We have a name...

We recieved the documentation for Joo Eun, the other day. In korean her name is 주은 . My korean friends tell me it is a very pretty korean name. Lots of Korean names have their corresponding Chinese letters and the meaning is depended on the Chinese letters. The most popular Chinese letters matched for “주은” is “主恩” and it means “the Royal benevolence (favors)” or “the grace of God”.

We have always believed that it is important to try keep all or part of you childs name if you have a intercountry-adopted child. Some parents adhere to this and some do not. The second part of “주은” name 은 is actually quite hard to say for an English speaking person. ( It actually doesn't sound anything like how I would read "Eun").

So the advice we have received from a korean friends is as follows:

Korean people usually put an extra sound “ee” at the end of a person’s name when the name finishes with a consonant”. In the same way, “Joo Eun” is
generally called or indicated as “Joo Eun” + “ee” (주은이). But the sounds
are connected and it actually sounds like “Joo Unnie" (주으니)”. If this is said faster, it will sound like “쥬니” (Junie or Junee).

In terms of that, I can gaurantee “쥬니” (Junie) sounds good and no problem
at all in Korean perspective. “주니” (Joonie) can be another candidate, and the
name is specially popular by many Koreans for their English nickname, especially
when their original Korean name finishes with a sound “준(Jun)”.

So after some consideration we have decided the name Joonie 주니 is the correct one for our little princess.

A Little Korean Princess

A while ago I blogged that the korean intercountry adoption had re-opened again. Well today I found out first hand. I am now the proud father of Kim juen.( Although I will have to wait for the paperwork with korean writing on it to verify the name). It has been a long wait, but all worth it now!!. I hope to be in Korea for December to meet her first hand and bring her back to Australia.

Language versus concepts teaching at universities

Last night I has a bit of a party for my 33rd birthday. One of my friends whom came over is a IT lecturer at the local university. During the evening he asked me my opinion of whether they should teach C# in first year. He said that some of the local industry had been asking about it and he was wondering what the university should do about it.

I remember a couple of days ago on slashdot there was a discussion about programmers/coder versus software engineers, which is very relevant to this question.

I believe the question is whether not universities should teach you how to program in a certain language OR teach you the fundamentals of computing so you can teach yourself how to build computer systems ( in any language/environment). I personally prefer the later approach, because in most cases the languages you learn at university are probably not going to be the langauges you end up programming in anyway, ( l learnt fortran, pascal and c at uni ) and I believe it is much better to teach the fundamentals of computing, compilers, operating systems , databases , networking and if you are going to teach specific programming languages then leave it till the last year so that students already have the fundamentals in place, and also the languages are more as relevant as possible.

It is a big problem in Australia, because in an environment where young people can get a job in a mine driving a truck down a hole for $120000/year, there is alot of pressure to try and attract people to university. This puts pressure on universities to try and make their first year courses as "sexy" as possible. The problem with this approach is that you inevitably end up dumbing- down the course work to attract more people and teach only the most "exciting" concepts. This in-turn leads to less of the "boring" fundamentals which means graduates learn less of the things that will actually make them good system builders in the future, and have less of an understanding of computing as a whole. The end result is that noone bothers to go to university because they see the academic level of the graduates, and what they are learning and cannot see the value in it. If university degrees end up being .net ( or java ) courseware why would anyone bother.

I think that the IT industry has already suffered through alot of this, and I personally believe the best software engineers I know are people who have had experience in many areas of computing ( admin, network support , database admins ) as well as business skills.

Say goodbye to take home DVDs.

I mentioned taking memory sticks to video stores in one of my previous posts . Well it looks like it might be becoming a reality in Australia.

Video Ezy CIO Steve Hogben designed the new video delivery system, which
works by customers going into a store to download movies onto a portable storage
device and then loading these on to a special set-top box at home.

I guess that means it won't be long before you can get a take-home movie from a vending machine at a train station or shopping centre. There is no detail as to how they are going to control the copying of the movie, the file format/quality, or if the movie will expire after a certain time ( to force you to return to the shop to renew it).

33 arrives with bang... literally

I had been 33 for 8 hours and 36 minutes... Then BANG... My old pulsar was an inch shorter than it used to be. Rear ended at a traffic light.

Lucky it wasn't my new Captiva or it would have got ugly. The car is still ok, but the rear door doesn't close properly. Hopefully my insurance company will write it off and I can pick up a 5 year old toyota echo/yaris for my commuter car in Brisbane.

I don't think anything happened to me, but I guess I will wait for the morning to see if I got any whip lash.

hit storm from nowhere

From wednesday this week http://yourtimesheets.com got a sudden massive hit increase. The problem is that none of the hits contain a referrer so I have no way of finding out where they are all coming from... It is very strange to have that many hits without referrers, especially when the hits are from all different locations... Oh well a mystery of the internet.

In Brisbane for the 26th

I will be starting work in Brisbane on the 26th of September. So far I know where I am working ( 80 albert st ), but I haven't found a house yet. That will be the job for the first weekend.

I will be working on the top floor of the building with a great view over the botanical gardens to the river.

Garmin nüvi 260

I mentioned before that it is my birthday soon, well this sunday actually. My mother sent me some money and told me to get a gps for my new captiva. I took her advice and got a
Garmin nüvi 260 for $490.

First impressions.. Awesome... I had it out of the box, connected to satellites , had my home added to favourites, and had a nice english lady telling me to "take the 2nd exit on the roundabout" in under 5 minutes. When you think about what goes in to gettting one of these things to work , including more than a few geo-stationary sattelittes, the price is really amazing.

I know every parent says this....

But.. My son is a genius.

He is only 3. Yesterday he said to me, "Dad I'll make you a chatterbox". He then got a square piece of paper and made one of these.

Genius !!!.. I was totally blown away.

Actually I have to thank Toki for teaching him.

Barcode SS in Blue.

Well after much hinting on my blog someone finally got a Barcode SS for my impending birthday. Thanks Dad.

33 this year, hard to believe actually, my mental age swings between 8 and 80 depending on the day. At least it is easy to remember.

Today I was flicking through a magazine and saw an advert for the watch. It is the new a funky thing for fathers day (supposedly ??). The advert obviously worked because the website that was advertising them has sold out

Korean T-shirts find target audience

A couple of weeks ago there was the Townsville cultural festival .

It turns out that Townsville has a sister city in Korea ( Suwon ) and to celebrate the friendship Suwon sent a group of traditional dancers and performers to Townsville. While at the cultural festival I decide to wear my Korea shirt. While I was there a large number of Korean teenagers came up to me and told me they liked my shirt and asked where they could buy one. This has made me think it is time for a new batch with a new design. Time to start thinking about it….

I heard a new word today.

Technopreneurs .. I like it and will endeavour to use it more in conversation.