A Somewhat Productive Day

Either due to some unknown mystical black magicesque influence or something dodgy in the water, something has given me the strength do finally do some work. It wasn't much but its a start and from here on in - as Yazz would say - the only way is up. I've finished my machine learning assignment and it's not even due in until Monday; I've done some more research for my dissertation and soon I might even be able to put pen to paper and actually begin to write some of the expected 20 - 25 pages that are expected from me before the end of the semester. I've found about 20 research papers and journals on the topic and have spent this afternoon trawling through them - first of all to find out whether they are relevant to what I'm doing or not and secondly to understand them and inwardly digest the content. I also spent some time trawling through the vastness that is Google Scholar trying to find the papers that have been referenced by the most relevant papers I have seen so far. Its really quite annoying trying to gain access to them though because whilst the initial search is fairly simple - especially if you know the title of the paper you're looking for - actually viewing the PDF is almost a degree in itself.

Most of these papers all link back to one or two websites, the most common being ACM followed by IEEE. These websites store copies of the journals and research papers from the computer science category and of course they want to charge for the privilege of accessing this data that they have so kindly organised and hosted. Because I am a student of the University of Sheffield, I am entitled to access this content for which the University has paid for. Sometimes these papers can be found through the universities library catalogue in which case you are authenticated with a username and password and redirected to the relevant paper. However, sometimes the universities catalogue doesn't recognise the name of the paper and cannot find it in it's database. In this case trying to get hold of it becomes a game of cat and mouse with the ACM website trying to convince it that you have the rights to access it. The only way I have found to do it so far is to come across a link to a paper that the university does think exists and get authenticated on the back of that link to use the search on the relevant website to find the paper. Then you have to keep you fingers crossed that it will remember that you have been authenticated and give you access to the paper. In some particularly awkward cases this process has taken up to ten minutes or so to work around. You'd think they could put a link on their homepage to log in via a third party or something or even require you to sign up and authenticate yourself that way such that they can associate a username with the content that the university has paid for.

Just as I reached the end of reading one of the papers I was reading, I noticed the sun setting outside and couldn't resist taking a quick snapshot. I wish I had my decent camera with me because my 'going out' slim Panasonic just doesn't have the same manual controls as my Canon and I can't get a really good picture with the inbuilt settings. One of them even managed to turn the sky purple! Anyway, here is what I did manage to snap. Being on the third story at the top of a hill really does have its benefits.

This evening brought a pleasant surprise in the form of a delicious meal, a turkey stir-fry cooked by the resident stir-fry enthusiast. To his credit, it was a fantastic meal and rightly so given the almost alchemy like process he had followed to get there. Without meaning to criticise (because I very much doubt I could have done better) I have never seen such meticulous preparation in all my life but I guess we all have our own ways of doing things. I'm told that I inherit that particular trait from my grandmother and often find it difficult not to poke my nose in, always assuming my way is the only way. I am gradually learning to accept that people are entitled to their respective opinions but it is going to take a lot of effort to knock that habit completely.

A welcome return this evening to Waterloo Road on BBC One. I only started watching this series last year but have been addicted to it since. Somehow the BBC are capable of producing wonderful drama series that I just cannot get enough of. They deal with all sorts of problems and even the younger actors in it are really very talented. This series follows on from the previous climactic end whereby the school was almost demolished by an unruly parent (and policeman) however, this year sees the newly rebuilt school merge with the local independent school who's pupils (and teachers) couldn't be more different. Fights break out almost immediately and feuds between the schools staff and pupils quickly arise and culminate in a large scale face off between the two schools outside. Already the hard hitting topics have been introduced and as if enough wasn't happening already, domestic abuse between a mother and father result in the father being murdered and the two daughters being questioned by the police. If all of this happens in the first episode, I cant help but wonder what is still to come.

Thanks in part to actually watching a programme broadcast live for once instead of on the iPlayer, I caught a trailer for the new series of Spooks starting next week so I have something else to look forward too now as well!