Not sure what went wrong, we really can’t blame the sound system or anything, I guess it’s because we didn’t prepare well.. We actually sounded really good together during the sound check, to the point where I was rather confident of at least putting up a good show. But.. it just didn’t happen during the actual competition period. We were off-pitch, sharp, our lead went flat at a crucial part, and comments from our friends indicated that we were not in tune for several parts of the song.

I blame myself for not mentally preparing well before I step on stage – my heart was beating fast, and I didn’t cool down well enough. Maybe I should’ve stressed myself a little during the waiting time, by constantly practicing my own part. I think I wasn’t concerned in the sense that I thought we wouldn’t make so many mistakes, but we really did, and we did badly.

Lesson learnt – always prepare more than you think you need. I really need to start working harder to perfect my hearing and singing, so that such things will not happen again.

Tips for a successful jailbreak:

- Do a Shift restore. This means downloading the iOS 5.0.1 firmware for your device (www.redmondpie.com), going to iTunes, hold down Shift and click the Restore button. A file dialog should open, and point it to the ipsw firmware file you downloaded. This does a clean restore back to the original 5.0.1 software, with all your settings removed (make sure to backup!)
(I am guessing I had this problem as I first updated to 5.0.1 from 4.3.5 without erasing data)
(It wasn’t enough to do a Erase all Data and Settings from the iPad for me)

- Make sure your iPad is plugged in through the whole process (or at least until the progress bar reaches completion on the Absinthe GUI program). I used the Windows version, and before the progress bar completes (and say something like ‘Almost done’), do not unplug.

- Instead of pressing the Absinthe icon after the GUI program completes, what I did was to go to Settings – General – Network – VPN and slided the slider ON. After a while (with the spinning wheel), it will say ‘A configuration error occured’. Now wait for a short while and your device will reboot.

Just my two cents!

In 2011, I..

*digs through Facebook photos*

1. … wrote a post about my 2010. Heh!

2. Till Death Do Us Apart.
My first experience of a lead role in one of the dances, my first experience as a dance coordinator, and my first experience in crying really hard after the curtain closed.

3. Chingay 2011.
Performed for Asia’s Grandest Stage for the first time. (sorry Jie Lin, I really like this photo )

4. First experience of fine dining. (It’s so goddamn freaking expensive..) (No, I’m not the waiter.)

5. Went to support my buddy Wilfred during the Singapore Dance Delight 02 preliminaries! That was one of my first exposures to so many strong dancers (and the different dance styles) in Singapore.

6. Dressed up in the ’60s and performed for Eusoff Fiesta. (I really loved the temporary tattoo thing!)
And it’s my first a cappella arrangement being sang – Forget You by Cee Lo Green.

7. Performed for NUS Open House! Under Eusoff Choir and Eusoff A Cappella.

8. Went to watch Live! Tay Kewei. She is such an amazing singer. <3

8. Completed my first dance course at O School, Wedding Dress by Zaihar. I love the dance steps!

9. Watched my first Dance Blast! concert –> Shut Up And Dance 2011. Awesome stuff.

10. Made my first A Cappella video for a friend’s birthday.

11. Performed at Dance Uncensored 2011 - under the combined item, and where I met so many crazy people – Charlotte, VK and Mereith just to name a few! I loved every moment of it. (Weiting, Ming Jie, Adinda!!)

(this is during our outing! )

12. Developed my first iPad app with my team – BattleWars. (not published :p)

13. Hall freak in action again – won the Cultural Medallion of Eusoff Hall. Thank you

14. Finished Portal 2 in the midst of exams. LOL. (It’s an awesome game – go play it!)

15. Went to Pulau Besar with my friends. Awesome trip (please do not mind my slutty pose.)

16. Made a Friday parody with my friends for another friend’s birthday (twins!)

17. Started playing Minecraft. DAMN AWESOME.

18. Lost a bet for having the.. best results and treated all of them to Xiao Long Bao buffet. ($$$$ fly away)

19. Choreographed for the first time, with Wilfred for Rag Day. This was a special one because it was a collaboration between Eusoff Hall and Temasek Hall. Had so much fun with the choreography and dancers.

(.. hello gay buddy.)

20. Celebrated one of my best friend’s birthday at some place, and we prepared a song for him It was so last minute but it turned out pretty well!

21. Joined NUS Dance Blast. I LOVE BLAST!

22. Performed for EMCC 2011 - A Series of Unfortunate Events as my first Blast! performance. I love the people here
Special shoutouts to Nic and Glenn!

(USA!)

(Spam photo!)

23. Went to watch The Real Group in Singapore with my A Cappella friends. They are seriously the best a cappella group in the world.

24. Sang for MDIS Graduation Ceremony for the 3rd time

25. Formed RANXM! <3

26. My second piece of a cappella arrangement, I’m Yours was sung by the freshies in Eusoff A Cappella This one really means a lot to me because it’s my full arrangement

27. Got 1st in PA’s Youth Got Talent competition, Vocal Group category! We sang Words by The Real Group.

28. Stepped up to choreograph Chingay 2012, NUS EH-TH section with Wilfred and Joy. Quite a disaster..

29. Went to Taiwan

(As you can see, I take really retarded photos.)

30. Completed Popping I & II courses in O School! Thanks to Wei Jie. He is fantastic! And I love popping

31. Carolled for the 4th year, and 3rd year under Eusoff Choir.

32. Wrote this post. (took me a few hours!)

32 things for my 2011! And most of them are big, exciting events. This is definitely a year I wouldn’t forget.

CS3216 – Software Development on Evolving Platforms
5MC / Non-examinable / 50% CA + 50% Final Project
Dr Ben Leong
Semester 1 only

The logical continuation to the iPad module, the Facebook module has been known for killing people during the semesters. And yes, I am here to prove that CS3216 will take up a whole lot of your semester time, albeit slightly less than CS3217 in my opinion. I guess I didn’t take the module with the correct mindset (I didn’t think far enough), but this is definitely a module that is worth your every sweat and second. This review is written from a software engineer’s point of view

Lecture – Lectures are mostly conducted by guest lecturers, to expose you to basically all the problems that require solving in the real world. It’s really an eye opener to realize that the world really needs a lot of software engineers and people with awesome ideas. no webcast but there isn’t a point anyway
Assignments – There were two assignments, both like mini-final-projects in that you have to develop an app that solves a problem. They were both quite fun, and useful in letting you pick up the skills required for modern web development. (PHP, HTML5, AWS etc) There’s also a blogging component, which in my opinion is really helpful, as it helps you consolidate your thoughts onto what you’ve learnt in the lectures and serves as a progress tracker (of yourself) at the same time.
Project – CS3216 is really not a programming module – you have to think about the problem that you want to solve, and develop an app that solves this problem. Many of the groups were really impressive in that they worked with external partners to come up with apps with backing up. I guess that’s where my group fell short.

Again, I would like to thank my teammates in the assignments and final project for being damn awesome and coming up with cool apps.

My grade: A-
My rating: Not for the faint of heart.

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CS2104  – Programming Languages Concepts
4MC / Examinable / 40% Problem Sets/Tutorial/Forum Participation + 10% Midterm + 50% Final
Dr Razvan Voicu

I have to say, Razvan is really a very knowledgeable lecturer. Respect.

This module teaches you about the underlying concepts beneath a programming language, although I would say it has slight overlapping elements with computer hardware knowledge. I had an interesting (and hard) time learning Prolog (Razvan loves Prolog), as its concepts were completely different from anything else I’ve learned. Practice is definitely required to understand most of the things taught.

Lecture – Razvan tends to not finish his lectures in time so sometimes you would have to self study. But other than that, he explains concepts rather clearly and if you can bear with his semi-boring tone (and concentrate), the lectures are really helpful. Be sure to take notes. webcasted
Tutorial – The lecturer will post the answers online, so unless you have completely no idea how to do some certain questions (which you should, towards the end of the syllabus), it should be okay to skip them. The problem is that the final exam questions are NOTHING like those in the tutorial. They are like 100 levels up.
Problem Sets - These are tutorial questions on steroids mostly (with a few easy exceptions), and I spent a lot of time doing each of them. They really serve as good practice for the concepts though, and should be attempted (even after you overshot the cap – the total marks for all Problem Sets exceed the maximum you can score with them).

The 40% CA marks are easily scorable as long as you do all your tutorials and Problem Sets diligently, so make sure you get those marks in full. My midterm was quite difficult whereas the Final Exam was doable as long as you practice well and read through the tutorials. (Problem Sets questions are at a higher level)

My grade: A-
My rating: Concepts are difficult to grasp, and practice is very important.

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CS2105 – Introduction to Computer Networks
4MC / Examinable / 5% Tutorial Attendance + 10% Midterm + 18% Programming Assignment + 32% Assignments + 50% Final
Prof Bhojan Anand 

Note: The same module has different syllabus and difficulty if it’s lectured by Prof Ooi Wei Tsang in that semester.

One of the easier modules of the semester. Contents are largely surface level at best, and not too difficult to understand; and Prof Anand is too lazy to set new questions for the assessments. (There were questions in my final exam that were complete replicas of PYPs.) Of course I guess the bell curve would be steep too. Make sure you have sufficient Java/C++ knowledge for the programming assignment. I like the content a lot though, as they are all relevant to our IT life everyday.

Lecture – All (or almost all) the content Prof Anand lectures are from the textbook, and I find that the textbook helps a lot if you can’t understand the concepts sometimes (or if you don’t pay attention like me). Other than that, he’s an okay lecturer. Take notes! no webcast
Tutorial – Tutorial questions should be quite easy as they are mostly just regurgitations of lecture concepts and simple calculations.
Homework Assignments - Slightly harder variants of tutorial questions. (Read: variants, because the questions are really.. the same..) Make sure you score full marks for them too.
Programming Assignment - For my semester we needed to create a Windows client for sending and receiving mail. As I had no experience in Java GUI, I ended up using NetBeans IDE’s integrated GUI builder (it’s really useful!). It shouldn’t be a big problem as they have sample codes for the backend part (sockets).

There really isn’t much to say about this module because it’s really not difficult if you put in some effort.

My grade: A+
My rating: Lightweight module that isn’t too difficult.

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CS3230 – Design and Analysis of Algorithms
4MC / Examinable / 5% Tutorial + 10% Lecture Quizzes + 35% Midterm + 50% Final
Dr Rahul Jain

Another lightweight module in terms of workload, but concepts are tricky and requires time to understand. I didn’t buy the textbook, but I felt that the lectures were sufficient. The more abstract section about NP completeness was a complete disaster though, it’s a lot harder than normal algorithm analysis. As there are very few components that contribute to your final grade, be sure to prepare well for each of them.

Lecture – Rahul attempts to explain the algorithms discussed in lecture clearly by drawing a lot and taking a lot of time. Make sure you take down notes from these discussions. He tends to confuse himself though  not webcasted
Tutorial – Be sure to attempt the tutorial questions and prepare for class, not because of the 5% participation grade, but because they are the only form of practice you can have (aside from the textbook, which I didn’t have..) The tutorial questions really help a lot in understanding the algorithms.
Lecture Quizzes - Should be manageable if you follow the lectures consistently. Algorithm design requires some analytic thinking though.

The midterm is a very large component of your grade so make sure to score well in that. I was lucky as Rahul gave hints in the midterm questions.

My grade: A+
My rating: Consistent work should get you through, but maybe not the NP-completeness part..

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GEM2901 – Reporting Statistics in the Media
4MC / Examinable / 20% Assignments + 80% Final
oops, I forgot the Prof’s name.. 

No tutorial yet again! Steeeeeeeeep bell curve, I would say this module really requires critical thinking and an adequate level of preparation. The module content is definitely interesting and very applicable in real life.

Lecture – I wasn’t concentrating for most of the lectures (8am.. zzz..), and that was a mistake - do pay attention to his lectures to understand how he analyses news article and information. He cracks jokes to keep his lectures interesting. Do go for lectures to copy down the ‘tutorial answers’ though. no webcast
Assignments - Two article reviews, one newspaper article and one research article. I’d recommend you go for picking a newspaper article with a research article source, so that there isn’t a need to reanalyze information and save precious words (for the word limit). (It’s kind of confusing to explain it, but if you take the module you’ll know what I mean.)

I got A for both assignments but I didn’t score very well in the end.

My grade: B+ (S/U-ed)
My rating: Analytic thinking required.

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Once again I survived another semester. Phew.

——————————————–

Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave
How can I love when I’m afraid to fall
Watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow

One step closer

[Chorus:]
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more

Time stands still
Beauty in all she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything take away
What’s standing in front of me
Every breath
Every hour has come to this

One step closer

[Chorus:]
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more

And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more

One step closer
One step closer

[Chorus:]
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more

And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more

Took the day off today after the exam, playing some dota games (ok I admit it’s not just some) and just relaxing in general. Totally the wrong attitude as I have another paper on Saturday, and it’s hard I promise I will study hard from tomorrow onwards! Really hard!!

And recently I’m quite addicted to 9gag haha. I guess I’m totally late to the trend but it’s an awesome site with awesome jokes. Check it out!

Something like this:

- If you’re looking for my reflection post, go to the one after this! -

1. I can’t keep my attention span, and I feel sorry for people whose names start after M, because I started to lose focus and not read as detailed as I did for people whose names start from A-L.

2. Half the class died in October. If you don’t believe me, go take a look at how many people in this class blogged in October. I guess it’s the final project phenomenon, plus the wave of assignments and projects that usually come swamping in the second half of the semester.

3. Some people don’t reflect a lot, some people do. Personally, I feel that blogging is not a fair judge of how much a person has learnt; as some people mentioned in their blogs, they are not so good with penning down their thoughts. However it’s heartwarming to see people trying to write about what they’ve actually learnt, which I feel the same for some of the things I read.

4. Two things that caught my eye:

• Ziwei mentioned that CS3216 projects are more interesting because “we have more freedom to choose the topic and thus everyone was enthusiastic.” This is really true – there are really no restrictions on what each group wants to produce (except porn and gambling of course.. XD) and this makes people really work for the things that they want.
• Weiguang penned down about some thoughts related to programmers picking up business, and the situation with his team shaped out to be what it is, which I really agrees.

And now, time for the brutal truth. (Incoherent post follows)

Reading through all the posts by my peers in CS3216, I can’t help but wonder why I did not feel the same level of excitement as they are. I was a programmer during my 3 assignments, nothing else – I just coded, and coded, occasionally helping out in a little bit of design. I have to admit that I didn’t really put in much effort in wanting to learn about business and execution in the first place, and that’s probably where I didn’t get the real taste of this module, which looking from my peers’ blog posts is the essence of CS3216.

Part of the reason, I guess, is that I’ve already burned out from everything else. Choir, A Cappella, Dance, Chingay (which is a b*tch btw), and a multitude of other hall factors are driving me crazy. It was my choice to juggle everything together, and now I would say I have a moderate level of regret about it. What if I didn’t do so much other things, and had more focus on CS3216? Maybe I would’ve learned more, and maybe BetterMe would come out as an even better product. I admit that I didn’t place as much emphasis as others probably did in CS3216, and that’s where I fall short – I felt that I haven’t learned as much as my peers in this semester.

But I mentioned a moderate level of regret – I am a performer, and I ain’t giving up that side of me so soon. The best I could’ve done is probably to reduce the number of commitments I have, but due to various factors (which caused all the ruckus halfway through the semester, that I’ve blogged back then), I couldn’t pull myself out from them.

I guess it’s kind of a waste that I didn’t grasp all the learning points of CS3216, since there’s no second chance for me to try again (even if I want to become a superhuman like Joshua, I can’t, since this is the last offering).

It’s time to take a break and think about what I want to do with my life..

I realised, through my previous posts, that I seem to be a person of regret. Maybe I have high expectations of myself, but I guess that’s the hard way of making yourself improve more, right? And I know that I definitely didn’t complete some of the things that I’ve hoped to achieve this semester, not only in this module, but on life and work in general.

Can anyone explain to me what this picture means? o.o
I found it when I looked for ‘regret’ in Google Images. Haha.

Looking back at my very first post, I’ve definitely worked with different types of people – really good programmers in my few projects, fantastic designers (shoutouts to Yin Yue and Yong Shen!) and some of them had really strong beliefs and ideas that made me feel good when working on the projects. One thing that I didn’t realise at the start of the semester, was how different programmers would work differently - I definitely wasn’t really content with how Meet2Eat was managed in terms of programming schedule, but we pulled through anyway. The first assignment (Shop4Me) was definitely one of the more organized projects that I’ve done – maybe it’s because of CodeIgniter, or how we organized our code and work distribution etc. Kudos to Alan on that.

As for myself, I think I am more of a solo coder, as I don’t really have time to meet up with my teammates because of my busy workload (I normally code at ungodly hours after 2am :/). I’m so sorry to my teammates who had to adapt to my working style sometimes.

In terms of my level of programming, to be honest I didn’t think that I level-ed up a whole lot. I definitely picked up bleeding edge technologies like Facebook Integration, HTML5 features etc, but I guess in terms of code design and organization I still have a long way to go. I couldn’t do much to ensure that the code in the projects were of decent level of design, but CS3216 really make me want to work on future projects in hope that I would write cleaner code next time. I guess in this light it’s good for me. Oh and CS3216 made me start reading online tutorials on web programming practices.

Nettuts+ is damn awesome. Check it out!

As to my final project (check it out if you haven’t!), it was a long but satisfying ride. To be honest, I was skeptical of my group’s idea at the start, as I didn’t think that creating such an app would be actually useful – I was scared that no one would use it, as there are many inherent problems with how we are going to make the users return to our sites, how to actually make them learn something etc. I was pleasantly surprised with how my whole team had the determination to keep going, to actually interview teachers and students, and we’re actually trying to get in touch with MOE right now. I guess if it was me, I wouldn’t have the courage to really step forward and try my very best to make a difference (as my teammates really did).

Yong Shen, thank you for your fantastic designs, the whole idea and your belief in it to really make a difference. You’ve really done a lot!

Jun Hong, thanks for all the coding and also making sure that our app reaches out, through your effort in getting primary school students to use the apps, and getting in touch with teachers etc. Without you BetterMe wouldn’t come far.

Kenny, thanks for tanking whenever I was busy. I have a lot to learn from you in programming, I really like the way you structured the backend API code, and you’re damn good!

Go BetterMe!

All in all, CS3216 was definitely a good module to take, zero regrets, and I feel sad that it won’t be offered again to other students after this one. I’m glad that I took the last offering, and I learned a lot, not only in programming, but in actually understanding the real world and making a difference. I definitely still have a long way to go in terms of coming up with ideas and executing them, but at the very least, this module sparked me to want to do things.

Thanks Prof Ben and Kok Wee.

The concept is definitely not new; and as I’m not a frequent cabber, I haven’t had the chance to try the app and compare it with other competitions on the market. It’s great that they got Premier taxi to back them up, but existing competition (Cabbie, ComfortDelGro Taxi Booking) already has downloads in the size of 10,000s, and unless they do aggressive publicity it would be hard to catch up. The fact that they made it into the Android Market so fast shows how efficient the group is!

Awesome graphics! I like how they want to focus on making the game such that the user won’t realise that the game tries to inform about the usage of AEDs. The team has mentioned that they make use of facial expressions of NPCs to let you judge their actions and thoughts, which is interesting; I remember going through the same experience in L.A. Noire, which was interesting. Just waiting for the full game

I was surprised at how well they used jQuery Mobile (to the extent of Ajax display of Facebook users on search), as I’ve had very bad experiences with jQuery Mobile (when I used it for my previous project, and as complained here). From their presentation, I can see that they’ve put in a lot of thought into how they differentiate themselves from the competition apps, such as being able to tag your friends without needing them to be registered users too. Definitely something that I will use.

A cross-platform, browser-based ePub reader. The good thing about this group is that they’ve managed to capture a specific niche market – the Chinese market, and the idea behind this project is that people don’t want to lose their bookmarks and settings when they switch devices. In this light, I believe people who have this need will find Yun Reading useful. Personally, however, I wouldn’t use this as I feel that there are more polished e-reader apps around, especially native apps on smartphones/tablets nowadays. Besides, one feature that is important to me, which is the ability to upload our own .epub files to read, is currently not available. (Correct me if I’m wrong)

RobTheRobot

They have amazing graphics! I guess this group has achieved one of the most important things in this course, which is to actually work with existing companies, and a big one at that (Disney!). It’s sad that our group didn’t manage to secure the collaboration with MOE in time.. Anyway, the graphics are definitely cute enough to attract the younger generation into playing the game, and I can see that the coders in this team have done a really good job in implementing the requirements from Disney.

My first thought was (no offense) ‘it must be quite boring to make this..’. But again, this group has done very well in terms of working with an existing company and actually delivering the requirements. I liked the part of their presentation where they documented the problems that surfaced when they try to integrate their app with the system in Lions, such as the need to synchronize data properly and to actually read and understand code from the previous programmers in Lions. (And trust me, it’s a pain in the ass to work with existing code not by you)

Cool stuff. The amount of restaurants that jumped on board on their project is insane! I think the only thing left for their group is to actually launch the app and get user data etc. And the good thing about this is that there are actually two sides to the app; besides the framework that they build for existing restaurants, they also have the backend service that aggregates user data and analyzes them for the restaurants to do selective advertising. This way, their idea actually hits two birds with one stone. Awesome.

Remember what I said at the start? This was the project that truly surprised me. While the idea behind seems simple enough and there’s not much difficulty in coding, the user interface is really amazing. The amount of detail that they put into designing the UI and UX, such as the hotkeys and the choice of the name Amanda, impresses me. And the simplicity of the app is another thing that will draw users into using the app; there’s virtually no learning curve and all it takes is just writing a short letter, or reading others’ letters. Sometimes I wish I had such crazy cool ideas too.

Again, another niche market that is well targeted – people moving out from halls or residences. Right now there still isn’t much traffic, but I believe that at the end of examinations this semester there will definitely be people who want to use the website to clear their unwanted stuff. A very well-executed idea, in my opinion.

(Singapore River)

With enough publicity I believe the Singapore River app will be used by thousands of tourists who visit Singapore River. The only problem I foresee is that tourists might not have internet connection to download the app (something the Singapore Tourism Board should provide at perhaps the entry point of Singapore River for example). Augmented reality is definitely cool and I think the group has managed to come up with a good concept to use AR on.

I remember reading quite a lot of posts about Diaspora being the Facebook counter mid last year. (Check out their Kickstarter page here, which raised $200,000. Yes, that much.) But after that, it seems like the hype has died down; I registered for their alpha testing, only to be invited now (read: nearly one and a half years later). Oh wells, I suppose it’s late than never.

Clicking onto the alpha invite link, I got directed to the registration page, where I could link my account to Facebook. What? Turns out that Diaspora wants to simplify your registration process, and thus chose to use Facebook to do so – after all, I guess the experience on Diaspora is really different from that on Facebook (to be covered later). Strangely enough, it pulled my name as Xian You You instead of Xian You Lim. Hahaha.

Diaspora also asked me to indicate my interests with #hashtags, which became clear when I was brought to its home page.

A few first impressions:

• It looks scarily like Google+. After Googling I found out that apparently it’s Google+ that actually copied their interface – I like Google+’s interface so naturally this appeals to me. It’s really a sad thing that they didn’t take off before Google+ did though, because now everyone will think that they are the copiers.
• You follow #hashtags, and your news feed is populated by feeds with these tags. Sorta like a moderately populated Twitter. I guess this is how Diaspora is different from other social networks at the moment; you read things you like without the need for mutual confirmation (just follow, no need to approve friend requests etc). Definitely a great way of sharing information, in my opinion.
• Aspects: Ways to control your friends. Google+ definitely adopted this too (as Circles), and Facebook also did it in one of their updates. Again, an original idea that is unfortunately stolen.

Currently, my feed is spammed with people who post that they are #newhere. I guess that’s how a new social network starts.

I’m actually quite lost to what I can do at the moment; there’s not much useful information there, and to invite my friends from Facebook, I got to scroll through that freaking long list of my Facebook friends (1k+), without a search function. I mean seriously.. Can’t you make the process a little bit more user-friendly?

In terms of what you can share, it’s the standard stuff: statuses (but you can #hashtag them!), photos, GIFs (which is apparently quite popular at Diaspora*) and videos. Good that they have the same features as the competition, but currently the user-generated content is not very healthy I guess. You can’t blame them on that though, as Diaspora is (I think) supposed to be installed at your own server and only shared between your chosen circle of friends. (Source link)

I don’t mean to complain a lot, but the Diaspora server is certainly slow. Loading any page takes up to 10 seconds for it to respond, and that certainly isn’t nice. But I suppose if you have your own server it will be blazing fast on your local network anyway.

To be honest, I haven’t read up on what Diaspora* really wants to achieve yet, but from a random consumer’s perspective, I guess there’s not much interest for me to use it at the moment. I’ll probably just visit it once a day to check out for interesting things. It’s really saddening that their designs and ideas were kind of stolen by Google in their social network..