Grid Computing

Need to add examples and need to work on motivating the reader to read my thesis! Grid Computing was suggested, i.e. the sharing, selection and aggregation of distributed and ubiquitous resources and services. As an example: universities making available their idle processors (?) for access by other universities.

Passed my viva

Huge relief. Got a month or so's worth of changes/additions/removals but passed and very nearly almost there! alhamdulillah.

Muslim traveller phone app ideas

Seemed to have a brainstorm moment with some friends last Saturday when stopping for a rest in the forest during our day walk in the countryside. Came up with ideas for two phone apps that could come handy for Muslim travellers, as follows: (1) "Am I Musaafir": Enter your starting co-ordinates (from where you set off on your journey) and then wherever you are, hit the button and it tells you if you are a 'musaafir' ('traveller' according to the technical, legalistic meaning of the word) or not. Options for the different madhaa'ib (schools of thought) would be available. (2) "Let's do Jama'at": If you are driving along the motorway and are stopping at the next service station for prayer, geotag it and anyone following the same route or at the impending service station can pull over for a(n increased) Jama'at (congregation). Like a virtual adhaan of sorts. Not sure if anything like this exists already? But still very far from being able to produce something like this. Only just started going through an Android development guide book!

Viva preparation advice

Six points of advice from (Dr) Sarah Junaid passed on (summarised) to me by Soumaya:

1. Read up throughly all the papers written by examiners that are relavant to your thesis;
2. Read up thoroughly the 5-6 papers that you quote most, and if you have time the other papers that are important but do not read them so thoroughly;
3. Read up on the basics;
4. Read up on the difficult concepts - make a plan of all the concepts that you need to know about;
5. Prepare a 10 min intro about why your research is important, what is the big picture;
6. Put notes in your thesis where you know there are issues so that you IF they bring it up you can show them that you are aware about them.