Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

It now being past 8am I have admitted defeat with regards to servlets. I got mine compiling but it still wouldn’t run so I’ve included it in my source code submission for some kind of consideration however small that may be. All in all though this has been a joke of a coursework and while I will be making a separate blog post about it I feel the need to rant a bit here too. My mysterious error which plagued me for hour after hour just randomly started working at 2:30. I had gone on and coded further stuff by then but this essentially placed me back behind everyone else at 2:30am!

Anyway, we’re through it now, term is over! At least for me. Sort of. I still technically have TKD today but I doubt I will go even on the off chance I am awake. I also have to sort out a few meetings with people next week with regards to my FYP and such not to mention all the work I have to catch up on for things like my websites and of course there is always FYP and lots of revision for exams that need to rescue my spiraling grade.

All in all, this isn’t the joyous end of term I was hoping for.

• The University of Toronto Press publishes a journal named the Canadian Journal of Linguistics
• Journal papers require a needless amount of special formatting
• Weka isn’t a particularly useful tool
• Don’t be fooled into thinking because you’re taking a DB module, the software you will be using will support databases
• Don’t assume that because you are on a computing degree your modules will be anything to do with computing
• Don’t assume that because you are on a computing degree your assessment will be based on technical knowledge
• Don’t assume that because you are a third year computing student they won’t try and teach you how to use Google
• If a module leader explicitly tells you not to use CRISP-DM, don’t believe them
• Data mining happens, and I quote, “by magic”
• Data mining has no value and isn’t useful in language research
• Data mining has no value and isn’t useful, period

Last night saw my first TKD grading. It was slightly tiring to say the least lol. Lesson one, make sure you eat something that day. Luckily I had had breakfast but not everybody had. These people were easy to spot collapsed at the back of the hall. In the end I passed though with a less than perfect grade but it was a pass none of the less.

Well you can’t have any. Because yesterday Colton Mill ran out :D. And somebody had to go chasing all the way over to Oakwood to get some. Fun times.

I love all-nighters. There is just something about spending all night in DEC-10 that is magical. I’m going to miss it next year though I have little doubt that whatever I end up doing will involve all night coding sessions.

Today being the GI31 deadline, myself, Kieran, Sarann, Nima and Will were in here all night working away. I submitted it an hour or so ago though I might go back for a little more work on it. I couldn’t focus earlier but I’m getting my vision back now lol. What I really want to do is sleep though. Having worked the weekend before last I then had Atheist Week, then the A-Soc Weekend Away then I was doing my FYP on Sunday and GI31 late-nighters all this week. All in all it’s really cut into my sleep.

After trying to get hold of my TKD gear for 2 months now due to a combination of either myself or Mr. Smith not being at training I finally got my gear today! It’s all very exciting though I almost missed it. I left training half an hour early due to the combination that a) I haven’t slept properly since before Atheist Week so am exhausted b) didn’t have any sparring gear and c) needed to get back to labs to finish my GI31 coursework but it turns out that Mr. Derrig turned up with my gear just after I’d left! Luckily he phoned me after training and being in DEC-10 I went down to pick it up. So, bring on the fun on Friday.

I did warn people that allowing poor people to go to university was a bad idea.

I was right. Leeds Met Union have declared themselves bankrupt. They were losing somewhere in the region of £80,000 a year and have been for a long time. Because the people who go to Leeds Met are pennyless losers with no future. And now they don’t even have a union. That will teach you to blow all your money on sports facilities!

I learnt a new word today.

Interestingly, when we were in meeting room 5 for the faith & cultural assembly meeting today the previous group (or a group before them) had left there work on the white board. Which consisted of the terms dogging and cottaging as well as a few other terms. Which leaves me wondering who the last group in that room were. Having mentioned it around, it also appears to have left Kieran wondering what the last group in there were doing? :D.

How hard is it to get an internet connection?

A lot f***ing harder than it should be!

You would think that in London you get get an internet connection but apparently not. The hostel, which we picked because of it’s wifi access, didn’t have it’s wifi access working and none of The Cloud’s wifi hotspots would give me an IP address despite many, many attempts.

I had to resort to getting my emails at 9.6k using my phone as a Bluetooth modem which I had the pleasure of paying for which took half an hour of fiddling with to get it to work including disabling G3 and this just failed to work all together on Sunday during my repeated attempts.

Then I finally got home to find UK Online was down AGAIN and it took me 15 minutes to get that back online just so that I could finally get an SSH connection to get my server back online!

Feel the burn baby, feel the burn!

It’s 3am and I’m still not in bed yet and I have to be up at about 8ish. I’ve been busy. Yet interestingly enough my to-do list is now running at 6 pages – 3 pages for the main list and 3 sub-lists coming off that.

So who else is feeling the pressure from third year?

One thing that does occur to me though. We have another 3-4 weeks of uni and then we have a month off. It happens again at Easter. And then we have 3 months off over summer (or at least we did, we don’t this year). So why are we ramming all the stress into like half a year when we could spread it out over so much more time.

I mean sure, we’ll get some FYP and revision done over the holiday but not as much as term time. There are no deadlines over the holidays. There are ones for the end true but you don’t have the pressure of term time. You can probably make a case for needing it to work full time to top up the old bank account and there are probably other reasons too, but still – personally, I would trade a little of those 5 months of holiday for a little less stress during term time.