The second chapter is finished….

The second chapter of my enrollment at the EuMI programme at the University of Trento is finished. I earned 36 ECTS during this second semester which makes the total of 66 ECTS I’ve earned so far. It seems like I’m going on the right track, but then I really need to pay attention to the requirements of Media Informatics programme in Bonn/Aachen. But I believe everything will be fine.

The second semester in Trento was a real pain for me since I came to Trento when the courses had begun for about 1 month (i.e. I missed 1-month courses). And upon arrival I still didn’t know which subjects I should take. The course mapping stuffs of Trento and Bonn/Aachen limit my choices, and the compulsory subjects were very new to me which only made things worse. The whole semester was packed with project milestone deadlines, and since 3 of 5 courses I took were project-based, they were really killing my time severely.

So I took 5 courses during the second semester:

• Data Mining for Knowledge Management — 6 ECTS
• Logics for Data and Knowledge Representation — 6 ECTS
• Nomadic Communications — 6 ECTS
• Organizational Information Systems — 6 ECTS
• Web Languages (Service-oriented Architecture) — 12 ECTS

The data mining course was interesting since it covered many aspects: association rules, clusterings, classifications, outlier detections, data streams. For the final project I teamed up with Mu and Elda focusing on blog clustering topic. The project consumed a lot of time especially in the coding phase, and as I didn’t have many experiences with coding stuffs, it was a real hard work to me. But then I got a good grade for this course.

I had a logics course about 5 years ago and I still remember some basics of logics. But then this course dealt with more advanced logics stuffs and I became quite frustrated with it. And since I’m not interested in logics (I took this course because it’s MANDATORY), I found this course pretty boring. And yes, I passed with the minimum passing score on the first try of the exam. But fortunately this course offers 5 exam sessions which are independent from one another. So I took the second exam and I passed with the best score on that exam session for this particular course. Thanks to Mr. Tizar and Ms. Yusi for giving me some very useful tips. Also thanks to Mr. Yudis for suggesting me to contact them for help The course covered 3 famous classical logics: Propositional logic, First-order logic, Modal logic. And modern logics: Description logic, Context logic, Default logic.

Nomadic Communications was my favourite course during the 2nd semester. Not only because I like data communications topics, but also because this course offered a practical approach in the form of labs. There were 4 bi-weekly labs and for each lab I needed to write a report. I teamed up with Suzie and Kumar for the labs. I played with several Cisco access points during the labs and also Linux terminals. The fourth lab was pretty interesting to me. It was cracking WPA PSK using dictionary-based approach (it’s a form of brute-force attack) with aircrack-ng tool. Too bad my Fedora Core 7 box hadn’t been tuned to support the monitor mode for the wireless interface due to the lack of free-time, which required me to use Linux terminals at the university for gathering the data needed (i.e. the 4-way handshake).

Organizational Information Systems initially looked easy, but then the 3 project milestones consumed most of my early-weeks of the semester. I teamed up with Mu for the Chinese Restaurant project. I didn’t know a thing about Chinese cookings (except that they are delicious ), I didn’t even know about cooking in general, but yet we decided to choose a Chinese Restaurant project. I relied on my luck pretty much for this course For the organizational modeling we used mainly the i* diagrams, but other diagrams were used as well, and for the business process modeling and simulation we used the ADONIS software. Thanks to this project, the Windows Vista operating system residing inside the harddisk of my laptop was used which otherwise would be left untouched since I used its Linux counterpart for the rest of the courses’ projects (and daily needs).

I had a little background knowledge of web services since I dealt with them for my bachelor’s final report. But then the composite services using the BPEL was a very new thing to me which in the end put this course at the bottom list of the courses I have taken so far (grade-wise) alongside the German exam which I did pretty badly . The ODE-BPEL engine running on top of Apache-Tomcat on my Linux box was damn problematic (I didn’t try using the Windows operating system. There was just not enough time). Everytime I modified a service in Axis which required the Apache-Tomcat daemon to be restarted caused a crash to the ODE-BPEL engine. The only solution I found was deleting the ODE directory and re-explode (the way used for installing the ODE-BPEL engine) the ODE archive file. I had to do this each time I made a change to a service, even the slightest one. Another nightmare was that the ODE-BPEL engine couldn’t support the RPC-encoded styled SOAP services. So I needed to change the services I created initially using RPC-encoded style to Document/literal. But anyway, I learned a lot about the Service-oriented Architecture through the final project of this course though the final grade was very disappointing.

OK, so the new chapter, the third chapter, of the four-chaptered EuMI programme is about to begin. I should really get back on track and do my best. I hope this time everything will be better.

A trip to Milano

OK, so this is another late log of my journey to Milano. The final projects of study subjects I took last semester were killing my time severely. Coding for about 12 hours a day in average, writing reports and papers, and in the end taking written & oral exams. The trip itself was managed pretty well, but the log-writing was not

In fact the main reason for this trip to Milano was to watch AC Milan’s last match for the 2007/2008 season against Udinese. I’m not a Milan fan, but 2 of my friends whom I spent times studying with in Bonn, Mu and Yanto, are Milan fanatics I might say. And since Mu and Tanin were inseparable , Tanin joined the trip as well. I and Mu quite frequently checked the match’s tickets availability through Banca Intesa (one of the official AC MIlan matches selling points), but couldn’t get the ticket until a week before the match took place. It was a special 50% discount, so we chose the best position/price options. I can’t remember the exact seat (I lost the ticket), but we were in Arancio sector for sure, and I think the second row. The regular price for the ticket was €66 for the seats we chose, but then we needed to pay only €33. Knowing this price reduction, Elda and Bora decided to join us as well, and later on Alexis was interested as well, bringing a PhD-student girl with him. But they couldn’t get a nearby seats from us, so during the match-time we were separated.

The match was taken place on 18th May 2008 in the famous Stadio Giuseppe Meazza “San Siro”. I and Mu went to Milano on 17th afternoon by train and met with Yanto directly in San Siro to take the stadium tour. The tour was quite interesting. We went to the San Siro museum, then went inside the stadium (the pitch, the dressing room, the bathroom, the lounge etc.). Below is me at the closest possible point to the pitch.

San Siro – Posing near the pitch

After finishing the tour, we went to San Siro’s official merchandise store (also in the stadium) and bought some stuffs. Mu bought a Milan cap, made by Adidas, and surprisingly: made in Indonesia! See… my country’s workmanship is pretty good The hat can be seen below.

An official AC Milan cap which was made in Indonesia

The “Made in Indonesia” label of the cap

Tanin didn’t join the match-eve tour since he’s spending his time with his ex-girlfriend. We didn’t want to disturb him for sure We took the metro from the Lotto station to QT8 and checked in to our hostel. Then we met Tanin near the Cadorna train station, and headed towards Piazza del Duomo, then went through the famous “Vittorio Emanuele II” gallery passage which is located at one side of Piazza del Duomo. This gallery is packed with famous brand shops including Prada, Louis Vuitton, Versace etc. The only affordable shop in this gallery for us was the McDonalds

Milano – In front of Vittorio Emanuele II gallery (Mu, Yanto, me, Tanin)

After wandering around Piazza del Duomo, we were starved and looked after a good-and-cheap restaurant. Tanin had an information about an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant, but we couldn’t find it. We met Elda and Bora on the way and had a dinner together. Then we all went back to the hostel except Tanin. He spent his night in Como.

In the morning when we were enjoying our breakfast, I met 2 Indonesian girls (language students) and found out that both of them were about to watch the same match later that afternoon. But as with the case of Elda, Bora and Alexis, their seats were far from us. After the breakfast, we went to the Teatro alla Scala museum at the city center.

Milano – In front of the Teatro alla Scala museum

Then I, Mu and Yanto went to the cathedral (duomo). Elda and Bora didn’t join us since they had gone there the day before (when we took the San Siro tour). So we went inside the cathedral and went up to the roof by feet. As also with other towers, the scene of Milano from above was awesome.

Milano – In front of the cathedral (duomo)

Milano – At duomo’s roof

After enjoying the panorama from above, we met Elda and Bora again just in front of the cathedral and took the metro directly to the Lotto station. We bought some burgers from McDonalds for our lunch and took a bus heading towards the stadium. Then we were separated again from Elda and Bora due to the different entrance gates. The checking at the gates were a bit paranoid to me, they even opened my backpack and found out what’s inside. What about Tanin? We met him at the stadium safely

San Siro – Posing with Mu before entering the stadium

San Siro – Among the crowd of Milan’s tifosi

We entered the stadium quite early which enabled us to see the players warming up while eating the burgers we had bought earlier. The seats were very small and the space between rows of seats were very narrow, making us having to stand up whenever there was someone about to enter or leave the row.

The first half of the match was evenly-dominated by both teams, but only one goal was scored. And it was for the away team. Yeah, my 2 fanatic comrades were shocked (and I believe it happened to all tifosi at the surrounding). But the match was held for 90 minutes, not 45. The clips below were taken with my handycam during the match. I transferred them from miniDV tapes in DVD-quality, but then when I uploaded to Youtube, the image quality decreased significantly.

San Siro – Udinese’s goal

But then on the second half MIlan’s squad really impressed their tifosi by presenting 4 goals. The first one was scored by Pato and followed by Inzaghi soon after.

San Siro – Milan’s first goal (Pato)

San Siro – Milan’s second goal (Inzaghi)

After up by one goal, MIlan’s squad kept pushing Udinese’s defense, and a foul was committed by Udinese’s defender inside their penalty box. Kaka was in charge of the execution, but his shot was tapped by the goalkeeper. Inzaghi was there to make a shot, but then his attempt only hit the post. So funny!

San Siro – Kaka’s missed penalty

But then Cafu’s and Seedorf’s shots brought Milan’s squad to victory by 4-1.

San Siro – Milan’s third goal (Cafu)

San Siro – Milan’s fourth goal (Seedorf)

Despite this last match’s triumph over Udinese, AC Milan won’t participate in the upcoming UEFA’s Champions League session since they only finished fifth in Serie A. But at least they presented a good match that day for the fans. At about the same moment in Parma, FC Internazionale defeated the home side by 2 goals to nil which confirmed their scudetto achievement.

San Siro – After the match (me, Yanto, Mu, Tanin)

After going out of the stadium, we met Elda and Bora, and Alexis with his friend as well. Then we headed to Piazza del Duomo to see the crowd of Inter fans celebrating their scudetto. As we had expected, the square was packed with Inter fans. Black and blue or white with red cross attributes were everywhere to be found on the street. And it was so noisy. But then it was a double celebration day in Milano: for AC Milan’s fans after the team’s triumph over Udinese and for Inter’s fans after the scudetto achievement. I’m really thankful to have witnessed both.

Milano – The crowd of Inter fans at Piazza del Duomo

Happy 63rd Anniversary for INDONESIA!

May Indonesia get better as it gets older…. Sorry for the 3-day-delay. I was traveling to Zürich on 17th