#10: Crossing Two Finish Lines - Industry Immersion and JCSSE 2018 Research Deadlines

Just as the deadline of the submission of our industry immersion requirements draws near, the research paper I submitted last April to JCSSE 2018 (15th International Joint Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering) titled "LSB Rotation and Inversion Scoring Approach to Image Steganography" in collaboration with Dr. Arnel C. Fajardo has also been approved. The paper has been subjected to double-blind review by the technical program committee of the conference consisting of international experts in different areas of computer science, computer engineering and ICT. The committee made some insightful comments about my work and recommended several revisions prior final submission. If submitted, the paper will be included in the journals of IEEE Xplore Digital Library which is generally SCOPUS indexed. The deadline of my registration as a conference author and the submission of my camera-ready paper is on May 31, 2018, which is also the same deadline of my immersion course requirements.

In my personal pursuit to present my first ever internationally recognized research, and to pass my industry immersion course, I spent the remaining days of May juggling between two research works. It's been over two weeks now that I stayed until midnight in my favorite cafe working on my documentations. I hope my effort pays off.

Staying late working in a cafe and chatting with my D.Eng classmates in FB

I however gave priority to my industry immersion course research since the repercussion of not passing the course is quite heavier compared to not presenting paper to the conference. I finally finished my paper titled "Scheduled Generation and Distribution of Data Strategy on Distributed Systems" wherein I made a comparison between the performance of my distributed system strategy versus the traditional client-server systems. 

Shown below is the pages of my industry immersion research.

   

Industry Immersion Research: Scheduled Generation and Distribution of Data Strategy on Distributed Systems

Through the encouragement of Dr. Fajardo, I also made it my intimate mission to finish the revision of my other research that were approved by the committee of JCSSE. I was able to find time to work on this and I am fortunate that was able to submit my other research on time. To seal the deal, I already paid my registration as an author and bought my plane tickets. I'm in the point of no return right now! 

Shown below is the pages of my JCSSE 2018 research.

 
 

JCSSE 2018 Research: LSB Rotation and Inversion Scoring Approach to Image Steganography

As of now I am working on the remaining requirements of my industry immersion course such as the portfolio and the research compendium. More late hours work, more coffee... probably until the next three years of my life. Fortunately, I am having fun.

#09: Sprint! - Programming the Units

Though on surface, changes on the requirements introduced midway in the project seems not to pose any significant impact but its unexpected domino effect has greatly increased the complexity of my tasks. It was only recently agreed by the university HR and me that some work schedules like overnight security duties may require time outs that are a day after its time in. My initial version of the DTR program assumed that all time ins and outs occur on the same day, and it looks like that all I need to do is just add a time out date to the database so as to comply with the new requirement.

Unfortunately, when I added a date component to the time outs database entries, I realized in the last minute that dates were also needed to be appended on other time-based entries of the database. When multiple fields of the database are revised, so are revisions to the interface design, time log processes, and attendance reports will also be required. This inserts complexity to my already complex programming tasks, which results to the gradual sliding off course of my actual activities away from my planned blueprint.

Me programming the DTR units

But still, I have my obligations to the project, and also to my immersion study as well. There is no time to feel bad about my situation but to continue the progress of my program. I also have to keep in mind that my internship also needs lots of documentation work.   

So no time to walk... run!

#08: Mapping the Course - Mentorship Blueprint

Because of my mentor's busy schedule, it was only today that I managed to present to him in details the contents of my Mentorship Blueprint. I promised our Dean that my internship activity should be different from my existing project with the university. Shown below is my blueprints signed by my mentor that shows the tasks and deliverables specific for my existing project (green), and the other ones specific for my industry immersion activity (yellow).

Mentorship Blueprint - Deliverables

Mentorship Blueprint - Gantt Chart

As for now, both my project and internship activities are on schedule. I hope I could maintain this pace until the end of this summer term of 2018.

#07: The Tour Guide - Meeting with the HR

I was supposed to have my Mentorship Blueprint evaluated and signed on this day by my mentor, Mr. Gerard G. Sayomac, but he was not in his office during my visit. Fortunately, the ICT office has managed to arrange the meeting with their HR officer which I requested from my last visit.

Meeting with Dr. Marivis A. Gangoso (HRMO Director) and Mr. Vinray Alumbro (ICT SysAd officer)

The meeting was attended by their HRMO Director, Dr. Marivis A. Gangoso, and Mr. Vinray Alumbro, their ICT SysAd officer. We discussed about the schools policies on monitoring employee's attendances and the grounds for declaring lates, undertimes, and absences. We also brainstormed on the possible effects to the employees when the attendance system goes fully implemented.

I will return back to the university next week to have my Mentorship Blueprint signed and to program their DTR system in compliance with the discussed attendance policy.

#06: The First Step - The Initial Meeting

For my industry immersion activity in USA (University of San Agustin), I was assigned under the mentorship of their ICT Director, Mr. Gerard G. Sayomac. We discussed on our meeting about the current status of our project, my doctoral study at TIP, and my new role in USA under the internship program. It was made clear that there are separate objectives, activities, and expected outcomes between our existing project and my industry immersion activity. 

Mr. Gerard G. Sayomac, USA ICT Director (right)

Within this summer, I must accomplish the following tasks in compliance to our current project:

• Finalize the design and fabrication of the customized DTR (Daily Time Record) machines.
• Conceptualize a scheduled load balancing algorithm to offload time-sensitive computing loads away from the server and assign them instead to its numerous machine terminals that are connected to it.
• Secure the official policy of USA with regards to computation of work attendance.
• Reprogram the machines based on the official policy.
• Install a number of units at the administration building of USA.
• Encode employee profiles and work schedules.
• Run the system on testing and actual environment.
• Generate attendance report.

As for my immersion activity, I must accomplish the following industry immersion requirements by the end of summer term:

• Append time logs to every database query or update activities executed by the server or its machine terminals.
• Generate statistical reports of the collected time logs over a period of five days. For privacy concerns, none of the identities or attendance logs of USA's employee will be documented on the deliverables of my immersion activity. Instead, only the performance related activities of the system's databases will be the subject for documentation.
• Produce the following deliverables as required by the industry immersion course
• Mentorship Blueprint
• Weekly Blogs
• Immersion Portfolio
• Research Compendium

Me and Mr. Sayomac discussed the tentative schedule of activities related to my internship which I will later reflect on my Mentorship Blueprint. Also, I finally got the filled up acceptance form from my mentor.

Acceptance Form

I am scheduled to have a meeting with the HR (Human Resources) staff of USA next Friday  

#05: The Go Signal - Approval

Whew! After more than two weeks of waiting, my application for industry immersion at University of San Agustin has finally got approved!

If there are two things I gained during this delay, at least I managed to come up with two research titles that I will propose on our dissertation project. But I will still keep on searching for more titles so as to increase the probability of having at least one of my proposal gets approved. 

Right now, I am preparing all the necessary documents required to start my immersion activity. I will start reporting for duty this coming Monday. Good luck to me!

#04: Choosing the Right Shoes - Application

One of my options for my industry immersion is either apply to Department of Agriculture, or Philippine National Police of our region. I could request for their existing data, do some data analytics, and come up with some meaningful interpretations that could reveal something new or useful for them.

When I however recalled the surviving rate of DEng and DIT students who enrolled in dissertation course ahead of us, I realized that the next two or three years of my life starting this coming 1st semester should be all about serious and dedicated dissertation work in order to pass the program. No more teaching load, no other projects, and no more monkey business. Otherwise, I might not pass the course, lose my scholarship, and instantly inherit a huge debt.

So in preparation for the most academically challenging phase of my life I am now in the process of vowing to minimize my academic duties in my home school and close all my remaining external projects. Yes, no more new projects!

The problem in my preparation however is I still have one project for a school in our region, USA (University of San Agustin), that was supposed to be fully implemented and closed since last year but unexpectedly still in an "on-going" state until now. The project involves the design and fabrication of a number of customized electronic devices and the programming of their software, which is actually our field of expertise as Computer Engineers. Extending the development of this project beyond this summer term will certainly soon compete for my precious time that is suppose to be allocated for my dissertation study. 

I won't be explaining in this blog entry why the project overshoots its scheduled timelines. But I am confident that I could significantly accelerate the development of the project if I could have myself "immersed" as an in-house project manager within the organization of USA rather than just an external 3rd party developer. With my additional authority to directly communicate with the university officials and staffs that are relevant to my project, I could effectively and promptly implement the required system features much faster. No more tedious requests for a meeting that takes days to setup and confirm, and take more additional days or weeks to gather official responses. I could just knock on someone's office door, have a quick chat, sign some documentation papers, and continue back to my programming task in less than an hour.

With this strategy in mind, I applied to USA for my industry immersion study. Shown below is my actual application letter with some of the personal details of the project blurred out for confidentiality.

If my application will be both approved by USA and by our dean, Dr. Ruji P. Medina, I will immediately execute whatever is needed by the project and produce the essential deliverables required by our industry immersion course.  

Furthermore, I will also be applying to the project the concepts I learned from our Computer Security, Data Mining, and Distributed Systems courses of our doctoral program.