Andrey Vystavkin Blog

Some of you already know that for my senior Bachelor project I decided to do Robotics & Automation, since it is a brand new field of study for me.

Due to the fact that this project includes a lot of sensor fusion techniques and algorithms for positioning, I had to go through lots of IEEE research papers, since our university library in Limassol doesn’t have many books on the subject.

What I noticed was the fact that most of the research work goes from Northern Europe and Northern part of the USA:

• Germany
• USA (particularly UMC and MIT research centres)
• Finland

This is just a shallow list of countries involved in the research, however there are more to add. I’m not taking Japan or South Korea in account since this field of science is quiet popular there and it’s Asia - it’s completely different story. The main question of this article is: will this type of computer science and engineering become popular in Cyprus?

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After staying for 3 years in Cyprus, studying in one of the main institutes of the island, the trip was something i definitely needed. Just to relax from the island, and the environment.

After, almost, half a day flight (since we went to Helsinki through Prague), we got in Finland, and stayed for 15 days in Leppavaara, where Evtek university was placed.

6 universities brought their groups, and after the first day, there appeared 5 international teams with representatives of each country.

Lectures were mainly about ICT Security issues, and network aspects of data protection, which was completely new for me, so I found it quite tough, but challenging enough to start collaborating with team members and learn quickly a lot of new stuff. Some of guys didn’t really want to do anything, because they found it or hard, or boring. But those two weeks of intensive courses were worth it, IMHO!

Finnish were really friendly. There were no problems in communication aspects, since I didn’t find anyone speaking only Finnish. Everybody speaks English, with slight accent, but it was really comprehensible if you compare it with Cypriot English, or Greek English and some other countries.

Hopefully to be continued…

Good news for Netbeans 5.5 users - now the bug is fixed by the development team of UML Modeler pack.

Thanks, guys, now there won’t be any headaches of transfering

For those who need UML integrated in their Netbeans IDE, there are two solutions:

1. Wait for the final release of Netbeans 6.0 (most of essential modules go out the box)
2. Start Netbeans - > Tools ->Module Manager -> Update.. ->Chose UML - Enjoy developing UML with Netbeans!

As it appeared, in few weeks, somewhere in the old city part of Limassol, the municipality plans to open a Limassol University of Technology. Great idea, especially when the main studying resorts like Intercollege and Frederick Institute are planning to achieve the status of University this year.

After studying three years in the institute, I’ll be graduating already the university: sounds good, but already some changes started to piss off:

• Someone decided to start filtering Lab computers according to the Internet usage (they could have left at least admin logins unfiltered,damn!)
• The rumours about increasing payment fees up to the “university” level (will be equal to 1 year MSc payment fees).
• Free wi-fi over the whole building. (Did anyone tell where to find the installation settings, or it’s for VIP’s?!)

Well, in September, all filials of Frederick Institute should be prepared for getting the status of the university, which university, and who’ll be prepared by that time and how well - no one knows…

As any variable combination, it can produce different varieties of answers, like: young and wise, young and foolish, old & wise, old & foolish.

For the last few years studying in Cyprus, I’ve witnessed the changes of climate in educational sphere, which drastically changes the approaches of education and the ways of teaching.

It’s not a secret that gerenal concepts of education, especially in Computer Science faculties, remained the same, but the technology changed. In this case, some of the lecturers, which have already lost their interest for their field of teaching, slowly go down in quality of education. They are replaced by young professors, who still feel interest for what they are doing.

Technology dictates the rhythm of teaching. The concepts of programing for the basement of the ideologies and concepts stays unchanged, while new researches give different ways of getting solutions and approaches in it. When is the time for the person to stop digging the knowledge and say to others: “Now I know everything, and I’ll teach everything I know, and not more, not less” ?
Usually, it happens when people get satisfied with what they have, and they don’t want to move on, thinking that’s enough for them.

Actually, the teacher loses the interest to its field of studies, and pass this attitude to his or her students. This is one of the main disadvantages, or people who teaches too long, and think that they’ve reached the top.

That’s why the idea of bringing up young and old teachers together give a fascinating effect on educational feedback. The wisdom of old concepts, collaborated with new technologies and concepts, give the students a new way of discovering the subjects they study.

Finally, the situation cleared up a bit. Due to the lack of updates on the official website of Frederick Institute of Technology (FIT), I had to contact one of the lecturers from Computer Science Department in the main campus of FIT - in Nicosia.

As it appeared, FIT offeres Master programmes for Bachelor students provided by Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh, therefore, if there would be no problems with staying in Cyprus, I’ll be able to proceed with my Master Degree in Cyprus.