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.

I've managed to progress slightly further with my text processing assignment from yesterday but this particular section is proving quite frustrating, I thought I was getting the hang of regular expressions and Python but apparently not. Even something as simple as trying to generate a dictionary of word counts is going wrong at the moment with the computer deciding that one is sixteen and two is thirty two. I think I have a loop problem somewhere but as yet I have not managed to trace the blasted bug. I might start on the next machine learning assignment tomorrow just to prevent myself going insane through frustration. I should really be concentrating on my dissertation for which the interim report is due in a couple of weeks and I still have about fifteen pages to write but I just can't bring myself to sit down and write a load of text, not only is it boring but if I want to output anything even slightly decent, I have to be in the right mood. Maybe the weekend will give rise to this illusive emotional state, for my sake I hope so.

Toy Stories this week was all about scalextrics. I never had an actual scalextrics set but a cheap(er) alternative version. I don't actually remember playing with it much as a child but it did make an appearance last year where it made a lot of mess and we discovered that half of the track is none functional. Three out of the four cars have lost (at least) one wheel and so it lasted about ten minutes before being hastily packed away and taken to the charity shop. I was amazed at how successful they were in constructing the course because a) I had no idea that they were as resilient as they seemed to be and b) they were capable of driving up a near vertical slope! They did an amazing job of getting around all of those obstacles and an especially good job of getting over the pond. It's been really nice throughout this series to see communities come together to achieve something really meaningful which sadly doesn't seem to happen as often as it did in times of old. As the modern era comes along, society seems to become more and more independent and secluded. People don't talk to each other any more, they use SMS and instant messaging, often to people in the same building or room. It might be nice to put restrictions on using instant messenger to users with the same IP address or restricting SMS messages somehow to within a fixed distance. Okay so admittedly as usual I haven't exactly thought the logistics of the whole idea through properly but that's what a project manager is for.

I saw an advert for Morrison's earlier in the day and they are running a special deal on Pringles and Pepsi with the unusual offer of buy one get two free. Now thats something my frugal mind simply cannot resist. It doesn't matter that I don't normally eat Pringles and rarely buy Pepsi (I'm more of a Coke person) I simply had to go and get some. Sort of regretting that now because it turned into a small shop for other tasty treats as well, I spent close to £10 and ended up with Jaffa Cakes, popcorn, pizza and Danish pastries. On the plus side, the pastries were superb, raspberry and custard - a combination I've not come across before but certainly hope to again.