Thought I was in the clear..

but then another flurry of coursework swooped down upon the few. And they’re not getting any easier. For this case presentation for Professional Development we’re kind of in a rut as we were given the case we were to argue for and none of us agree with that point of view. And then Gabbay has sprung us with a surprise Monday deadline and there’s a 2.5k word essay for next Friday as well. Chin up. And sadly our group didn’t make it into the finals for the ATOS origin prize.

I’ve been reading some AI books that I took from the library and one of them (Artificial Intelligence by Neill Graham) had a chapter on LISP which I found a really good read. LISP looks like a fun sort of language, the single chapter explained it well and I reckon I’ll give it a go over the summer some time with some sort of project or something (another thing to add to the list).

EDIT: Give this a read. http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html A good idea about how to make your computer usage less distracting, buy another one. It does seem like a very good idea, one that I might give a try some day (another thing to add to the list) as I do seem to spend a lot of my time ‘working’ just browsing about. How do you think I found the article?

Why does everything I touch…

…just break.

It’s been a long two weeks, what with writing and handing in all the documentation, AI courseworks and two demonstrations yesterday.

And the Group Project demonstration didn’t go well at all. The recommender for some unknown reason just started throwing back the first four items from the database and then the applet to run the graph wouldn’t launch. These were the only two parts of the implementation I worked on and they both broke. Makes me look like a right tool.

The graphics demonstration went a lot better but I wasn’t there for that one. The animation turned out quite well, and I got all the code to work the way I wanted it to. I like it when courseworks turn out well. Let’s have hope for the rest of the term, just another 3 weeks.

Regular Updates…

2 days in a row, take that whoever said otherwise.

Cracked on with some graphics coursework today and learnt a fair bit about ye old C programming language. Filled my program with some of the many features that C has to offer with pointers, structures, strange ?:; type if statements and references to functions (a very handy tool, although not as easy as interfaces in Java (then again few things are) with all the segmentation errors that is was complaining about (my bad really)). We decided to make our model some sort of triangular Newtons Balls (Martin had no idea what we were talking about) and it looks like it could be presentable for tomorrow.

I took the political compass test that was on Richards blog and I came out a bit of a lefty-liberal type, so did all the other people I showed it to. Well apart from Herr Hamilton.

Tomorrow demonstrations are happening for both the Group Project and graphics coursework. Then nothing to submit until Monday.

Well I got my glasses back…

Well it’s been a while.

I’ll cover the important things.

Went home for the weekend. Went to give blood and some guy fainted afterwards (I laughed on the inside). Finished off the group project. Had the MEng interview. Got a reply saying the panel would recommend me to the progression board. Got anoyed at KDE4, shiny as it may be, it doesn’t give me the bar thingee at the bottom anymore, although through a bizzre mix of widgets and console use it works a charm. Read Hackers and Painters and The Mythical Man Month (The later a bit dated going on as it does about punch cards and this strange thing called a text editor (I want me one of those)). Went to Alloa for Rays 21st, good laugh. Did both the AI courseworks today, my NetLogo skills not really up to the task, in the end I was just typing, hoping and putting in brackets (yes the square ones, not braces or parenthesis but brackets, good old [ and ]) everywhere, but the prolog went down like a charm. Got both the graphics and group project to demonstrate on friday and I have precious little of the graphics done.

Seem to have lost my glasses. Again.

Busy day today.

Started with a wee bit of a lie in, although I did make it to the bank and then Uni with an hour to spare. Loving these 12:15 starts twice a week. Managed to fix the code for the Recommender. Undid the four or five hours that I’d spent on it yesterday by reverting to a backup. Then I stuck in a line and a half of code, and that was it. The group project seems to be coming together quite well now. The implmentation should be completely done by Monday, leaving us a few days to scare up these reports for a first draft.

Compilers was a good lecture today. Gabbay complimented my eeePC, saying that it smaller than his. Then I was put in charge of filming the lecture. Better cimatography you’ll never find. That camera was panned about everywhere. Well between the board and projection screen.

After Uni I bought a Guardian (there was no G2 in it, where’s my G2? It’s the perfect size for bus reading), and headed into Costorphine. It rained as it always does when I go to PCWorld. Then I popped over to guitarguitar and bought some new strings (a few months after I snapped one). Tried to head back to the guide rails to catch a 22 by going though a house estate that some idiot didn’t design on a grid iron pattern. Don’t people know how bad that is if you’re just tryng to cut through somewhere you’ve never been before to find streets that lead you in rings. When I managed to get to the guide rails I found myself going west along it instead of the south I thought I was heading (perhaps I should buy a compass, this isn’t the first time I find myself joining a road I know on a heading well off the one I thought I was on). By the time I got there it was entirely the wrong time of day to get a 22, I had to stand in the door way. Bummer.

Tried to update the linux kernal on my eee so that it should sleep and what not but that didn’t work. What’s with ’su’ not working but ’sudo su’ works fine. I don’t really trust Linux anymore.