4th of May 2005
Oh SHIT
I just tried to close the window as it is a bit nippy. Problem is, one of the runners has been doing something odd recently and I've not been able to close it. To remedy this I tried to push it upwards to assist the window in closing. It closed a bit further, great! So I tried again and it went a bit further. I tried it once more and *SNAP*. I've broken one of the arms that leads from the runner to the window frame itself. And, of course, because these things always have to happen at the worst time imaginable, it had to happen the day before the inspection.
The window is hanging at an angle and tomorrow I've got to hope and pray they don't notice, because I don't even want to hazard a guess as to how much it will cost to get it fixed.
4th of May 2005
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
I watched this last night and it is one of the best films I've ever seen. A lot of people might be put off by the fact that it has Jim Carrey in it (doesn't seem the sort to do a serious film) but he was good in The Truman Show and he was fantastic in ESotSM. It's basically all about love and memory. I'm not going to spoil the film by detailing it all here, so just go and watch it.
2nd of May 2005
Robotics Assignment
Well, having read the code produced by my team-mates for the robotics practical, I believe it's safe to say we're all going to fail. I was doing the more practical stuff like respotting the robot after each trial run, taking measurements, marking distances, waving objects in front of it, etc, etc. Now that I see the code, I think we're screwed.
Also this write-up is ridiculous. We're basically being asked to repeat everything that was written on our original assignment sheet. What's the point of that?!
I'm shattered, I've had enough and I want to go to bed. But instead I am going to spend the next 14 hours or so trying to get this crap assignment into some kind of coherent order.
2nd of May 2005
Nice Extended Weekend
And so ends another weekend. Liz came to Aberystwyth for the weekend. I'd had 8 hours of sleep from Wednesday to Friday so I was bright as a button, as you can imagine. That didn't stop me going out for a drink with her and Woodsta, Surfr, Lambie etc. The reason for so little sleep was that I had been working on my artificial intelligence assignment, creating a Kohonen network to classify Olive Oil data. It didn't work when I handed it in but I didn't care. I gave a good argument as to why it didn't work.
Anyway it was a good weekend with a lot of alcohol. Now I have to write up my robotics practical by tomorrow afternoon (oh look, no sleep tonight either) and then I have to have written up the reasoning behind my retarded soccerbot. I submitted it on Friday before going out for beer. Actually that's not entirely true. Liz and I had walked all the way down the hill when I realised I'd forgotten to submit it, and so I had to walk all the way back up the hill in order to send it to the tutor.
In other news, I am trying to make Firefox stable enough to use as Mozilla's main client is not being maintained anymore.
26th of April 2005
Why Politics Doesn't Work
Some random thoughts on politics, particularly in the UK:
What can be done?
Sadly I don't see many options. The ideas of staging a coup or organising a revolution are bad ones. A coup is a very risky business, and a revolution takes money, time, people, dedication, and getting people to believe in your cause. In this country, getting people to believe in a cause is like trying to push a rock up a hill through treacle. The remaining option is less extreme: Simply vote as best you can in the next election.
Forget about your local council and vote for the party that best represents your views. Forget voting for one party to try and stop another party from gaining power. Don't believe anyone who says "a vote that isn't for Labour or Conservative is a wasted vote," because it's thinking like that which causes the two-party system we have. Do try to think about the bigger picture. Don't just vote for the party which will save you a few quid off your council tax, vote for the party which will ensure that your kids will still have a country to live in when you're six feet under. Don't feel like it's all a waste of time -- there's far too much apathy in this country -- remember that people fought and died to give you the vote.
Finally, don't believe everything a party says on TV. They'll say anything to get voted in.
25th of April 2005
Dreams
My dreaming took a turn for the worse last night when I dreamt that I was in the film The Exorcist which was fucking horrific.
21st of April 2005
Dreams
Last night I dreamt I was living with my Mum in a house that looked suspiciously like a house in Sheffield, but not the one I grew up in. There were some arsehole kids playing in the street with toy swords who did something - I can't remember what - that seriously pissed me off. So I ended up killing the lot of them with their own toy swords.
What the hell is wrong with me?!
20th of April 2005
Dreams
Yesterday night I had a dream that I was living with my parents. In the utility room at my parents house, under the carpet by the door to the kitchen, is an inspection hatch which leads into the pipes that lead to the sewer. In my dream this was open and one of their rabbits was running around down there. Yes, in the sewer. They had let it down there to get some exercise. This seemed perfectly normal at the time. Then I saw my cat down there too (he died about a year and a half ago) and decided I'd better go retrieve him.
I jumped down into the sewer which was easily big enough for a person to walk around in (in reality the pipes are about the size of a fist) and went to find him and the rabbit. I wandered a little and then stumbled across an exact replica of the living room at my parent's house set up in the sewer. My Dad and someone else (possibly my sister but I'm not sure) were watching TV. I can remember having a conversation before waking up wondering what the hell it was all about.
Last night I had a dream that I was living with my parents. Hmmm, notice a theme here? We were in the back garden. I don't remember much of the dream: It seemed to go on for hours and hours but I can only remember bits of it. At one point my mum had a fishing rod which had two hooks attached to the end of the line by another length of line. I had these two hooks embedded in the index fingers of each of my hands, kneeling on the grass screaming in pain as the stupid bitch pulled on the fishing rod and told me to let go. I was trying to tell her that the hooks were in my fingers, but I couldn't talk ... just scream.
I'm not sure how this weird situation was resolved, but I remember that later in the dream I beat the fuck out of her. I was punching her in the face repeatedly, as hard as I could, and her face was turning some interesting colours. Weirdest of all was the fact that she wasn't at all perturbed by this, and was in fact laughing as I punched her again and again and again...
...I swear to god I'm going out of my fucking mind.
19th of April 2005
"Dissertation"
Try plugging the word "dissertation" into Google and look at the results. Right at the top, in the sponsored links section, is
We Write Dissertations
www.ukessays.com, Custom Unpublished UK Dissertations - 2:1 and 1st Quality Guarantee
At first I was incredulous and didn't believe it was real, so I followed the link to have a look. They write dissertations for people. This makes me sick to the stomach: I've been working so fucking hard towards my dissertation and there are people out there who are willing to just buy their way through their degree.
Setting that aside for the moment, would you trust a company that writes on their website,
Whatever subject your studying ...
We give you, our client the edge, providing ...
If your are looking for the best essay service ...
... in fact were the only essays company ...
...to write your dissertation for you? A company that claims, "We are exceptionally proud of the standard of our essays and dissertations" but then goes on to use incorrect capitalisation, miss apostrophes, and several spelling errors.
I'm speechless.
Anyway I am now off to the department to see a friend hand his dissertation in, then we're off to the pub for a celebratory beer.
18th of April 2005
It Is Done
The dissertation is finished, printed, bound, burnt (the CD, not the print-out) and ready to be handed in. I can't believe how huge it is. When I collected the print-out I thought someone else's dissertation had printed out on top of it, but when I checked I found it was all mine. The two copies are sat next to me. 6 months of work in two little books...
It's just sort of caught up with me. Just now, while typing that last paragraph. I've just realised that I've finished my dissertation. It's over and done with. On the spine it says "Aberystwyth 2005". For the rest of my life I'm going to be looking at that and thinking "ahh yeah, I remember 2005".
I'll probably remember it quite differently in 50 years time though. By then I'll have forgotten all of the sleepless nights, all of the cash problems, the piles of work so high that terrorists keep launching planes at them.
I need to get some sleep once I've finally handed this in, but I don't know whether I'll be able to or not. Maybe I'll go to the pub and celebrate instead. Afterall it's not every day you print off nearly 200 pages, bind them, stick a CD to them and then give them to a secretary now is it?