Lyon - March 29th

O yes it's been a while since my last blog. I got all wrapped up in the 2 last weeks of school. It's official, no more school!! I had my last exam today Prog Sys.... we'll talk about that one later...

I start my stage on Monday in a company called ACTi, it's web developpement mostly B2B (Business to Business) in all web languages... you name it they do it. PHP, JSP, ASP, AJAX... etc. So it should be quite interesting. I had my interview last week and it went quite well, I don't know what it is with me and interviews but I always feel comfortable.

So here's a summary of how my 7 classes went this semester:

Java: A real joke, however the exam wasn't all that easy although I did good on it.

Expression: Not a problem there, had an oral last week on humor, and it went well.

Preparation Stage: Not Marked... just how to handle yourself in the professional industry.

Network Administration: Not too easy, but somehow I thought I did really well on the exam

Datacom (In C): Interesting... I had a good teacher and he helped me with C a lot more than Mr. Ratard did in my other C class. There was no final exam... only a final project.

UML Application synthese(IN JAVA): UML part was hard for me. but programming in java was where I picked up all my points.

System Programming(IN C): COMPLETELY OUT OF MY LEAGUE... I learned a lot on my own since the teacher is quite possibly the worst I've ever had. However the final exam went horribly...
/** GEEK SECTION**/
We had 3 hours to write a program that reads a black & white image into RAM and then reads each pixel directly from memory , calculates the average grayscale (0 to 255), and then creates a new image with each pixel adjusted to a calculation based on the average... OH AND THAT'S NOT ALL... instead of making it somewhat doable by allowing us to write 1 file... we had to write it in 3 separate files which had to communicate with each other using THREADS, MUTEX, SHARED MEMORY SEGMENTS, SEMAPHORES AND CHILD PROCESSES... needless to say 1 student out of 70 managed to finish the programs... I just managed 400 lines which when executed displayed a bunch of errors... O and i forgot to mention, all this without documentation and using VI in UNIX... fun...
/** END OF GEEK SECTION**/

Anyways , it was one of those exams that aren't even worth getting upset about... I walked out of there and laughed in disbelief.

Overall, the way the grading system works here is different then in America. Grades are on 20 and NO ONE EVER GETS OVER 18. They just don't give 19's and 20's EVER. So we have to consider an 18 as 100%, furthermore in order to pass you need to have an average of 10 overall... So even if I get a bad note in Prog Sys, the other classes will more than make up for it.

In other news, 2 of my good friends here in Lyon are leaving for England where they will have their stage. Kinda sucks for me but, I still got some very good friends that are staying in the city.

This week I'm going to work on a video for you guys ... kinda give you a tour of Lyon and my daily routines...

This weekend I'm thinking of going to Grenoble for a day, a get a taste of the Alpes. I heard it's beautiful.

I've also been following our beloved Habs from over here.... I'ts going to be tight... Good thing they woke up in the past 7 or 8 games. I guess we need to win at least 3 more games and with a little luck we'll be in the playoffs. Don't forget that we have more wins than the other teams bellow us... So even if we Tie in the 8th place we'll be the team to move on to the playoffs... YOU GOTTA BELIEVE.

Anyways leave me some comments so I know whats going on back home
love you guys.

Martin

Lyon - March 14th

I've been back in Lyon for a couple days now, no news yet on the stage... I think i'm going to give it a couple more days before sending out some more CVs.

Sunday I went to my first ever European soccer game!! Kevin invited me to the game with Pierre, Antoine, Manu, Margo and Lambert. His dad gets free tickets through the amateur soccer team he manages, so of course I couldn't refuse.

It was l'Olympique de Lyon vs l'Olympique de Marseille, or like they say here (l'OL contre l'OM). Two teams that are considered to be big rivals here in France, like Montreal / Toronto back at home. The ambiance was amazing! All the fans sing.... and trust me there's a lot of fans in the stadium... it's huge. There's about a dozen songs or chants that are rotated throughout the game, and I managed to learn about half... some of them are quite complicated... One of the chants that really grabbed my attention was :"Qui ne saute pas n'est pas Lyonais" where you must jump up and down at the same time which results in quite an effect in the stadium. I happened to take a video of it when it they started chanting... sorry for the poor quality but my camera is a digital antique...

Compared to American sports where fans from both teams are seated together... Here, the opposing team's fans have a specific section, to prevent any escalations... We were seated right next to them, so you can imagine the trash talk that was going on between our side and the Marseillais' side..

Lyon opened the score early in the first half only to have a goal scored on them in the dying minutes of the game... The final score was 1-1... An exciting match, but the ambiance was what impressed me the most.

Furthermore, I totally forgot to mention that last week I visited the Musee d'art contemporain in one of my classes. The museum is about a 15 minute walk from the campus and is one of the biggest contemporary art museums in the world. I don't know if any of you have ever seen contemporary art, well... it's special to say the least. Basically when they don't know where to classify the art, they just say it's contemporary art. The most known piece of contemporary art is the toilet by Marcel Duchamp... Very controversial as to weather it should be considered art at all...

Anyways one of the expositions impressed me... basically you walk into someone life room by room represents something in the artists life... What was so awesome about it was that it was quite disturbing. Blood red walls, Pitch black walls, Devils, Gods, Iconic figures... here are some pictures:

Martin

Valsonne - March 10th

Donc aujourd'hui j'avais un cours à 10h du matin et ensuite j'ai fait le ménage dans ma chambre avant de partir pour Valsonne avec Kevin, Antoine et Margo.

Valsonne est toujours de toute beauté!! Le paysage me fascine à chaque fois. Nous sommes arrivés vers 16h et après le souper nous avons regardé un film français appelé Les 11 Commandements. C'est un peu comme une version française du Jackass. Nous avons ensuite terminé la soirée chez un ami.
Le chien à Kevin est trop cute... Quand tu te rapproches, il se met sur son dos pour que tu lui flattes son ventre... comme Jazz

Le lendemain nous nous somme réveillés vers midi et j'ai étudié jusqu'à 16h avant de faire l'apéro. Ce soir il y a une Dance à Valsonne pour célébrer les Classes. C'est le Bal des Classes... Comme je l'avais déjà mentioné, les classes est une fête pour célébrer tout ceux qui ont 20, 30, 40,50 ans...En autant qu'il y un 0 à la fin de ton âge. Nous avons beaucoup bu ce soir et nous avons dansé jusqu'à 3h - 4h du matin. Je me suis bien amusé mais il était temps que je rentre vers la fin.

Antoine

Martin

Lyon - March 9th

Well it's official, my laziness got the best of the blog... AND my Internet at the residence has been ON and OFF this past week.. It's been almost 2 weeks since I last wrote, and yet it seems like yesterday I was in Monaco... Time flies!

I believe the reason why I haven't written in so long is because since I got back from Marseille and Monaco, I made it my number 1 priority to get my head back into my studies... So I've been hard at work on catching up with programming in 'C'. I've made quite a lot of progress in understanding the language since I had my first class here in early February. The language is so basic, so close to the hardware that I can't help but wonder why we didn't do any at Dawson... It seems almost essential to truly understanding computers. Furthermore, I now think I understand why I've been having so much trouble thinking in 'C'. Although I couldn't quite put my finger on what was bothering me I now believe that it's the fact that 'C' is NOT an Object Oriented language... You see, at Dawson we've been taught to think in an Object Oriented fashion... Going back to procedural programming seems so limiting and frustrating.

Anyways, I had a final exam in Network Administration this week and I think it went really well!! The last 3 weeks I will have a new class in it's place :"Network Programming in C"

While I'm still on the subject of School, I applied to Concordia in Software Systems for next semester. At first I was honestly thinking Software Engineering, but then I thought of all the UML and paperwork behind it and voted against it...

The nights out this week consisted of the Coco Pago lounge, and the Wallace pub, followed by a ska concert at the Transbordeur (Equivilent of the Metropolis or Medley).

Last night I went to the ska concert with a bunch of friends (Laurent, Tom, Thomas). The main group was called N&SK and it was honestly quite good although I didn't know any of the songs and lyrics... I managed to stay in the pit for the entirety of the show... something I rarely do anymore. As Andrew says :"We're too old for that now" haha.. I think the last time I felt that tired was at the Bullet for my Valentine show at the Vans Warped Tour. Well it brought back some great memories of a time where ska was at it's peak :(Planet Smashers, Reel Big Fish, Catch 22) I know some of you remember those summers...

As for my stage... well CVs have been sent out to a little under 10 companies and I'm currently waiting for a reply. They're mostly programming stages and web development positions.

This week-end I'm heading back to Valsonne to relax with Kevin, Antoine & Tom.... it's supposed to be gorgeous this week-end. I'm crossing my fingers because this past week has been a little gloomy and rainy.

Sorry for the lack of pictures... but a picture of me studying probably isn't very exciting...

Martin.