GenesisDreams

Another Long Week

Friends - Fun - Personal - University - Work Well it’s Friday again, and I’m on the train down to Nottingham. I have some time now to myself, to think, to reflect, and to write an entry for my blog! This week was very intensive. I did an all-nighter Sunday night, and another Tuesday night. I racked up more than 80 working hours this last week, so effectively did two weeks work in one. This whole last month I’ve been averaging 60 hours a week. It’s pay day today though, and I’ve got a rather large pay packet coming to me, so I’m happy. ^_^ The drinks are definitely on me tonight!! I’ve been doing some really excellent work recently, and because of it I’ve got another promotion. I’m now the design authority for the Enterprise Project Management system I am producing, which means a lot more authority and responsibility. Hopefully another pay rise too; I’m talking to the boss about that next week. So we are now examining the next phase of functionality. I’m writing documentation and getting everything ready for security auditing. We have to comply with BS779 because of the restricted and secret information that is being held on the system. We are entering an exciting stage of the project and I’m really looking forward to getting onto the next lot of functionality. But enough about work. According to Nikkie I am now officially the best boyfriend in the world. Because I’ve been so busy this last week I haven’t been able to call her as much as I would like. She has been really busy too, doing her neurology placement in a hospital in Boston. She’s been feeling a little sad that we have both been too busy to keep in better contract, so to cheer her up I got a dozen red roses delivered to the ward she was working on in the hospital . She said she got such a shock when they arrived, and has had a massive grin on her face ever since. I’ve had a massive grin of my face all day too knowing about the surprise she would get. I can’t wait to get to Nottingham and see her. In other news I talked to mum and Fragma last night for about an hour each. It’s the first time I talked to either of them on the phone since I got back from Australia! I know! How bad of a son/friend am I!! Mum had a lot of news to tell, and we chatted for ages. She told me that she had received a thing from the University of Queensland saying that I had been admitted to the Dean’s Honour Roll for my Bachelor of Business Management, which I thought was a scream. I hardly use my Engineering degree, let alone my Business one. I guess it’s good to put on my CV, but I still think of it as a bit of a joke considering the amount of work I put into it. Mum said she lost the lapel pin that came with it, but I told her not to worry. I’m never going to wear it. After speaking to mum I called Fragma at work. He works harder than I do the crazy man! Nikkie reckons it is all his fault that I am working this hard. She says he is a bad influence on me :). We chatted about all my friends back home, what they are up to, what new things that have been happening. We also chatted the normal bollocks that we do. It was great to talk to him again. I’ve got to stop being so slack and call my friends back home more. I think I’ve only called Ads and Wulfen once or twice each, and Fragma only a few more times than that. I left some really great friends behind in Aus and I really need to start making more of an effort to keep in touch. With that thought in mind I’m going to finish this blog entry here and spend my remaining battery power writing emails all of those friends of mine who have been slipping away recently. Expect an email soon guys!

These little piggies went to Amsterdam

Friends - Fun - Guest Entry - Personal - Travel - University This is Nikkie. Michael asked me to do a guest entry so here goes... The physiotherapy course is so hectic that this is the first time in a year that we have been privileged enough to have been given a week off while all the other students are busy celebrating the arrival of an 18 week summer holiday. I grabbed the opportunity to whisk Jade, my best friend and housemate, off to Amsterdam for a wild night out to celebrate her 21st birthday. Before our adventure could commence, we had to endure painstaking revision and an exam which took place on the Wednesday morning (1st June) at 8.45am. Jade and I were both very nervous for the practical exam as you never have enough time to think and appear a fool if you don’t have the answers at the drop of a hat. The exam consists of a case scenario, 15 minutes thinking time and then joining the examiners to discuss all the relevant anatomy and clinical reasoning to arrive at an appropriate diagnosis. Next, you discuss a management plan and have to demonstrate 2 treatment techniques on a model. Finally, after what seems like forever, you document everything done with the patient, including treatment dosage, gained consent, safety tests, advice given and when you would next like to see them. Jade and I were given the same scenario of a patient with tension headaches so we came out of the exam intrigued as to what treatment we had each given. Luckily, we both appeared to administer the same treatment for similar reasons, so with that out of the way we left to get ready for our trip! I drove, for the first time, up to Liverpool. We arrived, after a relatively stress free journey to the city but as we approached Michael’s flat, things became slightly more traumatic. At this point it is fairly relevant to mention that Michael has lived in Liverpool for 5 weeks but still appears to walk around with his eyes closed, hence the reason he (and Graeme) will be blamed for getting us lost! We ended up travelling around a roundabout 5 times until they could meet us there and take us the right way! So, we eventually arrived at the flat, piled our belongings up the 3 flights of stairs and headed out for some lunch in a typical English café. The boys left shortly to return to work and us girls took the opportunity for some light shopping before our lift to the airport. Jade and I are both fanatical about fashion and the idea of retro and vintage clothing delights us! As a result, spotting 4 charity shops to rummage through determined the activities of the following few hours. At around 5pm, the boys had finished work for the day and we hopped in the car, laden with plastic bags full of vintage 1940’s purses, tops, scarves and the odd few bits including a wooden elephant names Widnes! So much for the light shopping trip! Graeme and Michael dropped Jade and I off at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport and I managed to shop as soon as we got there, buying a fantastic golden yellow leather handbag. We boarded the plane at 7pm and by 11pm were sat in a bar in Amsterdam. An exam at 8.45am in a British university, and barring in Amsterdam by 11pm - I love Europe! Staying in a cheap hostel in the red light district ensured we were surrounded by lots of young people. We quickly re-applied some lip-gloss and changed our shoes to heels and headed out. Passing the local chippy, we were unable to resist the classic Dutch chips and mayo. I got back into the swing of the language and was soon chatting to the chip-shop man only having slight difficulty understanding the Amsterdam dialect, which is very different to that I am used to. Once our appetites had been satisfied, we followed the crowds past some very sexy and virtually naked women in doorways to a bar for a beer. Soon after our arrival we began chatting to the barman who, much to our disgust, told us we were not in a ‘green’ café, although smoking in there was permitted. We rushed off to find somewhere selling pre-rolled joints, as neither of us were in any fit state to start rolling ourselves. On the recommendation of the guy behind the counter, whom I now realise we should never have trusted, we bought 4 joints for the equivalent of about £10. Back in the previous bar we lit up and began to chat to a bunch of Aussie men. It amazed me how many Australians there were in Amsterdam, most travelling Europe after uni. Mindless chit chat revealed that these particular guys were all living in London as teachers although one had flown in from Sydney that afternoon. They were a laugh and bought us a couple of drinks so we decided to stick with them for a while. By about 1am, we had broken off and un-surprisingly only two guys remained. We visited a few more bars, smoked and drunk a bit more while playing cards in a chilled bar. The lads knew where our hostel was, as they were in the same one, so we began our walk home. We were halfway there when Jade was cornered by one of the lads and had to apologise that he must have got the wrong idea from her. Realising that he was not going to get anywhere with her that night, he swiftly left. The other guy, however, was more persistent and we had to team up to get rid of him, which we eventually did by hiding in our dorm! Although I had shared a dorm with mates on camping trips ( I was in the scouts) and on school trips, nothing quite prepared me for this. It was a dorm of 20 beds and great fun. We sat up a while chatting crap due to our stoned and drunken state when we over heard a couple arguing over a guy having been in a peep show instead of meeting up with his girl! I’m sure this would have still amused me sober but we were both having serious difficulty in resisting laughter and continued to listen to the bickering trying to work out whether the guy’s story was genuine or he had in-fact been in a sex show as his lady was stating! By about 3am we got ready for bed and fell into light, interrupted sleep. We awoke at 8am with the sun streaming into the room and the dorm already half empty. After showering and attempting to make ourselves look remotely human we wandered downstairs for a full English breakfast, and a mug of incredibly strong tea. Our persistent friend from the previous night pulled up a chair questioning us about where and when we were leaving Amsterdam. Making quick excuses and ensuring we were sufficiently dosed up with caffeine we walked in the direction of the main shopping street – Kalver straat. I had been to Amsterdam previously with relatives living nearby so was slightly more orientated than the average tourist and we found Kalver straat fairly quickly. We shopped, had some lunch in the Vroom and Dressmann restaurant, a definite must for a cheap detoxifying meal, and shopped some more. After a few more trips to the cash-point and laden with bags, we returned to the red light district for some major vintage shopping. I got a pair of ankle height grey slouch boots which I had been on the hunt for ages. All in all, we spent over £200 of our student overdrafts on clothes and accessories, all very worthwhile! After all, you spend what money you actually have, and then the bank decides to give you more! No, I don’t always have such a lax attitude to money but do find it very hard to resist a bargain! By 5pm we were exhausted and grabbed our bags from the station lockers and returned to Schipol airport for a ‘maccy D’s’ (Mcdonalds) and to catch our flight home. We landed back in Liverpool at 10pm and were greeted by the boys who drove us back to Michael’s flat. Shattered from our adventure we went to bed and slept soundly. The following morning, Michael strolled into work at 10am and Jade left to rush back to Manchester to grab fresh clothes for a night out with some old friends in Newcastle! I, on the other hand, pottered around the flat with my eyes half closed all day trying to recover from abusing my body so much. The next few days have consisted of more pottering and trying to get Michael’s hole of a flat slightly more liveable! I have cleaned, washed, tidied and sorted but this is the first and last time I will do, so he will have to become domesticated from now on! We did a very ‘grown-up’ shop of cleaning products yesterday evening which Michael clearly needed some guidance on - he was shocked to discover that bathroom and kitchen cleaner were different! My work here is definitely challenging! On Saturday night we visited Liverpool’s night life which I definitely felt was something else! I felt like I was in Ibiza, obviously without the gorgeous weather, it was very surreal. We sat in a square outside surrounded by bars and a very concentrated amount of gorgeous people. The women were all slim, verging on the border of too slim, had all been bronzed, either by a bottle or some hard work on a sun bed, and were made up with very expensive looking clothing. Graeme, Ben and Michael, un-surprisingly, were in awe of them all, [Editor’s Note: I was more in awe of my fantastic girlfriend of course!- Wigs], as was I, but my eye was placed more on enjoying the surrounding fashion statements. I must state though, the women were some of the best I have ever seen, obviously not including celebs, models etc, only with the downside of the Liverpudlian accent! The men were incredibly well groomed and also in expensive clothing. The music was brilliant, Michael said that it was much like the dance music ‘back home’. Being out with the lads I had to keep up with the pace of drinking which, with a reputation of a lightweight I did quite well, going drink for drink with them. Overall, Liverpool was a great night out, expensive but great. Our trek home left much to be desired. We caught the night bus home after waiting for a taxi for over an hr. On the walk home from the bus stop we got separated losing Ben, our other scouser housemate who had come home for the summer, and fell asleep with him not having returned to the flat. We woke with a startle the next morning realising Ben was still not home. I dressed hurriedly, on a bad hangover, to jog around and try and find him. Michael eventually got him on his mobile at the same time as I came across him asleep in the back of his car! Safe, but still very very pissed he came up to the flat to sleep off the alcohol. I went for a 20minute run along the beach and came back when Michael and I decided to return to bed till 3pm. Another crazy but fantastic night out. To think that a year ago, I was still in Newark Hall, had only known Michael 6 months, was a fresher and living a very dependant life shows how much things can change. Life is fantastic but it has been hard to get to this point; I considered dropping the physiotherapy course during the harder times, Michael moved 3 hrs away from Nottingham just when we finally got together, I moved house and Graeme’s changed university course. The summer is only a month away, I have one more outpatients placement to get through and then I will be back in Liverpool living and working here for 6 weeks. Third year will be here sooner than later and then I’ll be a qualified physiotherapist and will have to become even slightly responsible! On second thoughts, I’ll delay that as long as I can, go travelling, live a little before pinning myself to a 9-5 job. The end of university is so close, yet so far. I’m only two thirds through it and things have changed so much since arriving in September as a fresher. Change is good. Hard but good.

The Party Is Over

Friends - Fun - Personal - University - Work University is over. It's time to retire that category I think. I doubt I'll be writing anything else University related any time soon. I've been lazing about the last week. Well partying about is more apt a description. I decided to take last week completely off, have a holiday, a break, a brief hiatus from the stresses of the real world. So I partied hard the first weekend after my exams, and went out almost every night last week. I hardly got any sleep, and feel great for doing it. We went out to Bar BZA, The Works, Dogma, and a bunch of other places. On Friday night we went out to Ocean. We went there almost every Friday night all of last term, but hadn't been yet so far this term. It was the same as I remembered, crap music, but a lot of fun. Viki had her camera and took a bunch of pics... and here they are! First Picture, Second Picture, Third Picture, Fourth Picture. So the party is over. I've got to settle down now. My task this week, and the following week, and the week after, and for as many weeks after that as needed to succeed, is to get a job. I need to start working if I want to remain in this country. I'm going to try my hardest to stay in Nottingham, I don't want to leave here, leave the friends I've made. This will make it more difficult to get a job, but I'm going to do my best. I want to stay here. I don't know what will happen, where things will lead, but I know I want it to happen here. Written while listening to Crazy Sunshine by The Pillows.

It's A Bit Fuzzy

Friends - Fun - University Where do I start? I’m only just sobering up. I didn’t sleep Thursday night. I was procrastinating as usual, and hadn’t done any real study yet. I had two exams the next day, and they were my last exams ever. So I stayed up all night, did a little bit of study, and then set off to Uni for my 9am exam. The exam went well, thankfully the questions I had prepared for came up, so I am pretty sure I managed to pass. I couldn’t wait to get out of there though, and as soon as 11am cranked round, I got up and fled that exam room as fast as possible. I met up with Bruce and Ben, who also had 9am lectures and we went down to the Ark, the student union bar. Let the silliness begin! We got in there, grabbed a seat, grabbed a beer, and started to kick back. That morning’s exam was Ben’s last and Bruce didn’t have another one until Saturday. Nikkie and Viki soon came and joined us, both of them having no exams to do either. And so I drank beer and got progressively drunk. While I was getting drunk, I pulled out my text book and past exam papers for Computer Security. I had my final exam starting at 4:30pm that afternoon and I was planning on doing it completely drunk! I also had to do some form of study for it. I wasn’t really worried. I figured I could go in and do most of it with my eyes closed. For an advanced subject it was pretty straight forward. However I wanted to be sure I could answer it in my increasingly drunken state. My friends thought I was crazy, but I’ve been so damn responsible my entire university career I wanted for once, for this final time, to do something really stupid. So I drank my beer, and then drank another, and drank some more. I spent almost five hours in the Ark, and I lost track of how many pints I had. I think Ben, Bruce and I bought two rounds each, but I can’t be sure. When it approached 4:30 though I left the other’s and went to my exam, almost falling over on the way. I don’t know how I managed it, but for a full hour I went into overdrive. I was in a drunken state of power writing. My booklet was almost full by the time the exam was over. When the time was up, I stood up, managed not to topple over, and triumphantly left the building. I had done it. I was finished. I was free at least. We had made plans to go out that night, so I walked straight home after my exam. The fresh air did some good in sobering me up, and it gave me time to think about my situation. Things are never going to be the same again. It's like the end of high school all over again, except I'm older, wiser, and better able to appreciate it. For some reason I had the Gurge’s Black Bugs mp3 on my phone, so I listened to that the whole way home. It wasn’t really relevant to my feelings, but it was still great to listen to. There will be many turning points in my life. Events which will shape the person I am. This wasn’t one of them. Those sorts of events are random, interactions that are spontaneous, and can change your direction forever. This was just an ending; one I knew was coming for a long time, and one I should have prepared myself for better. Anyway I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop and get on with the rest of my story. Friday night we went out to Bar BZR, but not before drinking half a bottle of Absolut Vodka and some 70 proof Czech Absinthe which really didn’t agree with me. BZR had triples for £2.50, so while I was there I had even more vodka. At about 12pm we headed out to the Works, where they played fantastic music and I danced until closing time. Most of the night is a blur. Drinking for more than 12 hours straight took its toll, and I crashed out at some point after getting home, somehow, and woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and no recollection at all of the specifics of what happened the night before. All good fun! My sore head didn’t stop me going out again the following night though. We didn’t go clubbing, instead we went to this bar called Dogma and met up with Nikkie after she went to an Ice Hockey game. Lots more drinking occurred, again I don’t remember much, but I do know that I got a taxi home early with the girls, for which Bruce, Graeme and Ben gave me lots of stick for. I am tired now. Its 3am Sunday night and there is more drinking ahead of me tomorrow. We are doing the slab challenge tomorrow, so I need to be rested and prepared for it. I’ll report back on my progress when I sober up from it ^_^ Ah my liver is going to hate me after the end of this week. I’ll start being serious come February, but for the rest of January, I am partying hard! Written while listening to Black Bugs by Regurgitator.

Penultimate Day

Quotes - University Ok this is an entry completely devoid of any real substance, but tomorrow I will undertake my last two (undergraduate) University exams ever! Of course I am procrastinating, avoiding doing the work I should be doing, and thus, here I am writing this… La! La! La! Told you this entry was devoid of any real substance. At this point in my schooling career, nearing the end of seventeen years of continuous education, I would like to think I’ve followed Mark Twain’s outlook on it all. "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." By this time tomorrow I'll be a free man. Hopelessly intoxicated on Absinthe. Written while listening to Everything is Alright by Fourtet (damnit, it only took me 2 minutes 31 seconds to write this entry, should have picked a longer song ^_^)

The End Is Nigh

Television - University This afternoon I sat my third last exam ever. It was on Financial Management, and as usual, I had done far, far too little work for it. For the first time I was actually coming close to almost fearing I might fail. It was a little scary actually. If I failed this subject it would completely screw up my plans. I wouldn’t be able to graduate, I would need to finish off just one more subject, and I would have to do it back at UQ… ewww The exam went well though, and I think I managed to somehow get a pass. I’ve got two more exams on Friday, but all of tomorrow to bum around and not do study for them. Then comes Friday night, when I’ll get absolutely shitfaced! ^_^ In other news, and in the current trend of me avoiding doing any study, I've now watched the first five episodes of season four of 24! I completely agree with the comments Brendan made to this entry about this season being much stronger up till this point than the equivalent place in last season. I’m actually glad that Jack is the only real main character back. Looks like he’ll get to do some real badass shooting in episode 6 as well! P.S. Brendan, I’ll be on Yahoo this weekend… when I sober up. Listening to Sometimes by My Bloody Valentine.

Another Weekend Expires

Friends - University

Thanks Calvin for the title. Calvin's (relatively) new blog can be found here.

A pretty uneventful weekend all round. Not too much in the way of distractions. Though I was awake from Friday morning at 10am till Sunday morning at 3am. I'm kinda tired now. I just got up. The weekend isn't officially over yet, but it is for me. I've really got to start doing some work. I had my Japanese exam Saturday morning. Went to it having not slept at all the night before, having not done any work at all in the days before it, and think I did alright overall. It is the first time I've ever done absolutely no preparation for an exam, but this one I didn't even need to pass, I didn't need credit for it back home, and I couldn't find the energy at all to study, so I didn't. Thankfully the work I did during the semester paid off and I'm pretty sure I scraped through a decent mark.

So now I'm on to study Financial Management, the subject whose average mark last year was 46%. Joy!

The Hacker Comes To Town

Friends - Travel - University On Tuesday I had my Digital Business Communication exam. I probably studied less for this exam than any other exam in my entire university career except for Introduction to Chemical Engineering back in first year. I just couldn't work up the enthusiasm. Things kept on distracting me; I let them keep on distracting me. I am pretty sure I passed, but I know I didn't do well. Usually for me passing isn't the issue, what I am generally unsure of is how well I did. Yeah well this time, that's not the case. Oh well, one bright spark was that during my exam, Jimmy the Hacker flew into Nottingham East Midlands Airport from Rome... Yes just Jimmy the Hacker, not Ads in sight. I haven't really carried on my reporting about Ads other than mentioning that we met up with them in Paris and Amsterdam in December. Well he and Jimmy have travelled all around the place since then, and though Jimmy has to be back in Australia next week to start work, Ads hasn't organised anything specific to do now that he has finished Uni. So he got his plane ticket extended, and is currently off on his own doing some more travelling. I think it's a fantastic idea and wish him all the best. He said he will pop by Nottingham at some point in his travels, so I'm looking forward to that (I hope I'm still here by then). Anyway Jimmy the Hacker showed up, toting a big bottle of Absinthe from Prague. I had just come from my DBC exam, and I had some DBC coursework due the next day. It was supposed to be a 3000 work report, and at that point I had written about 500 words. So we sat around and talked for a while, not getting blind drunk and hallucinating, and then at about 10pm I started working on finishing my report. Boring I know, but even in my current state of apathy I couldn't hand in just 500 words for this coursework. Jimmy stayed another night and then headed off this morning. I don't think I was very good company, I've just buried in my books, or on my computer doing work all the time he has been here (well some of the time). He is off to London now for a couple of days before heading home, so I hope he has more fun there than he did here. All my housemates are of course studying as well, so there was really no one here to entertain him or show him around at all. Poor effort on my part I must admit. Anyway so now I am back to procrastinating, writing this entry instead of doing so much needed work. I've got a Japanese written exam at 9am on Saturday morning and then three more exams next week. Ah the life of a Uni student ^_^

Going Nowhere, Going Somewhere

Friends - Music - Personal - Quotes - University 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where --' said Alice. 'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation. ~ Lewis Carroll, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Following on from my previous post; some things are going nowhere, because we have decided that is for the best, while other things are going somewhere, because I've finished University for good in less than two weeks, and then I have my whole world ahead of me. Also, inspired by Brendan's effort over on Digital Iris and looking for ways to procrastinate, I decided to make a quiz. So let me present Michael's Mystery Quiz!. Man I am so restless. I really can't get into the mood to study. I am in a Paul van Dyk mood at the moment, and I always listen to trance when I am attempting to study, so right now I'm listening to his We Are Alive.

Nihongo no benkyo o shimasu

Japan - University I had my first exam today. A 20 minute Japanese speaking exam worth 30% of my marks for the subject. It was more difficult that I expected, but I think I did well overall. So my exam period has officially started, and boy do I have a lot of work to do. I have slacked off this semester more than any other semester in my entire university career other than my very first semester in first year. For two of my subjects, both with 100% exams, I have barely been to any lectures. Perhaps two for one of them and three for the other. I have to catch up a whole semester's work over the next few days. I have five exams in the next two weeks, plus two pieces of coursework due. So my social life is effectively going to be dead for a while. That's ok though because all my housemates are in the same situation so there won’t be anyone going out and having fun. This is my last semester. No more exams after this. I think this fact is partly to blame for my apathy. I really just don’t care anymore about exams. I am over it. My marks won’t count here. All I have to do is pass. At the moment though I am struggling to find the enthusiasm to do the work just needed to pass, let alone doing extra work to do well. I just can't wait till the 21st, when it's all over, and I can party! ... And then start thinking about what I really want to do with the rest of my life.

Insomnia

Friends - Music - University Insomnia I've had a crazy week. Monday night was Judge Jules, Tuesday night was utterly sleepless and totally enriching, Wednesday night was Christmas clubbing at The Works and tonight... well tonight I am going to see Faithless play live at the Nottingham Arena! All the while I am trying to finish off two very large course work reports (the Digital Business Communication one is approaching 35 pages now, while the Computer Security one is pushing 60!). That hasn’t stopped me though from enjoying my last week in Nottingham for this year. I’ve just had to cut back on a few non-essentials, such as sleep. I exhausted, but not tired at all! Faithless! I can’t wait! I know the gig is going to be fantastic. I’ve just got another couple of hours to kill before I meet up with my friends and we head off to a classic performance. Written while listening to even single Faithless album I've got.

Hackers Of The World Unite!

Fun - University One of the subjects I am studying this semester is Computer Security. In fact it's almost the only thing I've been working on at Uni lately. I've split my time pretty much between it and Japanese. My other subjects can wait until swotvac, I'll do revision for them then. Anyway the coursework for Computer Security is a lot of fun. We each get given a computer in an isolated lab. We then have four weeks to set up a number of services on it (SSH/SFTP/Webserver) and make it as secure as possible. After that initial setup phase we have a four week "LIVE" phase, where pretty much anything goes and the aim is to hack into a bring down as many computers as possible. No physical attacks are permitted, and we aren't allowed to do denial of service attacks either, but other than that, everything is fair game. So far my computer has fared really well. It's stood up to all attempts to break into it (well those that I know about at least) and the services run as they should (most of the time). The fun really isn't in securing your own system though, it's in hacking other people's. Having a stable and secure machine as a starting point to hack from helps, but I've personally put most of my energy into attacking other people. And it paid off. This afternoon the poor little box at 128.243.27.248 was penetrated and... TAKEN DOWN! I know whose machine that IP belongs to, and trust me, they deserved what they got. I am not going to go into how access was gained (because it's long winded and a little complicated) but the end result was their box being totally trashed, everything deleted, forcing them to do a full rebuild. Oh the joy! I shouldn't be getting so much pleasure from causing a lot of trouble to other people, but I do. It's so much fun. The thrill you get when you gain access is fantastic. It's such a rush! You know you might be noticed at anytime, that your connection may be shut down. You are working against the clock, and you want to do as much damage as possible. I think I've awoken my inner sadist. It was far far too much fun inflicting all that pain. They will need to spend hours and hours rebuilding they machine now. Poor them. Anyway I think I got a bit carried away. It was worth it though and I learnt a lot. Hackers of the world unite! Note: All the hacking involved in this course is done so as part of the curriculum and is authorised by the University. We are only allowed to hack in a special lab and it is isolated from the rest of the world. What we learn to do is illegal and no I don't do it outside of the labs. Listening to Orbital – Halcyon & On & On off the Hackers soundtrack. Of course.

Green And Gold And Guinness

Friends - Fun - Games - Travel - University Ireland - 77 Australia - 41 We didn't even put up a good fight. I am back in the Nottingham now. Will write more in the morning.

Education, Apparently.

Japan - University I have finalised my timetable for the semester, and it is woeful. I have ten contact hours a week, which is a fraction of what I did back home, and I have two full days off as well! It's crazy, I have more free time now that I know what to do with. If I was here to learn I would be annoyed, however I am here to have a good time, with learning as a secondary objective, so I don't really mind. I am sure I have ranted about this before, but looking at my final timetable it is all the more obvious. I am studying five subjects this semester, four that I need to do to finish my course, and one because I just wanted to do it. The funny this in that my "extra" subject gives me more contact hours (and will involve more work) than any of my other subjects. Oh well. The subjects I need to do include The Internetworked Organisation, Financial Management, Computer Security and Digital Business Communication. They are all pretty standard, easy subjects. I am using my free elective to do a subject in the Japanese language. This subject is actually a lot more hardcore than I expected. I am really enjoying it though, and am learning a lot. Overall this will be a fairly easy final semester of University. It’s about time too!

Play, Rewind, Record

Friends - Personal - University Whenever I think I have managed to get up to date with this blog, something comes up and I manage to get terribly behind. So here are the last couple of weeks in brief. I have moved into my new house! If anyone wants to send me anything, email me and I'll give you the address (as always care packages from home (filled with Vegemite and Tim-Tams and the like) are most appreciated ^_^). We have dubbed it the Party House and there are six of us living there. Myself, Bruce, Ben and Graeme (the three lads I travelled around Europe with for the first month), and Nikkie and Viki. It is a three story house, four if you count the basement, with a nice big kitchen and lounge room. It's about a twenty minute walk from Jubilee campus (where I do most of my subjects) and about forty minutes from University Park campus. There is a hopper bus that runs between the two campuses though, so I just take that when I am feeling lazy. I have been there two weeks now and I am absolutely loving share house living. It helps that I am really good friends with all my housemates (we were all in Newark Hall last year), but just generally I am having a fantastic time. I am not eating well, I am drinking far more than I should, and I spend more time in bed than out of it, but that's what being a student is all about, and I am trying to make the most of it while I can. This is my last semester of University. Lectures start today (I've got a break and am stuck in the library, so that's the reason I am writing this). My holidays are finally over. What a glorious summer it has been, but now it is time to get back to work. Not that I have that much work. With around eight contact hours a week the actual learning I do here is a bit of a joke. Still it gives me the free time to do all the drinking and lazing about I mentioned before. I don't really know yet how I feel about this finally being my last semester. I have done the whole graduation thing already. I have finished engineering, worn my silly gown, and gone through the whole ceremony. I wasn't that excited then, so the prospect of graduating from a second degree isn't really thrilling me either. The prospect of being completely free though is thrilling. I have always seen the end of University to be the moment in my life where I face the most possibilities. Even more so than the end of highschool, finishing Uni signifies an end of an era, and a point of origin for the rest of my grown up life. There are opportunities out there for me that I haven't even discovered yet, and a whole world of possibility for me to explore. I don't think there has been any other point in my life, nor do I think there will be any other point in my life, where I have so many choices. This is it, and I am going to make the most of it. I am not going to let this chance slip away, I am not going to take the easy option, the safe road. I choose adventure, I choose life, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I have already decided that I am going to stay in the U.K. next year. I am currently in the process of looking into working permits and visas and applying for jobs. I know my adventure starts here, I just don't know where it is going to take me yet. But enough rewinding, it's time to press play again. I haven't caught up completely, a lot of other stuff has happened these last two weeks, but some things are best simply summarised I think. We went out, had some drinks, danced a lot. Went shopping, bought food, went to the hardware store, bought stuff, went to Ikea, bought even more stuff (pillows, duvets and the like). Went to the Ark, to Tantra, to the Pit and Pendulum, to Bar BZR. I made lasagna, noodles, stir fry, toast, bacon sandwiches, scrambled eggs, spaghetti bolognese, corknflakes and weetabix. I registered for Uni, signed up for subjects, and (as of this morning) went to a lecture. No more fast forwarding though, it's time to play, and hopefully this blog will do a good job and record too.

So, So You Think You Can Tell

Friends - Fun - University A lot has been happening these last two weeks. I've finished my exams. I had four over the space of three days, three of those over the space of thirty-two hours, but I survived. I didn't do much study, I only need to pass, but I think I went well overall. Results come out on June 11th, so I'll report on my success (or failure) then. My exam preparation went a big askew for a little while there. Wednesday night (this is Wednesday last week), two hours after just finishing an exam, and having two exams the next day, I went and picked up my friend Morgs from the bus station. He had flown into London that afternoon from Budapest. We got a taxi back to Newark, then went down to the hall bar and proceeded to drink our way to closing time. It was great to see Morgs again. He is the first person from back home that I've seen since coming over here. He's been backpacking around South East Asia and Eastern Europe since graduating from UQ at the end of last year (he did Engineering with me). We swapped stories, talked about old times back home, what everyone was up to, and generally just had a really great reunion. Morgs had basically run out of money from all his travelling and now needed to find a job over the summer before heading off travelling again. He was going to stay in London while looking, but I said he could stay here with me for as long as he wanted. I managed to convince one of the cleaners to keep one of the unused rooms (some people have already moved out here) unlocked, so Morgs has a bed to sleep in, and I also got a spare catering card for him, so he gets free food too! ^_^ After we were kicked out of the bar we gathered some of the others and went back to my room for some more drinking. These rooms get cramped with that many people in them. In the end I kicked everyone out around two-ish because I really needed to do some study and then get some sleep before my 9am exam in the morning. Morgs and Bruce hit it off really well, and I could head both of them continue drinking in Bruce's room for the next couple of hours after that while I was trying to study. So Thursday came and went, I was hung over, tried, and woefully under prepared, but I think I did alright of my two exams that day. That signalled the end of exams for me! So of course we had to celebrate! Thursday night we went out to the Pitcher and Piano in the Lace Market, which is a bar housed in a converted gothic church. I didn't have my camera on me, but here is an image of it that I found on the net. The place was fantastic, it by far has the best atmosphere of any bar I've been to in my life. At night, with the lights on, coming through the stained glass windows, I was bathing in brilliance. The music was also really good too; this guy was spinning some very laid back mellow beats which suited my mood perfectly. He was so good that at the end of the night (when we were eventually kicked out because they were closing) I had to go up to him, shake his hand, and tell him what a great set I thought he had done. Morgs, Bruce and I were sharing pitchers of larger; Adam was drinking his cider, while the girls (Nikkie, Viki, and her sister Catherine) were drinking wine. We wandered through town a little bit afterwards before finally getting a taxi back home. Friday I showed Morgs around the place, we went to the co-op, the pub, the library, and back again. Morgs spent the afternoon writing up his CV and applying for different jobs. I slept. That night we stayed in, drank in the bar, and played poker. We have progressed on from five card draw to Texas Holdem. £5 buy-in, no limit, play on until one person is left with all the money. It's an exciting way to play. Either you walk away losing £5, or winning £30. After getting kicked out of the bar we went to the games room and continued playing there. I drank too much so I lost my money fairly quickly. Morgs cleaned up, and we were accused of being convict Aussies and organising it so he could come in and con everyone out of their case. Saturday was Summer Party. The biggest party of the year, 9000 people, held on the downs in the middle of main campus. We started drinking around midday, the gates not actually opening until 2pm. There was a main stage, a dance tent and an R&B tent. There were also these bouncy castle things, with gladiator, bouncy boxing, and bouncy bungee jumping. I fought against Morgs, got a got couple of knocks but gave my own back pretty well. Drinks were cheap, the weather was great, and the music was good. The dance tent played the best music I've heard since coming over here. No cheesy crap there, just solid beats and a great atmosphere. Everyone was there, and though we got separated at different times during the night we always found each other again. The only crap thing was the closing time. On the tickets it say "2pm till late", but late I had assumed at least 2-3am. No "late" meant 11pm. There was almost a riot when they stopped playing the music. A couple of guys half pulled down the big R&B tent. It was actually pretty hairy for a bit, with people pushing and shoving everywhere. I escorted the girls home (we had to walk from main campus back to Jubilee) and we finished up the night sitting in my room, with pizza we ordered in, drinking Morgs' Hungarian wine (out of a plastic bottle) and lots of beer. Sunday everyone took it easy. Sunday night we played some more poker, drank some more beer, but went to bed fairly early. On Monday Morgs got stuck back into applying for jobs, while I caught up on all the stuff I had neglected during the exam period (unfortunately that doesn't include writing in this blog). Monday night everyone went to the Works nightclub. It was Foam Party night, where they had supposedly the "biggest foam machine in the UK" pump foam out onto people on the main dance floor. We got there late so missed most of the foam, but there were a lot of people walking around in very wet cloths (the smart girls didn't wear white tops; the ones they didn't think ahead regretted it). With £1 vodka redbulls we proceeded to get very drunk, and because we were already wet, lots of half finished drinks were thrown. In the end we were just going up to the bar, asking for two pints of water, getting them, turning around and then throwing them all over someone. It was really crazy and I was expected to get thrown out any minute, but in the end the bar closed and the music stopped and we had to leave anyway. When we got back to Newark though it was raining, and Graeme got pushed into the moat. Bruce soon followed, with Ben, Viki, Zoe, and Cristina all going in as well. I took off my shoes and gave my phone and wallet to Simon because I was sure the guys would push me in too, but somehow I avoided it. The guys who went in smelt like crap, being covering in layers of duck shit. Zoe, who originally had a white miniskirt on, had a brown one when she finally pulled herself out of the moat. It's been pretty uneventful since then. I've been into town with Morgs, and (finally) visited Nottingham Castle, and a bunch of old pubs. We've played more poker, drank lots more, and generally had a good time. I'm going up north with Morgs for the weekend, and then I'll come back down for me last week here at Newark next week while Morgs will continue north up to Scotland. Summer is almost here and I'm itching to get away. Did you exchange, a walk on part in the war, with a lead role in a cage? Everyone should know what I'm listening to. It's my cousin's favourite song, and her husband can play a great rendition on his guitar. Of course you shouldn't know because of that, you should know because of the lyrics.

Busy

University I had my first Exam this afternoon. It was for Introduction to Digital Business and was worth 100% of the subjects marks. I'm fairly sure I aced it, but I'm going to wait for the results to be returned before I make any comment. I'm going to reserve my long and drawn-out rant about the British education system till after I get my results back as well. Meanwhile I'm actually pretty busy. I have four more exams next week, over the space of three days and I haven't started studying for any of them. This weekend is going to be all about revision. It's not too bad though, becuase this time next week I'll be finished! I'll write more when I've finished my exams. I've got heaps to say! ^_^ Listening to Evolution by Ayumi Hamasaki, for some reason it helps me study.

Swotting

University I'm in swotvac at the moment. My exams start next week and I'm woefully underprepared. That's nothing unusual, but it isn't comfortable either.

Friends

Friends - Friends - Television - University I just watch the last episode ever of Friends. Yes, I know, I do absolutely no work at all here at University ^_^ Bruce, Graeme, Ben, Nikkie, Viki and I sat, cramped, in Graeme's room, and watched final epsiode of the 10th series together. I'm not going to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet, but the ending was so happy, and yet so sad at the same time. I am really glad that things turned out the way they did. I had hoped it would end that way. Friends has been one of those shows that I grew up with, that I watched all through highschool. Like Seinfeld, it's something I will associate with my teenage years, and will miss now that it's gone. Yes it's just a TV show, but TV shows become a part of your life. I mentioned with the OC that I don't usually get emotionally involved with shows, but that doesn't mean they don't form part of your memories. Listening to Walk On by U2. It's the only song that will do right now.

Mr. Blue Sky

Movies - Music - University Sun is shinin' in the sky, There ain't a cloud in sight It's stopped rainin' Everybody's in a play And don't you know It's a beautiful new day. Hey, hey. I'm addicted to this song. It's on the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind theatrical trailer, and I've had it in my head ever since I saw it at Kill Bill Vol. 2. So I watched ESofSM, and I loved it! Mr. Blue Sky isn't in it at all, but the movie was great all the same. Anyway I'm procrastinating to avoid finishing my coursework, which is due in a little over 3 hours!! Arrhhh!! Oh well better get back to work! It should be obvious what I'm listening to ^_^

Information Rules

Books - University The set text for my Digital Economy module is called Information Rules - A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy written by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, and published by the Harvard Business School Press. Tenenbaum, a man whose textbooks I consider among the best I've ever used, describes this book as follows: "Full of powerful tools for strategic decision making, Information Rules is a valuable source for students, researchers, managers, and legislators." That's written on the second page of the book, and if Tenenbaum thinks it is a good book, I know it's going to be a good book. The Digital Economy module has been extremely interesting. Firstly it's an economic module, and I've only done a couple of economic subjects back at UQ (microeconomics and the like), so I'm being introduced to concepts I've considered before, or which have been touched on briefly by other business subjects, but which I've never studied in-depth. Secondly it's just plain interesting, learning about positive network externalities in digital industries, and issues surrounding versioning and lock-in. Studying standards wars and rights management and looking at information policy. It's all really great stuff, and reading it all I think it very much supports the statement that Shapiro and Varian make at the beginning of the book, that is: Technology changes. Economic laws do not. I plan to be a part of the digital economy, so I'm glad that I now have a much better idea of how it actually works. There are economic reasons why Microsoft gets bigger while other companies get smaller, why Sony and Phillips agreed on the CD standard, but why the phone companies still won’t standardise their networks, why different versions of products are priced differently and why versions exist at all. Things make sense now, which is always one of the best things you can get out of learning in my opinion.

Sunny England

Friends - Fun - University Yesterday England graced me with some of the nicest weather yet. It was sunny, it was warm, and there was a cool breeze blowing, and it was the perfect weather for drunking some beers with your mates. We set ourselves up in the Newark Quad next to the bar, and made ourselves comfortable. We got bins of ice from the bar, a whole lot of beer from Graemes room, and sat down to enjoy the weather. Most of the regular Notts Crew were there: Bruce, Graeme, Viki and Ben, Simon and Nikkie. We drank lots of beer, played some cards, kicked the football around, lay in the sun, and just chilled. At about 6pm, after sitting in the sun for the past five hours, we decided to pick up our big cooler full of ice, water and beer, and walk it through the Atrium where everyone was eating dinner, our to the lake on the otherside to enjoy the last hour or so of sunshine. By this point we were all pretty drunk (in particular Bruce, Ben, Graeme and I were), so we threw Bruce into the lake. Later that night we went to this house party being held by Bruce's boss, Ross. We kicked around there for a little while before heading into town to a club called The Zone. I got home somehow. What a great day.

Vulture Street

Fun - Movies - Music - Travel - University Well I'm back from London again. I arrived home yesterday, but I haven't even unpacked yet. I've had this CSD (ok enough with the acronyms, it's Commercial and Industrial Systems Design) coursework due, and I originally thought it wasn't due until tomorrow. Oh well, it's done now, I just had to sacrifice some much needed sleep. It was basically just a project management assignment, and I did a whole subject on engineering project management last year, so all the PERT/GANNT analysis stuff was pretty easy. Once I submit it then I've only got one more piece of coursework due before the Easter break! Yay! (Oh yeah did I mention that I've got an entire month of holidays coming up! ^_^) Anyway back to the weekend. I caught the bus down to my cousin's place Friday night where we proceeded to get very drunk and play chess using backgammon pieces with letters written on them. We woke up the next morning around midday, so we scrubbed plans to get the train into London early and went out to see a movie instead. Simone wanted to see Mona Lisa Smile, a chick flick if ever I heard of one, while Toby had to go to a meeting (rather convenient on his part ^_^). The movie sucked. It was shockingly bad. A women’s Dead Poet’s Society this is not. Simone hated it as well. Julia Roberts was passable, Kirsten Dunst was cute in a 50’s sort of way, but everything else was horrible. After the dismal movie we met up with Toby and had some Italian at this restaurant called Z’something. The food was nice but the service was bad; we waited forever for everything. By the time we got out of there it was 5pm, so we raced off down the M1, and then onto the M25 (the London orbital) around to the western edge of London to Hammersmith. We all had tickets to see Powderfinger play at the Hammersmith Apollo (there are a whole lot of musical venues at Hammersmith, and the Apollo is but one)! For those who don’t know, Powderfinger are a Brisbane band who are probably the biggest rock band in Australia right now. They are not my favourite group, but I don’t mind their music. The strange thing is that even though they are from Brisbane, I’ve never seen them live before, and I had to come all the way to London to see them! Simone knows the drummer, well she used to know him back in Uni, he was in the year ahead of her at UQ. While she was doing engineering she lived with a bunch of guys who were in a percussion band, and the Powderfinger drummer was in it too. Anyway they rocked. The Apollo must have been a pretty small venue compared to what Powderfinger and used to back home, and I think they really took to it. We were right up the front in a really great spot and the atmosphere was intense. They were really pushing their new album Vulture Street, but also played a lot of their old classics. Overall the gig was great and I’m glad I got the chance to see them. Sunday we slept in again, before driving to Northampton to have lunch at this really great Indian restaurant. Simone and Toby know the owner, and the food was incredibly tasty. After that we went to see a preview of Starsky and Hutch, which was great. Then we did some more stuff, then it was Monday, then I went home. I’m really tired now so I’m going to go to bed. I haven’t slept since Sunday night and I didn’t sleep much then either.

XML -> ( (XSLT + CSS) + DTD ) -> HTML

University I've spent about 8 hours so far today working on my "Internet and the World Wide Web" coursework. It's the most work I've done since coming here. I started it today, it's due tomorrow, and I'm almost done. Yay! I'm procrastinating now, becuase I've finished all the hard stuff, the XSL, CSS and DTD stuff, and now all I need to do is write 1000 words about what I've done. I deserve a break though. I haven't been too any of the labs for this subject, so I started from stratch this afternoon and storm learnt how to write XLS and CSS files to convert XML to HTML as well as how to write DTDs to validate the XML in the first place. The assignment was actually pretty tricky, a lot of non-standard stuff was thrown in there which meant I spent a lot of time trawling the net looking for hints. I get the feeling that all the little work-arounds that are needed to meet the requirements were discussed in the labs sessions. Oh well. Anyway I had better get this report written. I'm heading down to London again this weekend and I'll need my rest.

Newark Hall

Friends - University I've got my accommodation for the first semester next year finalised. I’ll be staying at Newark Hall, which is on the Jubilee Campus. It costs a fair bit, but looks pretty cosy, and for once I will only have a five-minute trip to class as opposed to an hour and a half one! I think I’ll have a lot of fun there ^_^. I probably will move out to a sharehouse somewhere halfway through the year, but for now the security of living on campus to start with is quite comforting. It’s one less thing to worry about, which is good, because one of my biggest aims this coming year is to minimise worry! And now for a random Lost In Translation quote, "The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you." At the moment I’m listening to Mad World by Michael Andrews off the Donnie Darko soundtrack. Oh yeah, it's New Years Eve too; though I still don't know what I'm going to do tonight. I've been invited to a party at a beach house up the coast with some Uni friends, Wulfen is having a party over his place, Alex (whom I spent Boxing day chasing rainbows with) is going to Rainbow beach (coincidence) and asked if I wanted to come along (he headed up yesterday in fact), and then there is the mystery fourth option. I'm keeping all of my options open at the moment, and I'll see where the night takes me.

One Month To Go!

Friends - Personal - Travel - University On January 21st, 2004, at 8:30 PM I'll fly out from Brisbane International Airport, on my way to the UK. Ostensibly I'm going becuase I'm enrolled in University over there and I need to finish off my Business degree. Of course I could have just as easily stayed here to finish off my degree (in fact that would have been the easier option by far, the amount of paperwork I've been doing recently is crazy!). So why am I really going? ... Yes that's a very good question. ... To be completely honest I don't really know. I think I've had lots of reasons over the past two years or so I've been planning this. I can't remember what first triggered the idea, but ever since I got the urge to leave, I've never really looked back. Things came up from time to time that provide some reason to stay, and these reasons seem to by multiplying of late. I'm resolute though, deep down I know I've always been, that nothing short of my Mum dying would stop me going. But I still don't know why I want to go. There is the desire for change, and that's a big one for me, but that alone isn't it. I want to broaden my horizons, become well travelled and worldly, that's not it either. I want to be educated at a truly world-class university, but study is well down on my list of priorities for next year. I want to meet new people and at the same time part of me wants to escape from the people I already know. I'm going to miss terribly everyone I leave behind, but overall I think it will be good for me. As sappy as it sounds... I think I go to grow. Maybe that's a cop-out answer. In fact I'm pretty sure it is, however it's the only think I can come up with right now. Next time I'm totally in tune with my feelings and emotions I'll write an entry explaining them in full. Expect it sometime around 8282 AD. So I don't know why I'm going, but I don't really care right night. It was a long process and it's almost over. Well the leaving part is almost over, the living on exchange part has almost begun, and this next month is going to kill me with anticipation. I hope that in a years time, when I've got some perspective, and my exchange is almost over, I can look back, read over this, and laugh to myself about how in the dark I was. I hope I'll understand it then, and I doubly hope that the manner in which I gain that understanding over the next year is most enjoyable ^_^ This entry was written while listening to Art of Noise - Dreaming in Colour over and over again.

EUSIPCO-2004

Travel - University 12th European Signal Processing Conference September 7-10, 2004 Vienna, Austria

"The 2004 European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO-2004) is the twelfth biennial conference promoted by EURASIP, the European Association for Signal, Speech, and Image Processing (www.eurasip.org), and organized by the Institute of Communications and Radio-Frequency Engineering at Vienna University of Technology (www.nt.tuwien.ac.at) and the ftw. Telecommunications Research Center Vienna (www.ftw.at). EUSIPCO-2004 aims to cover all aspects of signal processing theory and applications. Sessions will include invited presentations with review character in addition to presentations of new research results. An extensive technical exhibition will also be organized."

I'm currently in the process of writing a conference paper based upon my thesis work for submission to the 2004 EUSIPCO conference. If it's accepted, my thesis supervisor said that he could probably arrange with UQ to fund my registration, travel and accomodation expenses to go to Vienna in September and present the paper. Awesome! I haven't talked about the the final results achieved by my thesis project here yet, and I'm not going to do it now, but I will get to it soon. If this paper is accepted, then it will be published in the proceedings of the conference, and maybe in some academic journals later on. It's exciting to think that other people will read my work and possibly quote it, and build upon it. But enough about that, I've got to write the damn thing first!

Graduate

University I am no longer a graduand; I am now officially a graduate! My graduation ceremony was pretty low-key. It didn't actually start until 3pm, and so I met Littlewing (we made up) in the city around midday and then we made our way to UQ. We went and picked up my academic robes, and then made our way down to the UQ Centre hall. I kept bumping into friends of mine, other people I knew who were graduating. I did a lot of hand shaking, congratulating, photo taking. It was fun. We met up with my Mum. She was the only of in my family coming. I didn't think it was such a big deal, and I told my brothers not to worry about it. Mum and LW get on well, so they kept each other company while I went to the pre-ceremony briefing, and was prep'ed for the big event. They gave us each a number, and arranged us in order from PhD graduands, to Masters, to Engineering Class I and down from there. We were also ordered alphabetically in our groups, I was number 76 overall. There was a program with all the award details in it, and in my free time I ran some stats on it. There were 153 people graduating at that ceremony from their Bachelor of Engineering. Of these 113 were Electrical Engineers, 11 were Computer Systems Engineers and 29 were Software Engineers. It's really strange to think that back in first year, in our first semester, there were more than 550 starting engineers. At the end of four years, only 153 are left. Less than one in three made it through to the end. I remember hearing in my first lecture, "Look to your left, look to your right, those people wont be here when you graduate", but I didn't really think that much of it until now. I got through, I'm finished, I made it, I'm done. Now I've only got to finish one more year of Uni… but that's another story. So after our briefing we all lined up and were led into the hall. There was clapping, and lots of people taking photos, and video cameras transmitting our images onto these big screens at the front of the hall. Mum had asked earlier that day if I was nervous, and I wasn't, I didn't think much of it, and even walking in then, with everyone's attention on us, I still didn't feel much of an effect. We got to our seats, the academic procession entered the hall, the chancellor made a little speech, and the presentation of the awards began. It was my turn to go on stage, I walked out, shook the Chancellors hand, heard LW and Mum yelling out loudly from somewhere in the hall, along with a bunch of my friends up the front who were also graduating, and then I walked off and it was over. I got my certificate, I returned to my seat, and I watched the others get their awards. About halfway through it came time for the valedictorian speech. I didn't know it before hand, but my friend Ruth, whom I had spent a bit of time with during one of our team projects, was valedictorian. She spoke well, making some good points, and I'm glad she was the one to do it. Then the award presentations continued. While sitting through the rest of the ceremony, I saw someone standing in line that I hadn't seen for more than three years. I knew instantly who it was, even before her name was called out, she had changed little since I last saw her. Miss A looked as good as ever. I met her in Multivariate Calculus and Linear Algebra during my first year at Uni. She sat next to me during the first lecture, and I couldn't help but talk to her. The math was easy, we had both done similar stuff before, and so we chatted the hour away. She was smart, and funny, she liked Sonic Animation and Evangelion, and I liked her straight away. We went out for coffee after the lecture, and after the next lecture too. Eventually we started going out properly, and I was having a lot of fun. To cut a long story short, I got scared of how perfect she was, and I ran away. I told her some inane story, and quoted the last line of Fight Club. In other words it didn't end well. Seeing her on stage was a shock, and it brought back all those memories from three years ago. I didn't know she was graduating at the same time I was (though if I had bothered to think about it I would have realised it made sense) and I hadn't seen her in all the time we spent before the ceremony getting ready. After that though I saw her everywhere; as we were filing out of the hall, as we having refreshments afterwards, as we were walking back up towards the great court, and right at the end as I was returning my academic robes. I had managed to avoid her almost completely for the past three years, and now I couldn't get away from her. I actually bumped into her while getting a drink, but said only a few perfunctory congratulations and then made my escape. It was a strange experience, and seeing Miss A again really made the four years I've been at Uni weight down upon me. It seemed like everything had come full circle. A lot has happened since I finished highschool, and though this isn't the end of my University career, it does mark a turning point of sorts. Anyway, so after the ceremony I didn't want to hang around, and there were no real plans for everyone to get together, so I headed off with Mum and LW to this little place near Ascot. We had some coffee and food, and talked and then came home. Right now Calvin is over, normal Monday night schedule, and we are going to watch some TV and play some DDR. I'm writing this while we are watching TV, and he just offered to write a guest Blog, so the next thing you will read will be from him. Note: I revised and expanded much of this after Calvin went home. While doing so I've been listening to Massive Attack - Angel.

Graduand

University M D Wigs Having fulfilled the conditions prescribed by the University is this day admitted to the degree of BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING (SOFTWARE ENGINEERING) WITH HONOURS CLASS I GIVEN UNDER THE COMMON SEAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND THE EIGHT DAY OF DECEMBER, 2003

Stats

University Well it's summer, and for once I'm not working, and I'm bored, so I ran some stats on the data presented on this page. There will be 161 people graduating from their BE on December 8th, of these there are 56 First Class Honours, 49 Second Class A Honours, 23 Second Class B Honours and 33 without honours. I think that it is interesting that more than one third of us are graduating with first class honours, meaning that we maintained a GPA of around 6 or more. Engineers are a smart bunch of people, and I think this reflects that. It takes a lot of hard work to complete a BE; it's exponentially more difficult that anything I've ever done in Business, both in the complexity and conceptual difficulty of the work, as well as the level of effort that the teachers expect you to put into your work. My business GPA is far higher than my engineering one, even despite the fact that I do a fraction of the work in business compared to engineering. So basically I'm saying that I'm proud to be an Engineer. It's a tough course, which attracts a lot of really intelligent people who I'm proud to have worked with over the last four years, and overall I think we all did a great job.

Judgement

University My university results were released today. I did really well overall, but the best news my results contained was the 7 for my thesis project. For those who aren't familiar with the way the grading works down here, a 7 is the highest mark you can get, a High Distinction, it then works its way down from there, 6 is a Distinction, 5 is a Credit, 4 is a Pass... actually I don't really know what they call the grades under that. Anyway basically it means I did as well in my thesis as I could do. So I'm pretty damn happy right now. Not that I was in any real danger of missing out, but my marks for this semester confirm that I'll get First Class Honours when I graduate a week and a bit. My GPA isn't fantastic, but it's high enough to get first class honours, so that's all I'm really worried about right now. I'm not even a part of the graduate recruiting scene this year (which is really the only place where your GPA and honours class actually matter, when you are competing for the few positions available at the top companies); I don't have to worry about looking good for potential employers until the end of next year. So that's it, I didn't fail anything, I don't have anything else I need to do in order to graduate, and so one week today I'll graduate! Yay me!

Hybrid Rainbow

Friends - Japan - Music - University A couple of days ago I was asked to briefly explain my thesis topic on one of the forums I frequent. I don't think I've gone into detail about my project here yet, so here is the description I gave on the forum. To steal a passage from my thesis abstract: "The fundamental purpose of this project is to develop a system by which music similarity can be measured based solely on the content of the music itself. This system will analyse the inherent characteristics of musical pieces and use that to compare songs, independently of any metadata that may exist. It will allow a database of music to be quickly and efficiently scanned to identify similar tracks." Basically there is a whole lot of digital signals processing stuff involved in producing signatures for pieces of music which not only uniquely identify the piece but also relate specific characteristics of the musical structure (tempo, beat, rhythm, etc...) Once you have those signatures then it's a fairly simpler matter to calculate the similarities and difference between them and then you can do all sorts of cool stuff. Genre grouping, instrument matching, identifying covers of a particular track, taking a seed song and producing a full DJ set, etc... etc... etc... All the DSP stuff is done, and I've almost finished coding up the base framework which utilises the DPS stuff (I'm not going to go into detail about that; to put simply it involves calculating the Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients, which is really just the coefficients of the Fourier transform representation of the log-magnitude spectrum of a signal, and then using K-Means clustering to group certain spectral traits together.) Now I just need to develop the final application that I'm going to demo at the innovation expo at the end of the year. Oh yeah, and write my thesis ^_^ In other news, I'm going to see a performance of a play written by my friend Calivn next week. It's called "Vodka and Condoms" and I know it's going to be great (I've read the script). Calvin's been coming around a lot recently, which is great. I've been slowing introducing him to the myriad forms of anime; we watched Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind on Monday, and I also showed him some Azumanga Diaoh. He is obsessed with Ranma, RANMA!, but wants to see more of Miyazaki's work after I took him to see Spirited Away earlier in the year. I'm going to play more Initial D tonight. Meeting up with Fragma and rurouni so we can throw away some more of our cash. Wednesday night is pretty deserted down at the arcade, so we shouldn't have a problem getting on the machines. I've run out of music to listen to in the car, so until I get around to burning off some new sets, I've gone back to my anime CDs. I've got FLCL Addict out now, and I think it will be my CD of choice tonight. I've got all The Pillow's albums, and most of them are great, but the tracks on this OST bring back memories of when I first saw the show, and the powerful feelings I associate with it. Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?

Benkyo! Benkyo! Benkyo!

Personal - University I did some work today. For the first time since getting back I actually sat down and spent a good couple of hours studying. Caught up on all the Business Policy and Strategy work I needed to do, and read through my Advanced Database Systems lecture notes as well. I've now pretty much broken even for the first three weeks of Uni, am up to date with everything I need to be up to date with... except for my thesis. Well not so much my thesis itself, but rather the project I'm supposed to be writing about. My topic sounds good in concept, and it actually works surprisingly enough, but I'm really struggling to find the energy (or concentration) to sit down and write some code to take all these digital signals processing algorithms we've created and combine them into one single application. I'll get around to doing it sometime, just not today. For those who don't know, I'm currently enrolled in a dual degree, a Bachelor of Engineering (majoring in Software Engineering) and a Bachelor of Business Management (most probably majoring in Electronic Business, but maybe just Business Economics) at the University of Queensland. I'm currently in my fourth year, and as a result of some serious subject overloading along with some rather specific subject choices, I will have completed all the requirements needed to graduate from my BE at the end of this semester. That will still leave me with another year to do in order to finish off my BBusMan degree, but I will be on exchange then, so I'm not really thinking about that at the moment. It's funny to think that come the end of the year, I'll be a qualified engineer (though of course not professionally accredited by the Institute of Engineers until I've got a couple of years experience under my belt). It's even stranger to think about still attending full time Uni, studying like everyone else, but having the qualifications I need to get a great engineering job. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Of course if I get a great job offer overseas I might just ditch Business, or at least only do it part-time. It's only really going to come in handy five years down the track (when I'm hopefully fast-tracking it up the management ladder). Of course then there is always the possibility of further post-graduate study. Assuming I don't royally stuff up my Thesis and I graduate with first class honours, I can pretty much walk onto the PhD program at UQ (and presumably most other places). Nash is has just started his Doctorate, so he is committed for another two years at least. I'm not sure how I feel about adding another couple of years to the five I will have spent if I graduate from everything I'm enrolled in at the moment. I've been in some form of formal education for more than 15 years; do I really want to push that towards the 20 year mark? Some people only do the 10 minimum required by law. All of these questions I'm putting off thinking about for the moment. I need to finish this semester first. I'll worry about them when I have to make the decisions. For now I'm just going to get stuck into my work. Study! Study! Study! Actually maybe I'll just watch some more anime ^_^

Australia is boring

Personal - Travel - University I've got the post trip blues. This coming semester of University is going to be one of the most tedious, and yet most difficult, of my student career. I have a thesis to finish (*cough* start *cough*) writing, but the rest of my courses are essentially no-brainers. That in itself is bad enough, but I'm just coming off the cusp of one of the best months of my life, and six months from now I'll be setting off again for what (I hope) will be one of the best years of my life. I'm looking at it as a six month sojourn, a time between times, when I will muddle through what has to be done, but will always be thinking of what comes next. I want to be back in Japan. In other less angsty news, the pillow fairy came while I was away and brought me nice new big pillows for my bed. They are great. After living with crappy rice filled death-log head rests for a month, I've had a great couple of nights sleep. Just thought people might be interested ^_^ Anyway I'll have my trip report up sometime soon (just thinking about going over all those memories again makes me depressed, wanting to be back there). I've almost finished taking care of everything I missed during the last month (paid off my credit card this afternoon) so in a couple of days it will be business as usual. Until then, be patient!! ^^

One sleep to go!

Friends - Travel - University I had to get up before sunrise yesterday in order to get into Uni on time for my last exam. It was cold and it was wet and I was miserable. The test was easy though and it brought to a close my seventh University semester, so I'm happy. I spent the rest of the day walking around the city buying Australian "stuff", mostly for our friend Sugoi, so he can give it all away as presents. Today I started packing. I was going to start earlier, but well it didn't happen. Thankfully I am not missing anything too important. The flights confirmed, Sugoi rang us last night, everything is taken care off. Just a few last minute things to worry about now. I was going to write a whole lot more here, but my list of last few things to do today is actually quite long. Next time I write I'll probably be in Japan!

Lantastic

Friends - Travel - University - Work I contemplated blogging from work today. I had come up from the rec room after being soundly beaten at pool (boo) and I didn't really feel like getting stuck right back into documentation, so I pondered whether the IT guys would consider blogging as "work related internet usage". For some reason I doubted it. I just surfed pages on backpacking instead. I've got to work again tomorrow, and the next day and the day after that, but if it means I can eat tasty things in Japan then I'll gladly put up with it! My test went well yesterday. No surprise questions, nothing I absolutely couldn't answer, all is good in the world of relational database systems. Only one more really small (30%) exam left (for Business Research Methods) and I'll be free! Free for this semester at least, free to forget about my thesis for a while and go party in Japan. I haven't been to any of the lectures for this test since week 3 (it is a business subject after all) but if I do some study on the weekend I should be right. My 40% assignment mark should have been released today, but it's not up on the website yet. Not that I really expected anything better from the Uni. Meanwhile half my friends are at a LAN, and have been for the past three days. It's so very annoying becuase they are sitting on IRC and I'm sitting on IRC, and I'm trying to study, and they are playing games, or doing other "fun" things as the case may be. As I type it seems that Bull is about to head over to the LAN as well. Oh and Chris ate a yogo in 30 seconds, I think Wulfen's comment "the fatty" sums it up best. I probably shouldn't blog and read IRC at the same time, everything gets crossed over. We still haven't got anyplace booked to stay in Japan (other than Obama, where we are all staying with our friend Sugoi, and paying by means of walking the landlady's dog). Hopefully we get that all worked out soon, otherwise it's a capsule hotel for us! The closer we get, the more disorganised we seem.