Company Visit I: Agilent Technologies

January 11, 2008.

Today i had a company visit to one of the great companies in Germany. Founded in 1939 with the name -that actually more famous- "Hewlett-Packard". Hewlett-Packard (HP) is founded by Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard as a company that produce test-machine, their first financially successful product was a precision audio oscillator, to test sounds. Eventually, they sell printer, and all the computer-related products that made them famous. Well, in 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form Agilent (Source: Wikipedia). Now, back to the real world.

At about 10.45am we (me and some uni karlsruhe students) departed from Infobau (the main building of Computer Science Faculty of Uni Karlsruhe). About 45 minutes later we have arrived at Agilent Technologies in Waldbronn. We came to a Conference Room and listened to some introduction from Agilent. Theres some story about the history of Agilent as HP, and then the buildings (about 5 buildings there, and the Agilent representative had said that they still have plans to build more). Agilent is an international company that have a branch mainly in USA (East Coast & West Coast), Germany, India, Cina, Japan, and maybe more countries that i can't remember. Their business products ranging from scientific instruments, semiconductors, optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment for telecom and wireless R&D and production. They researching in many fields from chemistry, biology, physics, farmacy, computer science, and many more. Well, enough for the crap, what do the researcher actually do in this branch of Agilent in Waldbronn?.

Agilent in Waldbronn developing tools in chromatography. What the heck is that?. Thats a laboratory techniques for the separation of mixtures. A little example: We have an pen with ink in it, a filter paper (a long rectangle paper), an a box of water. We touch the filter paper with the pen, an absolutely a stain appeared on the paper. We take the paper, and hold it above the water box, so that it touches the water a little bit. The water will absorbed, and the stain, strangely, separated and forms 4 stains with various different colors. What happened?. The stain composed of a mixture. And the water absorbed will push it to top. The mixture composed of different molecules with different sizes. The small size molecules runs faster, the larger ones slower. Thats why we could see more than 1 stain, where each stain have a different molecules in it. Well, now, in modern time, we don't use such technique with paper. Agilent developed all the tools and machinery that make it possible to do the chromatography accurately & efficiently. In the past, a whole laboratory was needed to do all the steps in chromatography. Well, theres a new solution, a very ingenious one indeed, with the slogan "Lab on a chip". The machinery itself called "Bioanalyzer". Accomplishing the job of a lab in one single chip. Well, after a lot of presentation slides, and photos of machines, we go to one of the great reason that we come here, dinner time!!!, and its all free. I think i don't have to explain about all the delicious foods that we have there. 1.15pm, we are divided to 2 smaller groups, and the tour begins.

The first part of the tour shows the phases in actual manufacturing of the machines. The manufacturing room is really clean, modern, and quite noisy too. Theres a lot of voices of machine testing, screw driver, etc. We were shown the actual workstation & stacks of machines. Theres one quite interesting knowledge there. It had been researched that actually the most expensive part of the machine is the screws. Thats why Agilent develop the machine compactly with very minimal screws. It had the advantage of being cheaper, easier to disassemble to replace/ update the parts, and also designed specially so that just one fan needed, to cool the whole box. And then we were explained exactly how the little parts works (honestly, i still don't have a clue about it). The machine assembling room & the final assembling room (final product with the casing closed) located strategically so that no time wasted to communicate or transport things. The other rooms located with the similar idea. The product's defects must be detected as early as possible (better while not yet assembled), but theres also the final quality control. There is a special machine to test the products, and 95% of them pass the test & directly packed to the customer. The rest 5% will be fixed in a reparation room.


The next part of the tour is led by a biologist (he is a sharp young scientist that have a lot of experience includes with Fraunhofer Institute etc). The biologist explains and shows how the Bioanalyzer works. Just fill the chip with the substance to be "chromatographed". Choose the right chip of course, he used as an example the chip for RNA. And then put it in the machine (its actually quite a small machine, looks like a common size laser printer to me). And then runs the program to connect the computer to the machine through the appropriate COM. Well he don't actually runs it with the actual substance because it would be about 25 minutes until it finished, and we don't have such time. He uses demo version instead. And we could see the amazing menus (well designed user interface) in the software, its still runs in WinXP btw. The results displayed as a signal (line graph): x-axis = time, smaller time means smaller-size fast molecules, y-axis = the quantity of molecules detected, written in percent relative to the quantity of molecules of the whole substance. There are peaks in this graph that shows the molecules contained in the substance. Theres also a profile that shows how the results should be. And we could compare it, so that we know how good our substance ist (for example sometimes RNA being in room temperature too long could be broken, and so its signal will have a large amount of noise, we can see it by the peaks, besides the peaks theres should be a relativily flat signal (almost 0)). He had also told a story about a Diplomarbeit (compatible to master thesis) from one student that give ratings to the resulting graph. 10 being the best with minimal noise, 0 being the worst. And in judging between 10 and 0 he had succeed to designed an algorithm that mimicks the knowledge of the experts in that area.

Next, we have enlisted our names to the project's list (its now 1 group max. 5-6 persons only). And the first one for me is "genetik algorithm in controlling the result quality". The presenter is a student too. He studying in FH Konstanz, and he have Diplomarbeit in Agilent about it. Not yet finished of course, he had just 2 months working there. So, at first he showed us the criteria of the expected result (result of which is peaks and which is not) : theres a false negative (alpha-error, most important to avoid), false positive, and the right results. The false results should be minimized with this genetic algorithm. How?. Theres a 2D array with blue and red colored little boxes as its element. Each column is one individual, each row is the parameter (thresholds, etc). Fitness function = minimize the false pos./neg. Begin with the iteration, on each iteration 2 best individuals get a free-pass to the next iteration, the rest must be married and 2 offspring resulted with some mutation, crossover, etc (common genetic algorithm rules). After about 250 iteration, hopefully, the best combination of parameter found, and so only the real peaks identified as peaks, and all the real peaks be found. The program will be enhanced with Simulated Anealing, Hill Climbing etc. Its not yet finished, so we still can't see the final program.

The next one is "Software Lifecycle". The presenter have this funny german dialect with a lot of "-isch". He had worked 9 years in Agilent. And he explains about the steps of planning, designing, implementing software. And then still have to take care of the maintenance, customer complains about bugs, etc. Theres an explanation about the "waterfall" scheme of the software engineering, a lot of talks about revision system of the software, and others that i can't remember or understand.

And at last the closing presentation. Its about Agilent on the 2nd phase (inventions, great employees, connection with universities etc), with the 1st phase of separating from Hewlett-Packard is already completed. There were a lot of talks about positions that could be filled by us in the future (programming related). And the opportunity of master thesis, parttime job, or something like that in Agilent. The most interesting, is about the talks about some seminar in the last Bioinformatics conference in England. The Airbus A380 is designed by computer to make sure its very good quality, efficiency, and other specifications. Why not drugs?. Thats one of recent holy grail in bioinformatics. To automatize the designing of drugs, and therefore maximize its quality in combating diseases.

Conclusion: A very interesting experience, can't wait till the next Company Visit!.

Tools of Communication (Use of language & it's future)

• The most ancient form of communication is using body language & sound, Later the Sound developed & became what we called spoken words which formed the first language. Only recently (about few thousand years ago) the first written form is created. Every geographically separated areas in the world have different form of language, the language is always evolved as the time goes, the language evolution process is quite similar to what we already know in evolutionary biology which involved natural selection, variation, etc.
  

• In the future, language in it's written & spoken form will eventually extinct once we mastered new techniques for communicate with another 'live being'. Once we found automatic telephaty tools & applied it in new born babies, the language will extinct. The only major reason it still existed will be because of our brains structure that already familiar with language using. Our brains now actually using language words to store conceptual meaning. Yea, but who knows in the future with the absence of language our brain will also evolved in some ways.
  

Savants

Do you ever heard about savant??,
maybe you know it from the film Rain Man,
I just watch some discovery documentary about savant,
And I'm so much amazed by it.

In about several centuries ago people called it "idiot savant" meaning the stupid wise one, in 20th century it called "savant syndrome". Some people who suffers it (usually from birth) have an extremely great ability in one narrow particular area (it could be music, painting, arithmetic, or memory), but great disabilities in other areas. For example a guy named Kim Peek (now about 40s) had an iq about 73, had absolutely no math skills, but remembered all that he ever read/heard in his life (encyclopedia, phone book, world history, even calender). Like all other savants Kim able to mention the day of a particular date in a very short time (about 2 seconds). And then there's Stephen Wiltchire who able to draw the world great skyscrapers with a very detail sketches in very short time, he draws it from the memory using his "photographic memory", in fact all savants had a photographic memory, it enabled them to see the world differently from what we see.

The world, just like dr Alan Schneider says, is full of information, so to prevent our overloading or overprocessing in our brain we naturally develop some system to transform the visual data to become conceptual data, in other words we filtered and packeted the visual data and we throw out the rest. In savants, they don't have the data transformation system (because some part of the brain damaged or simply not existed), so they have an access to the visual data which we never have (the photographic memory). For example, we see a skyscraper with about 100 windows and prism-like shape, but savants simply see the complete picture without understanding the meaning, that's why usually they have difficulties in language skills. Dr Schneider concluded, that savant-like abilities existed in all of us, and someday we will be able to temporarily turn off the particular part in our brain to make us more creative (by having photographic memory ability).

In the documentary, one thing most interesting for me is a child called Matt Savage. He is an idiot savant. He had a hyperlexia, autism, so he had a troublesome difficulties in his life. But, unlike other savants he had an incredibly high IQ, so his drawbacks is only in the social skills. The magical thing is his ability in JAZZ, yes you heard me.. He is some Jazz genius, in his early age (now about 12yo) he already tours in many countries. He plays trio with two other world calliber drummer and bass player. Oh my, i know that he had an autism, but other than that he had everything i dreamed of he3. Anyway if you interested to know better about matt you can open http://www.savagerecords.com . It's a great site you know, there's a video clip that you can watch (that clip will 'wow'ed you, i guarantee that).

Singing.. How lovely...

I just remembering what I had achieved in 2004 hmm.. A year full of change, as usual, thank god it's a positive change. Last year I began to read books a lot, especially english books, and my passive English ability (reading, hearing) is a lot better. My active ones (speaking and writing) still quite bad hic2, yeah.., you read this writing and you can tell that, at least I keep learning.

Last year I met a new friend, a great vocalist and pianist named Aldo. In the next 2 months I learn a lot from him about playing piano and how fun it is. That's a real miracle that I met him because after that, there's a lot of change, I change my regular piano teacher with a better one (obviously more expensive hic2), and I began to think about studying piano not as something rutinity and boring but as something a lot more fascinating, challenging, and fun. After that I began to become church pianist (honestly, recently it (church pianist) becomes not so interesting for me anymore for some reason).

In my college life there's only a little change. There's a little declining in my social life hhh.. maybe I study too hard he3.. Fortunately I got a lot of new chat friends. Last year, just the same as the previous year, I haven't met any special girl, maybe I have to work a lot on my 'aura' to attract chicks hahaha..

Just a few months ago I began to join my college choir and began to learn a lot about singing. A few months after that, in December last year I sing in christmas choir conducted by Ndaru Darsono and Rev.Stephen Tong, how lovely.. It's a wonderful and unforgettable experience for me. In Februari 7 (next month) I will began my vocal training in Surabaya Symphony Orchestra (SSO) trained by Pauline Poegoeh. It's quite expensive, just imagine, together with my piano lesson I spent 3 quarter of a million rupiahs every month. But I think that's worth paying, maybe music is my future after all. However, computer science is still my lifelong dream, and I will do my best to achieve it. (Do you think I can become succesful in both subjects?, Can you imagine a singing computer scientist? hahaha...)

Karl Out..

New Year's Eve, The National Mourning Day for Tsunami Disaster

It's only few hours before new year celebration, and looks like no one have the spirit to celebrate it. I watch CNN and there are more news on tsunami aftermath rather than new year celebration. Just few days ago on Dec 26 tsunami hits few countries where the most badly effected is Aceh, Indonesia, the closest to the epicenter of the quake. Tsunami is a huge tidal wave caused by the movement of the continental plain under the ocean during an earthquake. The up movement of a very vast land makes huge amount of water above it moves quickly to the other lower land, and that creates a huge tidal wave with a very strong power. This tsunami that happens just few days ago is not the greatest tsunami ever existed but it brings the greatest destruction and the greatest number of victim in human history.

Tsunami had kill more than 135,000 people, where about a third is children, and the death toll expected to rise while the body count still going. In Aceh, the northest province on Indonesian Sumatra island, more than 80,000 people dead, and expected to rise to 100,000. Melouboh, a small city in Aceh, is where the tsunami first struck, and the last place to get help because of it's isolation. There you can see a complete destruction and devastation. Some people even compared it to when atom bomb hit Hiroshima, you can see only few buildings left, the rest is completely nothing, piles of body everywhere. There are many other cities and countries destroyed and devastated by tsunami, and right now, the whole world together conducted the greatest relief effort ever existed, had donated over 500 millions USD to the countries effected.

Now after you got an image on tsunami disaster, do you really want to celebrate new year?. At least, after you celebrate, don't forget to pray for many tsunami victims. In Indonesia, like in many other countries right now, national flag flown at half staff to give respect on tsunami victims. It is new year just few hours from now in Indonesia, it is also national mourning day for tsunami disaster. I hope this kind of disaster never happen again in human history.

See more about tsunami aftermath on http://www.cnn.com/quake

Christmas For Everyone

Just few days from now christians from around the world will celebrate the birth of the saviour of the human kind that called the christmas day. Nowadays, christmas day celebration has grown in cultural way rather than religious. For simple example theres nothing about santa claus and the christmas tree on the bible (you just realized it huh..).

The "cultural" christmas day celebration even makes many western cultured people (in non-western countries) join together in the celebration even in non-christian society. We could see it most in the developed countries around Asia like Japan, China, Singapore, etc. Non-christians likes to joining in what they called 'christmas spirit' (with santa claus, christmas tree & ornaments, gifts etc).

In my personal opinion its not a wrong thing at all. I think its a great thing for non-christians to join together with christians in christmas celebration. It is a great oportunity for christians to show to the others the real christmas meaning, the real christmas joy, the real christmas spirit, the same spirit & joy felt in every christmas day from hundreds of years ago before local culture influence it.

Let the cultural fog don't make us forget the real meaning of christmas day that is the birth of the saviour of human kind, Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas for everyone!!..

2-2-2, A New Program for My Daily Life

Begins today, I plan to rearrange my daily schedule.
Hmm.. Of Course I never had any schedule before he3.
So I called this new program 2-2-2, that means 2 hours
on study college subjects (computer science, etc), 2
hours on piano practice, and 2 hours to working on my
college assignments, and the rest is FUN TIME.

This first day is so difficult, now I had finished the
2 hours piano practice and 2 hours assignment making,
but not yet study at all and now is already 10pm huh.
Actually considering my daily activity lately, 6 hours
to spent on hard work is not supposed to be so
difficult. Its now holiday, and it'll still holiday
for the next 2 weeks. I never go out, going to the
mall etc, of course because the lack of money, the
only time when I go out from my room is when I eat
twice a day.

So I had 24 hours minus approx. 7 hours on sleep minus
2 times an hour to eat, equals to 15 hours. From the
15 hours I have to spent 6 hours of it to study etc.
So I still have 9 hours to spent on anything I like.
In the reality it is more than 9 hours a day on the
fun time, blogging is included.

So, my fight for success continues,
Wish me good luck!..

At Last, Back To The Blog Business

Yup, after more than a month.. huh.. more than a month guys... without posting any blogs at all, my daily internet activity filled with downloading and chatting only. Yeah, not enough time to blogging (but enough time to chat hahaha). From this day on, I'll try as often as possible to post my blog (I'll try with all my time and effort, believe me hahaha).

I got a lot, yeah.. quite a lot new chat friends, many from them are young girls, and hmm only a few girls at my age and older, and of course my college friends (you may think i'm a playboy or something knowing that I chat with many girls, but it is just a matter of conversational need, you know boys usually don't like to chat with the same gender). Actually I like to having conversation more with persons at my age or older, you know, the matured ones, so I can learned something from the chat, not just having fun.

My College Projects huh... killin me. I have to finished most of it on this month (at most). Yeah, that means less time on internet and more time on my projects & books, hmm.. that's sounds really fun..

Ok, like I said, I will post blog more often, but maybe that means shorter text on a blog hehehe.
c ya All

Singing with my choir, a tiring but very lovely day..

Today i sing with my choir in the inauguration of my rector to become professor. Many guest is also lecturer came from many different university. My rector got a great honor because a professor from Jakarta (i think from Indonesian National Education department) came to my school in Surabaya to attend the event, and he said that its very rare to had this kind of inauguration ceremony in private university.

The ceremony went well and everybody is pleased. One thing that make me happy, Mr Kus (my rector) and some of the people I met said that the choir done a great job, the singing was wonderful, I wondered if that is true of just to pleasing the choir hehe.. Me and my choir will rehearse again to preparing before the graduation day in my campus. We will sing once more with more songs (a lot more tiring..). By the way I like the choir teacher a lot. Its a pity that he only teach us 3 times before today. I'm considering to attend singing course with him as the teacher next semester, I also considered violin course but I just don't know will my parents able to afford it.

However, I just realized something.., I love singing, It felt so good to sing any songs with a great spirit and feeling the songs had. Singing with your heart.. My friends the chairman.. mmm.. chairwoman of the choir always said that..

Bad connection day

Today and few last days is so sucks, the internet connection is just so slow, so slow that i can't browse at all (just the same as disconnected hic2..). I'm glad today the internet connection is running altough still too slow, it takes minutes to open a page.

My college day is beginning after the short break, many assignments waiting too work on. I have to reduce my 'blogging' time. But however, I'll always posting at this blog oftenly (ofcourse if the internet runs well). I haven't check my account in BlogShares.Com hic2 (check out blogshares.com by click at the button in links at the right bottom of this page), maybe if I play it I'll never stop.

This afternoon I'll practice singing for my campus choir. We will perform at October 2nd in the inauguration of my rector to become professor (I think he is not that smart to become professor). I'm glad that the choir is getting better each day, but its a pity that my campus didn't have any piano, choir accompanied by keyboard is so weird, and not every choir member come to the rehearsal, so I can't imagine how our performance will become (maybe my rector will collapse after hear it hahaha..)