GoneWacko’s Blog

I have internets!

After 2,5 months in Finland, I have finally been connected to the world wide web.

It was actually enabled yesterday, but because I went to celebrate Vappu in Turku with friends from my street, I did not actually get to use it until today.

More on the said festivities in a later post.

Twitter

Sander (one of the Dutch guys I’m working with here in Finland) has lately been responsible for getting me to use all sorts of Web 2.0 things that I really shouldn’t be using.

He is not actively telling me to, but in a horrible case of I-want-what-my-peers-have marketing, I find myself signing up to such things as LinkedIn and Twitter.

In the case of the latter service, it has so far not really proven too useful for me, because the only person I follow/following me is Sander. Who I sit next to every day. For 8 hours. And live next door to.

So if anyone is using the aforementioned services, feel free to add me as a buddy or start following me or whatever the action of subscribing to my person is called.

In other news, I STILL don’t have internet at home, even though the two weeks that would be needed to get me connected ended on Tuesday.

Slow day at the office

So yeah, I’ve not actually blogged from the Scandinavian country of Finland; I know. However, currently it’s all a bit slow at the office. The only work we’ve got at the moment is putting some finishing touches on the documentation, and preparing for a presentation which will be taking place next week. Oh how I long for the time when we get to start writing awesome code.

I have two reasons for not blogging about my work placement:

• I (still) don’t have internet in my apartment, which is horrible but also an experience on it’s own; It’s training my skills of solving problems without Google.
• I’m making a special blog about Finland; I’m writing this in Django so that I have something to do when I do not have internet. And for this reason, I’ve been meaning to keep all the interesting stories and anecdotes for that special blog

The blog in question will ’soon’ be found at an as of yet undisclosed location (to prevent it from being indexed or visited by people who will only be disappointed).

I’d just like to point out that I’m well; The work is fun, the boss is awesome, and the other international students in my street are all very nice people.

The Calm Before The Storm

Last Friday I had my assessment of the current semester, and the outcome was that I needed to fix a few minor items in my portfolio in order to pass, which I shall be doing over the next few days.
Apart from that, I’m pretty much free of any obligations such as school work for the next three weeks, meaning that I’ve got plenty of time to make the necessary arrangements for my work placement in Finland. This time of leisure will be short lived because when I arrive in Finland I will be working full time for the first time in my life D:

Things that need doing include:

• Looking at insurance options
• Looking at how I can prove that I’m able to finance my stay in Finland
• Buying new shoes
• Having a drink with the people I’ll be going with

I also still need to put the finishing touches on my school project (which I don’t count a school work because it’s not that much work and it’s fun to do).
In the end I’m not overly proud of the product we’re delivering, but I did learn a lot about how not to do stuff (which surprisingly enough does not include ‘using JSP’ as a bad practice).

I don’t know why I’m even writing this blog entry, I guess I figured I had something interesting to say when I started writing but now (after spending about an hour rating movies on Flixter, through Facebook) I can’t quite remember what it was.

Semester’s end

Yesterday was what everyone in my school calls Portfolio Day or Oh-God-Not-This-Shit-Again Day. It’s the day on which everybody has their deadlines for proving that they are competent on whatever they’re studying during that semester.
This semester I’ve been learning about Object Oriented Programming and Design, as well as writing Distributed Applications.
After learning about these subjects for 3 months I’ve now spent about 3 months (9 weeks + christmas holiday) applying these topics in a web-based application for a real company.

So traditionally the night before the day on which we have to submit our portfolios is subject to half the school pulling all-nighters to get their work done. This semester it was no different, and I was up for a good 38 hours. ‘Tis times like these where a mild form of ADHD and a condition where I don’t produce enough Melatonin, the hormone which causes drowsiness, really help. I’m able to stay up for 40 hours or more without too much of a problem.

Unfortunately I’m not feeling very secure about how my portfolio will hold up under the scrutiny of my assessors, but I should get plenty of chances to fix what’s wrong with it, luckily. At least the fact that the portfolio’s have been handed in means there’s less stress. Normally this also means that I now have a few days off, but no such luck: I still have another week in which to deploy the product we’ve produced and fix the last couple of issues we may stumble upon.

After next week however, I should have about 3 weeks of free time before I travel north-east to Finland! Exciting times are ahead and I’ll have tonnes of stuff to take care of. I have to buy a ticket, new shoes and perhaps somewhat warm clothes (although so far the temperatures in Salo, Finland are pretty much comparable to the temperatures in the Netherlands). I also need to figure out if Finland has different wall sockets from us and such.
Yesterday I’ve received word that they’ve made housing arrangements for us, very close to the university campus, in a residence where all the university’s international students are placed. So I think it’s going to be quite good, with people from all over the world in very similar situations as us. Should be a lot of fun!

New laptop and Finland

Last week, my laptop mysteriously died on me. It seems to be under the impression that it’s powered on, even though it’s not (the LED is burning). It’s also acting as if it’s drawing power from a wall socket, even though it’s not (the LED is burning).

So after looking for a nice laptop to replace it with, my dad and I ordered it last Saturday and it arrived today. It’s an HP Pavilion dv9595ed (although these version numbers seem to vary in meaning per country). For info on what’s inside, check the specifications page (In Dutch, but you should be able to make sense of it anyway). You can also check out the product demo flash animation.

Apart from the 2 GHz Centrino Duo and the GeForce 8600M GS (shared memory ) I also quite like the

• Support for 802.11n, which is good because that’s what we’ve got at my home
• 320 GBs worth of hard drive space (5400 rpm)
• Integrated fingerprint reader

Yesterday I received confirmation from my school that I should be going to Finland for my work placement. Woo! There is no concrete assignment yet, but that’s being worked on. I’ll probably go to Finland somewhere around the 18th of February, for about 20 weeks. Exciting stuff!

Work Placement in Finland

Fooled you! Completely disregarding what I may or may not have written the other day, I’ve decided to write about something not-entirely-technical anyway. I probably will until I figure out what I want and how I want it.

Anyway, I’ve been planning on going abroad for my work placement for quite some time. A good friend of mine went to Finland about 2 years ago I think it was, and he came home with such good stories that I’ve always wanted to go to Finland ever since. I’ve somehow always thought that Finland was a pretty cool country. The land of Metal, cold weather, and incomprehensible languages.

Anyhow, I recently started to do the things needed to get there for my work placement which will be from February until June. At the moment the plan is to go to a company called doRego (or some other variation of the capitalization of that word) which is a company in Salo, some 2 hours west-north-west of Helsinki. The aforementioned friend went there, too. The plan is also to go with a classmate and good friend (Roel).

Recently yet another friend of mine (Jan-Jaap) bought an XBOX 360 and we (Roel, Jan-Jaap and yours truly) have been enjoying a great many games like Assassin’s Creed, Halo 3, etc. So now I’m saving money to buy an XBOX 360 myself, which I think may come in handy in Finland if we ever get bored (which should not happen because there should be a lot of international students there to socialize with).

I’ve also been thinking of taking my PC along. Doing some quick calculations (two screens of 5 kg each, plus a case which I’ve estimated at around 15 (may have been a gross overestimation) would amount to a total shipping cost of 270 euros, with UPS). Although that does seem to be some sort of express delivery where it gets delivered the next day, so maybe it’s cheaper if I tell them to take as long as they want.

How do I make money for buying xboxes and paying shipping costs, you ask?
I’ve been working as a (Visual Basic 6.0) programmer, which is great fun and lucrative! I’ve just finished writing a printing system (which took ages to write because I tried 3 different methods and found out they all Failed Badly™) and now I’ve started to work on a way for the application I’m working on (Dutch website: Voetbaltrainingsuite.nl) to be internationalized. It’s a bit of a makeshift solution at the moment though.

I shall no doubt be posting more about (and possibly from) Finland in the coming months, because I’m quite excited about going there