Archive for July, 2003

Radio controlled Battle Tanks

Monday, July 28th, 2003

Radio-controlled battle tanks are for sale for $44.95 @ Jaycar.
Yep, an interesting new toys for little and big boys. The tanks have movable turrets and can shoot an infra-red beam to other tanks, which will disable them for few seconds.

It would be interesting if the tank is equipped with the Sony’s AIBO AI system, able to make smart manuvuers on a perhaps realistic terrains with hills and sand dunes.
Or the AIBO can be equipped with turrets. Hmm….this reminds me of the movie “Small Soldiers”. They probably then become more suitable in barracks than homes.

Finally, at the consulate …

Monday, July 28th, 2003

This morning, I went back to the consulate to proceed with the visa application. This time I had an official letter from the school, including a letterhead. It was not fancy though, like many other companies’ official letter.

Anyway, the application went through. Thank God for it.
But … (why is there always a but at the end of a road?)
But they needed information regarding the company that covers the travel insurance. So, I have to get hold of a statement letter and send it to the consulate.

Another attempt to the consulate

Friday, July 25th, 2003

This morning I went to the consulate again, equipped with a sponsorship statement from my supervisor. The outcome was …. REJECTION *DOH*.

I was told that the letter must be an official letter complete with the university letterhead, bla bla bla…..

Why wasn’t I told that weeks ago? Speaking of truth but half truth…..

Thesis cover page

Monday, July 21st, 2003

Last Thursday, I took a plunge into latex programming, trying to customize the thesis cover page according to the UNSW format. It’s true that the Scientific Word has a number of thesis templates from which I can choose but none of them is satisfactory. Even its UNSW thesis template is not suitable for postgraduate thesis; well it was written by someone for his undergraduate thesis in EE.

So, I decided to create my own cover page plus copyright page, declaration and dedication. It was a “hair-scratching and pulling” path for someone who is not familiar with Latex programming like me. I could only deduce and guess how it works, looking at several class files. “Trial-and-error” is basically my best virtue.

On Sunday night, I started to have a good grip on this and managed to finish the cover page plus other attachments. Here they are.

One thing really still puzzles me; the process of adding things into the table of contents using the command \addcontentsline . For example, there are 3 pages dedicated to the List of Figures . Naturally, the table of contents should indicate the first page of the section. But somehow, it displays the last page. This is so weird…worth checking later when I have time.

Paper II

Wednesday, July 16th, 2003

Finally, I have finished writing the second journal paper. I think I spent a month doing it. Next week my supervisor is back and we’re going to finalize it. As usual, there will be major editing. The max length for a journal paper is 30 pages while mine almost reach 40 pages. Apart from major editing, obviously there will be cropping. We’ll find out later….

For now, back to editing thesis again, especially after the review from ICIP2003.