A Forgetful Personality

A brilliant start to the day meant that I ended up leaving my house three times in the space of ten minutes. The first time I didn't get very far because I forgot my keys and thus couldn't lock the door. I had also forgotten my phone but thankfully remembered that when I was picking up my keys. Attempt number two I got significantly further, five minutes down the road further and I had to do the embarrassing turn around in the middle of the road and head back in the other direction thing. I would normally have come up with some pathetic excuse for having to turn around so as to avoid the embarrassment but I was too tired and fed up. Thankfully there was no one around to see so I think I got away with it.

Jabberwocky

Despite a stupidly late night last night - I didn't end up going to bed until about 7am, I woke up at about twelve o'clock unable to get back to sleep. I also managed to function fairly well during the day until it got to about six o'clock when I could no longer keep my eyes open. A short nap later and I was wide awake once more.

Mr Blue Sky

Another Saturday, another Pop Tarts. This is starting to become a regular occurrence but I quite like it. My plan is to do the event so much that it becomes second nature and thus I should have a good idea as to what to do when I eventually have to Stage Manage something.

Space Lights

Just as I'd finally caught up with my blog posts, I start working again and thus it all goes to pot once more. It is going to be a busy few weeks until term ends and the holidays begin and the boredom kicks in in which case I shall be longing for those busy weeks gone by.

TV Catchup

Another catchup day today and this time is is for TV. Having been at the blog for the last few days, I totally forgot how much missed TV was building up in my iPlayer. If I was still using my old laptop I fear I may be running out of disk space at this rate. Thankfully the generous month long deadlines meant nothing had expired.. yet but some were mere days off going the way of the dodo.

The New iPlayer

A big day in the world of tech and TV today as we see the launch of the new look iPlayer. Having been a huge fan since the inception of the product many years ago now when it was called the IMP - I was a beta tester for this and couldn't imagine how much it would change my life.

How Many?

For the first time since our assignment groups were allocated before Easter, today was the first time I have actually met one of them and also the first time we have all been to the same meeting! Incredible when you think that Easter was at least four weeks ago (maybe more, I really can't be bothered to count) and we have only got this far. Goodness knows what would have happened if the lecturer had been like the other lecturers and actually set a proper deadline rather than just anytime before the end of term.

The End of Lost

It is the end of an era, six years of programming have come to an end with the season finale. For the first time in TV history, the episodes were broadcast in both the UK and the USA at the same time! Admittedly the USA didn't make the compromise - we did but I'm sure a lot of people got up at 5am to watch it live. Perhaps finally the TV schedulers are learning that we won't wait for days or weeks for it to be shown over here and we want it at the same time as the USA.

Catchup

Having neglected this blog somewhat over the past few weeks, it is time for a massive catchup. I have been keeping a note of the events that have happened for most days and there are some days for which I have decided to write the post down on paper. I find it nicer to write the old fashioned way in bed rather than having to unplug my laptop from all its wires and carry it over and I prefer scribbling things down in the evenings rather than being kept awake by the glow of the screen.

Marina and the Diamonds

Since seeing Marina and the Diamonds on the NME Radar tour last year, I have been longing for her to make it in the hard world of music and for her next big tour. Now that she has and the day of her return to Sheffield is here I am very excited. Arriving slightly early at the Leadmill, there was already a substantial queue outside and because I am silly and didn't think things though properly I brought no drink with me. Did I mention that today was one of the hottest days of the year so far?

In Charge of the Laser

After not quite finishing the assignment off yesterday evening, it was back to the lab today to get the final bits in place. I am a little disappointed that we didn't quite finish on time and ended up handing in the assignment two minutes after the deadline. With a bit of luck the lecturer will be lenient enough to see that it was only two minutes rather than just accepting the 'late' stamp added by the Blackboard software.

Playing with Lasers

It’s been a long week, up early and late to bed but the end is nearly upon us. Today was the practical side to the laser training, learning how to use the laser control system and putting into practice the safe programming techniques that we learned yesterday. Once again, it is one of those things that they can tell you how to do a million times but until you actually try doing it in practice, you will never really learn how to do it. The schedule for the day meant that before lunch, two people would have to program a single head show and one person a two head show. The more senior members were allowed to do the two head show and I was using the single head. We had about thirty minutes for the two of us to program our shows which should last the duration of the song we had chosen. It was a pretty big ask given that we had never before touched the control system and only one person could use it at a time meaning that in reality we only had about fifteen minutes each.

Lasers Are Dangerous

Out of the two courses, I was most excited about this one - laser training. Sadly, the lase is only used once a week when Space is held in the Octagon. The main reason for this is that the room is many times higher than in the Foundry and so the risk is significantly reduced. The downside to being laser trained is that I will no doubt be asked to work more at Space which is doubly bad because you have to actually sit in the main area when operating the laser and subject yourself to the awful noise made by the resident DJ.

Playing With Lights

Today was far more hands on than yesterday and the first thing we did was disassemble two of the slightly older models of light. We didn't have access to these yesterday and thy have certain peculiarities that are worth knowing about. We then spent the afternoon fixing the stash of broken lights although a couple of them turned out to be working fine because we couldn't remember which ones were the broken ones.

A Week of Training

I have mixed opinions about this week. During the day, I am hoping that it will be quite fun as I will be on two TSC training courses. However, during the evening I will end up in the library working on the assignment that I should really have been working on during the day, Th course runs from 10am-6pm which leaves 8pm-12am to do the assignment. Long days and ling nights for four days in a row is bound to screw with my body clock so I will be trying to cram in little naps left, right and centre.

Portal is Free

I have been meaning to get my hands on this since I heard about it at the beginning of the week but never quite got round to it. I finally got round to downloading it yesterday and have been playing with it for the first time today. I remember when it first came out my friend showing me a trailer for it and actually being quite interested in a computer game for one. I could never quite commit myself to paying the £20 or whatever it was for it though so I never bothered. When I heard that it was free however, I couldn't resist - especially as I am nearing the end of the year and will be looking for a source of entertainment.

Going It Alone

I have once again offered my services as a programmer to my friend whi is struggling with her Actionscript project. The last time I offered to help was on the promise that I would be fed a delicious roast dinner - which by the way didn't appear - and so this time I made sure I would be fed.

CSS Meeting

The only event on the calendar for today was a Computer Science Society meeting in Bar One. It is the first meeting I have managed to attend as I have only found out about the others after the event. One of the first points on the agenda was this lack of communication both internally within the committee and externally between us and the students. One of the things I most want to bring to the committee is to involve the members more than they are at the moment. As it stands, all of the social events are decided by the committee and then the members are informed and encouraged to turn up. Last year I received a few emails from the committee informing me about these events but I had no input in where and when they were and had very little interest in going to the events that had been organised.

Junior Apprentice

Today was the first real start on the intelligent web assignment. We made some progress but tiredness on my part got in the way and I made so infuriatingly silly mistakes with my regular expressions. It can often be quite difficult to work out where you have gone wrong without butchering it to death and writing special code to test it. I usually end up using Python to build and test the expressions before copying them into Java when they work.

My First Tech Position

The big day has finally arrived, not only does today officially mark the end of my dissertation - culminating in a poster session - but it also marks the day where I am finally given the responsibility of a technical position in TSC.

Damned Printers

Tomorrow I have to present a poster about my dissertation project. As such, I have devoted a large part of today to printing the poster which is A1 size and thus I have had to split the text and pictures across about ten A4 pages - which I then had to cut out and arrange to build the final poster. Tomorrow I will have to stick everything into place - hurrah! I feel like I'm five again doing collage at school.

The Great Napkin Hunt

I arrived fairly late for yesterday's barbecue and so ended up taking the cake I made back home with me. I had planned to share it out during the TSC meeting today but somehow totally forgot about it and ended up leaving it in the office instead. Despite having spent the morning chasing down serviettes for the cake - the sot of sponges I make are far more suited to being eaten with a fork and on a plate than on the move. My first thought was to pop to the local shops and pick some up before hand however, to my disgust the Co-op were selling them for about £2.20 for 20! There was no way I was paying that much and I probably needed a few more than 20 anyway so the only thing for it was to hop into town and get some from the pound shop.

Barbecue

If I hadn't had enough of the TSC lot already then today was another chance to talk technical at the barbecue social. I couldn't quite face the full eight ours or so that it was supposed to be so I decided to just go for the evening and the pub quiz afterwards.

Apart from being a bit on the chilly side, it was a good night and we did reasonably well in the quiz too. The picture round was especially clever, they had pictures to represent the films in a catchphrase sort of style. As usual I was useless at films but thankfully a lot of my team mates were film buffs and managed to work them out before I could tell what the pictures were even supposed to be. One of my personal favourites was a rat, a tattoo and a Wii - Ratatouille! Whoever came up with them is a quiz mastermind as far as I'm concerned so well done to them (unless they stole them from the internet in which case they are big cheats).

I decided to bring along a cake but I ended up bringing it back home with me as there weren't enough people or time to eat it. I will probably end up handing it out at the meeting tomorrow so it won't go to waste.

Watercolour

This is going to be a very short post today as it was pretty much sleep, eat, more sleep, more eating and then some more sleeping again. It does however mean that there is plenty of room for me to put my single of the week up. This week it is Pendulum with their brand new single Watercolour from the forthcoming album Immersion.

It reminds me a lot of Propane Nightmares with quite a heavy vocal part which I really like. I'm not such a fan of the more instrumental songs and think that Rob Swire's vocals really bring the song into the mainstream rather than exclusively for drum and bass fans. I really hope the album is more of this but there are rumours that they have tried to make it more like their first album. The single was out at the beginning of the week and the album is released on the 24th May.

Let's Go Disco

I had to force myself out of bed this morning as I had promised to help my friend with her Actionscript scripting project. I had agreed to do so on the promise of being fed and I was expecting a roast dinner. Sadly, this did not happen and I left having helped rather a lot and with a very empty stomach. Turns out that because the date had to be changed, food was no longer part of the deal - the first I'd heard of it!

Go Safari

I was having a particularly lazy day because of yesterday and knowing that I was working this evening meant I was going to make the most of the time I had at home. As such, I lost track of time and forgot my tutor meeting about my poster. I hadn't designed anything yet and was about to email him to apologise when I realised I should probably have an attachment to send him as well to prove that I had actually done the work. A couple of hours later and I had a draft that I thought was acceptable and sent it onto him. I haven't had a reply yet so I don't know whether or not he got it.

The End

I decided to get up early today to make sure I didn't get held up in the dissertation hand in queue. As I got to the lab however, there was only one or two other people there. With that done, I met my partner for the next assignment and attempted to make a start on the Intelligent Web assignment due in a week and a half.

Printing

IT'S FINISHED!! Finally, after many many months of scribbling, typing, coding and testing, my dissertation has come to an end. Well, apart from the poster session next week but that requires very little thought. I have spent most of today trying to print the damned thing, 60+ sides of A4 twice over is not a fun task. If the printer isn't complaining it's run out of (or lost track of) some of its cartridges then it's complaining about no paper.

La Roux

Ah, bank holiday Mondays. Most of the time I would be grateful for them - especially the early Mat bank holiday because it means I get a day off if my birthday happens to fall on a Monday. Today however, it has been more of a hindrance than a help.

My Birthday

HELP!!! It is official, I am now 21. Actually, it isn't that bad really. I haven't found any grey hairs or wrinkles and I don't feel any older than I did yesterday. Not that I expected to mind but twenty-one makes me feel really old, no more excuses for acting like a child anymore, I am officially an adult. Well, most of the time anyway - I'm not yet ready to let go of my youth for good and I will still be very immature when the situation allows me to.

The Wrong Door

To justify going out this evening, I thought I should spend at least some time on my dissertation today - don't worry, after Wednesday you wont have to read those words on here again, I know I keep blabbering on about it but it has somewhat taken over my life.