Wow, last week was awesome! As I wrote the last time, I went to Madrid with EESTEC; a Europe-wide students organization organizing workshops and exchanges.

Since I was the only of the 22 participants from the Netherlands, I was very eager to meet all the other participants, coming from all over Europe. Already on Sunday, the day of my arrival, we had a great dinner together and the night ended with a big party.

On Monday, after the official opening ceremony, we contributed to a celebration of the Spanish “day of the book”, by each reading a passage of Don Quixote in our own language. Afterwards, we were taken for a sightseeing tour around the city. Madrid must have been such an incredibly rich city, nowadays you can still see the breathtaking buildings all around.  After a successful international dinner (where everybody served food from his/her own country), we again headed for a party.

On Tuesday we had our first lecture, about a promising company making agent-based software. Unfortunately the lecture in the afternoon couldn’t continue, so I had to spend the rest of the afternoon in the sun in the Buen Retiro Park. What a pity .. . After a great Spanish buffet while watching one of the big football matches with the Spanish, we again headed for a party, this time in a fancy club.

On Wednesday, we visited two research facilities: the home automating lab of the Polytechnic University of Madrid and CeDint, where they do Research on Augmented Reality, Smart Buildings and Energy Efficiency. In the evening we went to a traditional Tapas restaurant. Afterwards we went to the club were all Erasmus/international students go; it was legendary.

Thursday morning started with a lecture about the “Magic Box”; a prestigious climate neutral house created by researchers and students form the Polytechnic University of Madrid. After the Lunch, which they take really serious in Madrid (with a 3 course meal), we could visit this Magic Box. In the afternoon we were taken through the city again for another sightseeing tour.  As you can guess by know, the day ended with a visit to a club.

On Friday, we had our last serious event; a lecture about wireless sensor networks. Afterwards we taken to the Spanish countryside, for a weekend of relaxing. Unfortunately, the weather was not really helping us, so we spend almost all weekend in our house over there. We slept for ages, played lots of different international games and shared our national liquors with each other.

During the last night, I found out that I’m strongly allergic to squid. Suddenly, my body was covered with red itching spots and breathing got harder and harder. Fortunately, our Spanish hosts reacted fast and immediately brought me to the hospital. Thanks to the good treatment over there I was back before sunset and I was still sharp enough to say farewell to all of my new friends.

Al in al, after a week in Madrid, I can truly confirm “La Gente Está Muy Loca”.

Since my girlfriend is on a study tour to Argentina for five weeks, I’m looking for some new things to during the evenings. Luckily there is a lot to do on the campus; I’ve started sporting more fanatically at the gym in the TU Delft Sports center, and I’m even considering to take some salsa lessons at the TU Delft cultural center. There is really a lot to do there!

I’ve made some big steps in the progress of my research for my thesis. Unfortunately for you, I’m reaching the phase where I’m actually making novel stuff, which I’m not allowed to write about. But that does make my work much more interesting for me!
Last weeks, I saw myself using a lot of the knowledge I acquired during my Masters; I’m programming in C++  mostly for my Digital Image Processing. I speeded up my algorithms, with the knowledge from Parallel Algorithms and Parallel Computers.  This way the data I generate  is fed to a machine learning algorithm, as I have learned in the Pattern Recognition course. In all steps I try to use my knowledge from Real-Time Systems to keep my algorithm real-time.

Next Sunday I will leave for Madrid for a week. The study association for Electrical Engineering (ETV), is member of EESTEC: a Europe wide students organization organizing workshops and exchanges. Having organized two international workshops myself, I really like to join a workshop before the end of my studies. During my one-week visit to Madrid, I’ll meet a lot of other European students. With them I’ll have workshops, lectures and parties. I guess it will be legendary!

I’ll write you when I’m back!

Working on your thesis certainly is an entire different phase of studying. I ‘m starting to miss my fellow students, the day-to-day diversity and (because I’m mostly at the company) I miss most of the activities in the faculty. Luckily, I am enjoying the project and have enough people to distract me once in a while.

My thesis work is progressing gradually: I can now create pretty accurate 3D models and I’m starting to analyze them. In the picture you can see a 3D model I created of myself. As I hold the camera in my right hand, this arm looks a bit weird. For creating this model, I use the Microsoft Kinect Fusion algorithm, as I wrote last week. This algorithm maps pixels from depth images to XYZ coordinates. Next, these measurements are averaged in a 3D volume. As every of the 512*512*512 volume elements (voxels) have to be recalculated for every new frame, I need a lot of processing power. This is achieved by using the GPU of a powerful graphics card.

Besides my studies I have been enjoying the weather and spending my time with friends and my housemates. The weather in the Netherlands was exceptional good last two weeks. My Italian housemates stated that it was even warmer than it normally is in the summer. I enjoyed this nice weather mostly with my housemates. We found a big sofa and put in on our balcony, facing South. Last Saturday we already had the first barbecue of the year. The day before I had unlimited pancakes in the sun a Restaurant in the park in the middle of The Hague. I’m even getting  a little tanned already, which normally only happens after weeks of  summer.

This Friday, my girlfriend will leave to Argentina for five weeks. She is going on a study trip, like I did to Asia. At first I was afraid to get a little lonely these weeks, but my agenda is getting quite full, luckily. I will write again in two weeks!

Christmas dinner in April

My life slowed down a little bit after writing my last post; I passed for the security test at the Airport and got my security card. I worked hard at my project and little happened during my evenings. Last week, however, was much less predictable and some more fun to write about.

For the work at my thesis, I started experimenting with a camera similar to the Microsoft Kinect camera. Using a 3D library, called Point Cloud Library (PCL), I was able create the 3D model of a passing crate shown here. As you can see, there is still a lot of noise and missing data. This week I’ll try to greatly improve my results by applying the Microsoft Kinect Fusion algorithm.

As the end of my study will soon be in sight, I’ve also started looking for a job. I’ve started off ambitious by applying of a Business Course of McKinsey’s Business Technology Office (BTO). I am looking for a job where I can use both my technical insights with all the managing skills I learn during all my extracurricular activities. My first serious motivating letter proved to be rather successful as I was invited for a job interview today.

As I wrote earlier on, last week was a bit more interesting. On Friday the 10th we went with a group of housemates to a big party in a neighboring students house. I was nice to see them in some really different perspective. On the 13th there was the first activity of the new IEEE SB Delft board. Afterwards, I spend the whole night on cooking for a big dinner on Friday. On Wednesday I had a double-date with a housemate and his girlfriend which whom we went to a Fondue restaurant in the city off The Hague. On Thursday there was a big party organized by students from our faculty, but I wanted to sleep early, to be well rested on Friday.

Because, on Friday, we had our house Christmas Dinner! In April! As most students are with their parents during Christmas and New Year’s eve, most students houses have a big Christmas dinner somewhere during the year. The dinner was, as we called it that evening, “Epicdary”, with 7 courses and all drinks included. We sat at the table to around 2 in the morning and had a really good time. We all wish Christmas could be celebrated more than once a year, but that would be weird, right.

Last Saturday, I saw my mother for the first time in 10 weeks. She just got back from Togo, where she did voluntary work a child healthcare organization. I was incredibly nice to hear all here stories about the totally different way of living they have there. My mother really enjoyed working with the kids there, as you really notice they are way less spoiled than the children here in The Netherlands.

Today I heard I’m selected to join a one-week exchange program to Madrid, Spain, so some more good stories are probably coming from Madrid at the end of April. For the next few weeks I hope to make some significant process in my thesis research. Check out my blog in two weeks to find out what I’m up to then!

Two weeks ago I gave you a quick summary of what I’ve been up to in the last two months. As I wrote, my tremendous busy period is now over. Right now, most of my life is about my graduation project, which I’m already quite proud of.

Last Friday, my Thesis supervisor told me my literature study is ok, for now, so I can finally start experimenting, measuring and implementing! The Friday before I received the grade for my last exam ever: a 10! All in all, it’s going pretty well so far! If I manage to get at least an 8.5 for my thesis, I will get my MSc title “with distinction”.

Last week I was, next to my graduation, quite busy socially. I found myself three evenings in a row at the beestenmarkt, a square in Delft surrounded by pubs and restaurants. On Tuesday, there was the traditional Kobus-drink for students from my faculty. On Wednesday, I had dinner in a mediaeval restaurant with an old friend of mine. The mediaeval restaurant, which I visited before a couple of times, is pretty cool: there is only candle light, you have to eat with your hands and there are even chickens walking around. It is located in one of the really old buildings in the city center. When we finished, we decided to get a few more beers at the beestenmarkt. Thursday, almost the same happened after I had a go-karting match with my housemates (I finished 3^rd by the way  ).

This Monday I’ll have a security-test at Schiphol airport, so I can get a (sort of) employee-card, to do my measurements. I already had a guided tour through the baggage handling system of the airport. The size and complexity of the systems is immense; they recently invested around one billion euros, to save costs! There is almost as much space for the baggage transport, sorting, security check, storage, etc. as there is for the passengers.

By the way, the  weather in the Netherlands is getting better quite soon. Today was really sunny and felt like spring. Pretty strange, since only two weeks ago it was -10°C and there almost was a Elfstedentocht, a legendary 190 km natural ice skating race, hold only in really cold winters. I applied for a student exchange in Madrid in April, so I hope I can enjoy the warm spring there too!

Ok, I realize it’s  a long time since I’ve posted something on my blog. If you are a frequent reader, you know that this is partly due to my study tour through Asia. But this only explains half of my absence here.

On November 19^th my plane to Being left, as I was participating on the Study Tour my study association organized (see reis.etv.tudelft.nl ).  During the Study Tour, we visited universities, like the best University in China (the Tsinghua University), cool companies, like State Grid, Samsung and Panasonic, and unbelievable cultural stuff, like the Great Wall, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and the Golden Temple in Kyoto. With a group of 22 students and 1 professor we had the 30 days of our lives in four different countries (China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan).

At the moments we had free time, according to our tight schedule, we took a change of getting to know the local culture for ourselves. We explored the shops and markets, and – of course – we thoroughly explored the nightlife. The most amazing party I enjoyed was on the thirtieth floor, in the middle of the Hong Kong skyline (impression). While we were having a great party with an excellent view, we were also “owning” the party. Everyone their liked our way of partying, and as soon as we introduced a new dance move, everyone was doing this move. We let them know the Delft way of partying!

This study tour is just one example of the many great things students in Delft accomplish on their own, just for other students.

When I got back from Asia, I got a tremendous amount of work waiting for me. Not only did I miss 30 days of lectures, and time to study at home, but the company I was going to start my graduation project at, already wanted me to start in January!  So the last weeks of December, although there was a Holiday break, I was working my ass off on my projects.

On January the 2^nd I started my internship at Scarabee Systems & Technology. I’m working on a really cool project: With the help of a camera of my choice (I’ll probably choose a Depth of Field camera, like the Kinect), I have to determine whether or not baggage on a conveyer belt is actually “conveyable”. If I succeed this will actually be used at Schiphol Airport (12^th biggest airport in the world). These few first weeks were really busy, as I was still working on my projects in the evenings and in the weekends, and afterwards the exams.

Fortunately now, after finishing my last exam – ever (!) - , I’m going to have more time for myself and for updating my blog. I’ve started to go to the gym again and I’ll probably even have time to get bored again. There is a chance that I’ll get involved with some medical research in Togo, but I’ll tell you more about this next time!

Wow, these were two busy weeks again! Even though I had an exam on Friday 11^th, I had quite some meeting the week before. I’m involved in a small task group researching the future of the two Master Programs, Embedded Systems and Computer Engineering. As planning with the academic staff is usually quite hard, they liked to meet in the exam period. Luckily my second exam still went somewhat okay.

Directly after the exam I had to rush to the train. I went to Maastricht, the Southernmost city of the Netherlands. My sister is studying there since September, and I never had the time to see here new room: I never even saw the City of Maastricht. The city itself was really nice, it had about the same atmosphere as Delft; pleasant people and a lot of mediaeval buildings.

As I’m leaving with the ETV study tour this Saturday, this was also the last weekend together with my girlfriend in quite some time. To celebrate this we went to a really classy restaurant. Unfortunately they weren’t quite used to my big stomach, so they were unable to entirely fill it..

This week started with the handover board meeting of the IEEE Student Branch. As I’m going to start my graduation project after my study tour, I wanted to reduce the number of additional jobs I do at the faculty. We found a motived new group, with a mix of International, Dutch, Master and PhD students.

From Tuesday one, the week was all about the study tour: it started with a symposium about the countries we are going to visit. We had a talk from the former Dutch ambassador in China, a PhD on cultural studies of South Korea, the embassy of Japan and a Professor on Asian economics. On Wednesday we had the chance to get to know all the participants and Asian food, in a wok-restaurant. All time that was left this week, I had to spend on getting ready to leave: washing and ironing my clothes, having last minutes meetings with people I won’t see for 4 weeks, etc.

As the study tour is coming closer and closer, I feel like going more and more. As I never left the western world, I think it will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Ill post my experiences when I’m back!

Kind regards!

The time of exams has finally come. Is the a strange feeling that these are one of the lasts exams I’ll eve take. I have two exams for semester-courses in January, but then I’ve already started working on my graduation project. The first exam, for Displays and Image sensors, was last Thursday and on Friday I will have the exam for Ad-Hoc Networks.

As I already realized last time, I still had quite a busy agenda before I could start studying. First of all there was the beer-tasting. Although we had a really fun evening, learned a lot about the rich history of Dutch and Belgium beers and everyone was really enthusiastic about it afterwards, it was a pity that only a small amount of student showed up. The hazing, later that night, was a better success which ended with a spectacular tandem sack race.

Next Thursday there was an “instemming“ in my student house. Because my Greek and Italian house-mates are moving out, there are two rooms coming free. At an instimming a lot of people are invited and, at the end of the evening, the person(s) fitting in the best with the house can move in. As I live in a house with a lot of different people, this is always a hard decision. Luckily our house will keep its international character, with a new student from the United States moving in.

In the next week I felt like a professional guide for our campus: on Monday I joined my 16 year old cousin at the open day of my faculty and the faculty of Aerospace engineering. Of course I hope he will choose for my faculty! Next Thursday,  after a full day of meetings, a group of 15 students Electrical Engineering from Hannover arrived. I showed them the Delft nightlife and the next day I guided them through our faculty.

It was funny to see that after showing them the nicest research labs at our faculty (e.g. the clean room for microchips and world’s 5^th largest high voltage lab), our nice campus and the beautiful city center, they were most impressed by the ETV. The ETV is the study association for students Electrical Engineering. It has a fulltime board which has close contacts with students, professors and companies. As written in my first blog, I also was in this full-time board.

This all toke place in the week that is supposed to be free in order to study for the exams. So in the weekend that followed I really started to study. Unfortunately for me, I had to take a break from studying on Tuesday for the job-interviews for the new IEEE SB Delft board I had to lead. It was strange to have these interviews from the other side of the table, especially because there are much older PhD student in front of me.

Luckily the time I had left was still enough to study for the first exam. Now there is one more week of studying ahead for me. Next period I will only follow two small courses as I will be away most of the time. Already in two weeks I will be walking around in Being, with the ETV study tour. I will try to give you one more update before I leave.

See you around!

With the exam period (31-10 till 11-11) ahead, things are becoming a bit more relaxed.  Last Friday I went to Limburg (southern of the Netherlands) with my family, to enjoy the autumn sun. We hiked, drunk special beers, got almost locked into a nature reserve and mountain biked near the border point with Germany and Belgium (Tripoint Vaalserberg). We were lucky: this year the autumn weather is extraordinary good, even better than in the summer.

Most courses are coming to an end and soon I really have to start studying. Luckily I’ve only got two exams:  for “Ad hoc networks”  and “Displays and imaging sensors”, both free elective courses. So I’ve got one week to study for every exam.

In the last two weeks still a lot happened:

First of all, there was the first activity organized by the new IEEE board, of whom I’m the chairman. One of our most easy-going professors gave an interesting lecture about IEEE and his research in the field of  biomedical engineering. At the end of the lecture we could provide al attendees with free pizza.

Then I had to do my final presentation for my internship at Deerns. Together with another student I had to give a 30 minute presentation on redundancy in Data Centers.  Although the idea of giving a presentation in the headquarters of a rather big company was rather thrilling, the presentation went surprisingly well. It was actually rather enjoying to give a presentation to such an interested group.

The same evening I was at a long meeting at the student housing organization, about the new internet connection.  Last Thursday I visited the Chinese embassy, to apply for a visa for my study tour.  

After a relaxing long weekend in Limburg I could start arranging upcoming activities. This evening we’ll organize an IEEE beer tasting and a few hours later I’m leading the “hazing” for the successors of the “Kobus Kuch committee”. Next week a group of 18 students from Hannover will visit Delft and I’ll guide them through our faculty and our city. Finally, on the first of November we have intake interviews for new volunteers for our IEEE Student branch.

Did I say life was becoming more relaxed?...

Welcome to my new blog. Since this is my first post I think it’s time for me to introduce myself:

I’m Frank Teunisse, I’m currently in my second year of the Master Embedded Systems, at the Delft University of Technology. I live in a student flat close to the faculty, together with my girlfriend and my 8 flat mates (1 Greek, 1 Italian, 1 Portuguese and 5 Dutch students).

I started studying in Delft in 2006 with my Bachelor Electrical Engineering. As I was always interested in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, I decided to do a Master where those two field of studies came together: Embedded Systems.

If you are fast in Math, you have calculated that I should have graduated by now, 5 years later… But, luckily I’m not: I lost time working on so called “extracurricular activities”. In the academic year 2009-2010 I was in the full-time board of my study association, the ETV.  Currently I’m still chairman of IEEE SB Delft (ieee.tudelft.nl) and member of the Board of Studies of Embedded Systems and Computer Engineering.

The first month of this academic year has been a really busy one. There were the traditional “welcome back” activities, a lot of graduation drinks, I had to finish the documents for my internship at Deerns, I started arranging my graduation project and the first activities of IEEE SB Delft are planned. Furthermore my study trip (to China, South Korea and Japan) is coming up, which I’m really looking forward to.

On this blog I’ll keep you up-to-date about my life as a student Embedded Systems here in Delft. You can expect a post from me at least two times a month. See you around