Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

I was somewhat dreading today because it involved me making a rather large decision. Nothing hugely important in the grand scheme of things, but important enough to matter. We were venturing into Birmingham - to the jewellery quarter to find my birthday present. Being a 21st birthday, my mum has insisted on buying me something special, that I will have to keep almost indefinitely, which seems like a good idea to me. The decision was made that I shall have a nice watch - nothing massively original but at the moment I still use a Casio analogue and digital combination watch that seems a little bit childish now.

It's also in a very bad state scratched and worn but it is pretty much the only watch that I haven't either lost or broken. The last watch I had actually ran out of batteries - from overuse of the backlight I suspect but that was a totally digital watch and I thought it was about time I made the move to analogue and learned to tell the time properly. So this one has been with me for nearly five years I would guess and whilst it is a good work watch, it would be nice to have something a bit more grown up.

Not having any ideas about what design, strap, shape, functionality etc I wanted, we headed off to a shop that had been recommended by a friend. Talk about choice, this shop was huge and there must have been at least a thousand maybe more watches on display. Where to start!? After looking round them all and immediately dismissing a lot of them, I found a couple that caught my eye but nothing immediately screamed 'this is the one'. After looking in a couple more shops with a much smaller collection, we decided that the first shop was the place to look and so we returned. We went back to one of the ones that caught my eye - a touch sensitive watch from Tissot. It was pretty amazing really combining a lot of functionality into an adult watch and somehow managed to make it not seem gimmicky. The one I saw initially was quite large though and as my wrists are ridiculously thin, it looked somewhat silly. Thankfully there was a smaller watch with a very similar design but it was made from steel rather than titanium like the previous one. This made it considerably heavier and put me off a bit despite it being a much better fit.

Then my mum came to the rescue with the age old adage - 'if you don't ask, you don't get' - and so with a few words to the shopkeeper, she found the catalogue and found exactly what I was looking for. A very similar model made from titanium. The face was actually a bit different and whilst preparing myself for a compromise, it actually turned out to be much nicer. I had done it, this was the watch for me. And here is it, a picture of the watch that will soon be mine, my birthday isn't for another month yet and I will be back in Sheffield before it arrives which is a shame but means it will be even nicer when I get it on the big day.

From Joy to to Woe

Good news from the science and physics front this morning with news that the LHC is finally working as it should do. They have started the machine running at 7TeV and have managed to keep it going for nearly four hours. A large amount of data has been collected but it will take a long time for anything to actually come out of today's events apparently. I think it's wonderful that we can have a real time feed of what is happening in Geneva and at CERN via both a live webcast and twitter.

Mr Mechanic

Today has been a wasted day work wise. I kinda accidentally installed the Zero Hour expansion pack to command and conquer which resulted in a lot of wasted time playing the new campaigns. The main part of the day consisted with me fiddling under my bonnet, something I don't do very often and for good reason too but it was fairly necessary in this case.

Lemon Fudge Cakes and #tomsontoast

Searching through some recipe books earlier today in search of a pudding for Easter Sunday (yes I know it's not for another week yet but we were making a shopping list) led me to look back over the recipes from the Hairy Bikers Mum's Know Best show. I came across Aida's recipe from the first show (if I remember correctly) for lemon fudge biscuits. So they have been made and are currently cooling in the fridge. They supposedly only needed a couple of hours but they still seemed a bit squishy when I iced them earlier so I have left them overnight in the hope that they will harden up a bit. Also, if they are any good (as I suspect they might be) then I will post up the recipe.

Springing Forward

Not content with the amount of work I got done yesterday, today was even more dotty but I have now finished the next phase of that prototype and can move on to the final one tomorrow. Early tomorrow morning, the clocks will spring forward an hour and whilst I usually either forget or change them so early that I confuse myself, this year presents another challenge. Because I am in Birmingham for the holidays and my alarm clock(s) are in Sheffield, I will have to remember to change them all in two weeks time. It's difficult enough remembering on the day let alone a couple of weeks afterwards. I have managed to configure Outlook to send a delayed email which will hopefully remind me but we shall see.

Seeing Dots

I have managed to get quite a lot of work done today and as a result of which I am now seeing red and blue dots all over the place. This was the first proper attempt at a prototype for a teaching tool and looking back over the coding that went into it, even if it was my first attempt at actionscript is frankly unacceptable. I think I started with around about 500 or so lines of code and I am now down to perhaps 300 and that includes all of the extra functionality that it has been given today.

Voting

Despite convincing myself that I would continue with the early starts, I thought I deserved a rest this morning so I had a little lie in. Okay, quite a lot of lie in - something I'm now regretting seeing as I feel even more tired than I did the previous day. To even further hamper any thought of getting some work done, I have been playing with Command and Conquer at least two or three times a day since installing it and I have today installed Microsoft's Ribbon Hero game, which tests your knowledge of the new ribbon interface in office 2007+. As suspected, I'm pretty good with most things although there are some nifty presentation elements to excel that I wasn't aware of which takes the conditional formatting to a whole new level.

The Arcadian Kicks

Today was the last day I have to get up early which is a huge relief because I am now knackered. It's not even as if I've done loads - in fact, apart from the morning drive to the other side of Birmingham and back, there isn't a lot else that I've done.
I did however, make a point of stopping to get some petrol before the dreaded rise on Sunday.

Here, There and Everywhere

Today has been a very busy day and I have been so tired that I have taken a nap in the car and in someone else's house. An earlier start than yesterday meant that I could obviously fit more into the day and my mum made sure that I did just that.

FlashForward Returns

As a treat for being back home, I have been designated the local taxi service and so for the next few days will be ferrying my mum around at stupidly early hours of the morning. In fairness to her, I did offer to do it (because I'm kind like that) but after this morning, I might be regretting that decision a little bit.

Back Home

Today has primarily been a travel day despite the actual travelling only taking up about two hours. The Easter holidays have officially begun and so I am now writing this post from the comfort of my home in Birmingham. It's always weird being away from my student home because the way of life here is so very different. There is a totally different time zone (about two hours in front of what I'm used to) so in a sense I suppose I can blame the inevitable forthcoming tiredness on a sort of jet lag.

Rock Tarts

After wasting the morning playing about with Freestyler some more (I told you it was dangerous), I went on a further procrastination hunt and decided to put my old laptop to rest and instead install Windows XP on my desktop as a dual boot. Whether this will be a good idea or not, I don't know. Trying to remove the old vista partition was hard enough and the amount of hassle I have almost undoubtedly caused myself by rewriting the somewhat already dodgy boot record means I may no longer be able to access the Windows 7 partition currently on there.

A Long Wait

Today has been somewhat of a day off in some respects. Apart from the two hour seminar this morning that is but that turned out to be more enjoyable than I was expecting. Since handing in the assignment early yesterday, I was somewhat at a loss as to what to do not wanting to start any work which I had now shifted into the ever increasing list of things to do during Easter but thanks to a few timing issues, the day sort of filled itself.

A Fishy Tale

I managed to get up early enough this morning to run the spider on the site without any disturbances, it was running a bit slow still but I managed to get the whole thing done before having to leave for a lecture. It was the lecture for the same module as the assignment coincidentally and the lecturer informed us that we had 'baffled' the support guys and that he had never had any problems with this assignment before. He also gave us an extension although since I've managed to get the spider to run, we didn't need it and we got the assignment submitted this afternoon, a day early! (Something practically unheard of in our department).

Freestyler

Today was split between lab work and more TSC training, I was about to introduce the posting with "this morning..." but then I realise nothing actually happened this morning and the day actually started at about 12pm. Even so it was fairly productive, we have nearly finished the lab project, no thanks to the site that we are supposed to be crawling is periodically down, presumably someone disregarding the rules imposed but as no one seems to be doing anything about it, we will have to continue using my crude test site.

Post Population

I was determined to attend the lecture / seminar / presentation session this morning and so with little more than four hours sleep, I hauled myself out of bed and trundled off down the hill. I managed to stay awake through the hour which surprised me and I hope I managed a half decent abstract of the second presentation. The second hour was cancelled and the presentation re-arranged for undisclosed reasons but I was quite thankful for this as it gave me time to do the morning computer routine I sacrificed for an extra half an hour in bed.

Behind the Scenes at Population

The last of the regular union events to work was Population and today I have done it! I have now worked all of the weekly regular events and it is now time to pick my favourites. By far the easiest and most enjoyable events have been Roar and Pop Tarts. The two worst ones have been Space and Tuesday Club but I am probably being unfair to them giving them prejudice because of the genre of music they play. I did learn the most at those events and there is so much to do that the chances of being bored are fairly slim. Working in the octagon for the first time was pretty amazing really and I would love to try it with a different event - possibly even a Headphones disco. Unfortunately the next Headphones Disco coincides perfectly with my birthday and I can't see myself wanting to work then but who knows.

A Proper Sunday Roast

You often don't realise how much you miss something until you are treated to it once again. Today I had the first Roast dinner for months, in fact I've only had one roast dinner in Sheffield this academic year which is frankly wholly unacceptable! The problem is getting hold of decent quality meat without leaving a gaping great hole in my wallet which is something that seems to be getting more and more difficult to achieve. Anyway, a special Mother's Day celebration called for roast beef with all the trimmings and a special chocolate pot dessert - recipe courtesy of Mr Ramsey and it was pretty damn good although our pots were significantly larger than the ones suggested in the recipe and so I had to admit defeat half way through mine.

Baking Day

Being at home always seems to inspire the creative cooking side of my brain and when I was told five minutes before dinner that I was in charge of the dessert, I began to panic a little. Luckily, I spotted a jar of marmalade in the cupboard and some apples in the fruit bowl and decided that I could make a slightly less than traditional bread and butter pudding.

Home Time

Presentation day today and it didn't actually go as badly as I had been expecting and preparing for. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst is one of the mottos I live by and it seems to have worked fairly well so far. Either I bamboozled the audience or managed to cover all of the questioning points because other than the usual "What did you think of the paper?" from the lecturer and a simple question about advertising from one of the class, there were no others. I had been dreading fielding questions form the two or three frequent question askers who often pick you up on the slightest thing you may have said wrong and then spend the next twenty minutes arguing or trying to rephrase their question so that it actually makes sense. I don;t know how some of the speakers have managed to answer some of the questions thrown at them because I didn't recognise the words they spoke as English, let alone a question.

Batteries Not Included

After the long and exhausting day yesterday I didn't make my 11 o'clock lecture this morning but never mind, I can catch up with it later and apart from the lecture I missed after my brain turned to mush last week - which was entirely accidental - this is the only lecture I have missed this semester. When you compare this with the track record from the last couple of years I think that's pretty good.

Gimmie Gimmie Roar!

Another behind the scenes posting today (not many more left now!) and this week - as the title suggests - is ROAR, the replacement for the previous regular Wednesday club night Juice. Those who are old enough to remember Juice are always a bit nostalgic about Juice and often somewhat resent Roar for taking it's place. I am one of those people but Juice held an even more special place in my heart because it was one of my first nights out in Sheffield.

Bouldering

The day finally came around (after the disappointment when they ran out of tickets two weeks ago) for bouldering. Finding myself at the gym was very weird as the only other time I've been there is for exams. It took me a while to find the reception and then a further few minutes to find the bouldering wall. The problem with a lot of these programmes is that they assume you know where to go and when the ticket simply says Goodwin - a complex with at least three buildings, you don't know where to go. It probably wasn't the best choice of day either now that I think about it as I had already been in for 6 hours without a break (unless you count standing outside my tutors office for half an hour, more about that later)

A Recipe for Success

Two unusual events were on the schedule for today, first up was another Skills for Success session "all about interviews" and the next one was a student assistant recruitment event. Sadly I think the second one may have been a wasted hour because a lot of the dates that you "must be free" are likely to clash with senior training for TSC. What is worse is that whilst being a student assistant would have counted towards my graduate award, I am fairly sure that TSC training doesn't although I may request that it does given that it is helping the union and requires significant time commitments.

A Cunning Plan

Today has been a pretty boring and empty day really, as most of the day after the night before days are. I managed to write just over a page of my report which isn't anywhere near what I would have liked to have done, but I did manage to finish my third prototype flash program so at least I now have something to show my tutor on Tuesday.

Behind the Scenes at Pop Tarts

Another working day, another new event and today is Pop Tarts, taking you back to the 70s 80s 90s and early 00s. I have always been a fan of this event and working it has pushed it to the top of the list. The work starts at 7pm instead of 4pm as with the previous two events and because it is a Saturday event, I am not working beforehand so the day is relatively short. It has also been the easiest and most laid back event to work but the downside to this is that I didn't learn as much as I have done at the previous two although this learning curve was bound to start declining as there becomes less to learn.

Meh

A mildly productive day today in the sense that my lab partner turned up and we managed to make a start on the assignment. On the other side of things, it took us well over an hour to decipher what it was we were actually meant to be doing and to be honest I'm still not sure whether we've got it right or not.

Cake!

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote about how the Intelligent Web module sounded very interesting and how the lecturer was quite funny. Today however I am using the reserved judgement that I put in place at the end of that post and would like to change my mind. Other than a few (frankly useless) statistics, I have learned very little that I didn't already know. A lot of the content is identical to that of the BBC's virtual revolution programme and I'm sure a lot of it even a non computing person would know. Facebook is popular MySpace isn't so much anymore and Twitter's popularity is on the rise. There are lots of blogs out there etc and each week I wonder why I attended.

More Training

Wednesday afternoons are now going to be a regular spot for TSC training and this week we are learning all about sound. We learned how to set up the DJ's equipment, about the different types of speakers - active and passive - some more about cables as well as learning how to use the amp system, how to eq (setting the equaliser) and that Sam's Town by the Killers is one of the worst produced records of all time.

Behind the Scenes at the Tuesday Club

It took me while to come up with a title for today's post. I have already done to death the long day titles and today is longer than both of those. Somehow I have managed to stay awake, alert and sit through three hours of lectures and work this evening. I started at 11am and finished at 4:30am which is, I now realise, far too long to become a regular part of my timetable.

Braindead

Oh Dear. Today has been one of the most disorganised and pointless days this year. I started the day my missing my first lecture after convincing myself that I was an hour early for it. I therefore spent the hour in the lab - although some productive work did come of this - and as I walked to the lecture theatre for the lecture I thought it was a bit strange to see the class (and the lecturer) walking in the other direction. After checking my timetable, I realised that I had in fact just spent the lecture time in the lab.