School

Update 1: I’ve tested the profile and found that it doesn’t not work due to certificate issues. I’ve updated v0.2 of the profile and I hope it solves the problem.

Update 2: There have been infrastructural changes, i.e. WLAN-Student is depreciated by WLAN-SMU. Hence, please refer to SMU Macness’s Configuration Guide for Mac users and ignore the configuration profile on this post. Their instructions supersede that of here.

Singapore Management University (SMU) employs 802.1X authentication for its wireless network access. Mac OS X has always had certain kinks when dealing with multiple 802.1X profiles, such as SMU’s and Wireless@SGx’s.

Apple has changed the 802.1X configuration screen for Mac OS X Lion. End-users are no longer able to manually add 802.1X configuration profiles within the Advanced Network Preferences panel. All 802.1X configurations are now managed by a “configuration profile”, provided by a systems administrator. I hope this redesign increases the stability and reliability of the 802.1X mechanism in Mac OS X.

Well, you may ask, what is a “configuration profile”?

Apparently, it’s quite simple. They are the same .mobileconfig profiles used for iOS devices and the same Apple iPhone Configuration Utility can generate compatible profiles for Mac OS X Lion.

For your convenience, I’ve provided an untested configuration profile here, that will configure your SSID to WLAN-Student and to use 802.1X, according to the credentials you supply when you install the profile onto your computer.

Do look through the contents of the profile before installing and ignore the warnings that the profile is unsigned. I will provide further updates to the profile when I have a chance to conduct some field tests.

I hope this helps the early adopters out there.

Download: Lion Wireless 802.1X Configuration Profile for SMU v0.2.

What I’d learnt in business about message delivery is to pass the message directly to its intended recipient, with as little intermediaries as possible. In the place I work however, they stubbornly adhere to the contrary – message passing. If you’ve ever played the game called, “broken telephone”, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

To illustrate my organisation and the context, I’ll let you imagine an auditorium where a level of students are assembled. Each level contains 3 classes is divided into 30 people each, led by a class in-charge. Each class subsequently is divided into 3 groups with 10 people each, led by a group in-charge. Effectively, the group in-charge has at most 9 people under him.

Let’s say the principal needs to get everyone to do something such as taking out a piece of paper from their pockets, most normal organisations would have the principal go to the microphone and address the gathered directly. At most, the level in-charge would be informed and announcement made by him.

However, in my organisation, things work in a more ridiculous way. To send a message, the principal would instead summon his deputy and passes his message to him, and his deputy would then summon the discipline master and pass the message to him. Following which, the discipline master would summon the level in-charge and pass him the message; and subsequently, the level in-charge would then summon the class in-charge, and the class in-change would summon the group in-charge. Finally, the group in-charge would then summon the remaining 9 people under his care to tell them the (possibly already distorted) message – do an equipment check before moving off.

These elaborately detailed procedures happen all the time, regardless of the need nor inefficiencies.

You wouldn’t believe me if I were to tell you that the organisation that I am forced to work for is sadly hopeless and stifling.

While I was back in school, we complained and whined about the poor implementation and execution of the IBDP. I thought I was sitting through the worst movie that can ever be produced by the school.

Fast-forward a year, little did I know, the worst has yet to hit rock bottom. When fellow alumni are told of the things that are present, it solicits exclamatory remarks coupled with sighs of relief that they are now alumni and need not witness cultural and spirit massacre first hand. One thing for sure is that a certain degree of unrest and annoyance is stirring.

The question is, can it get even worst before the cause is eliminated? More importantly, what is the cause? Apparently, every other significant person to the cause have left or been forced to leave on grounds “told not to speculate”. The rest are either new or couldn’t leave due to life obligations (such as children). Speaking of new, they leave as fast as they enter. Something must be terribly wrong, not in the state of Denmark!

So, what do all these actually mean? Can we still sleep soundly over it?

Speaking of sleep, I’ve come across this interesting article which talks about the process in which the mind undergoes while you’re sleeping at night.

I’ve always this impression that your mind is hard at work while you’re asleep, and that’s why I put huge emphasis on sleeping, whether while I was still schooling or serving my time in the mental jail known as the army.

While I was on doing my IB Dip course, I’d always made it a point to take a good nap right before working on thinking intensive work, such as essay writing and mathematics portfolios. Most of the time, I’ll awake with inspiration on how to tackle questions or simply having found out what to write for an essay.

Had times where you’re out of ideas? Try sleeping.

In the training school I was previously in, I disagreed with many of their training principles and ideals. The primary ones which drew great ire from me was their concept of ‘leadership’, ‘supervision’, and ‘command and control’.

’Leadership’ in their warped perspectives indicates the ability of one to force actions down people’s throats with speed and little dissent. Such definitions would certain lead to massive resignations (commonly seen in a place I once knew) and staff dissatisfaction. Not to mention, poor motivation and negative repercussions when ‘initiative’ is required are troubling side-effects. In fact, by reality’s definition, this form of leadership is a massive failure and will probably not work at all in an open environment where people are not bound to work by a bond or law.

Leadership in this world has got more to do with earning respect than demanding respect. Ways to earn respect which I have seen is to have great moral fibre and graciousness, especially the ability to admit to mistakes and accept criticisms. Just saying sorry when you’re obviously wrong and treating everyone with respect, even with simple words like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, will make a big difference to your standing as a ‘leader’. It goes without saying, ability and knowledge of the subject-matter at hand needs to be of very high standards.

The following annoying definitions that I’ve been forced to contend with is with the phrase, ‘supervision’ and ‘command and control’. Their concept of supervision is that it doesn’t exist if no one is shouting or just making (stupid) noises. I mean, when dealing with people with the ability to think, constant noise pollution and/or verbal harassment will not increase their working speed, and might on the other hand be counter-productive.

I believe the most important aspect of supervision is communicating your requirements clearly and succinctly, with reasonable deadlines, so that people can work on them without confusion and misunderstandings (and thus less shouting and directing noises need to be made by you). Equally important is to give people sufficient freedom to achieve your requirements. Allow them to use their methods (which are usually more efficient than yours); show them yours only when you see that they are going the wrong way (but without force).

Of course, these methods will definitely not work in times of war but the art of leadership is to adopt the relevant style in the appropriate context. Go ahead and shout when you can’t be heard; similarly, speak nicely when you are within hearing distance.

At that, I still stand by my decision to avoid hiring (if I get to) anyone who has served in the armed forces as a regular, with the exception of pilots.

After reading these posts, an Eureka moment suddenly jolted me from my wonder.

Despair sets in.

Having been really busy these days, I hardly have time to check emails in accounts which I rarely use. Lately, someone pointed out that there’s an email in the school issued email account (where its interface quite resembles Hotmail 1.0). Albeit the insincerity, it talks about ‘Univerisity offers and Response to questionnaires’.

Basically, it’s a survey to find a correlation between the IBDP result and university offers. That’s the boring part.

The more exciting part is a polite advertisement for a survey going around regarding “the implementation of the IB programme”. Although the email claims that “official approval” is required for such surveys to be conducted, I think otherwise. Having it ‘officially approved’ in the first place would introduce bias into the questions, creating an observer effect, which can induce negative outcomes to the results. Moreover, I find it absurd that we were told “not to respond to this survey”, to announce our names to them, and to retract our responses from the researcher if we had done so. After all, we are no longer under the jurisdiction of the school and they are pushing it by telling us what we cannot do even after we have graduated.

What they have effectively done is to tell the whole world to stop imagining a pink floating elephant in front of them. By the tone of the last paragraph, it sounds as if the implementation of the programme is extremely shameful and would raise serious consequences if let known by researchers and the public.

做賊心虛

Sadly, the deadline for survey submissions is up. Otherwise, I will do them the favour by pointing you to the survey.

As you all know, I’m currently in a special type of school that is a magnitude more inefficient and stupid than my last.

It’s pretty amusing that many of my teachers do not agree with much of what that was being taught. What’s even more amusing is that the institution is a very horrible place to work in. Every teacher that I’ve spoken to regrets his decision in joining the organisation; many are planning to resign the moment their minimum contractual obligation period is up.

As for the curriculum, it’s a bunch of outdated drills which are purely based on rote learning capabilities of the students. Intelligence is hardly required. What’s needed only is the ability to follow simple instructions to the dot; and have the ability to stomach last-minute changes and inconveniences without complaints.

That aside, this blog contains many interesting stories worth reading.

On the financial side of things, this article on fiscal finagling in Singapore.

I don’t know if I should be angry or happy. Maybe I’m happy because it’s the anniversary of the founding of the school, maybe I’m angry because things didn’t go the way I wanted.

I came to school with a few things to accomplish in mind. First of all, to collect my CCA record and my IB Diploma as according to the DP3’s email, “the IB diploma should be available for collection in February”. Well, the administration office staff claims that June/July would be a more probable date for the collection of the diploma. The next document available for collection is my CCA record.

Despite having made and submitted corrections before deadlines and leaving school, I was still issued a totally blank and clean CCA record. The best solution the staff offered was to look for the CCA Director. This reeks of pure incompetence and negligence as I’ve found that a few other classmates too have a blank record. In spite of my contributions to the CCAs and claiming awards in competitions for the school, I have no official records of them; I’m certainly not going to submit the blank sheet to universities in my applications. Although I have a decent 2005 CCA record to submit in place, I find this incompetence and negligence (despite my earlier notifications) extreme peeving and infuriating.

Meanwhile, I shall ponder on my recourse.