News about me

Final Year Thesis and Internship

I've made my decision about my final year thesis. Next year, I hope to do something about wireless network access on trains. There'll be a WLAN on the train, with a base station on the train, and the train itself will communicate with antennas next to the railway. Because of the high speed of the train, there will be a handover to the next antenna every two seconds. In my thesis, I'll have to study and test those handovers. This is my first choice, I also had to give a second one. That one is about using the eID (elektronic identity card) for authentication in MHP (Multimedia Home Platform), the digitaly television platform that will be used soon in Flanders. You can find more information about both subjects on the INTEC website. The first one is at the research group IBCN (INTEC Broadband Communication Networks) while the second one is at WICA wich stands for Wireless and Cable. Both topics are part of the research in the newly constructed IBBT, Interdisciplinary institute for BroadBand Technology, founded by the Flemish Government.

I also had a meeting with a few people of the IBCN group for an internship related to that thesis. He'll try to arrange one at Siemens or at Televic. If he can't get an internship there, I'll accept the proposal of Barco to study the development of a L2/L3 multicast gigabit switch.

VTK

It was kind of an active week for VTK. At wednesday, we had ParkingPoP, a rock contest for local groups, wich was a big success. At wednesday and thursday, there were elections for the new board of VTK. Our followers are Bram and Pierre and I'm sure they'll do a great job. We had a meeting where we explained what we did this year and our vision about the next year. It seems they want to do great things, let's hope they've enough time for it. Before that meeting, I also had a lunch-meeting in a nice restaurant with the head of The Computer Store, the shop with the most ugly site in Ghent where we had a deal to sell computers. He claims our deal with Dell also has some disadvantages where he can be better, building on the very good results of the previous years. I've discussed it at the meeting with our followers and it seems they see more disadvantages than andvantages with them as partner, next to Dell.

Ah, before I forget, Lennert (who had a blog here before) is elected for treasurer with 16 votes more (on a total of 564) than his opponents. Congratulations and lots of succes!

Student representation

I didn't sign in for the VTK elections, because I've some other things in mind. I decided to run for the election of vice-president of the Ghent Student Council. The election is in oktober, but it isn't possible to combine this with another year in the VTK praesidium. If I don't make it, no problem, I'll be busy enough with my other work for the student representation, my final year thesis and of course my girlfriend who feels a little bit neglected sometimes ;-)

Also in student representation it was quite busy this week. Monday there was the facultairy computer commission with a very interesting point on the shedule: division of some money for new infrastructure. We also talked about the use of our pc-rooms and the troubles with the shortage of capacity. About that last one, we'll prepare a text from the student representation with a call for more available computers. I'll start to prepare that one after this post is finished ;-)

At the meeting with the student representation of our faculty of engineering, we decided to use a new name for our organisation. Now, it was "didactische cel", a term where nobody exactly knows the meaning of, especialy new students don't know who we are. We've chosen the name "FRiS", which stands for "faculty council of engineering students" or "Facultaire Raad voor IngenieursStudenten" in Dutch. It's a new name, invented by our responsible Peter Huyghebaert, to be better known by new students. This week, we also had the monthly faculty council and the deliberation before with the head of our faculty, who was very interested in the situation of the new students of the first year.

Peter Huygebaert

Friday I also went to the general meeting of vzw StudentENmobiliteit (student mobility) for the first time. From now on, I represent the students of our university there, together with two other students. It was a very interesting meeting. I also asked for more posibilities to pump up the tires of our bicycles in Ghent, especially at the campus in Zwijnaarde. The responsibles of our university agreed, so soon it'll be OK there in Zwijnaarde.

Next week, we'll have the election of the vice-rector of our university. There are two candidates: Luc Moens, from the faculty of sciences, and Paul Kiekens, from our faculty. Again, it'll be a very interesting time :-)

Politics

This week, I recieved an invitation to visit the Flemish Parliament and the new headquarter of the Flemish political party N-VA. Seems also very interesting, so wednesday I'll do the trip to Brussels.

The Flemish Parliament

My lovely girlfriend...

is so curious now :-D Because her cellular is malfunctioning, I bought her a new one. At the 6th of May, it's her birthday. So now, I've put the box in a cabinet and she doesn't may look inside of it. It's so tempting, it's so close, but I trust her not to look in it :-D She doesn't know wich one allready.

Before I forget

Don't create a banana republic here please ;-)