Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Well we are on to day 4 of this week (some would argue that it is day 5, while this is ground in solid reason, the week really starts on Monday officially or not :p) and so far Michelle and Phil have slept together every night this week. Going by the alternation so far it’s Phil’s turn to spend the night at Lupton though this whole reversal thing is quite a new concept.

How will it work tonight though? We are going to the Quilted Llama but that is at like 11-12 so it’s not really a late night thing and most of us are probably going to come back to DEC-10 and do some more work on our coursework. Really late night coding session in which Michelle misses the last bus perhaps? Lupton is in walking distance though so even that is not a sure bet. I’m sure those two crazy kids will find some excuse though :D.

This is not good. I left Phil’s early so I could get to sleep at a decent time and I now find that a) it’s past 1am and b) I’ve over-run the amount of time I was going to spend here by so long that the album I set playing has now finished. I plan on getting up at 8:20 tomorrow, I might set my alarm for 8:00 so I can spend 20 minutes thinking about getting up.

Anyway, went into DEC-10 today to do some C, Michelle was in there finally making a start on her coursework. We decided to go to the Quilted Llama and so met Phil there (everyone else was being a big geek and doing C coding). Given that we were low on numbers we ended up going to McDonalds for some food and then going back to Phil’s to drink and play cards. It was a cool night but I wanted to get a decent amount of sleep so I left about 11:15. Missed the 95 which came past 7 minutes early! It didn’t say Bodington Hall on it either so it was going past by the time I realised this mysterious bus was actually the 11:31 95 even though it was coming past at 11:24. So I ended up getting the 28 home.

Oh one more thing about tonight’s activities, Phil came up with the intriguing theory that Wendy House on Saturday could be the first of the double parter with the second being the aftermath in the few days before everyone goes home. Well Wendy House is really the climax of the events, I’m not going to rule out such a scenario as it doesn’t have to end on the climax, I don’t think all the seasons of DC did.

Once I reached here I decided to do a bit of work on Particle Wiki as we’re releasing a new version of most of the Particle Soft scripts to close security holes. I decided to go as far as writing a captcha for it in a continued effort to curb spam. Though I’m not big on the idea of doing that for a wiki so I think it will be disabled by default and let users enable it as they wish. It will be on the official demo no doubt.

Today has been an interesting day for script development though as we released new versions of two of our products, both for security reasons. It’s the first time Particle Soft has ever been prompted to make a new release because of security (we’ve had a few issues in the past but none of them prompted a new release, they were just added to the next release with all the exciting new features). It’s not like it’s something I didn’t expect though as it was bound to happen eventually, I suppose it just means people are actually using the script if people are hacking it and publishing security alerts about it.

Season finales are often too parters. Less so in teen dramas as it’s so continuously emo that people would die from emotional overload if they did. So it is better saved for the last series ever of the show. Still, they are not unheard of so there is always a chance. What is the first of a two parter though? Bondi would be a good choice but then it’s a little early. It did have some of the drama you would expect from a two parter though.

I think the other obvious choice would be Wire on Friday. It has the proximity to take on the role but will there be drama? I’m not particuarly clear on the guest list so far so I can’t make any accurate predictions as to who could cause drama. Unless Sophie is secretly in love with me. I like to think that about pretty much everyone I know but I don’t really have any evidence to suggest it’s true so I think that, that is quite an unlikely angle for the drama to come from.

There is also Thursday but we don’t really have much in the way of plans other than some llamage as ever (it’s like law we have to go there after exams, not that we need an exam to go there ;)). I think the stakes are set up for quite an interesting few days though, it shall all go down soon.

Despite saying that at the very latest accommodation services would contact me by the middle of May the email to let me know that I have got a place (I knew it anyway as I went down and spoke to them but that’s not the point, a lot of people haven’t and are wondering what’s goung on) today!

Ok, I can let that slip but the email informs me I will be paying £4,300 for the privilage. I was expecting a bill somewhere in this region even though I asked for a cheaper room so again, I can let that slip. But what has really pissed me off is at the bottom of the email it informs me that…

Meals and other services are provided during term time only.

Let me get this straight – I am paying over £110 in rent and for two months I am there I am not even going to get meals included in that? That is an absolute joke!

I miss Java, I really do. Java is stupid and fiddly and I’m fully aware that C is a more low level language to give programmers more control but I’m not sure I want that control. It’s an absolute marathon to do anything! All I want to do is validate that a string has something in and if not, set it to something else. But that is a complete mission involving defining temperory variables, invoking string functions and a million other little things. The programs we are going to come out with from this project are just going to be so bad (which exception to Matt’s, Kieran’s and George’s probably).

I’m sure I’ll slowly come round on C but at the moment I only have until Friday to finish my coursework and that doesn’t really include Friday as I am moving back home then and it doesn’t include Thursday either as we have an exam in the morning and then we need to spend Thursday afternoon lazing around in the Quilted Llama.

Given it was Monday yesterday we decided to drop by Bondi for a drink or two. That said, we actually started off in Mine at the union for an Attic Project gig which means we didn’t get to Bondi until past 11. We missed out on like 15 minutes drinking time but there wasn’t much of a queue (there was a little one) so it was all good.

We managed a count of 11, myself, Michelle, Sarann, Fonze, Kieran, Socialist Matt, Maths Chris, B, Phil, Norm and Claire and spent most of the night hanging round the tables by Bar Atlantic. I like to think romance was in the air as when we left, Norm took Claire home, Phil took Michelle home and Maths Chris took B home. I need a heart emoticon :p. Unfortunatly John is on holiday at the moment so he wasn’t here to take Sarann home.

If I don’t find a job soon I may have to take a break from Bondi though. My rapidly diminishing financial situation has reached the point that cash machines are turning me away, it’s really not good.

I’m quite pleased with how my SE16 coursework has progressed so far. I have got a lot of it done based on what I did at home today (the outline at least) and the last few hours I have spent in DEC-10 which is where the bulk of my code has been written. I think I will come back to DEC-10 tomorrow as there are various people around to help when I run into problems and I have actually been able to concentrate on my code. I’m down to the point where I have a to-do list so I recon I can finish it all off tomorrow.

Well, that’s the title I was going to use as I walked towards the union to get myself a drink before hitting the computer lab. But I didn’t make it from the union to red route before the heavens opened up and so technically it did rain on me although it was only just starting when I left the union so I didn’t get that wet and I think I missed the massively heavy downpour.

If it continues to rain (which I think it’s stopped already to be honest) it’s going to put a downer on tonight’s fun at Bondi. And if the ground stays wet it could also be annoying for spending entire days doing nothing in the park. It may even motivate us to do some work :o. But to be fair, it was baking hot when I left Bod to come to the lab and get some work done so I think that’s quite impressive :D. I need to remember to swing by the library and pick up some books.

I say part I, given I get kicked out on Saturday there could well never be a part II but I don’t think this is conclusive as I didn’t actually walk back from uni (or even more of a treck, town) but I just walked back from Michelle’s and it wasn’t too bad – 35 minutes door to door. Add on to that it’s like 5 in the morning, I was carrying a fairly heavy back pack and we had just walked back from Sarann’s and that is not too bad.

So I recon it’s walkable to go from uni (or even town if you’re feeling lively) back to Bod if you don’t have any bags or anything with you. If you are just walking home from a club then it’s doable, probably in under an hour from uni. It’s quite a nice walk as well, once you get past Headingly at least.

So to back track a bit, we went to the park today and hung around there for a while. Then when Michelle and Sarann went off to town, myself and Kieran headed to the Llama and on finding it was shut we diverted to our back-up watering hole, The Library and played some pool before Michelle, Sarann and Claire joined us later. This ended up with a plan to get Chinese food and go back to Sarann’s. We ended up watching Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and chatting about loads of different things until 4:20.

It was a really good night to be honest, we had a really good talk between us about loads of different things and I didn’t really get tired so me and Kieran were up for just continuing. Michelle was really tired by this point though so we headed off as I was going to crash at hers. When we reached it I was too awake to sleep though so I thought I might as well try the walk back to Bod. I’m still quite awake although getting more tired. I was going to watch some DC now but once again I’m foiled by the fact I didn’t bring all my boxsets! Might watch something else. Then get some sleep and get up at like 12 if possible and go to DEC-10 to get some C done.

This could be useful…

Sarann: “Where does God fit into the universe?”
Michelle: “He lives on Pluto”

Enjoy.