The 3rd chapter is (unofficially) finished….

As the title describes, it’s unofficial since there’s still 1 pending report to submit and not all grades have been registered to the online system of the University of Trento. But I have all the grades already in hand, so I might say it’s finished…. unofficially So let me highlight a bit the courses that I took during the 3rd semester.

I’ll start with the Computer Graphics course which was conducted by the Graphitech in cooperation with the University of Trento. I start with this course simply because it’s worth for 12 ECTS credits and the best grade I obtained during the 3rd chapter of the EuMI programme, thanks to my partners: Alessio Guerrieri and Gavriel Smith. I enjoyed working with them, and in fact I learnt a lot from them as they were experienced in the area. So the course was divided into 2 parts, the first part was mainly tutorials about how OpenGL works coupled with in-class exercises, and the second part was the project development phase (each group was assigned a project to accomplish). All implementations were done using the Java programming language with JOGL API. My group’s project was about the hybrid-terrain representation using a TIN (Triangulated Irregular Networks) on NASA’s Worldwind API. For a visual demo of several exercises and the final project, please watch the 2 clips below. The original clip was captured using the Istanbul desktop screen recorder in ogg theora format, then it was converted to MPEG4 format using FFMpeg, then splitted into 2 files to fit youtube’s 10-minute-length constraint using the Mencoder. Everything was done on top of my currently installed Fedora 9 linux distribution. I’d like to thank the teaching assistants: Olga, Bruno, Giuseppe, and of course prof. DeAmicis for giving me something to know about computer graphics

Computer Graphics demo – Part 1 (to watch directly from Youtube, please follow this link)

Computer Graphics demo – Part 2 (to watch directly from Youtube, please follow this link)

I’ve been interested in data communications topics since the very beginning I joined the EuMI programme, inheritted somehow from my previous job. During the third semester, the only related course to this topic that I took was the Advanced Networking course conducted by prof. LoCigno and his assistant Csaba, and also several guest lecturer(s). I learnt many things on the network, transport, and application layers through this course, complementing the second semester’s Nomadic Communications course which mainly focusing on the physical and MAC layers. For the final project, I teamed up with Ruchi for developing a call traffic generator program that used the (negative) exponential distribution for the call interarrival time and call duration. The final exam was dealing with the project as well as some questions from the theoretical class. In the end, I got a good grade for this course. Thanks to prof. LoCigno and Csaba for conducting the course, also to Ruchi for the time developing the program And to Fabrizio as well for giving us the direction during the project’s development phase.

The Computational Complexity course was quite tough inherently, but it was a bit releaving to have the exams (both mid term and final) in an open-book fashion. It reminds me the good-old-days of my bachelor programme where almost every course incorporated an open-book exam approach. In the end I got a quite so-so grade. Thanks to prof. Massaci and Ida for conducting this course.

Mathematical Logics was the nightmare of the semester. No doubt. Many students failed the intermediate exams, and so did I I studied hard like for a week at aula 22 of the faculty of science with Sandeep for the final complete-exam, and the result was not that good. But well, it’s enough as other students still failed this one. This course was about 3 classical logics: propositional, first-order, and modal logics. Despite the gory nature of this course, I’d still like to thank prof. Luciano and Anna Paola for conducting the course.

During the early month of the third semester, I also took an intensive basic Italian language course (that was compulsary) at CIAL for the A1a level. It was only for 1 month in September, and I got the certificate stating that I passed this course

Last but not least, the most interesting course was none of the above. Instead it was the Italian culture course that made me interested most. It took place by the end of January 2009 for a week or so by a professor who conducted the course very well. He talked, talked, talked, and we laughed, laughed, laughed In addition, the final 3 days of the course was conducted by his assistant, a super pretty girl. All guys in the classroom couldn’t agree more I believe A friend of mine even stated: “She’s the most beautiful Italian girl I’ve ever met”

So now comes the 4th chapter: the master’s thesis…. I hope everything will go well….