This term

This term isn't going at all well for me. I quit rowing so that I could devote more time to work, and yet somehow I'm more behind than ever! I received the following email from one of my supervisors this morning:

Dear Mark

As far as I'm aware I haven't received any essay from you. I will write your supervision report next week and I would prefer not to have to state this on the form. If you still want to hand in an essay I will accept one up until tuesday morning.

Best wishes

Annette

Not good. There's no way I'll have time to do even one essay if I want to get in any work for my other three modules as well...

Some eye-candy

Preview shots of OpenZaurus 3.5.3, just for you guys :)



A couple of those pictures will probably be in the next OE/OZ/Familiar newsletter, and they're available online to see if you go to scap, but y'know - semi-exclusive, just for you guys ;)

Exam results, OpenEmbedded

Got my exam results today! I didn't do as well as I thought I did unfortunately, but all the same, I didn't do badly... Here's the break-down:

Computational Systems - 63
Database Systems - 60
Software Analysis and Design - 61
Operating Systems - 73
Compiler Engineering - 60
Scripting Techniques - 74
--------------------------------
Average - 65.2

Happy with scripting and OS at least, anyway - I expected more in computational systems and database systems, for sure... Especially databases, not sure what happened there... But either way, I should complain considering the work I put into it.

Thinking of work, I have put SO much work into OpenEmbedded in the past couple of weeks! Fortunately, it's paying off :) My PDA is now usable again, after so long - Minimo is looking good too, but unfortunately, it still crashes on pretty much every site that doesn't have a special style-sheet for PDAs (looks great on OSnews.com though!). But plug-'n-play is working awesomely - Pulling out and putting in my CF card NEVER leaves the CF slot unusable anymore, and I can hotplug Wifi too, and it'll detect it and connect, if a network's available, and a nice icon appears in the 'taskbar' with reception details and such... It's all very nice, I'll post up some screenshots in a bit :)

OpenZaurus 3.5.3 for collie + gpe is going to rock anyway... SO much works compared to 3.5.2 (and even 3.5.1, which was the last release I worked on) and I'm very pleased with my work :) (and the work of others of course, it's hardly just me working on it) - I can see 3.5.3 as the release that attracts more users away from Opie and to GPE... Not that I want Opie to fail or anything, but I would be working on that instead if I thought it were a better alternative. I think the next big thing I need to work on is a decent media-player for GPE... mplayer works perfectly, but that's command-line only... Anyway, yes, that's what I'm up to

Wassup with you guys?

Jump update

Unfortunately we weren't able to jump. We all passed the training (which was knackering), but there was a blizzard. We can only jump, as beginners, in winds of no more than 12mph with good visibility.

Still, I had one hellova lot of fun with everyone. The last time I had so much fun was years ago, probably back in the days of London weekends.

I am still going to jump! We are planning on going at the end of term, weather permitting. If that doesn't work, we'll try sometime in Easter, and if that doesn't work, we'll try at the beginning of next term... But believe me, I will jump out of a plane, even if it kills me! (joke)

Everything's back to normal now, which is a shame. Feels like we were away for days, not just a short weekend.

36 hours

This weekend's plan:

Saturday
- 0630: Taxi ride into town
- 0700: Begin coach journey
- 0800: Arrive at parachuting destination
- 0900: Begin training
- 1800: End training
- 2100: Say what may be my last words to friends and family

Sunday
- 0630: (Last?) Breakfast
- 0800: Leave for airstrip
- 0900 - 1600: JUMP! (time depends on weather)
- 1200 - 1900: Go back to Cambridge (depends on vital signs)

I'm sure I'll be fine, but just in case: you guys rock. See you on the other side!

Work and play

As I may have mentioned (I can't remember if I did or not), I've swapped my shifts from Wednesday night to Monday night. Last night was my first day on a Monday, and I must say, it was rather interesting! The clientele differ completely, and I must say, I rather enjoyed it. Had some interesting conversations, including talking with a guy that sells porn and adult goods for a living :) Spoke quite a while with this girl as well, she was very nice (in a friendly way that is), she said she's a regular, so hopefully might see her again at some point... You really learn to appreciate conversation when you're stuck for 5 hours without it, believe me.

I've been reading Three Men in a Boat at work (well, just started yesterday), and although I initially thought it was boring, it's turning out to be quite funny. That's another thing about being somewhere with little to do, it forces you to follow things through... I've read so much I wouldn't have otherwise, and I've really enjoyed it for the most part - I finished reading Vile Bodies last week, which wasn't fantastic, but still an engaging read, if anything because of the use of language.

My group project is such a huge amount of work, it's kinda wearing me down a little... Still, gonna (hopefully) be doing more popping practise tomorrow, that'll get me motivated... My moves are getting a lot better, but I'm lacking in cohesion and leg-work - I intend to improve this of course. My hat came in the post today :) Need to go and collect it from the post-office at some point, looking forward to trying it on :)

I sent you a text and all, but happy birthday again Mark. I've been relegated to youngest member of the trio for a couple of months :( But yeah, whatever - I still have an excuse for making stupid decisions, what's yours guys? Eh? Hah.

I've been playing a lot of games recently, really getting back into them in a big way... My current favourite is Anachronox (a forgotten RPG that used the Quake 2 engine and came from Ion Storm - very humourous in places) - I've played that for almost 10 hours now, in the space of about a week... Quite a lot. Also, Lyss got me Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, which I look forward to playing through with her (it's primarily a multiplayer game, and each player *REQUIRES* a gba to play :p - the single-player can work with a pad however) - I also intend to complete Paper Mario 2 at some point as well, gotten quite far through that...

Anyway, what's up with you guys? Especially you James, you've not said anything in ages! (other than to comment on our posts that is)

Birthday

I had a rather nice birthday! Lots of surprises.

Yesterday my Mum and brother came up, and we had lunch at Nando's. Had an interesting chat about education, politics, jobs... I mentioned my parachute jump to my Mum and I think she took it rather well. She's worried, understandably, but is supportive.

My brother bought me one of those cool little indoor helicopters :) Y'know, like the one Dave has? I haven't had the chance to try it out yet, I don't have a 9V battery.

Del was over the entire weekend, spent lots of quality time together. She bought me a silver bracelet - though I don't know whether that's the masculine name for it. Last week she took my ring to get it engraved for Valentine's as well (I didn't even notice it had gone :/). I'm all kitted out, jewelry-wise :)

So after Del went home this morning I was feeling a little down, and so I went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. Then Stef (a friend on my corridor) came in and said hello, then asked me to come and kill a spider for her in her kitchen (which isn't particularly out of the ordinary, but I guessed what was coming). So I follow Stef to the other kitchen and it's bursting with people who broke into "Happy Birthday" as I walked in. There was a cake with candles that Stef and Liz had baked for me (and as I understand it they went to an awful lot of trouble, given that we don't have ovens!), camera flashes going off left right and centre, laughing... They made a massive card full of pictures and signatures. I was given a bottle of wine as well! After spending about an hour (or more... no idea) in there chatting with everyone, it was time to get back to work, so I went back to my room to find another surprise on my desk. Monika had written me a little card wishing me well, containing two cinema tickets as well. So sweet.

Ahh... if I were (any more of) a girl I would have cried.

20 years. Not all that long, really.

lol

I've left an enormous skid mark at the bottom of the bowl

Parachute Jump

It's time to start collecting sponsors for my parachute jump. What can I put you guys down for? Again, as much or as little as you can manage. If you really can't manage anything at all, don't worry. Please reply, positive or negative!

So, otherwise, I've been swamped with work. Recently started going through partial differentiation in maths, Gibb's free energy in Materials, Electro/Magnetostatics in Physics and triploblasts, deuterostomes and coelomates in Evolution and Behaviour. Almost had a second supervision cancelled today because I (we) didn't do the work that was set, but we convinced her that we just didn't understand it, which is true. So we had a short supervision.

Got an essay for E&B to write for tomorrow morning. I can choose between these two essay titles:

"Explain the terms triploblast, coelomate and deuterostome. Using examples, show how these definitions are important in a traditional view of animal phyla. Briefly explain how this view is being challenged by molecular data."

OR

"What is a phylum? Discuss two characteristics of living vertebrates that reflect conserved features of the chordate body plan, and two innovations that have played a major role in the subsequent evolution of vertebrates."

What's gay about these essay titles is that there's really not much to say about them, or so it seems. I won't have any trouble trying to 'keep it to 4 pages, maximum'.

The other day this girl I know criticised me for not going out enough, not enjoying myself, doing too much work. This really fucked me off. First of all, she has only two days a week in which she has lectures, and only one supervision a week, and that is it. I have only one day a week in which I don't have any lectures (Sunday!), and have four supervisions a week, and 8 hours of practicals a week. You could say that I have as much as quadruple her workload, on top of extra lectures etc.. I was pissed off about her comments for days!

Anyway, really needed to vent. This essay I'm gonna write tonight is gonna read like shit judging by this post ;o

Remember: add a comment indicating how much you'll sponsor me for, even if it's zero!^[1]

1: Please note that negative numbers are not acceptable.

Popping... and no news?

Hey dudes, what's with the silence? I've been eagre to hear what you two have been up to!

Me? I've just spent like around 1.5 hours popping :) Getting a lot better, starting to look respectable even! My side-slide is improving too, although I still can't really do it properly without a smooth floor. My hat was shipped earlier in the week too, looking forward to that arriving a lot. That and the coming of summer in the not *too* far future...

I've started back on my various projects - I've almost completed a nice little thing for cslib that allows everything to be stored seperately, but linked (compile-linked and symbolic-linked) to one location. At the moment, everything's installed into seperate prefixes, making sharing libraries very hassle-some. This new system allows the seperate prefixes to still exist, but for a new shared location to also exist, meaning all libraries are in one place (a good thing). Unionfs I've started work on again as well, hopefully I'll have that working adequately within a week or two...

What are you planning for valentine's guys? Anything special? Lyss and I are going to Pizza Hut... It's kind of a sentimental thing though, because that's like the first restaurant we ever went to together (that and we love pizza :)). Really not sure what to get her... I think she's got me Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, which is nice :) I'll probably get her some sort of game or something, but I'm not sure...

Anyway, tell me what you're up to!

Some advice... and unionfs :)

James, I think you need to learn to live with some discontentment, at least for a while. I have been extraordinarily lucky, in that I've known my calling pretty much all of my memorable life. Not entirely a good thing, but it certainly helps you feel content at the end of the day. I believe that you haven't found exactly what you want to be doing, and I'd hazard a guess that the longer you spend without knowing what you want to do, the harder it becomes to find out what it is you want to do.

Perhaps you already know, but you lack the conviction to throw yourself at it full tilt?

Until either situation changes, learn to live with this uncertainty - I can't speak from experience I'm afraid, so this may make my advice sound a little hollow, but I'm sure plenty of other people live with the same problem every day without feeling any the worse for it. Maybe you can take some happiness from it? Me, I have a basic outline for how the rest of my life will probably turn out. That can be a little disheartening at times; where as you, you still have the potential to be any number of things!

And like Mark said, as for it not being about you - it clearly is... Given that we see the world from our own perspective, it's hardly surprising that our thought processes revolve around ourselves. The likelihood of a truly (within reason, don't start with quantum theory or whatever...) random comment is quite low.

As for me, I'm feeling alright at the moment :) I'm not in a 'work' mood yet, I've just spent my post-exam time chilling so far (which took that awesome night out for me to realise this is what I needed).

When I supposed my idea to a post-grad friend of mine (about unionfs in regards to software located at multiple locations under multiple prefixes), he almost straight away came back with the problem of hard-coded paths when compiling applications. I figured out the solution today :) I was thinking about it incorrectly - unfortunately, you cannot just install to a seperate prefix, you need to install to the 'root' prefix (i.e. /usr). The magic comes in that before making the install target, you unionfs mount the prefix directory over whatever directory you've unionroot'd with the highest priority before installing - Then it'll get installed to the prefix, but be prepared to execute on the 'root'. Problem solved :)

I'm planning on making some scripts for all this, that use symlinking to simulate the features of unionfs somewhat... Given that I can't actually use unionfs in labs at the moment - I'll try to bribe help-desk into compiling the kernel module though, but I *VERY* much doubt this will happen. If it does, I will be a happy bunny :) Will find out tomorrow.

Also, Mark, that question looks like piss compared to the last question on my latest Scheme coursework that took me TEN fucking hours and ended up as like 12 lines of code :p (ends up the theory to the solution is quite simple, just implementation is a little more complex... Everything is easier in retrospect though...)

God dame

Look at this physics question:

Consider a thin disc of radius a with charge density 'sigma'. Show that the electric field at a distance x along the axis that passes through the centre of the disc (perpendicularly) is given by

I did it, but man, these questions take fucking ages...

I've done 2 in about 4 hours and I have 8 more to do. And that's only Physics. I've got Maths (Lagrange Multipliers, anyone?), Materials (Mmm, entropy and enthalpy!) and Evolution & Behaviour work to do as well, all for Tuesday, except the essay for E&B which is due in on Thursday.

Awesome night.

Wow, I just had an awesome night :)

As you may have deduced by my final exam being this morning, my exams for this semester are over! Initially, I was left with a stranded, empty feeling... When you lose such a strong focus so suddenly, it does odd things to one's psyche.

The perfect solution, however, was to go out and have some fun! Yes, I know what you're thinking... 'Go... OUT?!?' - But that I did. I was invited to go bowling with Chris and his friends. Understand that I've never met his friends before, and I'm not usually one for meeting new people, or even going out. My mood at that point was still depressed, and I was in one of those states of minds where you'd agree to anything (much like I was when I decided to start going to London), just to be doing something - so I agreed. I started to regret it soon after. "I've no idea who these people are!" I thought. The potential to get molested is always higher when you involve more people.

The night wore on. It opened well, I got a strike, a 9, then two strikes! My best run ever - My play deteriorated soon after, but I finished with a not too disrespectable 92 (given my initial score however, that was of course terrible). The bowling game was a little uncomfortable - Chris' friend and his two flat-mates were the other participants. Chris' friend was excellent. He just WAS Andrew (Whyton). I immediately liked him, if anything for the resemblence, but the fact that he acted in almost the exact same way only made it better :) However, the other two flat-mates were very anti-social... Which just made it a bit hard, given that I didn't have much of a hook into Mike (the Andrew look-alike) and I couldn't talk to them... Things were soon to get better though.

We were about to drive back to The Hobbit, but I decided to walk because I wasn't feeling great (I stupidly decided to have some beer - didn't even finish my pint :p) - And so I walked to The Hobbit. The walk invigorated me and not only did I feel better physically, but it improved my mood somewhat too (although by then, I had already cheered up a little). When we got to The Hobbit, I found them sitting at a table upstairs (usually a hard place to secure) with two new girls (the two anti-social ones had left and gone to The Dungeon - hurray!). I introduced myself and we all had a bit of a chat and it was nice :)

We progressed out to the beer garden, where there were more new people! I introduced myself to a couple, but we were still two seperate groups at that point, so not much happened. At this point, I got to know Mike a little better - he does Politics, and he's a very no-nonsense kinda chap. At the same time though, he's charming and quite a laugh - JUST like Andrew, it's uncanny... So me, Mike, Chris and a new girl, Sarah, were all chatting a bit... And out of nowhere, my friend (and Chris') Mat turns around! Mat's always a good laugh, so that livened things up a bit right there

To make a long and not-so-interesting story short, the rest of the night was just pleasant conversation, a dildo (bought as a joke from the women's toilets for this guy - That was Mat's group that did that though, not ours), meeting more new people (theatre people, James! You'd have loved them...) and a nice atmosphere :)

I think tonight has gone some way to curing me of my slight fear of going out and social occassions... All three of us are a bit hermit-like, but I'd say I was the worst of us before today...

Anyway, as you may be able to tell, I'm in a good mood!

The exam didn't go particularly well (not as well as any of the others anyway, except maybe compiler engineering...), but I don't care :)

A bit of humour...

A byte walks into a bar and orders a pint. Bartender asks him "What's wrong?" Byte says "Parity error." Bartender nods and says "Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off."

Nearly over...

aaah, exams nearly over - the feeling is good! I just have NOT been ARSED to revise for tomorrow morning's though, I hate the subject too much to concentrate on anything I read about it... Hopefully the experience of doing the two courseworks and going to a few of the lectures (perversely, my highest attendence is in this module) will be enough for me to get around half-mark's or so, which is approximately all I need to get a 1st in the subject.

Unionroot has taken a turn for the worse and the better - I think I figured out why it wasn't working completely correctly, but the solution requires me to rewrite a core script :p No biggie though... Once I'm done, I plan on writing a documentation/proposal on how it can be used for networked work-places and universities for sharing applications, maybe even get it used in labs. I was also thinking of taking a look at GoboLinux (google it) and modifying it to use unionroot/unionfs, to see how well it scales... All interesting ideas anyway, hopefully I'll have the time to go about a couple :p

Mark - You're bloody brave to go parachuting - how the hell did you get into that one?! What does sponsorship involve, given my state of poorness? I'd like to sponsor, but obviously, I can't afford much at all...

As for the 'this is happening now', I often find myself in a semi-3rd person perspective position for an extended amount of time, doing trivial tasks - then I realise and I'm all like 'wtf?!', but I don't think that's quite the same thing. Either way, James is right - MORE SLEEP.

Oh, and happy birthday James (for 35 minutes time) :)

Tempting fate

On the 20^th of February, I will be jumping out of an aeroplane! I will be parachuting for charity!

Other than that, not much is happening here. It's James' birthday day after tomorrow, and mine in just under a couple of weeks. No plans for either occasion yet, it seems...

I did a massive belch in the dinner hall today - the whole room (of about 300 people) fell silent for a few seconds, and then errupted into applause. How wonderful.

BTW, feel free to sponsor me for my jump! It goes to charity! (Spread amoung about 80 different ones.)