Back to College Tomorrow

After an approximately five-hour journey, I finally came back to my hostel in Kuala Lumpur from my hometown. Today is the last day of my semester break. New semester will start from tomorrow onwards. After resting for about one month, it is time to resume my college life at HELP University College.

 

(Wake up Sheng Loong. It's time to go school!)

Few days ago, I checked out the new timetable posted on the college e-Learning website. Well, I found nothing surprising since I already knew what subjects I will be taking and who the lecturers are. The three subjects that I will be doing are Data Structure and Algorithms, Computer Systems Engineering and Software Engineering. I really have to study hard now because this semester is the last semester of my second year. If I can maintain my grades - to score at least straight A- (85 marks and above) for the remaining subjects, I will have much better chance to secure a scholarship to study in University of Queensland, Australia for my final year. So wish me good luck!

There are plenty of things that I have to do. Luckily I have no class tomorrow because no tutorial class is held in the first week and I happen to have only one tutorial class on Monday. I need to ask the department regarding the subject clash and scholarship stuff and I have to walk to the PTPTN building nearby to inquire about the loan disbursement. Plus I need to help my girlfriend to look for a single room near to UTAR in PJ. Anyone staying the area have room to let please contact me!

That's it. I am not sure if I will still have time to update the blog frequently. But I will continue to post anything that i find interesting and informative in my life. Stay tuned!

JTranslator Desktop v1.0 - Desktop Version of Google Translate Made by Me

Today is the third day of Chinese New Year. I had some time to code a small software with my immature programming skill. Here you go, JTranslator Desktop v1.0, the desktop version of Google translate!

This application is nothing special. I believe anyone with some programming experience could make it better. I just want to practice more so that I will be able to program something big in the future.  

If you have used Google translate, you should know that it is a very handy tool for translating text in different languages. The drawback of using it is you cannot always expect the translated text to be precise and human-readable. After all it is just a piece of software and it does not really understand grammar and semantics. Note that you must be online in order to perform the translation function since my application retrieves translated text from Google Translate itself.

There are still a lot of things waiting to be improved such as user interface, exception handling, functionality, etc. But I don't want to spend my whole day on coding this application.

The application is programmed in Java. So you have to make sure that you have Java Runtime Environment installed on your computer. If you cannot run my application, you may download the latest Java Runtime Environment installer for free at http://www.java.com/. If you find any bug or if you have anything to say about the application, leave your comments on this post so I can view them.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?ggdkjwb24zg
I am hosting the application on Mediafire since Blogger does not allow me to host any executable file. Simply download the file and once it is done, double-click it to launch the application. No installation is required.

Enjoy!

Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Valentine's Day!

How to Invent Your Own Computer Games for Absolute Beginners

I believe most guys love playing video games. I am not sure if you ever want to create your own game, but for me it has always been one of the coolest things I would want to do. Despite doing a degree course in Information Technology, I rarely have the opportunity to learn how to develop graphical games. During the semester break, I tried to learn to write some simple games in Java by watching the video tutorials posted on Youtube. Today morning, I discovered a website which offers a free ebook for download that teaches people how to write computer games without prior knowledge or experience in programming. And so I want to share it with you!

The website is called "Invent with Python" and is located at http://inventwithpython.com/. If you are figuring out how the snake can help you develop a computer game, Python is actually a programming language. We need to write codes in programming languages to give instruction to the computer. You know, the computer can barely understand anything else besides binary numbers, 0's and 1's. There are tons of programming languages out there. If you have ever heard of Java, Visual Basic, C++, PHP, etc, these are programming languages and each of them has its own pros and cons. Some people might argue that C or C++ should be used to develop games. While it is true that C/C++ is the industry de facto standard, learning to program games in other programming languages does not make any difference for the beginners. What is important is to learn how to program a game.

I know C/C++ is powerful and fast, because my friends and I did witness how faster C/C++ is compared to other modern programming languages. However, C/C++ has probably the steepest learning curve, apart from Assembly and some other legacy programming languages. On the other hand, Python is more beginner-friendly and the codes are much simpler and elegant. Python might not be very widely used in Malaysia, but it is already one of the most hottest programming languages in overseas, especially when Google made Python as one of their official programming languages, in addition to C++ and Java. You might not understand what I am talking about so just forget it.

Anyway, I took a quick glance on the table of contents and several pages of this ebook and I thought, wow, this ebook is really valuable plus it is free! In addition, the author also provided the source codes and some useful resources on the website to ease your learning process. If you are interested in learning how to program games in python, you must not miss it!

Invent with Python: http://inventwithpython.com/

Google Buzz - Should Facebook and Twitter be Worried?

If you haven't seem Google Buzz yet, it is actually a new social networking platform introduced by Google. You probably need to have a Gmail account in order to try it. I have been using Gmail as my primary email account. So when I logged into my Gmail account today morning, I was prompted to enable this feature.

I think it's easier for you to understand what Google Buzz is by watching the following video.


It seems that Buzz is Google's weapon to fight against already well-established social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Hickey posted an article on ChannelWeb in which he listed out 5 reasons Google Buzz has Facebook and Twitter worried. It is a very well-written article. However, I doubt that Google Buzz would have any significant impact to Facebook and Twitter at least in the near future. Google needs to have some strategies to make what the users would want and what Facebook and Twitter have overlooked available on the Buzz platform. After all, Internet users are usually reluctant to make a change to another social networking platform unless there is a big reason to do it. And the reason is never because it is a Google's product.

As an Information Technology student, I am more interested in finding out whether Google will make Buzz an open platform for developers to create applications. While Google already has its own social application platform - OpenSocial, making application available for Buzz users is also very crucial. My girlfriend would never spend so much time on Facebook if she could not have fun playing all kinds of game applications.

Check out more about Google Buzz at http://www.google.com/buzz.

Blog Overhaul

I had not touched my blog for a couple of months. Lately Teddy urged me to update the blog since I am having semester break now. Today afternoon I had some time so I decided to start working on this blog again.

It was another blog overhaul. I actually did it a few times, probably once a year if I am not mistaken. Yet, I did not change the server or domain name like wad I did previously. Well, I did plan to move my blog to another platform because I just hate the limitations imposed by Blogger. After searching for several alternatives, I convinced myself to stick to what I have now because I don't feel like want to spend my Paypal credits. Renovation is always cheaper than moving to a new house, isn't it? So I just changed the template and add in some widgets. I spent a few hours on hacking the code to make sure that every part of the template is fine and clean. It was pretty challenging since I don't have the documentation of this template but I just enjoyed it.

In addition, I removed all the labels applied to my previous posts and made the posts labeled as "Archives" so you will know those posts are old.

So how do you think about the design of my blog now? Is it much cleaner and neater? Is it easier to navigate and view now? Give me your comments!