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Saturday, September 26, 2015

Swansea University Bay Campus and I

This was the article initially touted to appear in The Waterfront, but was rejected. However, I feel that you guys should have a read of what was written. Enjoy!


Swansea University, Bay Campus, your dream home away from home.  With the opening of the Bay Campus, Swansea University will be the closest campus to the beach, beating out Point Loma Nazarene University in California.


Background
A little background never hurts, does it? The Swansea University Bay Campus expansion is a £450 million investment on a 65 acre stretch of land generously donated by BP.  The university aims to capitalize on the University’s connections with international companies such as BP and Rolls-Royce.  The new science campus will initially house the College of Engineering and School of Management.  The new campus will also be the home of ambitious projects projects such as UK’s first Energy Safety Research Institute, and the Institute of Structural Materials, home to the University Technology Centre for Rolls Royce materials testing.  The campus also allowed an additional intake of students in technology and engineering to address the deficit of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) research in Wales.  The new campus will create significant additional student places principally in Technology and Engineering, addressing a deficiency in STEM research in Wales.


While development work will continue up until 2020, the majority of the works were complete in time for 2015 Freshers.


First impressions

I first heard about the new campus about a month after arriving to the university.  The promotional video released by the uni
to YouTube in January about the new campus was certainly impressive.





The video showcased magnificent buildings and grand halls.  The engine hanging from the ceiling , I think, was a good touch, as it gives the campus a kind of air and space museum vibe to it.



The rising action
As a Year 1 Aerospace Student Representative, in November, some other engineering representatives, Swansea Student Union officials, and I were invited on a tour to the new Campus.  Since it was raining the week before, we were greeted to flooded fields with large pools of water everywhere.  The manager of St. Modwen did her best to assure as that come September all the water would be gone.  Because of the rain, we were only chauffeured around in a minivan around the Campus.




The second trip in February fared a little better, though.  With the sun shining, which is quite rare in Swansea, the wettest city in all of UK, we were allowed more access to the construction site.  The manger led us to a viewing platform overlooking the construction site and I took the below panorama picture.


Bay Campus Panorama
Panorama of the Bay Campus under construction.  Featuring Simon Forster, the then College Representative for engineering


The buildings certainly live up to the hype generated by the video.  When the manager pointed out the balconies at the student residential buildings, I imagined midnight ballads of students professing their love to each other.  However, this was bitterly dashed since the manger of the site mentioned that the balconies were merely a decoration and no students were allowed on due to health and safety regulations, which was understandable.


As the months rolled on, the University published even more photos of the new campus, which fueled my growing excitement.


The two pictures featured below was published on the Swansea University Engineering Facebook page over the summer holiday.



D-Day
I have bought all my train tickets for the return journey and nervously, eagerly, awaited for the day I returned to the University.  Then came the day; time to meet the new campus face to face.  All the hype was building up to this.  How much of the discussed features discussed in the student-staff meeting would be implemented?  The tension was building the closer I got to the campus.


While the campus buildings looks stunning, the experiencing wasn’t what I expected.  I felt like living in a “beta-testing campus” where half of the features aren’t completed yet.  None of the shops were ready and there wasn’t a cash point (ATM machine).


In addition, in the library, I spotted a ceiling tile being pushed to one side with the wiring exposed. The onsite Tesco is also closed till October.




That’s not the end of it.  A student I met on Fresher’s Saturday at The Core, a restaurant at Bay Campus, told me that his building Llywelyn Fawr was not completed and he was temporarily placed at the Student Village for a week.  This isn’t good, but luckily he wasn’t coming from far so his mom could help him move his stuffs over.  Imagine an international student arriving to an unfinished building.  This wouldn’t make a good impression on the student.


On the other hand, the lecture rooms looks impressive and modern and the design of the campus is great.






Feedback from other students:
One student said the University library was ‘too small’ and expressed his concern of how it would cope with the influx of students.  Another student expressed his frustration with the bus service.  “The buses are quite infrequent, though, and often a large number of people builds up at the bus stop so not all of them can get on one bus, which means they are waiting a long time for the next one.”  The same student went on to say “The buildings are spaced out so it feels massive. The food in 'The Core' is excellent, good staff, and a nice place to eat.”

A close friend told me, "Library design is very professional interior design, but it's not as functional as it should be because the single seat chairs take too much space in the reading idea."




Another student has this to say: “The campus is very nice, I love the concept it's built around and we are so close to the beach makes it even more amazing!  I just wish they opened up shops a bit faster."


The feedbacks were fairly consistent.  While they all found one or two aspects of the campus to be lacking, when taken as a whole most agreed that the new campus is great.

The new Bay Campus provides “future proofing” and allows Swansea to provide quality education to the much needed field of engineering.  Swansea University is certainly making the right waves at the Bay Campus.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Update: Review: Fallout Shelter on Android

This is an update to my review of Fallout Shelter on iOS.  In that review, I said that the game constantly crashes on my iPad Mini.

When the game came out on Android, I had to give it a try.  I installed the game on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (N1080) and started it.

The game went through a quick tutorial before letting the player do what they want.  While the experience was better in the sense that it didn't crash, it was not much different from the other resource-based games like Virtual Villagers.  You have to build rooms for the resources (food, electricity, and freshwater).  Achievements are a good way to quickly build up your shelter.

I have also bought the Mr. Handy robot to gather resources when I'm offline.

Fallout Shelter gameplay.  Vault resources are shown along the top of the screen.
A notification appears when a room produces resources.

However, after a day of playing the game, I quickly became bored.  The game requires me to do the same task repeatedly.  To "spice things up," the game occasionally throw monsters at you that you have to defeat.  But it feels like a treadmill.  You'll just keep fighting the same Raiders and Radroaches you fought thirty hours ago, and maybe you'll now kill them 25% faster with all your fancy new gear.

Also, there is no peace in your life if you decide to play the game.  The game frequently prompts you to return to it.  Also, if I'm not on the game, I have a sort of withdrawal symptom where I worry that if I'm not on, my colony would be doom.  At the back of my head, I get the nagging feeling is the raider gone for too long and thus is dead?  Is my colony starving?

In the end, although the game is "better" than the other open-ended resource-based game in the sense in that you don't have to pay to "win" the game, I decided to free myself from the chain and uninstall the game from the tablet.

As Paul Tassi from Fobes.com said in A Warning To New 'Fallout Shelter' Players On Android, "It’s the dumbest kind of addiction ... . I wouldn’t have anyone else do the same before figuring out what a shallow experience the game really is.  One day is enough, and it’s the developer’s fault for not making it any deeper than that."

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Rant: Samsung and the case of the disappearing MicroSD Card

I have noticed a trend with major smartphone manufacturers to exclude MicroSD card slots from their phones in order to differentiate the different varieties and sell phones of different storage capacities.

What is a MicroSD card?  Well a MicroSD card, such as the one pictured to the right, is a type of storage device that allows you to store pictures, movies, music, etc on it.  Once upon a time, when internal storage was meagre, MicroSD Card was all the rage.  It allowed manufacturers to get away with less internal storage.  However, with smartphones, the apps are typically stored in the phone's internal storage, making the MicroSD card external storage quite useless for the task.

Then came Apple, whose first smartphone, the iPhone, didn't come with external storage.  Instead of allowing expandable storage, they sold their device with varying capacity of storage, where the user have to "predict" the amount of storage they might need in the future and buy the appropriate model.  I have heard too many a tale where iPhone users have "ran out of storage" since their storage needs have grown since they last bought the phone.  Also, each iteration of the iOS operating system that powers Apple's mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) were heavier than the last.  Thus, they ate more of the internal storage, leaving less space for the user.

If the iPhone had external storage, the user could have just bought an external storage card and offload all their photos onto that.  Some may argue, "but wait there's USB OTG (on the go), which allow you to plug in your USB storage device like flash drive."  To that I say, ha!  Would you seriously want to carry a USB pendrive around just in case you want to show your friends photos or playback music that you have "archived" since you no longer use them?

But thank gods that Android phones all come with a MicroSD card slt.  But wait, it seems that the MicroSD card slot is slowly growing missing.  In the mainstream Android market, the Nexus devices were first the one to do away with the slots.  First gen Motorola G and Moto X didn't come with the slots either and neither did the HTC One (M7).  However, those companies found the error in the ways and brought back the slot in later models of the devices.

However, it seems that Samsung, whose phones had always had an MicroSD card slot, is doing away with them.  The S6 and S6 edge device didn't come with the slot, much to my chagrin.  Instead they feature a metallic look that harken to the Apple iPhones.

While I'm not a big fan of the Samsung's physical button and their layout of the back / app switcher is opposite to 99% of non Samsung devices, in the past I was willing to give Samsung phones a go (I had one but swapped it for an Xperia Z2), but without the MicroSD card, it's bye bye Samsung. I am a long time Android user and my first smartphone phone is a Samsung device.  And plus, Samsung did a backward step here with the S6 and S6 Edge. The Samsung S5 had waterproofing whereas the S6 doesn't. On the other hand, Sony has done the opposite. The Xperia M doesn't have waterproofing while the M2 Aqua and all the latest range has waterproofing. In addition, the M4 has a capless waterproofed charger port. That means the only components that are hidden behind the caps are those you rarely touch i.e. the sim card and the MicroSD card slot.  It seems Samsung is trying to mimic Apple and "be cool" with their "redesign" turned out for the worse.

But enough about Samsung, the infamous (or famous depending on how you see it) OnePlus "smartphone killers" don't have the slots either.  OnePlus also relied on a clunky invite system, but that's beside the point.

By now you might be asking why would the company do away with the slots?  There could be a couple of reasons, simplifying of designs.  But the biggest factor is profits.  The MicroSD card stood in the way of storage differentiation.  With the slot present, if you need a larger storage, you could just go to a store and get a larger capacity card.  That means less profits to the smartphone manufacturers (and more to the MicroSD card producers).  Without the slot, the smartphone manufacturers can force user to buy a more expensive phone in anticipation of the storage that the consumer may need as in the consumer's eye, it's better to have more storage than less (and this is true).

So no matter how the company spin it, taking out the MicroSD card slot is an attempt to squeeze more money from the consumers.


Monday, August 10, 2015

Rant: Luxury smart phones

I am appalled with so call "luxury" phones like the Vertu Ti Android Ferrari.  They can fetch of up to $11,999.99, which seems quite a lot for a simple phone.

But what's so great with the phone?  Specs?  Nope.   As seen from the chart below, the specs fall in with other mid range phones, such as the Google Nexus 4, which came out a few months ago.  And the Google Nexus 4 have a cheaper price tag of around £135.00, depending on whether you want it brand new or used.

Vertu claims to be made in England by a single craftsman who makes each unit by hand (like sculpt it by hand? I'm sure you can't make the battery by hand... or the processor) at the company headquarters in Hampshire. In addition, What sets the Vertu apart from other competitors, other than the titanium and sapphire crystal, is its "live personal assistant on-call" at the press of a button. Vertu's Concierge Services enables the user to call a live person in the same region as the user to do functions, such as booking exclusive hotels and dinner reservations that can easily be done via apps.

Another example is the Bellperre Touch, which like the Vertu, has abmismal specs. According to the website, its specs are:

  • Dimensions: 138.0 x 69.4 x 9.4 mm
  • Weight: 166 g, Micro-SIM
  • 4.9 inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen
  • 48 GB MEMORY + 2 GB RAM
  • 3.5mm jack, NFC, Multitouch
  • GPRS Class 12 (4+1/3+2/2+3/1+4 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
  • EDGE Class 12
  • Speed: HSDPA, 42 Mbps; HSUPA; LTE
  • WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct
  • DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
  • DISPLAY, 720 x 1280 pixels, 16M colors
  • 2G Network: 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
  • 3G Network: 850 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100
  • Bluetooth: v4.0, A2DP, EDR
  • Android OS, CPU Dual-core 1.5 GHz
  • MicroUSB v2.0 (MHL), USB On-the-go
  • Autofocus CAMERA 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, LED flash
  • Simultaneous HD video and image recording
  • 1080p@30fps Video
  • Secondary cam: 1.9 MP, 720p@30fps
  • Accelerometer sensor, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer
  • GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
  • Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
  • TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
  • MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
  • MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player
  • Organizer, Photo/video editor
  • Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF)
  • Stand-by: (2G) / Up to 330 h (3G)
  • Talk time: (2G) / Up to 14 h (3G)
  • Music play: Up to 48 h

In conclusion, are luxury phones worth it? Definately not. Unless you're looking for a phone for a permanent showcase, they quickly get outdated. And an advice for luxury phone makers, please make your phones specs worth the price. You could maybe stuff your phone with like 4 GB no 8 GB of ram, 128 GB or 1 TB of internal storage with microsd card expansion, and the top of the line custom octo-core (8 cores) processor with a clock speed of 3 GHz or greater.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Rant: Doctor Who's music sounds like the Samsung ringtone "Walk in the Forest"

While watching the Doctor Who prequel trailer for The Name of the Doctor, the music used reminds me of the ringtone "Walk in the Forest" included in Samsung phones. Judge for yourself and see.

The trailer:





The "Walk in the Forest" ringtone from Samsung:

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Review: iPad Mini


You guys may know that I am a devout Android fan.  However, I won an iPad Mini (1st Gen) from Morgan Graduates and decided to give it a go.

There is a big difference between Android and Apple.  First is the lack of customization.  Second is the specs.  On Android, I could open at least 3 tabs on the Chrome browser, but on the Mini, I could only do 1 or 2 tabs.  Any more and if you change tabs, the tab would have to be reloaded.

Also, iOS doesn't really support multitasking.  If you pull down the notification, whatever app you are using is "frozen" in time.  Another drawback to the iPad Mini is Internet speed.  I feel that the Android Internet is faster despite both devices connected to the same network.  The task switcher is also clunky since you have to double tap on the home button to bring up the cards interface.

Click here for a more in-depth review of the iOS system.

Review: Fallout Shelter on iOS



Fallout Shelter by Bethesda Studios is the hottest new game on the block.  It comes in hot heels of the highly anticipated game Fallout 4 by the same game studio.  The online reviews by Tech sites were all positive, so I decided to try it out.

I was initially impressed that I can progress the game without hitting a paywall.  But that doesn't mean there isn't any micro transactions -- there is.  Real life money could be used to buy packs that can give in game cash, resources, clothes, or weapons.  But it doesn't require the purchase of the stuff and the first two achievements give you two of the packs for free.

Five minutes into the game, I encounter my first problems: crashes.  Fallout Shelter on iPad Mini (1st Gen) crashes randomly.  It soon become more of a "when will it crash" game.  And to make matters worse, whatever you have done before the crash doesn't saves.  For example, if you "rush" -- one of the features of the game where you can get the resources faster -- and you succeed and then the game crash, the rush may not save.  And if you do the action again, there is a high chance it would fail.



The infuriating crashes happen more frequently as the game go on.  In addition, the game require you to have things right on the first go -- no messing up.  In the game you can combine the resource makers into one large plot.  However, once you build a plot, you can't move it around.  And you can only destroy the plot from the end first.  So if you want to change the middle plot, guess what, you have to build the entire row again.  So that sucks.

In the end, the random crashes just made the game too unbearable for me, so I ended up uninstalling the game.



Saturday, May 9, 2015

Update: Updated remarks to the Sims 4 review

Sorry guys for not posting in a long time.  I am really busy with university and all.

This is an update to the blog post Sims 4 is the most boring game there is posted last September.

I have had a chance to play the game on a University loan computer without the game crashing the PC.  And while the pools and ghost updates were a nice addition, many of the points made in the initial post still stands.

Due to the loading screens, I was really hesitated to switch lots.  The "needs" were really annoying and to use cheats enjoy the game.  Without the cheats, the needs constantly interrupt game play.  The cheats I most commonly use are:

TestingCheats True - This will enable an interactive cheat mode. After typingTestingCheats True into the command console, hold the Shift key and then click on objects or Sims to interact with them. It won't work if you aren't holding Shift. Check out the list of actions listed below.
  • Shift + Clicking on a Sim
  • Modify in CAS (Create-a-Sim) - Modify your Sim as you see fit
  • Cheat Need | Make Happy - Sets your Sim's needs to full and mood to happy
  • Cheat Need | Enable Need Decay - Your Sim's Needs will decay
I use the modify sims in CAS cheat to change female sims into male ones for the purpose of getting genetically related babies in lesbian couples.  However, this has the effect of resetting the relationships between the couples.  Although married, they become like strangers.

In addition, after playing for like 3 hours I got bored and uninstalled the game.