What's up with Hatim?

I bought a VOIP service from BrainTel so that my folks could easily get in touch with me (and vice versa, but the BrainTel service is really crappy, and deserves another blog entry). I had specially bought a Nokia E51  which has builtin WiFi and a SIP phone as I was under the impression that it would be very easy to connect to the internet at Chalmers campus. Chalmers uses an online web based authentication system called  NOMAD which is tied into its RADIUS/AAA servers, the problem is that this authentication is webpage based, ie one has to sign in on a webpage as a HTTP POST request. After some searching around I found a Win32 Application named NomadMonitor which does the same. Following is some code snippet for its HTTP request.

I was actually thinking of making a small midlet following this simple code, but then I found out devicescape which is exactly what I needed. This software lets you manage your wifi access points through a single interface and will hopefully login me to Chalmers nomad automatically. It's funny actually as I was searching for Nomad and Chalmers on the internet and I came across an entry in their forums where another student from chalmers was discussing some problmes in using devicescape with  MacBook at Chalmers campus. So some times you find the best things when you are not looking for them :)

Edit: I have successfully tested device scape on Symbian S60, but for some reason the latest version doesn't let me use keypad to enter user info (or any thing else). So instead I am using an older version 2.0.6. Now I will never have to sign in for NOMAD on my phone again :)

Edit I later got the latest version of the devisecaspe's program from devicescape forums, which is signed only for my mobile (using MEI number). And it is working perfectly for me now

I am posting this entry after first 1.5 week of classes. As of now I have already started working in group for my Agile Devlopment Course. The project is to apply Agile Devlopment and extreme programming practices while devloping a student project called Vivace. It's a MIDI editor made in Java. Studying extreme programming and agile devlopment formally is new thing for me and I hope it would help me in better understanding of these topics becuase in practice we rarely get to do this right (we all brew in our own recepies which make the whole process so hetrogenous).

As for my other course of Algorithms, we have already skipped all the Mathematics and already gone on to discuss realworld algorithms. I have not yet bought the book though as I plan to read excrepts of it from Google books and probably borrow the book from library for missin pages.

On Sep 1st 2008 I have started a new chapter in my life, Grad School. I look back and think that it took almost the double amount of time for me to get to this point. Many of my peers started Grad School back in Fall of 2004. I have had my ups and downs in life but this is definetly an up. My program was greeted by the faculty head and then by the program director. Later we were greeted by CEO of Chalmers University. It was truly reaffirming that Chalmers was a correct choice for all of us when she counted all the positive aspects of Chalmers. Here at Chalmers they take student input very seriously and change the workings of university based on that. The CEO especially mentioned that there would be absolutly no compromise on equality and every one would get the same level of attention which they truly deserve.

After all the talks it was time for me to get keys to my new room. Here are some pics which i snapped before moving in. It's an OK sized room and I am glad that I got it on time. After this I completed my registration and all the related activities. As of now I have already attended atleast 2 lectures of both of the courses I have to take this study period (ie for next two months). One is Algorithms and other is Agile Devlopement Methodologies. The latter is more of a team/lab work than a course (so it would be just like working for a company).

I came to Gothenburg on 25th only to attend some CIRC activities. CIRC is a volunteer organization here at Chalmers campus whose aim is to help international students adjust to Swedish/European culture. I have so far attended their Campus tour and Phadders evening (small silly fun and games with a senior student). I am planning to go to their city tour and to Leisberg park tour this weekend.

Since I got admitted for my masters program I have applied for Swedish visa (also known as residence permit) and prepared my self for booking accommodation air line tickets etc. I have yet to start doing my packing and it's just 6 weeks till I leave.I applied for my residence permit on May 19th and was given an interview date of June 9th. Around July 8th upon inquiring from the Embassy I got to know that I was granted my visa. I have yet to get my passport back with the RP stamped in it.

I shall be flying from Lahore to Gothenburg via Frankfurt on Lufthansa airlines in last week of August. I got the ticket for around 47000 Rs . (around 430 Euro). I was also able to book a room from chalmersstudentbostader. Their international student apartment booking is password protected and is usually pretty swamped when there is a chance that apartments would be posted. I used a trick to book my apartment (it has to do with how a simple Java EE application is hosted,normally its running at port 8080 and its proxied from port 80 to this place, instead of using no port in URL, which implies HTTP port 80, I used HTTP port 8080) and I also had a cron script running looking for a new room postings every 15 minutes. Then after booking the apartment I filled my contract and with help of a friend submitted my deposit.

Though I have arranged for my accommodation, I have yet to get a temp accommodation for the few days I shall be not in my booked room.

There are excellent resources for Pakistani students at PakSirZameen.net (which is maintained by a highly motivated pakistani guy, in Linkoping Sweden). It also has a list of different mailing lists of Pakistani student associations across Sweden.This site helped me a lot. It also inspired me to open up my own chat room for incoming Pakistani students to Sweden.

I have started preping for my forthcoming stay in Sweden (I am quite hopeful about the visa). Since there is no tution in Sweden so the biggest expense one has to bear is accomodation, clothes and books. I registered my self to one of the housing comapnies in Gothenburg few days after I recieved my admission offer. The rents begin at around 280 Euros / month (including electricity and internet). I am targetting for an apprtment complex which is very near to the university and is frequented by international students.

As for clothes I am hoping to get some clothes stiched up within coming few months. I will rely alot on Jeans and Tshirts :) but would definetly get a black 3 piece suite. Sweden is a very very cold country so I need to buckle up (I also need some good shoes).

As for books I am on the lookout to buy them from here, but it seems very few books will be available in Pakistan. I will try to put a list of all the required books for software engineering and technology on my blog soon.