Journal: May 2008

< Entries for April 2008 | Past entries archive | Entries for June 2008 >

Camping, moving house, and surfing sound waves
Sat 31/5/08 (Link to this entry)

I've had a mix of good and bad news lately. The main bad news is that since James and Kim are going to be moving into their new house during the week that we had planned to go camping, we now won't be able to go. This is mitigated to some degree, however, by the fact that James at least is able to come up this coming week, so he's going to be accompanying myself, Ford, TC, Gus and Fraser to Glen Etive on Monday. I'm looking forward to it and if the weather today is anything to go by, it should be great fun.

A week from now, I'll hopefully be transporting some stuff down to Sheffield so that James can transport it down to Camberley, where I'll be staying with him (and latterly Kim) during my short summer contract with Sun. This is great as it means I don't have to worry about arranging a short-term lease, and I can help James out with the rent while Kim's not there (she's going gallivanting around the world).

So, all in all it looks like the next week or two are going to be really busy for me. With that in mind, I'm thinking it maybe wasn't a good idea to buy Audiosurf last night. It's a very clever arcade/puzzle game which generates tracks based on your music. You feed it an mp3, and it creates a sort of rollercoaster-like racecourse which rises and falls in line with the intensity of the music. It's a very clever idea and quite fun, even if I do suck at it.

The above is an attempt at the easiest kind of course on the medium difficulty setting (made more difficult by the fact my PC isn't really up to full-screen recording whilst playing the game). The idea is to catch clusters of the coloured boxes whilst avoiding the grey ones. This is easy in the quiet bits of the track (Default's It Only Hurts), but the choruses are a bit mental. I particularly like the way it bounces to the beat during the verses. It's quite fun feeding different kinds of music into it to see what each does - acoustic guitar stuff is pretty laid-back, while the likes of Joe Satriani or the Foo Fighters are not for the faint-hearted!

And that's fourth year out of the way
Tue 27/5/08 (Link to this entry)

My last uni exam for this year was today and I'm pleased to say it went pretty well, I'm quietly confident that I'll get a decent mark out of it. With that in mind, I'm pretty happy with the way this year's gone in terms of uni. The only annoying thing is that I still haven't received any marks back at all, so it looks like I'm going to have to wait for the official exam board results. I've no idea when the exam boards are either, although I think they're probably in the week starting June 9th. However, I'm pretty sure I'll have comfortably gotten the 60% I need to get into fifth year.

The year's marks are broken down and weighted like this (exams are 80% of a class mark, coursework is 20%):

• 50% - Industrial placement report (I'm hoping I'll have done really well in this)
• 12.5% - Artificial Intelligence (Exam went really well, coursework should be in the 90s)
• 12.5% - E-Commerce Technologies (Exam was very long but went well, coursework was decent)
• 12.5% - Distributed Programming (Exam not great, coursework should be close to 100%)
• 12.5% - Distributed Systems (Exam went pretty well, coursework ditto)

So, the only one I'm not entirely happy with is the DP exam, which has been widely slated by pretty much everyone I've heard talking about it. With that in mind, I'm quietly confident about the results. I just wish I at least knew some of my coursework marks already, more out of sheer curiosity than anything else!

:-/
Fri 24/5/08 (Link to this entry)

Hmm. That one didn't go quite as well as I had hoped, there were a few things I couldn't remember off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure I've passed it comfortably, but it won't be a dazzling mark. I really hate closed-book exams where you have to reel stuff off from memory - in a world where information is just a google search away, exams should be a test of understanding, not memory.

Still, that's now three exams down with only one left for this year. That's Distributed Systems, which falls on Tuesday and should hopefully be a fair bit easier than today's paper. I still haven't heard anything back about my placement report or any of my coursework marks, so it's kinda frustrating being most of the way there for this year with absolutely no idea of what marks I can expect to recieve. Fingers crossed...

:-D
Thurs 22/5/08 (Link to this entry)

The Story So Far
Sat 17/5/08 (Link to this entry)

A while ago, I was presented with a choice. Since this weekend doesn't fall in the way of any exams, I could do one of two things. I could either travel down to Wales with my dad for an archery shoot, or I could go to a Lúnasa concert with my mum. The archery lost out, and boy, am I glad of that decision now.

Lúnasa are an Irish group which play traditional celtic music - that's celtic music as in jigs and reels, not the likes of the Henrik Larsson song! To many people, the idea of traditional celtic music inspires images of a bunch of beards, polo necks and a squeezebox. Lúnasa are about as far away from that stereotype as you can get - tremendously skilled, lively, gallus, and (particularly in Kevin Crawford's case) utterly mental!

The short video above honestly does not come close to doing them justice. My camera just wasn't up to the task of capturing either the music or the lightning-fast finger movements of the musicians. I would have taken more footage but I feel that would have been a bit cheeky - instead, I'm hoping there's just enough there to give people a feel of the band without being on the dodgy side of IP law.

The band's website is here, where you can read all about them and hear more of their top-notch music (and, should the mood take you, order some CDs). Their latest album, The Story So Far, is a "greatest hits" of sorts, although I'm hoping there's many more albums to come from them yet.

Halfway there
Wed 14/5/08 (Link to this entry)

That's my second exam for this year out of the way, and only two now remain. This one involved a hell of a lot of waffling - I think it's the most I've ever written for an exam. I covered eight full A4 pages which, given the small size of my handwriting, is a fairly serious amount of text. My hand is still aching.

With my next exam falling next Friday, I've got a fair bit of time to relax before reading up for that one, so I'll be enjoying the ridiculously good weather we're having just now. Indeed, the only time the weather has been bad around here recently was during the archery shoot last Saturday (you can see what it was like in the second part of this video). With the start that we had to this year, it's nice to have some sun - even if it is too damn hot!

One down, three to go
Mon 12/5/08 (Link to this entry)

Around this time yesterday, I was having a minor panic as I started looking at the past papers for today's AI exam and realised I hadn't a clue how to answer most of the questions. Happily, however, this was because the course material has changed significantly, so today's paper was actually pretty straightforward. I was particularly pleased that all the theoretical guff was in one question while the other two questions were largely based around demonstrating practical knowledge. I only had to attempt two questions out of the three, so I got to avoid all the boring rubbish :-D

Thankfully, today's was my only morning exam this year. It started at 9.30, while the other three will all start at the much more palatable hour of 2pm. This is rather pleasing to me since I find my brain doesn't work too well in the mornings. Sadly, the next exam is on Wednesday so I can't rest easy just yet. Here's hoping it turns out to be as straightforward as today's did...

Green with envy
Mon 5/5/08 (Link to this entry)

Lately I've been keeping up with what's been happening at the world snooker championships at the Crucible in Sheffield. There's nothing as good at making you feel useless as watching the best people in the world at a sport you enjoy and think you're not bad at. I would accuse Ronnie O'Sullivan of being a robot were it not for the fact that robots typically aren't annoying wee chavs.

However, having just slagged off the man who's almost certain to win his third title tonight, I have to praise his play because he's great to watch, especially when he gets in about the black. One thing I've really enjoyed about the BBC coverage this year is the high-quality online videos using the new iPlayer. There's a great page with all the 147s (maximum breaks) ever recorded at the Crucible. Great watching, particularly the 1997 one. One thing that has annoyed me, though, is the crappy remix of the classic BBC snooker theme tune as immortalised by Bill Bailey. If it ain't broke, don't bloody fix it!

Edit: for those who are wondering what I'm on about, see here for the original BBC title credits, and here for the complete track. I can't find a link for the new travesty.

This is my one free week before my exams start, so I'm going to be taking it easy and doing the odd bit of revision intermixed with some part-time development work for the lab team. I want to make sure I can chill out a bit this week before the exams really kick in, especially since the period after the exams looks like being quite busy - I've got to fit in a camping trip before heading down south for a short summer contract with Sun.

Speaking of which, if anyone reading this would like to let me a room in the Camberley / Farnborough / Fleet area between late June and mid September, just gimme a shout :-D . Furnished or unfurnished is fine, though internet access is a must - I'll need it for my home SunRay (as well as the fact that, as a computer geek, I'm not sure I could survive three months without 'net access!).

Sun SPOT demo
Thurs 1/5/08 (Link to this entry)

I held my second tech demo for the Sun@Strathclyde program today. This one was all about SunSPOTs, which are clever little wireless devices with sensors built in for all sorts of interesting applications. Sadly, I got hit with the low attendance that is typical of end-of-semester lectures, with only 12 people coming along. Those who did come seemed to enjoy the demo though, and the lecturers seemed interested in using the technology :-)

Despite what it looks like, I'm not actually telling the SunSPOT off in the picture above - even if it does look a bit like I'm chastising it for some unspecified naughtiness. The demo involved using some fun sample code which made use of the built-in accelerometer to simulate bouncing balls and draw text in the air. There's a short video clip on the Sun@Strathclyde blog, complete with audience participation and me hitting my head on the furniture!

Now that the two demos are out of the way, there won't be much more I'll be doing on the program until the next academic year, since this is the last week of semester and students are now going on exam leave. That includes me, happily, so for the next few weeks it'll just be exams and some part-time work for the lab team. That'll be a welcome change of pace from the last two weeks, which have been somewhat hectic :-)

< Entries for April 2008 | Past entries archive | Entries for June 2008 >

www.lamsey.co.uk | (c) 2007 Liam McBrien | All bytes reserved