UNSW Sitewide

A collection of posts from across the UNSW Blogosphere!

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PolyU Global Student Challenge (GSC)

Posted by on September 7th, 2010 · competition, Sept 2010, Sponsored (Partial)

A global business plan competition.

In the inaugural 2010 competition, 60 shortlisted teams have been invited and sponsored to Hong Kong and enjoyed an array of activities along with competing head to head with other teams at the Finals.  

Online registration deadline for the same competition in June 2011 will be 31 October 2010, which is less than 2 months away.  You are encouraged to form teams to represent UNSW in this truly global competition.  Qualified members of all shortlisted teams will be sponsored for their flights and accommodation to/from Hong Kong for competing at the Semi/Final competition plus taking part in an array of activities throughout their stay.  

For further information and to register, please visit the competition website:  www.polyu.edu.hk/polyuchallenge.

View the Video featuring students’ experiences:  www.polyu.edu.hk/polyuchallenge/news/video.php

 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

WHERE INNOVATION MEETS APPLICATION

Project Map: at a glance 1.0

Posted by on September 3rd, 2010 · Uncategorized

Rebuilding the DAAO 1.0

This diagram represents an overview of the schedule, major components and milestones of the Project. It is a gantt chart in box form. As the project progresses, various little elements will change within it as we learn more – but the critical path should not change.

Assignment 1 – marking

Posted by on September 2nd, 2010 · assignments

We are marking the “assignment 1”. 

When it finishes and ready to collect, it will be announced in the blog. Until then, do not try to collect your mark.

New UNSW Data Centre

Posted by on August 31st, 2010 · General

The University has recently commissioned a new data centre on the Randwick campus called the R1 data centre (R1 refers to the number of the building on the Randwick Campus). This data centre will become the primary data centre for the University, with the current data centre on level 14 of the Library building becoming secondary.

Charles Nolan is the Project Manager responsible for the commissioning of the new data centre and the migration of services from the AGSM data centre.

Charles has provided the  following information on the R1-DC project.

—

This is the beginning of a series of articles on the new R1 Data centre, and will include articles on:
1.       Switching
2.       Density
3.       Cooling
4.       Environment
5.       Servers
6.       Cabling
7.       Electrical

Introduction:
The new UNSW R1 Data Centre is now operational. UNSW now has arguably the best modern data centre in Australia, incorporating all the strategic aspects, of Consolidation, Virtualization, Density, Switching, Cabling, Cooling and Environmentals, into an energy efficient and cost effective facility that will take University of New South Wales beyond 2020.

1.)  SWITCHING:
Designed for High Density (10-30kW per rack) computing, the new R1 Data Centre sets new standards for both UNSW and Australia in integrated data centre design. This includes the integration of state-of-the-art Cisco Data centre switching with our Fibre dense cabling, and High density servers utilizing 10GB on-board switches.

The Data and Storage Network specific elements include:

DATA CENTRE
Core switching – Cisco Nexus 7000
Distributed switching – Cisco Nexus 5020
Rack switching – Cisco Nexus 2248 Fabric Extender(FEX)
SERVERS
Blade Server switching – DELL/Cisco 3130G in each DELL M1000E blade chassis
STORAGE
Cisco 9513 SAN Directors-  controlling Fibre Channel storage

The key to the Cisco design is not only its integration with the platforms, (from Core through Servers to Storage), but also its future path that can take our storage network from fibre channel through FCOE to IP networking in stages. Cisco participated with DELL and UNSW  in our early integrated design platforms when we selected the servers and switches, and continue to participate in our integrated storage and network switching discussions, especially as UNSW heads down the road to network based (IP) storage.

UNSW will benefit well into the future on our up-to-date unified network design, as we continue to develop further computing capability for faculties, divisions and students.

Next week will see us discuss Density and its effects on servers, design, cooling and energy usage.

Exam

Posted by on August 31st, 2010 · Uncategorized

I’ve just written the final exam for the subject. It will cover your understanding of javascript and the principles of programming I have been teaching in lectures. The breakdown is as follows:

  • 20 marks are multiple choice, mostly testing your comprehension of small pieces of code (if statements, while statements, for loops, etc).
  • 10 marks are short answer questions about programming (answers are in the lecture notes).
  • 10 marks are longer code-comprehension questions
  • 20 marks are for two longer code writing questions.

You are not expected to have perfectly memorised the syntax or the API. Pages of the Unity Script Reference will be provided for classes that are relevant to the questions you have to answer.

The exam isn’t going to be easy, but if you can understand the code from lectures and can do the lab exercises and assignments (with reference to the scripting manual) then you should be fine.

French Company Internship – EXTENDED Deadline

Posted by on August 30th, 2010 · Internships

Application deadline: extended to Friday 3rd September 2010

To increase Australian student mobility to France, the Embassy of France has drawn together a number of leading French companies and Australian universities to develop this exciting internship program for Australian tertiary students. 

 The internship would involve working in a French company established in Australia for:

  • 6 months in Australia followed by
  • 6 months in France at the headquarters or another branch.
  • An intensive French language course to be provided before departing for France

 FINANCIAL SUPPORT

  • Up to $30,000 allowance
  • $2,500 Travel grant for a return airfare to France
  • $2,000 Intensive French language course
  • Medical cover while staying in France

 ELIGILBILITY

  • Advanced undergraduates (3rd -4th year) and postgraduates.
  • All disciplines, and more specifically Business studies and Engineering studies
  • From intermediate level French language proficiency – students who have completed French continuous and/or French extension in the HSC examination, or at least one year of French at the University.

CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES

  • EXPORT BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT TRAINEESHIP – Project Manager based in Sydney (6 months) then France (6 months).  ALTIOS Australia Pty Ltd, subsidiary of the ALTIOS International Group www.altios-australia.com.au
  • See the attached file: “ALTIOS Australia_ French company.pdf”.

SELECTION PROCESS

  • Students will submit the “Global Education Programs Outgoing Application Form” (see below) to Michelle Kofod at m.kofod@unsw.edu.au by extended to Friday 3rd September 2010
  • The University will interview candidates and provide the Company with a shortlist of suitable candidates.

 FURTHER DETAILS

See the following accompanying documents:

THATCamp Canberra

Posted by on August 30th, 2010 · Uncategorized

THATcamp Canberra is now finished, I’ve learnt so much in the past two days that it would take three days to write a coherent report. No time for that at present, so for now I’ll just list in  a random way the things I got from ThatCamp. There is the twitterfeed #thatcamp for more extensive documentation.

1. a network of like minded people working on related projects.  Some session felt like the best kind of masterclass. Very intense and very focussed.

2. the opportunities of variabilities of crowdsourcing,  and how important a good work flow design is for users. Best example i can think of is the NLA’s australia newspaper project http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper

3. I finally understand how semantic web and ontologies work!

4. networks, networks, networks… same as 1. but i need to reiterate how important meeting your institutional peers in an informal context is.

5. persistent URLS!

added: Trackability of record is vital for DAAO.  It is also interesting when thought of in a critical cultural light. The politics of identity and the persistence of identity as it relates to data and how that might relate to other politics of identity is a fascinating case study in metastability. ( I wonder if someone has done it?)

6. so many useful links for existing projects that have tools that we want –  no need for wheel reinvention. The DAAO’s delicious tags tell the story.  Look in the right column of this blog and click on DAAO delicious feed if you want to see more.

7. good citation information- the better you identify something, the easier it is to draw it back in. A repeat of No 5. But this is becoming a key issue for us in DAAO – as we have ambiguous information in our collections and artworks fields.

8. layers- safe layers and layer that users can play with.

9. Learnt more on dealing with Legacy issues, extensibility and transition paths.

10. A summation by another THAtcamp participant  http://rearleft.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/mo66g33k/

AIM Overseas Exchange Competition

Posted by on August 29th, 2010 · competition, Short courses, Student Exchange, Uncategorized

The Australian Institute for Mobility Overseas (AIM Overseas) in conjunction with AirAsiaX is giving you the opportunity to win a return airfare to London this summer, flying the world’s best low-cost airline AirAsiaX. The competition is open to all Australian university students who are going on, or planning to go on, overseas study programs including semester exchanges and short courses.

The winner of the competition will receive:

  • A return flight from Australia to London flying AirAsiaX
    (see www.airasiax.com for unbeatable airfares)
  • A domestic airfare sponsored by AIM Overseas to an AirAsiaX departure city in Australia (Perth, Melbourne or the Gold Coast).
  • Publication of their account of their travel experience on AIM Overseas’ website, blog and in the newsletter.

The runner up will receive a fantastic Lonely Planet Continents book pack featuring seven great books and guides.

ENTER NOW!

Entries close at 5pm E.S.T on Friday, 1st October 2010.Terms and conditions apply, see www.aimoverseas.com.au for more details.

Art Of Stealth – Playtest results

Posted by on August 28th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Over the last week I had 5 playtesters trying out my current version of the game.

To pass the level there was a requirement that the player had to survive for a certain amout of time to pass the level they played. This time was converted into a score and a target score had to be reached; I noticed that players liked accumulating points rather than finishing the level quickly. I did not like this so the target is now a bar that fills up instead of accumulates.

A roaring consensus told me that the single object of surviving for a certain length of time in order to pass the level was incredibly boring. My playtesters agreed that a second of object, a snatch and grab kind of play, would be far more interesting.

I felt the whole game was a little fast for my liking, my play testers on the other hand thought it was a little slow. I’ve decide to alternate the speed of the game a little bit, speeding up the guards to make them feel like they are actually chasing you while adding a penalty for having the player run.

I asked if I should leave the particle filter on during game play; the playtesters thought, while interesting, it made the game far easier.

Some players commented on the movement of the guards and some of their more subtle behaviour. I am endeavour to fix them as best as possible.

Other suggestions mostly were around having pick-ups/power-ups, snares, laser alarms and other things to create more challenging gameplay.

more whiteboard adventures

Posted by on August 26th, 2010 · Uncategorized

This week Olivia and I have been focusing on the schema changes we need to implement in order to capture additional information on Exhibitions.  We have been analysing Jonathan Holmes’ wonderful Art@Base exhibitions database, which, as well as providing much needed content, has provided a very useful model for an expanded exhibitions field structure.

We have also been using some initial User Scenarios (developed in my early scoping of the project) and actual CI research projects to develop benchmarks. We do this by mining your research proposals to elicit the series of queries that would satisfy the informational demands of your project. The diagram below represents the beginning of mapping such benchmarks. The project that we were scribbling about below has 6 major types of queries for the DAAO, i.e. report relationship between curators and exhibitions, or report relationship between exhibitions with X heritage values. At the moment the DAAO can only respond to 3 of the 6 type queries and it could not display the relationships between variables in a comprehensible way. Thus at the end of the project, we would expect the DAAO to answer all six questions and display results in meaningful and variable ways. So the more information we get about your research proposals, the better we can design how the new data we are incorporating can be organised.

Benchmarking using Researchers proposed projects

We have also started thinking about the processes of ingestion as new high quality research data appear out of dark to find a new home in the DAAO. In order for data to be ingested, we have to match the tables of different databases. Simply put, we need to lay out all the tables side by side in an excel document, compare the field structures and their naming conventions and then co-ordinate and systematise a matching of their structures. The diagram below came out of discussion I had with David Turnbull (Manager, Web and Innovation, UNSW), where we were talking about the process of an an ingestion module and how it interacts with the critical path of our project.

David is on our Technical Steering Committee, and he is one of many people around here that always has some time to explain and clarify technical issues. Another is the patient and sensible Laszlo Gercsov, UNSW Digital Library’s Systems Architect. We are very lucky to have such clever and helpful people around.

whiteboard_ingestion

Modularising Development: Ingestion

The word of this week is LEGACY, which sounds ok until you match it with the word ISSUES.  Another of the helpful clever people around here at UNSW is CSE’s Daniel Woo. I’ve known Daniel’s work for years, but he has just finished managing a database project, and his calm words had the hard edge of fresh experience behind them. LEGACY ISSUES, he said. Ah yes. Migration path. On the list for next week.