For the first time in my life – I got to see fireflies. They were quite a sight to behold. Blinking in synchrony, they light up the mangrove like Christmas lights. I was quite impressed. Being an electrical engineer, I like the whole concept of bio-luminescence. One problem that we face today is that electricity needs to be supplied. It would be great if electricity could be autonomously generated by our bodies and used to power devices.
Our civilisation is tethered down to sources of energy. Without electricity, life as we know it in most of the developed world would stall to a halt. While we have made some progress in the realm of wireless power transmission, it is still not easy to accomplish. Furthermore, radiation losses would make wireless power transmission a lossy power source.
While the bunch of us were at Kuala Selangor, we went up to visit the lighthouse as well. I cannot remember if we ever learned it in school, but even if we did, I did not know that we had a lighthouse there. It was interesting to see a tower with lights rotating and signaling the ships to stay away. It was on top of Bukit Melawati, just by the coast.
We also went for some cheap and tasty sea food of course. Over dinner, we were entertained with speeches by various local representatives of the Selangor government. They had organised a dinner at the same restaurant for senior citizens from a number of nearby villages. It was my first time at these dinners and I was quite surprised with the kinds of rhetoric being spouted.
Anyway, yesterday was a really beneficial evening for me. I learned a number of new and interesting things.
While randomly surfing the Internet and vainly googling my name, I came across some random Chinese sites. Since I don’t have a Chinese presence, I wondered what it was all about. Clicking on it turned out to be an interesting surprise. It seems that some diligent Chinese students decided to build a System-on-Chip (SoC) using my processor and ported a popular Real-Time-Operating-System (RTOS) to it! They even published an academic paper early this year to prove it. It was even reported in the local Chinese media.
So, now instead of just having the capability to boot Linux, my littlest processor that could is also capable of booting uC/OS-II (a popular commercial RTOS). I’m seriously proud of its accomplishments. Honestly, I don’t think that there is any reason that it won’t boot any other operating system as long as someone bothers to port it.
It’s just too bad that my Chinese is a little rusty. I can sort of make out what it says but I will try to get someone to do a proper translation of it for me instead. I can roughly understand that they chose my processor because it is Open Source and useful for research. There are other popular Open Source microprocessors out there and I wonder what made them choose mine. I wonder if it was because of the good real-time characteristics of my processor. I actually designed that as a feature – to provide good real-time support.
So, what have I learned from this paper – that the AEMB is now in China in addition to the US and EU; that the AEMB is capable of running an RTOS – uC/OS-II easily; that the AEMB has been implemented on Altera FPGA.
PS: I wonder if this counts as a citation. They did list me in the references section of their paper. I doubt that my present employer would care.
Good testers are hard to find, and impossible to maintain. The reason is very simple – people who are technically good enough to be testers, tend not to become testers but end up as developers instead. And in an amazingly idiotic twist, people who are not technically good enough to do development work, often end up as testers. Sigh.
Testers have to be good developers. In fact, I would say that they need to be the best. In order to find a hole/bugs in a software is not that easy unless you have a bunch of monkeys doing development. Otherwise, you really need to twist and turn things around to purposefully foul things up.
Therefore, I will not have any testing department in my future company. Instead, I will swap roles between teams. One team develops and another team tests. There will not be any dedicated testers and every team that develops code will also need to break code by other teams. I will pit the teams against each other. The objective of the team that tests is to find as many bugs as possible in the other teams’ project while keeping the bugs down in their own project. It’s all about scoring brownie points – which is something that all good developers care about.
Let us take gaming as an example. I used to tell friends that I can beat any computer game – not because I was particularly good at gaming, nor because I spent a lot of time at it. I am confident of beating the game because I am a developer and I know how games are written, what they can and cannot do.
So, when I beat a game, I don’t actually try to beat the game but I am trying to hack the code instead. There are lots of techniques that I have used in the past but I will not go into the technical details here.
Testers should not be conscripted from the bottom of the pile – they should be selected from the top.
PS: It usually takes me under a minute to find a problem with an apprentice’s code. The only reason that I can find it so quickly even without looking at her code is because I already know what to look for – because I was once a noob coder too! We all make mistakes and that is the best way to learn.
I’d just realised that I cannot call myself a chip-architect or microprocessor guru until I actually built one myself – from scratch! It’s not that I have not built a microprocessor before – I have and it is used in real-world products. However, I have not actually designed one of the most fundamental components of a microprocessor before – the instruction set!
A microprocessor’s instruction set is a set of predefined ones and zeros that have certain fixed patterns. These patterns are the most fundamental language that a microprocessor understands. You can consider them the basic vocabulary of a microprocessor. So, I think that until I have designed one myself, I cannot call myself a microprocessor guru.
Although AMD started off by making chips that use the Intel X86 instruction set, they eventually came up with their own extensions and finally designed their own AMD64 instruction set, that Intel was forced to copy instead. That’s demonstrating technical superiority right there – forcing your competition to imitate you.
So, I think that I will sit down one of these days and design an instruction set for my new processor – that I am keeping a little secret for now.
Sigh. I sometimes wonder whether the fault is with the system, or the students, or a bit of both.
I remember speaking up at a JPA forum organised by DAP last year and reminding everyone that JPA scholarships should be the last resort and not the first one. Every other Malaysian is applying for it and everyone seems to want to do medicine in the UK. There are just not that many places available.
I think that school counselors need to do a better job of advising students. Obviously, I don’t think that these students would be best placed as factory workers but I also do not think that everyone should end up as a doctor. There are plenty of other fields in which to excel in and I suspect that some of these students may end up doing better elsewhere.
As for the case of scholarships, while I do not think that these students have actually gotten very excellent results because there are 8,500 others better than them, I do think that there are flaws in the existing system. Some scholarships should be merit based while others should be needs based. Some of these kids come from pretty poor families and should be given a chance to get out of the poverty trap.
Personally, I think that there are faults with both the government policies and the students themselves. One thing that think should be revamped is our scholarship system. It is in need of a serious re-think. There are already so many ideas thrown about by so many parties that I won’t even bother to go into it but there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.
That said, the students, parents and families should also consider alternative career paths. Also, one set-back is not the end of their lives. There are plenty of other opportunities out there besides being a factory worker. I think that I will consider some other alternatives here instead.
STPM
It seems like a poor four-letter word but seriously, it is a well recognised examination unlike the SPM. It is a very viable alternative. There is nothing wrong with taking it – especially if you plan on doing medicine. It will open new windows to you while closing previous doors. While you may not get a JPA scholarship after STPM, there are other ones available – both inside and outside the country.
The STPM is also well recognised as a pre-university qualification for most universities around the world. Do not just limit yourself to applying for local IPTA/IPTS. Broaden your options and consider applying for overseas universities. I have several friends from Cambridge who have gone there using their STPM results instead of A-Levels/IB.
Employment
For those who are a bit cash-strapped, there are opportunities for gainful employment if you have some usable skills. While the options are limited when all you have is an SPM, you would still be able to make a decent income in many places – just stay away from the chinaman companies. Do not think of it as a dead-end though but take it as a stepping stone.
Take some time out to gain some real-world experience and save up some cash. You might even be able to fund your own further education at a later time. Keep in mind that most universities are willing to accept mature students into their degree programmes. In fact, in some countries, taking some time off after high-school is a very regular thing. It’s only us Asians who are rushing for time.
In fact, it may be a positive factor because you may not want to become a doctor once your eyes are opened to all the opportunities in the world. For people considering a career in medicine, maybe you can work as a clinic assistant for a while to learn. For people considering a career in accounting, maybe some work as an administrative assistant will work. You get the basic idea.
Entrepreneurship
To those risk takers, there are plenty of government grants available – even for young people – as long as you have a good idea and a sound business plan. Check out the guys from Cradle – they are happy to part with RM150k to fund great ideas from anyone above the age of 18. What is more important than the money is actually the experiences that you will gain, while trying to do a start-up. I can personally attest that you will not learn it anywhere else.
I think that the ultimate problem with our students is apathy. There are things that we can all do to succeed and scholarships, matriculation is just one way to achieve it. There are many others. So, please do not limit your options but go out and explore all the different paths that life has to offer you.
Sybreon Ones Nought 