FYP is Submitted Finally

Well, this morning I went to submit my final year project with one of my course mate Hendra, To my surprise, we were the first on the lists. I was expecting everyone else to be there too. We only met Joko and Boitumelo just before we left Ms Jaya's office. It was such a huge relieved and I truly am grateful because my project turn out to be as good as expected. I guess, all the efforts, sweats and the endless sleepless nights are worth it after all. I bet everyone will be releived too when they have submitted their project.

This project has got to be one of the best on my list for job hunting I guess. I mean, there are many good projects or better known as assignments that we have collected throughout these three years, but FYP is something you applied your extra knowledge, extra research and of course, impressive skills into. I believe that other classmates are doing good job too, at least some of their projects that I have already seen as there are some that I have not really see or rather get a clear picture on how the project is suppose to be. But anyway, that's not my point here.

To conclude my last entry, I just want to wish everyone happy holiday. Have an exciting and fun-filling holiday so that you'll all be recharged during job hunting later. Thank's to the lecturers for thier help, assistnace, and feedback. Nonetheless, thank's to everyone for being my motivation to strive for the best in this FYP.

Yay! Project is on its way to Completion

I am glad that I am progressing pretty quick this week. I manage to complete my electronic brochures and I can say that I have my 99% of it completed in good and fully functional condition. It is definitely one of the project I am very proud of. Although it requires a lot of effort, I believe it is worth it after all. I'll be re-checking and do final testing this coming weekend as I'll need to have it submitted by Monday. Well, all I can say is everything seems to be so far so good at the moment, Thanked God.

I am also considering if I'll add another feature to my project since it is considered completed before submission. I'll see what I can do on weekend. Nevertheless, I believe that it is a good project as it is at the moment. As for now, I'm off to prepare myself for the SAD exam coming up on Friday. Alright then, I wish everyone else the best of luck in exam and their FYP.

It'll be over before you know it! Cheers =)

Week 15 - Getting Closer to the Finishing Line

Well, after showcasing my project during alpha test, my progress this week is basically getting all the unfinished part completed. I manage to complete all my "shopping" section with fully functioning "illustrated-interactive location map" as well as the brief details explaining about each hot spots location. It is a pretty hectic task for me as I need to make sure that the illustration make sense and the information is sufficient. In addition, the flash part is indeed a little confusing. I only manage to complete the main page of my shopping section with the illustrated Singapore map in it plus a set of shopping locations located at Orchard Road location map before the alpha test. I'm glad that I manage to finish the other parts of it this week.

I am also working on my electronic brochures and I manage to complete few sets of the electronic brochures. I must say this feature is one of the most tedious one. It is simply because I am doing a total of more than 10 e-brochures with different designs as well as coming up with different themes for each and a total of at least 8-10 pages in each brochures for different places and categories. I guess organizing the content is one of the major challenge in the entire e-brochures development. Besides coming up with the content, I have to wait for approval after proof-reading sessions by the clients.

I have improved quite a lot in graphic designing I must say. Thankfully I do enjoy working on it, or else it can really be a "killer". Making sure that it is up to the client's standard is pretty pressurizing too. Thanked God most of it are up to what is expected so far. I am pretty progressive I believe. I am almost done with the e-brochures since I am only left with the "Nightlife" section e-brochures.

I guess everyone must have been really busy enhancing and completing their project these two weeks. The submission is suppose to be on week 16, Friday to be exact, but it has somehow been extended again to the Monday on week 17. I'm sure by then we'll be done. Good luck again to all.

Week Fourteen - Alpha Test

Finally the alpha testing for the final year project is done. Despite the fact that my computer crashed just before the alpha test, I am glad that my presentation went on fine. The feedback and comments were very positive and that reassured me that I am in the right track. Although the alpha test is done, there are still uncompleted portion of my project that I need to work on.

Basically, I manage to present most of my main features and the components of my projects even though I did not really go through all the features one by one. It is due to the presentation time slots allocated. However, I am sure that everyone has a very clear picture of what exactly I am developing. One of the main components that involves a lot of scripting and errors debugging is the electronic flippable brochures. It is really hard to incorporate so many additional features for my e-brochures. I have used XML to make it dynamic. Here's one of the sample.

I also managed to debug some errors before the presentation. Loading several dynamic XML e-brochures from one flash application used to be a challenge. It seems that the first e-brochure that you select will display even when you clicked on other e-brochures after you close your first selection. However, I manged to get the code that help me solve this problem entirely. Loading different dynamic e-brochures from the same application is finally possible.

I have also started on my "shopping page" section with the interactive location maps. There are several more e-brochures to complete besides the interactive map for the shopping page. I'll see what else I can do to enhance my project if by any chance I manage to get all these done before submission. I'm sure by now, everyone has got even more ideas on what to include to make their project more attractive. Good luck to all then.

Week Thirteen - Computer Crash Experience..

Week thirteen is insane. I mean computer crash just when you needed it most? Doing your work and just when you are extremely busy debugging never ending errors. Oh God, I sound dramatic don't I? But this isn't a joke at all. My laptop is "terribly sick" this week. It crashes just when I was doing my work. Seriously frustrating..Well, I guess I am at fault too since I have been forcing it to work endlessly and haven't been taking good care of it. Considering the fact that I have been working with a lot of high definition graphics stuff and all, it contribute to the damage in my computer. I should be upgrading my RAM one of these days.

I was sad for the fact that I lost some of the really important stuff in there. It was infected by some virus that actually messed up your files location in your entire system and also corrupted your files. As a result, I have to reformat all my entire hard disk including my back up partition. This also means that I have lost everything in my laptop. Everything! I tried going for data recovery before reformating it as well, but there's no way they can save the data because they were all corrupted. It took me a few days to get over the incidents and start rushing on my project again. Well, guys, I guess everyone is well aware that you should back up your work, the truth is unexpected things happen at times. Anyway, I manage to get it fixed and replace some component from my laptop. Costly I must say, but the good news is my laptop is back to healthy again.

Well, I am entirely aware that alpha test is this Thursday! Thanked God that I started working on it progressively. And I am truly thankful that most of my FYP files are stored in different back-up storage, or else, I can't imagine the stress that I'll be going through. Although I do face some headache re-creating some lost files.

This week I managed to complete all my videos editting and embed it to my application. I have also been editting sounds, cutting and combining the different part of the sound clips to go along with my videos. It was challenging. Apart from that I am also working progressively on my different e-brochures. I've been debugging some really complicated scripts that I encounter too. Well, basically it is a busy and progressive week. That's all for now. Good luck for alpha test on Thursday everyone!

Week 12 - Information Overload

This week is rather tiring for me. One of the major portion I've been working on is getting the information for every section of the E-brochures and the Flash pages organized accordingly. I must say, it is really tiring. Since I don't have any soft copy of the information as they're all paper based or just a rough sketch of what the client expect me to put in there, I have a hard time, typing out and also transfering some of the paper-based information to the screen.

It may seems like the easiest job in the universe "typing and editting" but the truth is, it isn't that simple after all when you need to edit and type out so many information for different sections at a time. No wonder there are people who specialized just doing typing and editing documents. I mean it's like doing endless mini essays. There are points where my eyes were just sore and everything seems to be black and white for that split seconds. Thanked God, I am still progressing.

Unlike the times where I am working on my interface design and action script coding part where I actually get to see the end-result, typing out the information is just really concentration consuming and boring, not to forget very time consuming. However, when I organize it into my electronic brochures and flash pages, I am able to feel somewhat a sense of achievement. That's what keep me motivated throughout the entire FYP development. Nothing comes easy in life. Take a peep at some of the completed pages for the e-brochures. There are many of them in my flash application, but anyway..

Well, my progress this week is that I managed to edit most of my videos, put in the contents to my flash pages, debugging action scripts errors for some part of my project, as well as complete several e-brochures. A pretty progressive week I guess. It's just a week before alpha test, I hope I'll be done with at least 70-80% by then. There are still some feature that I havent't start working on at all, but at least I am progressing, so to me and everyone else, goodluck.

Week Eleven - Plenty of Works to be Completed

Week eleven is coming to an end. I can't seems to be putting my thoughts in words, but I guess most of us will be extremely busy these few weeks. Apart from the major FYP in hand to do, the other subject like SAD and Writing for the web is definitely an extra pain to bear with. I guess main reason is because all these subjects are not exactly interlinked with each other. I've got to crack my brain to adjust to the different subjects I am dealing with. But anyway, I think I got to strive hard to pass every single subject in order to graduate. Just a couple more weeks to go.

This week I managed to consult Ms Jaya for feedback on my current progression. It's relieving to know that she finds it good. I mean if I have to add this or change that, it'll definitely be troublesome. The more I modify and do changes even if it is tiny ones, the more coding complication and errors seems to be haunting. Few of my course mates do find this statement really true. I guess, I am lucky enough to have modify and do necessary changes when I approach STB for feedback sessions long before I start constructing the actual product. Since the feedback were mostly positive, I started working on my videos and contents for all the pages.

Last week, I have finished all my gallery pages. This week, I am working on all my videos, editing, mixing and combining different scenes to be included in every category. It is not so bad after all. However. I do spend a lot of time drawing and do simple illustrations in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop for title slides and designing for e-brochure pages. It seems like I have been whining quite a lot about my e-brochure. That's one of the major challenging part to complete I must say. In addition, the pictures that I used throughout the pages are not simply camera captured images, there are more to it. I dealt a lot with image masking and image manipulation to make it stands out from normal pictures. I guess it is more to graphic works. However, most pictures turn out to be very pretty. Thanks to the tips and inspiration from some graphic design books.

Basically, I've managed to sort out the major part of my project development properly. The only thing I need to do now is to constantly work on it and complete the unfinished portion of my projects. It's a hard work, time consuming and tedious job indeed.