Another Experiment

Having another look at the BBC Labs page I came across the Brain Training experiment that I remember having heard about on Bang Goes the Theory - not to be confused with the American sitcom with the similar name The Big Bang Theory. I initially assumed they wanted us to all go out an buy a Nintendo DS and brain training games in order to participate but I now understand that the BBC have kindly put all of the necessary equipment online. There are several flash games to choose from and once you have signed up and completed the initial training to get a benchmark and answered a few questions, you are all set to go. They ask you to train at least three times a week in order to participate and some of the games are actually quite fun. If you are looking to kill ten minutes or so a day then this is a good way to do it, it's fun and you are taking part in a proper scientific experiment. I scored 180 on my first set of games which shouldn't take too much effort to beat but I suppose it depends which games you get picked to play. I'm hoping that that score will get higher as I practice more and who knows, it may even make me cleverer. Give it a go, what harm can it do? https://www.bbc.co.uk/labuk/experiments/braintestbritain/

Warning, the Following Post May Offend

I have been internally debating whether or not I should do this for a while now and have eventually come to the decision that indeed yes, I should. I've said this several times before now but I'll say it again, this blog has evolved from another silly method of procrastination to something more, a diary of sorts but with some little added extras for those of you who can be bothered to read it. What I'm now deciding shouldn't change that too much and I will endeavour to prefix any new such posts with a warning of the content that may follow thus giving the choice as to whether or not you want to continue reading. From now on, I will be including posts that let me say things I wouldn't want to say to someone directly. Not because I'm a coward (well actually it probably is some of that) but because I don't want to offend any one and this way I can get things off my chest without the people in question having ever heard it. So, here goes!

My Personality

Whilst catching up with the overnight blogs this morning, I came across this experiment linked to from the BBC Internet blog. It is called the big personality test and has (apparently) been running for quite a while now. It was probably mentioned on the One Show at some point but I must have missed it. Anyway, I normally go for this sort of thing, if not just to waste some time then to satisfy some underlying interest in the subject and I usually end up killing two birds with one stone. It didn't take too long to complete although the way it was structured meant that - as with most online questionnaires - you had to answer some questions that didn't have the appropriate answer. Even the questions themselves suggested that the response was dependant on the previous answer i.e. if yes... implying that you should only answer the question if the answer to the previous question was yes. Either that or I'm missing something because skipping it resulted in being red flagged and asked to complete all questions. Shame really because other than that the page was really well laid out and styled beautifully.

Panic!

Yet another assignment has found itself flying my way which brings the total to a gut wrenching four on the go at the moment. The latest one comes courtesy of my speech processing module and the only thing that makes me feel slightly better about this hideous workload at the moment is that at least I don't have an exam in this module. I do however have another assignment for it and have no idea at the moment how the lecturer plans to fit this in without intruding into the Christmas holidays which makes it as good as an exam anyway as that's the time I would be spending revising. The other problem with this assignment is that upon seeing the brief I thought it was impossible and initially had no idea where to start. After getting over that initial panic however, I went through the notes and found a decent starting point so with a bit of luck it shouldn't be that difficult although balancing all of these assignments is going to require a bit more effort than I'm used to.

Comedy Day

Today seems destined to be a day of laughter and general good spitritedness. This morning got off to a much better start than I imagined it would as I was due to meet my replacement dissertation tutor as the original one is going on maternity leave before the end of the term. I was slightly panicking because I seemed to be getting on quite well with this one and the meetings were informal and relaxed so I set myself up for the worst. Turns out that that was completely unnecessary as the new one is just as nice and the meeting was taken in all sorts of directions and tangents from dentists to a discussion about whether Google is truly evil or not. He even seemed to be impressed by what I had done so far which is always reassuring.

Humdrum

About the only major event that happened today was going shopping but I suppose after the last two days that's fine. I think a part of me has gone in to hibernation recently because I just cannot be bothered to do anything any more. I was only motivated to go shopping today because I had a petrol voucher that was due to expire and am currently horrified that the petrol prices have snuck back up to where they were last year.

Fairwell to the Fairground

Don't be fooled by the slightly sombre title, today was in fact a rather good day as far as things go. The title of course relates to the song of the same name by White Lies who I went to see in concert this evening. More about that later, but first off, Paradox started on BBC One this week so I'd better give that a quick review first.

I'm in the Quicksand

Stop the press, I went out tonight, hurrah! Okay so it was only to Bar One (the Student's Union Bar) and we spent most of the time on the games machine but it was nice to get out the house of an evening for a change. I shouldn't really have gone in the first place, I have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks but I felt I needed to go out to get it out of my system so I can settle down and start writing. I managed to win £1 on the Pub Quiz game and in fact the machine paid out about £5 during the night so we were quite happy.

Up

So I finally got round to watching Disney Pixar's Latest flick, UP. Being a fan of pretty much every movie that this duo have produced, I had the usual high hopes for this film - and boy did it deliver. I wish I'd have seen it earlier now, and it probably would have been fantastic rendered in 3D but in standard definition it was brilliant. Not at all what I had expected from the trailers, it was a really heart warming story showing that even though the man old man didn't manage to achieve his dreams and had lost his wife, he was still trying to reach his goal. Even when he finally gets to meet his childhood hero who turns out to be evil, he carries on and chooses the right path, turning on his former idol and keeping the promise he made to his young companion to protect the bird affectionately known as Kevin - which is a work of comedy genius in itself. A nice twist on the tale are the talking dogs, not the usual talking dogs that you get in animated movies but to add an added 'realism' to the story, the dogs can only talk thanks to a special collar that translates their barks into English speech. All of the dogs have been highly trained with their primary 'mission' to capture Kevin yet because they are dogs, their canine weaknesses are still embedded deep inside and whilst they are talking or concentrating, they will be very easily distracted by the sight of something moving to which they respond with the outburst of "SQUIRREL". The adventurous duo use this weakness to their advantage when the dogs are set on them, shouting "SQUIRREL" distracts them for long enough and throwing a tennis ball attached to Mr. Fredricksen's walking stick. Overall, a highly entertaining film with scenes of uplifting highs coupled with very moving scenes with the potential to bring a tear to the eye.

My 100th Post

I cannot quite believe it, this is actually my 100th blog post! Never in a million years did I think that I could keep this going for such a long time. Something that started off as little more than a way to keep myself occupied during the long and boring summer holidays has turned into an everyday habit. Okay, maybe not quite everyday - sometimes I have to catch up with some missed days but it turns out that this has become actually quite useful for remembering what I did. I've actually had to refer back to posts on several occasions and each time it has worked.

Children in Need

No lectures today so I can get on with the pile of work that has creped up on me suddenly. Very tired at the moment as I was up at 9am again this morning trying to buy a Muse ticket for a friend. Much easier today than yesterday because now that they are on general release, I could go down the Ticketmaster route, in fact I was done by 09:01 and you can't say fairer than that.

Tickets Please

An unusually early start for me this morning as I had to be in front of the computer at 9am to buy my Muse ticket for their date at Wembley Stadium next September. Whoever came up with the idea of releasing them this early is some kind of maniac but I suppose it is nicely timed for Christmas. It was surprisingly easy to get hold of the ticket actually even though I was using the Seetickets website (with which I have had several bad experiences previously) but thanks to a tip from my housemate who had a code for yesterday's pre-sale I got in early and got to the booking screen after only a couple of page-refreshes.

Temptations

The day got off to a bit of slow start courtesy of the Royal Mail. I didn't want to make the same mistake of having a shower just as the doorbell rings so I decided that this time I would simply wait it out. Kinda wishing I hadn't now because after about an hour of waiting, I decided to start watching yesterday's James May's Toy Stories (more later) and about fifteen minutes in, the doorbell rang. I had to finish watching the programme of course which meant that I didn't really 'get up' until around about midday. The only consolation was that I received two parcels instead of the one I was expecting. I was half imagining having to traipse up the road again to the sorting office to collect the other one but they've impressed me with their organisation. Shame they haven't got a computer that can tell them that someone else in the house has a parcel waiting as well and perhaps they could have saved themselves another redelivery.

3D TV

As you know by now, I like my telly and probably spend far to much time watching the gogglebox for my own good however, I can say that for the last month or so I have rarely been bored which is more than most! This week, Channel 4 marks a new era in television viewing history and is showing a weeks worth of specially commissioned programmes, all filmed in 3D. Of course because none of us have 3D TVs, they are using the age old technique of anaglyph steriograms (the red and blue glasses) or at least I though they were red and blue glasses, whether it's because they have to make the programme viewable to those without the 3D glasses or whether its for some other reason, they seemed to use dark blue and yellow. I don't know whether the Channel 4 glasses are more compatible with the pictures than other glasses because I am using a pair that I kept from here so the rest of this blog may not apply to anyone else (although I suspect it will because it would require a lot of pointless effort to manufacture special glasses for this occasion).

The Lost Symbol

Well that was an expensive two days activities then... book is now finished which hopefully means that this time tomorrow I will have done some actual work but never mind. I'm no literary expert but if you want to read my opinion then you are more than welcome and I shall begin below. Warning, this is a review and WILL contain spoilers!

More TV and another Single of the Week

Just what I need at this crucial time of the year when work is piling up and assignments are being handed out like flyers outside the student's union. I can't really complain I suppose, but I know that in a couple of months time there will be a complete TV and work vacuum and I will bored out of my mind. Winter has properly set in now, the sky starts getting dark at about half past three in the afternoon and it seems colder inside the house than outside.

Getting Slightly Philosophical

So after last night, I thought I deserved a bit of a lie in, although I didn't expect it to run until 2pm! Turns out I wasn't alone however and I was joined in slumber by two fellow co-habitants which made me feel slightly better about my over indulgence. Sadly this extra long sleep meant that I felt ridiculously tired due to that strange phenomenon that induces more fatigue after a given period of time - which for me seems to be around the ten hour mark. That resulted in the rest of the day being given up to playing around with the website - for which I have now fixed and updated all of the relevant areas in time for its review later this month. I did manage to cross another assignment off my now fairly substantial 'to-do' list so at least now I can concentrate on everything else for a couple of weeks until the next one comes along.

The Storm Beckons

What a horrible day! Windy, rainy and actually quite mild considering. So I finally got round to collecting my parcel from the sorting office. It arrived last Thursday but it has taken me this long to get round to collecting it. It was the new Dan Brown book - The Lost Symbol and I'm hoping that I will have some time to get to read it in the near future. At the moment, I can't see that happening any time soon what with work and having to watch all of that wonderful TV that they keep churning out. Maybe it's because its the winter...? It certainly seemed that in the summer it was music's turn to shine and now that the colder months are upon us TV had taken its place. I'm still yet to get through the current bedtime reading, The Atheists Guide To Christmas which has so far turned out to be mostly very entertaining with a few unusual or boring chapters that have been skipped.

A Long Day

This morning began very early, about half past seven in the morning, yes, in the morning. Now, by now you should know that I don't do mornings and so having to wake up this early makes the rest of the day look pretty bleak. The reason behind this strange behaviour was because I had arranged to meet the man who ultimately has the decision to accept or reject my website proposal. Over the summer I started on this project, sort of as a job and sort of as an educational exercise. I had just learned a bit of PHP and had re-learned HTML during the previous semester and was itching to put it to some good use. I've designed websites before but most of the time I've been a WYSIWYG whore and haven't really bothered to look at the code. When I found out last semester that I was going to be writing the code without using any sort of design package I was terrified. I couldn't even have written the outline for a basic page let along get some W3C compliant output. Thankfully the people at W3 schools had made a brilliant and very coherent tutorial which I highly recommend for anyone wanting to dabble in this world. What did surprise me during this project was actually how simple most of it is and only starting out with a little bit of knowledge, that tutorial and some Googling meant that I had come up with a very presentable and functional solution to a problem that I had been aware of (but lacked the expertise to solve) for a couple of years. I won't go into the specifics yet because I still don't know how this will turn out. My system is being compared to several off the shelf solutions and I wouldn't want to jeopardise my chances.

Home

After a late and thoroughly exhausting day yesterday, today was very much a rest day, signified by not getting up until gone midday. The rest of the day was spent trying to upload my pictures from last night which proved surprisingly difficult. The problem arises because I have an SDHC card for my camera, (like an SD card but it supports higher capacities). I've always had trouble with this but it had completely slipped my mind when I was packing and so I left my camera cable in Sheffield. I have an SD card reader in the house, I have an SD card reader in the printer, I have an SD card reader in my other camera (for which the cables are kept in Birmingham) and yet NONE of these support SDHC cards. I was racking my brains to try and find something that could read it because a) I wanted to know if the pictures were any good - its quite difficult to tell on a small screen - and b) I wanted to look at the videos I took.

MUSE!!

So today is all about going to see Muse at the NIA in Birmingham. I managed to get home without getting lost and even avoided the roadworks on the M1 save for about 3/4 of a mile before my exit junction so I made good time. I was treated to a fish supper by my Gran who has come to stay and keep my mum company for a week now that she is home alone. As usual, my timings are completely off and I missed the train I was planning to catch into town. Thankfully they were still running quite frequently and I got there with about ten minutes to spare. What I didn't realise was how far away the NIA was from New Street (the way I went anyway). I'm pretty hopeless with directions and still don't really know my way around Birmingham City Centre despite living here for most of my life. I managed to find it eventually though after following the crowds of people dressed to go to a gig. Just as we got into the arena the Big Pink came on stage and started playing. I had been forewarned about the excessive use of strobe lighting throughout their performance but thankfully we were still quite near the back at this point so it didn't matter too much. After they'd finished there was a complete mood kill when the safety announcement came on and explained about the emergency exits etc and the house lights were raised. About half an hour later (after several false cheers from the audience) they were once again switched off and the magic began.

Just Another Manic Monday

Not so much manic really but Bangles song popped into my head and I couldn't resist. In fact today was pretty calm really, we still have no food in the house so none of us could be bothered to cook anything. We decided on a take-away as the usual fix to this kind of problem and this week we were a bit more adventurous and decided to go with Indian. I can hardly remember the last time I had Indian, I think it was during the summer sometime. Thankfully this place was a bit posh and so had pretty much everything on the menu, I went with my usual Lamb Sag (that's with spinach) and a garlic naan. I'm getting worse at finishing meals for some reason but at least this time it meant that I had some lunch for tomorrow.

Catchup

As a reward for my hard efforts yesterday I have decided to bestow upon myself the TV catchup morning. Well not so much of a morning, more of an afternoon due to my out of sync body clock. In this house it seems that the morning runs from somewhere in the region of about 7 O'clock for the early risers - cursed with the misfortune of the dreaded 9am lectures - to around about 2pm to 3pm. The day can then extend to the early hours of the morning - and does so more often than not. This suits me perfectly well as I see myself as more of a night person anyway.

An Unusually Productive Day

Saturdays are always fairly boring and I usually end up trying to work and failing miserably. Today however, there must have been something in the air that sparked me on and encouraged me to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and start looking a bit deeper into the MatLab GUI capabilities. I spent the first couple of hours getting rather frustrated at the differences between the MatLab syntax in comparison to that of Java, a language I am much more familiar with. I suppose it is a slight disadvantage not having learned C++ on which MatLab is based but that's not my fault because the university decided that Java was a better starting point. Whether they have got this right or not I am yet to find out but thus far, it has served me well when picking up other languages although for the majority of them I have had formal instruction. It was only PHP and HTML that I have so far self taught and that is widely helped by the availability of free resources on the internet. PHP and HTML being the backbone of a vast number of websites on the internet and PHP being open source means that there are hundreds of thousands of books and tutorials available and one of them is bound to fit your programming style. MatLab on the other hand, whilst widely used in education is very expensive and although the Mathworks website does have documentation, often the examples can be quite difficult to comprehend and go into far more detail than you would ever need.

A Bit of Nostalgia

I was feeling a bit nostalgic today and for the past few days we have been having a 'Phrase of the Day' on the wall in the lounge. Inspired by my Walkman yesterday walking down to lectures, I decided that there could be no better phrase then "Hakuna matata", no worries. I have since found out it is an actual Swahili word and does indeed mean no worries. Previously I had always assumed it was made up for the Lion King but it's nice to know that they put a bit of thought into the lyrics. Apparently that didn't go down so well and along with my previous phrase of the day, was given a low rating by a housemate. This one was in fact rated "gay" which I thought was a bit unnecessary but I suppose everyone is entitled to their opinions. When I was wondering what to do for a while, I came to the only logical conclusion. I had to watch the Lion King. So I dug it out and put it on. It was quite nice remembering all the events that happened in the film and it reminded me of my childhood and simpler times. When Hakuna Matata came on though two of my housemates decided that this was too much and left me to watch it alone, I think it's a shame that they have gone past the barrier that lets them embrace their childhoods again. I enjoyed the movie anyway although I'm pretty sure there was a new scene in this version and neither me or my housemate recognised it which seemed odd. Not sure it fitted either and I think we get quite annoyed when people decide to change the classics. I remember watching a CBeebies episode of Postman Pat once during a teacher training day at school and thinking how much of a mess they had made of it. Maybe I'm just being stubborn and resistant to change but maybe they have ruined it. Clearly it's not as popular now as it was twenty years ago and if the Tweenies can beat it then there is definitely something wrong. Bring back the old school classics I say!

Fireworks

Remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. Yes that's right, it's Guy Fawkes day and that means fireworks and bonfires. We are all too lazy in our house to go out and buy fireworks and the landlord would probably kill us if they found out we had built a bonfire in the garden. Thankfully, the other house that we are close friends with are more bothered about the whole thing. They had a roaring bonfire (in a bin) and some wonderful fireworks that made the evening. We even ended up in a competition with the house behind who were also setting them off. They won in the end and probably spent a lot more on theirs that we did but it was nice to get a free viewing nonetheless. You can't have bonfires without marshmallows so that was my contribution to the evening. It's strange how something can change so drastically when cooked when you think about it, not just marshmallows of course but they do taste 100% nicer when they're nicely toasted on an open fire. The rain put a bit of a downer on the evening and we got a bit wet waiting for the very last "super" firework which turned out to be very noisy but not all that pretty.

Wrapping Things Up

It seemed like today was a bit of an admin day really, I normally get Wednesdays off but had to go into town to finish off my ISA application. Before that though, the graduate recruitment fair was in town and taking place yesterday and today. What I didn't realise was the reason for it being held over two days was so that they could fit all of the companies in. There were seventy in total so I got to see thirty five of them at least but missed out on a few key businesses in my field which was a shame. Also I was disappointed with the freebies because normally if you make the effort to speak to someone and seem genuinely interested then you get to take away some of the promotional items - pens, pencils etc but this time only one company gave me something. I didn't see many people because most of the exhibitors were either finance based or charities but I did get to see 3M - whose name I had seen on a diskette so assumed they were technology related but it turns out they are "so much more than that" and I was lectured for five minutes on the wide range of products made by the company. I won't bore you with the details but apparently you come into contact with about 30 3M products every day. Who knew? I got to see IBM who are obviously key players in the IT field but I also got to see someone I didn't even expect to show up to these sorts of things, GCHQ.

Second Time Lucky

I've been thinking about doing this again for a while now but it's taken this long to pluck up the courage to do it. A couple of years ago I decided to open an ISA. I did my research on the internet and found the best interest rates and decided to open an account. It was all fine for about a year until this whole damn recession business kicked off and suddenly, the safest place to keep you money was no longer the banks but under the mattress! I had decided to open an ISA with IceSave, an Icelandic bank which just so happened to be the hardest hit by this whole thing, so much so that it went under and for a while there was the distinct possibility that I'd never see my money ever again. I can't afford to lose that amount of money, especially not at my age because I won't be earning for another two years and every penny counts. Of course the government did the right thing and stepped in to make sure that everyone got their money back; and whilst I lost out on a bit of interest, I was still up compared to leaving it in a standard account. Since then I've been a bit nervous about the whole ISA thing but if I don't start saving soon then I will have to start paying tax on the interest I earn and I don't think I could stand that!

PANIC!

A major panic spread across the house this evening as a drastic situation arose. I was quite happily sitting in my room trying to work away at my dissertation when I got a distinct wiff of gas. I assumed someone had just not noticed that the gas had gone out on the cooker because there was someone in there making dinner. After a couple of minutes, the smell seemed to be getting stronger and I couldn't ignore it any longer. I had fears of my computer exploding and fires popping up out of nowhere. I saved my work online just in case and went downstairs to investigate.

Single of the Week

Totally forgot about this for a moment and this week I am slightly breaking the rules a bit. I first heard this on Fearne Cotton's Radio 1 show and whilst it pains me to say this, for once she may have been right in choosing this as her record of the week. To make me feel better however, I only realised I liked this tune so much when I heard it on Zane Lowe's show in the car on the way to Tesco the other week. The reason why it breaks the rules slightly is because it isn't officially released until November 9th however it is already available to download from iTunes and seeing as that is where most people download their music from anyway, I figured I could make an exception.

Crisis Talks

Monday marks the beginning of a much needed reading week for some of my modules, so I only have four hours of lectures. This should give me a chance to catch up with note taking and get a decent draft of my literature review in before my meeting on Thursday. I'm actually in a much better position this year than I have been for the past two years, I have a pretty good set of notes for one of my modules and have done the lab class assignments for the other which should put me in good standing for the upcoming assignment. All this and yet I feel really behind; I can't work it out but I have that gut feeling of panic and disorganisation. Oh well, new month, new attitude. I've only missed one lecture so far and if I can keep up a decent attendance and keep up with the notes then I will be happy. More work needed this month and then perhaps that feeling will go away.