APT at UoM

My APT students are progressing very well. I had several one-on-one sessions this week for clarification, technical advisement, and progress report. At UoM, I noticed that most students are very proficient in programming and problem solving. This type of student preparation makes it much easier to offer a number of APT courses in a semester's time. CS students at JSU should take notice :)

The CS program in UoM is concentrated mostly on the technical side. Students do not take courses on literature, history, ethics, music, foreign languages and art. Although the computer laboratories are decently equipped, a good number of students tend to bring their own laptops to school.

I really like the idea of an APT (Applied Practical Task) course. It is either a group project or an individual task. Third year students take 3 APTs in the Spring semester--two individual APTs and one group APT. The completion of these APTs is everything for the entire semester--i.e. no other class work. I will try to emulate a similar setup for our CS499 (Special Topics is CS) course at JSU when I get back.

Gozo

We finally made to the sister island of Malta--Gozo. It is quite an amazing place to visit. The churches and museum are magnificent! We didn't get to the Prehistoric temples of Ggantija which are documented to be the oldest free-standing structure in the world (about 3600 BC). It is older than the Pyramids of Egypt (2500BC), the Acropolis (600BC), and the Hanging gardens of Babylon (605BC). We'll make sure that we get there next time.

Homer alluded to the island of Gozo in his Odyssey as the island of Calypso. Here are some pictures.

MCAST Security Projects

This week, I have completed the description and testing of four Computer Security projects for MCAST. These are hands-on laboratory projects that cover system reconnaissance, packet capture and analysis, Log monitoring, penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, and web and system hacking. The instructors are scheduled to be trained on these projects in May. A digital forensics laboratory exercise is currently under development.

Now for the not so serious stuff. I started playing volleyball with MCAST instructors every Friday afternoon. It is quite a stress buster plus a great way to burn flab that started to build up due to lots of pastizzi and cheese. I'll show a picture of a pastizzi next time and you'll agree that it is quite enticing. Here is a picture of my volleyball buddies!

Malta Map

Check out my Google map of Malta. I'll try to update this with pictures.

Click on Malta Map with my annotations

University of Malta

I finally realized that I have not taken a single picture of the University of Malta. So this 3rd week of April I am on a mission--take some pictures of the University and my students in the APT courses and publish them.



The walkway between the Halls...can't figure out which buildings???



That's me at the main entrance of University Ta' Malta!



That's the administration building




A view of Msida from our apartment balcony



My APT students in the lab...guess who's Maltese and who's French

Easter Vigil with Filipinos

We were invited to a birthday party by the Filipino community in Malta on Black Saturday. After eating so much Greek and Maltese food during the past week or so, we surely are ready for Filipino food! We enjoyed the Filipino get-together with lots of singing and dancing!

Here are some pics.

R & R in Athens

The Holy Week brought some needed respite from lecturing. Nimfa and I visited Athens, Greece for fours days. Athens is just a 90-minute flight from Malta. We were back in Malta on Good Friday in time to attend the Passion and Easter services.

Our trip to Athens was quite enjoyable. We managed to get familiar with the Metro system during our first day and our travel was effortless from thereon. We even made it to the Southern port of Greece: Pireaus. That is where all the cruise ship dock and load passengers. We were contemplating on going to one of the islands but, since we arrived late in the morning, we decided not to. The next day we saw on the news that one of the cruise ship went under after accidentally hitting a volcanic reef!

The highlight of our trip is our dinner at Daphne's. It is a restaurant that is visited quite frequently by dignitaries and Hollywood stars. We love their lamb fricassee!

Here are some pics!