MPhil Graduation

After about 9 months the MPhil at Cambridge came to an end. A very formal and traditional end I might say.

Cambridge has a very old tradition to award the degrees. It dates from the early days of the University probably. We were dressed up in gowns and hoods (see some photos on Facebook), each one wearing the colours of the degree to be conferred. Each college has an allocated time in the ceremony, when all the students about to graduate enter the Senate House (a large building in the city center). From there some of the officials say Latin phrases after which we have a kind of blessing.

Once the formal part is over each college makes a party for its graduands. We were received with a great banquet, which they called High Tea.

Scotland

A while ago we decided that it would be nice to visit the north part of the UK island (aka Scotland). So we rented a car and for about 7 days we made a tour, starting from Edinburgh, then through Iverness and Loch Ness, and finally through Glasgow.

Probably many things to see in less than a week, but I can tell that most of the things we've seen were beautiful.

Edinburgh was probably the nicest city among all those visited. They have a nice castle/museum where you can easily spend an entire day if you want to read about all the Scottish history and achievements (much more than I initially thought).

On the landscape side, I would say Loch Ness was the most impressive place. Not only because Nessie is hiding somewhere there, but all the area around the lake is very nice. Another very nice place to visit is Oban. A small city within a bay, with many islands around and one of the oldest Scottish distilleries (from 1794).

I could say much more but I will stop here. Go to Scotland if you want to find more, and check our website for some photos:

http://danasiomar.shutterfly.com/

(also available on Facebook for friends)

Google Felloship (aka scholarship) for PhD

So many news to tell after being free from the MPhil pressure. Well, I'll start with the best. Recently I have received one of the European Google Felloships for my PhD. This means that Google will finance my studies for the next years, so thanks a lot Google. For more details please see the official blog:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/google-phd-fellowships-go-international.html

Also thanks to all the people supporting me including those at my current lab in Cambridge but also my old friends from IRIT (Toulouse, France).

Matter and Anti-Matter (and God)

I've just seen some news about a discovery on the matter vs anti-matter topic here.

The results seem to show that matter particles are slightly more predominant than the anti-matter counterparts and this is how we came to existence.

However what is more interesting in that page are the comments that have been generated. I've been reading some of them. I found very interesting the replies to "read the Bible GOOF BALLS". It seems that there are still some believers out there (I am one of them) but also people that would use the Bible to wipe out their ass.

I don't know if such discoveries will ever be able to actually proof the origin of our universe or our own existence but they certainly encourage people to forget about God and restrict themselves only to science theories. It remains to be seen what will be the impact of this research.

Facebook privacy

A few days ago Yahoo has published a guide to help people in making the right settings on Facebook. That guide is a good place to learn about the bunch of settings needed to protect your Facebook profile from unwanted access.

However, today I found out of a great tool that does all the necessary checks for you and allows you to fix all the problems by simply clicking a button. The tool is available here. You don't need to be a guru to use it. Just copy a link into your bookmark bar, log in to Facebook and click the bookmar link. The rest is piece of cake.

I am just a bit worried about the extra stuff this tool might do. However they provide the source code on their website and many magazines seem to write well about the tool. But I am still wondering if the actual button does more than just fixing your privacy issues. If anyone has made a full test of the code (I just don't have time to do it now) please let me know.

Romanian Easter and Others

I know it has been a long time without posts and the Orthodox Easter has passed a few weeks ago.

I haven't posted in a while because of work stuff. I just had the last exam of this term today. Now it just remains to go on with the project.

With the occasion of the Orthodox Easter we went back to Romania for 10 days. As usual, trips to Dana's grand parents, Bran and some other activities. Time went too fast to understand much of the trip.

Oh yes... I also got the prize for the best player of my football team. Who would've think of :)

Xavi Alonso style

This is a one-more post on the football topic. I know I've put already a few posts about this but... it's the first time I score a goal in a real game from the half of the field. It was also the goal that probably confirmed our victory on the league.

Just a few comments on that game:

"Omar spotted their keeper off his line and launched an exquisite looping 45-yard shot towards goal, which dipped at the last minute to leave their goalie with no hope. You could also describe it as a hoof from the half way line, but the result was the same - 2-0"

"Not forgetting Omar's 'I must break you' moment which resulted in his

sending off..." (that happened as well... but just trying to protect the score :D).

"Just as well he scored the winning goal Xavi Alonso style, from our own half."

Chip and PIN is broken

Be very careful about your credit/debit cards. In case you loose them, don't rely on the fact that an attacker cannot use your card.

Check the following video, to see what my colleagues in the security group have found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPAX32lgkrw

If you want to know all the details, check the full article:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/banking/nopin/oakland10chipbroken.pdf

PS3 on LCD/CRT VGA monitor

I want to share a trick to use a PS3 on an LCD/CRT VGA monitor.

When I moved from France to UK I didn't bring the TV with me. However I did bring my PS3 as we were very attached to all the funny games we had for it. We didn't want to buy a TV because in the UK you need to pay around 150 £ for the annual TV license. So what to do?

Well... fortunately there is a VGA cable (not produced by SONY), called HDFury which makes a hack to transform the HDMI signal (from the PS3) into the VGA signal used by an ordinary LCD monitor (if you don't have DVI). The cable is at the link below and works great:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001IZK0AQ/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

I know it is quite expensive but after reading many posts it is quite clear this will be the only solution guaranteed to work.

Now what about the sound? Clearly you won't get any sound from your LCD monitor. So the solution is to use the composite output of the PS3. Normally you get this cable with the PS3. If you had lost it, like me, no problem. Again, amazon solves the issue:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000SEU92W/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

Now all you need is to plug the composite audio signals to some speakers and you're done :)

Burns Night

Yesterday night we went to a Scottish party, called "Burns Night". It seems to be a traditional party to celebrate the life of a poet that had 13 children, each with a different woman. I don't remember the details but he died somehow at the age of 37 (probably because of the women :D ).

We had a traditional dish, with some mixed meat, very much like the Romanian "cartabos". However it was somewhat lighter and tested better :). As with any party there was wine and other drinks. But above all we had a live music band playing traditional Scottish songs which was very nice.

During the evening we've been learning many traditional dances. There was a lady showing us what to do before the music started. On every dance there was at least a person not understanding the steps, confusing everyone after the music started. Lots of fun anyway.

Take a look at the video below for a sample of the event. Photos on facebook.

Building the Router

Some of you may have seen my messenger status during the last days. You may be wondering what is that "BIR" all about.

Well, during the last 3 months I've been working a lot in building a router from an FPGA. Don't worry about the details. For those with some experience I was doing the hardware side using Verilog. More details in here:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0910/P33/

We were 5 teams involved in this course and last Wednesday we had to present our work. We were 2 people in my team, my colleague Alex doing the software side. To the presentation we had a series of important people from Cisco, Redgate, Zeus, Microsoft, Ensoft and (I think) Xilinx. Based on our results (and presentations) they decided who was the winning team. We also had Fred Baker (editor of rfc1812 and IETF chair) from CISCO on video-conference as part of the judges.

So as I was saying on IM ... we won!

I was extremely happy about winning because it involved a lot of work and to be honest the other teams were very good as well. I think what I was most proud about is that some of my colleagues from other teams already had experience with the platform I was using, whereas for me it was something new.

Well I won't bore you more on this. Dana is calling for me. We are going in town for some (hopefully) nice fireworks. This weekend Cambridge is ending the 800 years celebration and there are some light shows going on.

Ski in the Pyrenees

After an incredibly full term (the Cambridge equivalent of a trimester), I took a 4-days break in Toulouse. We went there to visit some good friends and also to take advantage of the relatively-close Pyrenees mountains.

The journey started great. My flight was cancelled and I found about that only when I got into the airport. Fortunately we were able to buy two tickets at a British Airways flight the same day. So finally, after about 12 hours we reached Toulouse. Nice weather this first day...

Next day we decided to head for Peyragudes (www.peyragudes.com/) for some ski. Was really fun, especially for me as I got to see my friend Razvan making some artistic falls in the snow :). Dana also got some nice moves. There are some photos on facebook. If you are not in my friends list send me an invite.

We stayed at a hotel (Le Floreal) in Luchon (quite cold in there to be honest) and next day I went ski again. This time I went for some ski right in Luchon, where I took a gondola from 650m up to 1800m. When I reached there I thought I was in the Himalaya. This time wasn't so much fun as Dana and our friends Razvan and Oana stayed for some shopping in the town. The fun was in the trip back home. It started to snow quite strongly such that half of the highway was unusable and the other half was quite slippery as well. When we approached Toulouse most of the roads were completely white (something extremely rare for Toulouse).

We were quite worried about or trip back to Cambridge. To be honest I thought we'll be staying a couple more days there. However both airports were open and we managed to get back home. When landing in London the ground was so white (full of snow) that I initially thought we were landing near some lake.

Holiday Stuff

So the holidays have come...and went, and I still got a lot of work to do. Probably that's why I didn't go to Romania this winter. Hopefully I'll be able to go in the spring.

Anyway, Dana's parents came to visit us over Christmas so we were able to celebrate in a traditional fashion (see photos attached). Worried by the possible extra kilograms that I could take after eating the "traditional" food (as in a lot of cakes, minced meat, etc... ), I decided to measure the take-in. As a surprise I actually had 1 Kg less but I think this is due to the strange floor we have.

The sales period has started here. You can buy a lot of nice clothes and other stuff at very low cost. This is similar with the "soldes" in Toulouse. I am not sure if we have this in Romania. Unfortunately we made a lot of shopping before this, just to have the presents for Christmas. It might be wise to celebrate Christmas after the sales period; or at least to give the presents then :)

Soon we'll go to Toulouse to visit some friends and do some ski. I really need this break. Hopefully the weather will be fine not like in Romania where there isn't a trace of snow in the mountains (aka no ski there yet; even though I've seen that a lot of snow is expected .. be prepared if you are there).

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

BOPs

BOP is the English (or Cambridge) term for Party.

We have several BOPs in our college. From what I've seen there is one every week or two. Two weeks ago we went for the Halloween party which was very fun. Most of the people were dressed in all kind of costumes. We had some beers and nice cocktails. The drinks in our bar are really cool and chip :)

Today there is a BOP with the 70's music. Next week we have our own Oktoberfest. This Darwin Oktoberfest seems very popular as tickets are already sold out.

On a side note, me and Dana are celebrating two years since our formal wedding :)

Hacking ciphers

We do many things but last week I did something particularly amazing (for me). It was the first time I've actually broken a cryptographic protocol.

For one of our courses (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0910/R08/) we had to do a presentation on one topic. So I did something in braking Smartcard's security (yes, those cards you use to take money out of an ATM or get Pay-TV services).

It was really fun when I got to implement a small crypto algorithm and also I got two different ways of hacking it.

Something also huge (again, for me...) is the presentation of our teacher on eavesdropping attacks. He can practically see ANYTHING is going on your monitor (laptop, LCD, whatever). He is able to see the contents of a monitor even 3 walls away, which means he can see anything you see !

Football Update

So I've been quite busy in the last weeks but I'll try to give some more updates.

One week ago we had another game, in which again we won :)

I need to mention the captain's comments:

"I don't like naming individuals for praise as I thought it was a team effort but I thought Simon was phenomenol with his work rate and effort (well deserved MOTM), Omar was an absolute rock in defence (particularly one tackle which is one of the best last ditch challenges I've seen in a 1s or 2s game - you'll need to be good to cover up for gums ;) ) and finally Jack R was outstanding as a central midfielder, really good passing and movement."

We had another game today: 3-0 (for us). We're practically unbeaten so far. If you want to follow our league check it here:

http://www.cuafc.org/index.php?option=com_joomleague&func=showresultsrank&p=3&division=12&Itemid=95&r=3

Yes, I do other stuff besides football :)

First Game First Win

Yesterday I had my first game (football) with Darwin's team. We made a great 3-0. I entered the field in the second half as I was new in the team. All the 3 goals were scored in this half, may be coincidence, may be not :). However, the game was nice.

Just a small citation from the captain:

"Great debuts from robust defender Omar, mercurial Rubens,..."

Cambridge Colleges

Ok I see some followers, that's great :)

I'll try to present my view on the Colleges at Cambridge.

So what are these colleges anyway? They are the extra-scholar environment of Cambridge students. They provide accommodation, food, social events, sport clubs, seminars, library, advice and much more.

They don't have anything to do with the studies, as many people think. Well, they provide advice on studies and your academic situation is related to the college as well, but you don't have classes in your college. When you apply to Cambridge you can pick any college you want. It doesn't matter what you want to study. Consider the college as your place for fun.

My college is Darwin (http://www.dar.cam.ac.uk/). It is small in size, compared to Trinity, King's or Corpus Cristi, but it is in down town, close to my flat (see below), has a great and cheap bar (most people say it is the best pub in town), good food, many sport facilities and a very nice court yard by the Cam river. Also it has a great library, including all the books of Charles Darwin.

For a list of other colleges and may be some more info, check this:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/colleges/

Most of the colleges have single rooms for students. For couples (like me and Dana), they have flats near the college. We got a spacious 3 room flat. The main drawback is that is is very old, has a carpet that should have been changed many years ago, and it only has a bath, no shower. You should appreciate a lot having a shower in your home. Only when you get a flat like mine (without shower, just bath) you get to appreciate things like that. Well.. we'll try to improvise smth in the near future :D.

I've joined the football team at Darwin. We are more than 25 players, and we have two teams, each one playing in a different league, like the pro's and those just playing for fun. Actually I just got training today. We have games each week.

One week ago we had our fresher's Formal Dinner. That is, we all went dressed up in nice costumes (thanks Razvan for sending it) and we got a nice (free) dinner with all the members. We had time to chat and meet our Darwinian colleges. After the dinner we went to the bar downstairs and I must say it is really interesting to meet all these people with such different backgrounds and professions. I've never thought you can actually do a PhD in law. Well... it seems that I actually have several colleagues doing that.

The meals are each day (except Sunday), launch and dinner. The food is very good and the prices are as low as possible. Soup & Main course & coffee/tea 4 pounds.

Well.. I don't want to make it too boring, and Dana is calling for dinner. So I'll let you find more on the net if you want :)

Romanian Squad

When I've first applied to Cambridge for a PhD (2008) I was the only one in my generation to do so. I've contacted a Romanian PhD student in the Computer Laboratory to ask him about life and work there. He told me that he would be happy to have another Romanian colleague at Cambridge as he thought he was the only one in the department.

Well.. what do you know? In my MPhil we are 4 Romanians out of 40 students! They said that for this master they took the best around the world. Well, if 10% are Romanians I must say Romania is one of the smartest countries, which is great. I must mention anyway that I am one generation older than my other colleagues and another Romanian actually studied in England and actually he is 2 generations younger, so basically there is a huge coincidence in this year. However, Romania rulz :)

P.S. Clearly we have a lot of Chinese as well.. but that's just common these days.

Master at Cambridge

In this post I just want to give you an insight of how a MPhil (Master in Philosophy) in Computer Science is at Cambridge. I'll try to give all the aspects that come to my mind based on my 3 weeks here.

There are 3 terms (English partition probably..) equivalent with the old school trimesters. As a research master, we clearly have a lot of research to do.

We need to choose 6 courses (among 30 or so) over the first two terms (I have chosen 4 in the first term). For the remaining term, and part of the second one, we need to make this big research project. For some this could be considered as the graduation project (what we did at the university).

Each student gets a so-called "course advisor". You don't get to see much this person, but it is there "in case you need its help". I am not too sure what this means, clearly he/she is not there to do your homework. Actually I think I'm lucky because I've got to see my advisor already, as most of my colleagues didn't.

There are 3 types of courses: reading (Rxy), practical (Pxy) and lectures (Lxy) - xy are two bits given to differentiate the courses. On the reading courses you need to read a lot of papers (sometimes I get the feeling that I'm reading even more than when I was working in research). On the lectures you have the typical classes where the teacher speaks (I don't have any of those). In the practical courses, as the name says, you get to do smth practical. I am doing "Building an Internet Router", which is based on the Standford course and I find it really interesting as I am practically engineering the hardware of a router.

For the amount of work... well let's say that since I've started I didn't have more than a couple hours off. That is you are full. Actually if it would be to make everything perfect you couldn't afford to sleep, so basically you have to maintain a good balance between what you do and what you drop, while still keeping up.

On the facilities side I don't have any complain. We have a huge lab (Intel's lab) shared with the other undergraduates. Then there is the MPhil lab, where only we have access, which is very cool. Last but not least there is the MPhil room, where we have some nice sofas and a few computers. Overall the facilities are great, nothing to complain so far. Oh... and we have a relaxing room with a small billiard and foosball.

If you want to see more, check the website:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0910/acs.html

Just running out of time. I'll try to put updates (if anybody is actually interested in this stuff). I'll go on with seminars and may be colleges next time.