Lecture Theatre Chairs

Have you ever noticed - the chairs in some lecture rooms are so uncomfortable to lean back on?

For example, the chairs in LT8. Try leaning back, and you find that your bottom goes forward and you lean back too much. And the chairs are actually designed to be like that.

Uncomfortable Lecture Theatre Chairs - 3 images stolen

The best comfortable one I've been to in SOC is LT27. Congratulations LT27! You win the Most Comfortable Lecture Theatre in SoC award.

The worse one, LT33 / LT34. Booooo. Even the ones in Business and Arts faculty have this issue. I wonder why... Maybe it is just me :-/

Furniture and IT Equipment Conditions in SoC

Go to the study area in SOC. Find a nice study table with a innocent looking chair. Sit down.

A Computer Chair - image stolen

Count your lucky stars if you get a chair that doesn't have any one of these problems:

1. Automatic height adjustment feature. Seat goes down when you sit down, lifts up when you get up.
2. Gas lift doesn't work and hence you find yourself the shortest kid in the area unable to raise the chair.
3. Leaning back suddenly gets the whole area's people to look at you - the back of the chair creaks loudly
4. Leaning back is impossible without you toppling over as the back of the chair leans too much.
5. The back of the chair is set to the bottom at the lowest possible giving only lower back support

Regardless, I am thankful for the study areas that NUS SoC is providing as compared to other faculties.

When you go to a lab to use the computer...

Check out the ergonomics!

The monitor is now higher than you. And you can't lower it. The best you can do is to tilt it downwards.

You still have to tilt up your head to view the top part of the screen.

And the chair syndrome also exists there.

In the PCs, ClearType is disabled and the Appearance display tab in Display Settings is removed. Probably to stop me from changing the wallpaper. Changing the wallpaper only affects my user account so I can't figure out why NUS has such a policy.

And don't get me started on the numerous dialog boxes that you have to close and click OK whenever you login. Up to THREE 'Message of the Day (MOTD)' and there's even one in the webpage that opens up.

That's not all...

Mouse Shit? Eewww

I have seen worse than this, this is just one of the moderate cases. And finally...

Broken Keyboard Stand - Better Ergonomics?

Sometimes you have to wonder, how did that person break it? I'll leave it to your imagination...

The NUS Financial Bill

Sometimes I wonder why I am being charged for things I don't use. I don't even understand what some charges are for.

Screen Capture from Current Tuition Fees Payable. Bright lines indicate things that I don't know why I am being charged for

a) NUSSU Annual Subscription ($10 first year, $24 every year)

NUSSU = National University of Singapore Students Union .

The NUSSU logo. Stolen from official site.

NUSSU has done many stuff for us. A great example is the S/U option and I appreciate the efforts they have taken. But why are they not being transparent with what they do with the money?

OK, let's assume NUS has 25,000 students (from the annual report). That means they are collecting 25,000 x 24 = $600,000 per year!

Where is it going to? Am I making use of it? I notice HOOKED and "The Ridge" are some publications they do. Fine, the printing, design and licensing take up a bulk of the cost. Then again, most of the staffs are mostly NUS students doing the job as a CCA. So where does the remainder of the money go?

b) Sports ($24)

We are SO generous that *most* of us are helping to pay for others' sports activities. Cool eh? Even if I never stepped inside or peeked inside any of those halls, I still have to contribute my chunk. Well, for exams maybe. That's Twenty Four Dollars per semester for the use of the multi-purpose hall for exams.

NUS Sports ad. Image stolen

If everyone really used the sports facilities available to them, would it really be sufficient? 25,000 chiong all the sports facilities together! Would the stadium be barely able to contain them all?

Just like the hotel bill joke (warning, a stupid MIDI will play in the background).

We pay for unlimited [56k] internet, licence the latest Microsoft [development] software for SOC students to download and probably are paying for many others stuff that we don't use. Perhaps it is because charging on a per-use basis would be troublesome.

c) Health Insurance ($60)

I managed to get the information from here. Apparently it gives free consultation, basic investigations and standard drugs from University Health Physicians (Non-standard items are chargeable). Cool, free consultation and medicines! Ditcha know that?

And Outpatient reimbursement (at subsidised rate similar to B2 rate) from Singapore Government hospitals for cases referred by University Health Physicians, excluding pre-existing illness.

But it does not cover dental care and many others.

Did you know? You are paying for unlimited Consultation in UWHC every year! Image stolen.

But, there is already a very friendly subsidised polyclinic nearby and I already have health insurance. Anyway to opt out? Nope. $60 per semester for nothing.

d) CLASS ($13)

Nowhere can I find the definition of this $13 charge. Furthermore, it is 'CLASS' and not 'Class'. So it has to be an acronym that stands for something.

After Googling deeper, I found out that it is a "fee which is imposed to comply with the Copyright Law, and use of academic related facilities (eg: computers and labs". Still, I don't get why we need to pay to comply with Copyright law? So where does this money go to? The lab fees are already included in the main fees, right?

Seems that we are paying for many things that we don't use. Even the Laboratory charge of $30 is charged if you don't take any lab-related modules for the semester.

Oh, and I also noticed that GST is about $950 (7% of 14,000). Luckily, the tuition grant covers it well, though I don't wonder why GST has to be charged for tuition granted students. It is like as if the government is charging for granting tuition grant.

The Online Student Feedback on Teaching Exercise

Hey NUS Mates! You know those surveys that you are forced to take every semester? Yea, those student feedback surveys? Here's a letter from me with regards to that:

Dear NUS Mate,

How have you been doing? I hope you are going to graduate soon. Wish you the very best!

I have a sincere request. Please don't specify that the modules you are taking as easy during the end of semester module surveys.

You make us, future victims of the module, suffer for that click on that radio box. Because, based on your feedback, the course coordinators make the module harder. Please always say that the modules are hard. You will still earn the 'free' NUS points.

That 0.5ms time you take to click on that radio box = 1 semester of extreme torture for future students. Image stolen.

In return, we promise to mark our modules as very tough so that you will have an easier time with SSs, UEs and Breadths. Deal?

With Warm Regards,
NUS Computing Student

P.S: 'Free' NUS points for doing surveys? Right. More like bidding points being penalized if you don't participate. If you don't participate in these free point schemes, you end up lower than the competition in CORS. Clever gimmick to make students participate.

P.P.S: That's not even scratching the surface 2 years ago. "Graduate students, Dentistry, Law and Medicine undergraduate students who do not participate in the feedback exercise will only be able to access their results via the internet five days after the release of the examination results". What better way to imply that you must take this survey?

Odd Exam Hall Related Things in NUS

These are some annoyances during the midterm or final term exams.

A random exam paper heading that we are all used to

a) Unstable Rocky Tables and Chairs

Depending on your luck, you may get a table and chair that both tilt to one side depending on which side the force is on. This force starts becoming very noisy when you attempt to correct a mistake in the OCR form with a rubber.

Some of you may say, just put some tissue at the unstable stand. But, during the exam, every second counts and you don't want to waste time maintaining the stability of the table.

Especially if the bloke in front/behind of you has the same predicament, everytime he erases something or adjusts his position, either things start falling down or his table makes a banging noise.

b) Temperature

Sometimes the hall is very cold as if they want us to buy the promotional NUS jackets.

Freezing sometimes! But fortunately, we can voice out and they will re-adjust the temperatures

It is such a common warning that lecturers give before the exam that I wonder why the maintainers don't bother to increase the temperature.

Then again, in the lectures I attend nowadays, the temperature is only slightly lower than outside. Gone are the days where entering a lecture room / tutorial room would mean getting some cold air from the warmth outside. It is still air conditioned, but only slightly. It is probably due to the environmental initiatives but what use is it of the air conditioner if it is only a few degrees lower than the outside?

c) Counting Exam Papers

During the end of every exam, all exam papers must be accounted for before any student can leave. 99% of the time, this causes a 15 minute delay. Those leaving early get to escape this lateness event.

In 99% of the cases, I believe, is human error. So why doesn't NUS invest in an exam paper machine counter or a procedure to collect/count exam papers efficiently and save the whole lot of students some time?

We're talking students filled in a whole Multi-Purpose Hall being held back just because someone made an error counting the papers.

d) Scanned Exam Papers

Some of the scanned archived exam papers are very crooked. For some reason, the person-in-charge is not able to obtain the digital PDF copy of the exam papers to host them online.

Why doesn't that person chase after the module's course coordinators for the digital PDF rather than scanning each paper one by one?

Some of us like to print two pages in one, and by having a digital version (rather than the scanned PDF version), the print quality of the text is also much better.

Maybe they just want to save time from chasing the lecturers.

Advertising and Useless Announcements in NUS E-Mail

NUS E-mail is being used to communicate all sorts of things that should be posted in a bulletin board / mailing list.

Recently I received the following mails:

Racing Cars anyone? And from a source I would trust

IMPORTANT news to all SoC students!! New music library operating times! Huh?


Free advertising privilege for a NOC student?


Some 'thoughtfully' come with the <ADV> prefix and even require read receipts

Seriously! How does the hours of music library changing operating times warrant an e-mail to be sent to all SoC e-mail accounts?

An option is to block the senders. However, the senders also sometimes (About 30% of the time) send important information. Not much choice there eh, mate?

Why can't NUS have a page of mailing lists that we can select to opt in? E.g. Music Library Announcements, Engineering Faculty Activities, SoC Events, etc. There are NUS groups that you can opt out of, which only like 5% of the senders utilise.

Maybe NUS should consider linking up with GMail Custom Domains to fight email spam. Or allow us to forward all mails from our NUS account to another account, just like SoC E-mail allows.

The NEW! CORS Gripes

New CORS design. With a pretty ang mo and laptop that looks as if they were digitally combined (photoshopped)

In a list of CORS gripes that keep growing, here are three new ones:

a) Open Bidding Statistics

Why, oh why, doesn't CORS display results of the open bidding statistics right at the Bidding Management page?

Why do I have to go through one long long document for the statistics? See my rant here.

Probable Reason: Requires additional tables and SQL queries that can slow down the system. Right.

OK, I am playing cheat here as I have already mentioned this in another blog post. But this issue deserves another mention as I was getting really frustrated from scrolling up and down when looking for open bidding statistics.

b) Not checking for whether I can take a module BEFORE I add a module

Minor gripe, why doesn't CORS check the eligibility BEFORE I add a module?

Right, tell me this only after I spend time adding, choosing a module and not before it

A minor usability issue. But it could have saved me 5 minutes of my NUS life!

c) Current system time in the bidding page?

Why isn't the current system time shown at the bidding page? Every minute/second makes a difference so the time in the system could be different from the time in my watch during the last few minutes.

Especially for snipers like me <grin>.

Oh well, perhaps this is one of the ways to prevent last minute bidding and err.. 'save resources'.

d) Round 3A starts during term time? Long Round 2A?

Why does CORS Round 3A starting during term time?

Why does Round 2A require 3 (that's THREE) days?? Two days is reasonable, but three days just to watch the bid points go higher and higher and higher and .. you get the idea.

Round 3A starts on the Monday, the first day of lessons

And why does a module allocate slots to each faculty rather that letting the faculties compete with each other? Open field, direct competition with all NUS students. "Save resources"?

Nonetheless, the new CORS design does improve things alot (the navigation is finally non-javascript based). That's only in the front unfortunately. Once you login, it is still the same old thing.

Top 5 Annoying Things Lecturers Do

This is a follow up to the previous one, now that I am in third year.

1. Not uploading PowerPoint slides in PowerPoint format
   
   What is with PDF that lecturers just love to post instead of the original PPT? Compatibility? Why not upload both versions? Copyright? Lecturer's lecture notes are NUS property, not personal property.
   
   

   
   It is a war of PPT vs PDF! 4 images stolen

   Some of the lecturers go a bit further on the PDFs; they upload different versions of the PDFs. Like 4 slides per page, or 8 slides per page.
   
   Hello, why not save the trouble and just upload the original PPT?
   
   OT: Deciding whether to go for Office 2003 or Office 2007? Go for Office 2003. The interface for Office 2007 is way way different from Office 2003. What's more, there is no way to switch to the Office 2003 view.
   
   

   
   Word 2007 new interface - all menu options are now reshuffled around

   OT: For those new SOC computing freshies, help yourself to the latest Microsoft developer software. No Office though :(
   
   
2. Not providing answers to exams and/or tutorials
   
   Common excuses:
   
   
   1. "We want you to discuss the answers".
   2. "Giving model answers may make you think that this is the strict answer"
   
   Translated, in my opinion
   
   
   1. "There are so many answers that we feel it would take too much of our precious time"
   2. "There are many answers for this. So we feel it is better that you write / record / memorize the words spoken / displayed during the tutorials so that each of you get your own unique idea of the answer"
   
   

   
   Get the answers during the tutorial. No written answers will be released.

   Sometimes, you wish there is a ten year series assessment books for modules like this.
   
   
3. Not randomly assigning project groups
   
   Some of you may not agree with me. That's probably because you already have mates that are taking the same modules as you. However, this introduces a problem. The saying 'Birds of a feather flock together' explains the problem.
   
   

   
   Do you get to choose your members in the work force? Image stolen

   What I mean is that people who know each other will form up and the leftovers are left to scour for group members in the forums.
   
   This means spending time to post in a forum (citing marketing words like ' I cannot SU this module', 'have taken related modules before', 'cap 4.5+!!!', etc) and making guesswork of whether a topic poster has already formed their group - not many people update their thread if their group has been formed.
   
   
4. Providing lectu__ notes with bla__ spaces
   
   Combine this with the PDF problem mentioned above and you either MUST print out the lecture notes, or write the answers in a separate sheet somewhere.
   
   

   
   In the uploaded slides, the underlined texts are just underlines without text

   The aim here seems to be to improve attendance to lectures. But why??!! If students don't want to attend, then it is their problem. It is a choice they have taken to sacrifice your all important famous mythical (insert-more-words) lecture. Why do lecturers have to encourage them to come by putting 'blanks'? Besides, they can get the answers from those who attend the lecturers. And you waste time by waiting for students noting down the answers.
   
   Tip: Most lecturers change their lecture notes after going through a lecture so I tend to print the PPTs only before a major exam. Furthermore, you can modify the lecture notes with your own notes. Provided, the lecturer. Uploads. In. Powerpoint.
   
   Tip: You can print 16 slides per page using a combination of Foxit Reader and PDF Creator. They're really not that small unless the lecturer squeezes many points in one slide. In fact, sometimes I print 25 slides per page, if the slides consist of mostly few words in big font (e.g. Catherine Tay's BSP1004 slides).
   
   
5. Marks for acting stupid, being talkative or just asking wild questions
   
   Translated into real world - "Class Participation". This is a great boon for those people who are not afraid of stares, making mistakes, saying stupid things and things that others may not understand. Oops, did I just admit something about myself?
   
   

   
   When in doubt, act stupid! Image stolen

   The act of the tutor or tutorial assistant having to write a mark every time somebody opens his/her mouth sometimes looks funny to me. People are getting rewarded for talking! Wow.
   
   Maybe NUS is training us to be more willing to talk. Well, I think this method only serves to reward people who are not afraid of talking and since marks are given for talking, some people may be more reluctant (rather than more eager) due to the fighting for tutor's attention and marks.

Meeting NUS CORS soon; bidding time again. And what do I see? A new CORS homepage design!

For some odd reason, the header's right side seems to going to break off anytime

Good luck to all bidders. Don't forget to read through these valuable CORS tips.

Winning in CORS. Timetable Builder. Another Semester Start Irritant

I'm through with CORS. The tactic works - Wait till 4:55pm and put in your points. Do not bid first (leave it at zero). Got all my modules with this tactic <evil laughter>. Oh no, did I just let out a tip?

How to win (in) Centralized Online Registration System.

And I am not alone, judging by the increasing number of bidders in the last 15 minutes. And who doesn't want to? The other bidders for the module have the following considerations

1. They have very little time to make a decision in the last 15 minutes if the bidding gets too high
   
   
2. They do not want to put too many points in it
   
   
3. Many will not bother re-checking the bidders as they think the closed bidding period has not much to offer. This is GOOD in one way as there is a potential for you to increase your bid points and go over budget on seeing the number of bidders ballooning. BAD in a way that you could have used the points and module slot to bid for another module if they are too many bidders.

The fact is, the number of bidders play a BIG role. If the bidders are much more than the vacancies available, than you know you have to bid much higher due to the increased competition. Lower than vacancy, you will have to watch for Snipers (as they are known as in eBay; people who bid in the last minute).

Needless to say, the F5 (Refresh) key is still used before close bidding. Image is stolen.

Next, the NUS Time Table Builder. Often linked to and praised about on how it has helped plan our semesters, this tool is indispensable.

The NUS Timetable Builder

It uses HTTPS. Shh, somebody is going to find out what modules you are going to bid for. It is Top Secret! Encrypted with key length 1024-bits. Nearly undecipherable. Rest assured that nobody can break it within reasonable time.

Raaaaight. My planning of the time table is very, very confidential.

Step 1: Selecting Modules.

Now to select modules. Easy as pie. Select the faculty and add the modules as needed. There's only one problem. The correct semester. The system defaults to Semester 1 for one of the oddest reason I cannot imagine. Those who are used to planning the time tables repeatedly in semester 1 may forget to change the Semester box and end up with the wrong time tables.

That's Problem 1.

So for this semester, I plan to take CS1105 and CS1231. I also added CS1102Y and CS1102Z so that I can see how it fits into the time table and choose the best class. Hit "Next".

Oh, a exam clash. That's OK, lets ignore and move on.

Looks like an exam clash. That's fine. Clashing exams will cause problems and cannot be added to CORS either. But since I am adding both of them only for comparison's sake, I click "Next".

I *know* there's a clash. But I am OK with it!

Show stopper encountered. Problem 2.

Now I have to manually generate two time tables to compare. I uncheck the first one and click "Next".

Now to select what to view.

It asks me whether I want to view only lectures and/or tutorials. I find myself always choosing both, so that I can plan tutorials as well. If many people are doing this, this screen should be skipped and provided as an option in the time table screen instead.

Hitting "Next" showed me the generated time table. You can select the slots and keep hitting "Rebuild" to show an updated time table. Pretty good. This is where you try with different slots and tutorial slots to get the sleep-and-wake-up-late and 3-off-days-per-week dreams of every NUS student.

A partial screen shot of the generated timetable

Looks good, but CS1102Y seems to be alone. Oh well, lets see if I can replace it with another module. *digs through CORS listings*. *finds a module* MA1505! It is an 8am lecture module, but it'll help me normalize my waking time so that I do not end up waking up too late everyday.

Now, how do I add the module to my beautifully customized lecture and tutorial slot timetable? *looks around the page*

My beautifully customised time table. Now to add a module...

There is a blue link on the top left - "Selecting Modules". That should be it. *click*

It brings me to the first page, without any modules selected.

Click "Back". Heave a breath of relief on not losing any of the customized data. Quickly do a "Save As" in case something goes wrong.

Now I try to hit the "Back" button to the module selection screen.

It brings me to the first page again, without any modules selected.

So there are no easy ways to add or remove modules other than repeating the whole process again. Problem 3. Neither can you plan a time table with modules that have clashing exam dates.

Otherwise, it is still a very good tool. Happy New Year everybody.