An Endless Stream of Thoughts!

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

Monday 5th of July was my final seminar...

There are lots of thoughts about it...it ends at Prof. Dr. Saeed Abdel Wahab lecture hall, where we had our discussion.

When I think about it...the stream of thoughts keeps on going!

All the happiness, the laughs, the anger, the sadness, the craziness...everything!

It all keeps on going and I can't have enough.

One of the best moments we had was when my friends spent the night @ our house. We prayed Al-Fajr together...this was unforgettable :)

later, Mona wrote on her status: 

"‎[status should be written from two days ago :D]

Having my first Fajr prayer with my friends ♥♥♥"

Reading it made me sigh :) Thank you Garfield :)

Printing the documentation was also very interesting...we were all very keen to see the output.
We kept on revising the whole thing several times before we print the final version and every time we found major errors...that made us a little bit worried.

Finally we printed a sample and were pleased with it (hoping not to find more errors). We went back home and the next day two of us went to get it and the rest were doing other tasks...

You can't imagine how keen we were to see it :) and what we did when the bell rang :D

Thaanks to Allah it was more than fine :) for us it was just perfect :)

This is how our package looked like

[Documentation - CD - Brochure - Setup Manual]

All in a zip-bag with a name-tag :)

Many of our friends (college/school) came and attended the discussion. I received looooots of congratulations wishes/cards/posts that made me really happyyy :)) 

Thank you girls 

My friend ACMaa came too  she really did an effort to be able to attend; it's a working day! You know ACMaa how much i appreciate it :))

The best thing EVER was having my whole family supporting me :)

Dad, mum, misho, mero & lolla... :)

Misho was in Kuwait at the seminar's time. They brought a laptop and opened a skype video call and she saw me presenting my final seminaaaaar =)
This was amazing.....They never fail to impress me!

I loveeeee you gals! :) <3

After finishing we went out (my team) to have lunch.

I went home really tired that I can't remember any details about the rest of the day!

Finally...to my team :) (ALMNS♥♥)

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّـهِ الَّذِي هَدَانَا لِهَـٰذَا وَمَا كُنَّا لِنَهْتَدِيَ لَوْلَا أَنْ هَدَانَا اللَّـهُ

Scientific Computing [1/2]

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

I never thought I’d be writing this post. Actually I still have my doubts :D. I just know now, It wasn’t CSys. I love coding more than this & debugging hardware wasn’t very fun (sorry simoz :D). Definitely not IS :D (no offense :D). May be CS was a choice, but guess what?

I enjoyed my year in SC J with all the ups & downs…I took the whole package & I’d take it once more if I had the choice J

So how did it go?

1^st you need to know that whatever you choose…whether it is CS, IS, CSys or SC…you’ll still be an FCISian & you’ll work wherever you want. The department does NOT define you. It’s you who define your own self. You learn, understand, solve, win, achieve, think or do whatever…not the department!

You can get the BEST of what you have just by keeping your positive attitude.

Back to SC, my dear department (a)

Visualization

Simulation

Finite Elements

High Performance Computing

Mathematical Programming

Those are the subjects for the 1^st term.

Let’s start with Visualization…It’s my favorite J

1^st I need to make a confession…This was one of the main subjects that attracted me to SC. During the 1^st couple of lectures I totally HATED it & I thought it was gonna be the worst subject ever! Then things turned out to be VERY different. Again it became my favorite J

Dr. Ashraf Saad is really different. I was told by a friend from the previous batch that he really loved us (my class) and that he treated us differently. I learned from him how to think outside the triangle I was fitting myself in. He always had some time for free discussion…things related to the subject, but not the exam ;).

When we studied his subject (I’ll tell you later about the “we” J) we always needed to be online. Youtube & Wikipedia were our best friends, along wiz some googling of course.

The exam was way different than all the previous exams…what do you expect? He loved our class :D :D

The subject itself wasn’t complicated; we just needed to read more in order to understand. Most of the study was reflected in real life. I guess that’s why it seemed attractive to me.

Those were some related posts:

• Color map editor
• Contouring
• My Visualization Package

Next comes the Simulation. This was common with CS.

The core of the subject was to simulate some real system. Example: Some customers in a supermarket, they come with a certain rate that is governed by a distribution, they are serviced in a certain time & we need to find out whether the system is efficient or not.

It was nice to know that almost any real system can be simulated & studied with computers.

The thing I hated about it was the amount of rules we had to memorize. I generally don't like to memorize rules & I don't study from the beginning of the year, so I don't practice a lot. Totally my fault J.

The third subject was HPC which stands for High Performance Computing. The very special thing about this subject was the exam. It was an open everything exam...yes EVERYTHING :D

Bring all what you can bring (notes, books, summaries, exams wiz solutions, laptops & even USB modems!)

It's one of the exams where you actually use your brain and think :D

Dr.Hossam may sometimes seem to be offensive, but he really wanted our own good. He wanted us to learn right & to get the most benefit out of the subject. 

This is one of the subjects that you'll enjoy...and never forget our BEST friend...Google ;)

Next will be the Finite Elements...well I got its goal very late...and this was the main reason why I didn't like it much. We studied the materials and how the bodies are affected by tension, pressure & heat.

It wasn't very much related to our field, but you can always try to find an application that you'd relate to all the year J. After all, we're having a +ve attitude :D, aren't we?

Like simulation we needed to know many rules...so u do the math.

Finally comes the Mathematical...It was one of the nice & light subjects.

Our midterm was a take-home exam & we delivered it via mail. (Interesting, huh :D?)

It's mostly about algorithms & problem solving.

Network Flow, Graph Coloring, Assignment Problem, Queuing System, Scheduling...Along with some old algorithms like Kruskal, Prim...

I totally enjoyed the Visualization, HPC & Mathematical. I liked the Simulation & I went over the Finite Elements.

The "we" I said about earlier was SC gals. We always studied together. We used to divide each subject upon us & met to study together. Sometimes we met offline at college while others were skype conference calls. We enjoyed it a lot & it was surely beneficial.

And this was my first term in SC J
I hope it will be somehow useful J


Scientific Computing [2/2]

Starting your GP?

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

This post is about the graduation project in FCIS...How will you start? 

The team, the idea, the supervisors & some general tips.

The Team

The whole GP journey begins with choosing your team. This phase is really important.

You need to choose those whom you'll be compatible with.

For a team to be formed, it usually goes through 3 stages:

1.     Getting together

2.     Struggling 

3.     Synergy

Maybe we'll talk about these in a separate post later isA.

Next comes the idea & the supervisors

The idea

• Research WELL
• Don’t just do anything, choose something that u'll be motivated to finish.
• Ask around a lot!

Remember: The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.

The supervisors

Practically these are the TAs

There are 2 types...which to choose will depend upon the team.

If your team has a good leader, both will be fine. If not, go for the first type (leaders) you'll need that.

1-Leaders

Those actually lead the project. They help in everything; reading papers, debugging errors, dividing tasks, motivating the team...

Well known in our college :)

2-Supervisors

They help you technically more than anything else...They support you with information & helps with ideas & solutions for problems

The one thing you really need to learn -if you don't have it already- is to think positively :)

There is nothing that is 100% bad!

Remember: The cup is half full :)

During this -some how- long journey, you'll go through many situations where nothing but +ve thinking would help you out.

Now that you have a team, an idea & a supervisor...you're all set...Begin your 1 year marathon and have lots and lots of fun :)

Some Random Tips

• Begin early & do your BEST to stick to your deadlines.
• It helps a lot to work on prototypes...i.e.: do the whole job & enhance/update it later.
• A time plan may sometimes be ruined...don't give up! things don't always go as expected so give yourself some extra time for the job (just in case things didn't go as planned)
• When a certain road seems to lead to nowhere, don't just stick to it...try something different..Think outside the box! Based on personal experience...it may save you months not just days! We lost about 3 months in a task that was done in 2 weeks.
• Document your work from the beginning...It helps later...especially when no time is left.
• Presenting your work -generally- is really important...learn how to present it in a nice way (either it's the documentation or the presentations you regularly do in seminars). Remember: people don't see except what you allow them to see.
• Understand every single step you do (during the whole project)...when you use an algorithm, make sure that you know why you're using it, what are the other options and why not the other options.
• Sometimes it helps to imagine the whole thing...I mean the output of the project...how it will look like...How things will communicate...And so on. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.

Last but not least

Link your work to your beliefs. It's what makes the whole thing worth it.

Remember your intentions & share them with your team...It helps a lot if you all have the same goal.

a more useful topic :)

http://alaashaker.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/the-graduation-project-rhapsody/

Enjoooy :)

Best wishes everyone :) 

May Allah help you :)