I realised, in my stupidity, that I forgot to tell everyone about the other exams that have been taken this year:

• Algebra I:
  A big pile of poo. I don’t particularly want to recall this exam - it suffices to say that it was about as enjoyable as sticking my face in a blender.
• PDEs:
  Great, great exam. I think I pretty much aced it.
• Analysis III:
  I wish I’d done more revision, because I could quite easily have done a lot better in this exam if it weren’t for Algebra I revision. Never mind. Probably 50% or so.
• Mathematical Methods II:
  Pretty much a walkover, but that was fairly unexpected. I was happy with it, nevertheless.

Anyway, RSS feed works, so no prodding/beating/breaking/etc. Always a good thing, I feel.

8:24 pm | Posted in Academia, Exams, Maths | No Comments »

So, I went and stayed away for quite a while, didn’t I? Oh well. It doesn’t matter all that much I suppose. It’s not like anyone actually sits down and reads these posts.

Yes, indeed. I’ve been updating this site in secret!!!! (shock horror etc). Now that the site is hosted somewhere apart from my box at home, I like to develop the site in stages and then upload once I get to a point of significant progress. As far as I can see, things are coming along nicely:

• Added some rudimentry bbcode-like stuff
• Fixed some annoying bugs
• Replaced the links/stats sections so that they actually work.
• Minor tweaks to the database.

Next on my list, in order of priority:

• Finish the registration form
• Re-write the blocks code because it’s ugly
• Finish the projects page
• Populate the admin CP (which you can’t see) with some options.

I’m thinking that I might actually release this at some point, just for the sheer hell of it. Although that’s maybe a bit of a crazy idea because compared to WordPress et al, it stinks quite badly. I’m just hoping the RSS feed will work now, because if it doesn’t I may actually have to beat and simultaneously poke the server.

So, what’s new? Not a lot. I’ve started my exams - here’s the results so far:

• Algebra II:
  Went well, but not as well as I had hoped. Still, I’m not going to complain; I reckon I got something like 60%.
• Variational Principles:
  This was the best exam ever; questions that I could answer, and they still made you think a bit. Somewhat akin to the Differential Equations B exam I had last year, methinks.
• Number Theory:
  I had originally thought that after my rather dismal 50% on the in-class tests, this would be a crap of an exam. However, it turned out to be pretty good in the end. The questions weren’t all that hard, but they were still quite challenging.
• Differentiation:
  This was today’s examination. Unfortunately, it didn’t go brilliantly but I was fairly happy with the last two questions, and two of the other ones I staggered through somewhat. It was to be expected, though; I hadn’t really had the time to do all that much revision of the course due to Number Theory yesterday. Never mind.

I’ve still got 3 left, but in all honesty it’s getting to the point where I don’t actually care all that much. Metric Spaces ensues to be a horrible exam, but I’m quite looking forward to the Vector Analysis paper (it’s quite a fun topic, and has a gentle introduction to complex analysis). Then there’s Introduction to Fluids on Monday. I get the feeling that I may actually fail this one.

Apart from exams, there’s not been a lot going on. I’m sitting in one of the IT workrooms at the moment, and quite shockingly it’s a Linux-based system (more precisely, Mandrake). I’m not a huge fan of the distro, but it suffices quite nicely (and more importantly has X-Chat installed). Doesn’t have Firefox, and the latest version of Mozilla is 1.4 - ouch. So, I downloaded and installed Firefox onto my USB flash pen, and now I’m chugging along quite nicely. The only downside is that I have to have that with me when I’m around here, but since it’s attached to my car keys, I can’t see that being too much of a hassle.

Anyway, I’m going to go off and maybe do a little more revision now. Alternatively, I could mess around with some LaTeX and see whether it’s worth my while installing my mod on this blog. Hmm.

I think the latter idea sounds better.

8:04 pm | Posted in Academia, Exams, LaTeX, Linux, Maths, Site Development, Web Development | No Comments »

Well, this is my first entry on Warwick Blogs (obviously). I get the feeling I could spend a fair amount of time on here though – this is quite worrying. I suppose I should do the entire “hi, my name’s dave!!!!1112″ kind of thing. Here goes:

My name is Dave, and I currently study Mathematics (2nd year MMath, in case anyone cares). Needless to say, the course is rather hard and right now, I’m not enjoying it too much. Then again, I’ve just had exams so that’ll do it every time. That’s all you’re getting, because I’m fairly bad at writing these things. Bahahaha.

Anyway, right now, I’m currently seeing how easy it is to export the data on here. You see, I do have another blog with a pretty interface that I coded myself (rock on PHP 5), and me being me, I want to see whether it’s possible to write a script to grab the data on here and import it. If it’s available in XML then that would be ideal – however, something tells me it probably won’t be.

Then I’m going to recode the script to parse the rather interesting formatting code that blogs uses into the code I use on my website.

So, all in all, it’s going to be a bit of a dull evening. Oh well.

7:21 pm | Posted in Computing, Maths, PHP/MySQL, Warwick Blogs | 1 Comment » | Show comment » | Hide comment » |

Well, I’ve spent the past three hours doing maths. This is not fun. PDE’s is a pain in the arse, and it’s not working. I am so completely and utterly bored that I think I’ve gone insane.

Oh well.

My plan now is to go and play CS and beat some bots senseless with giant blocks of whoopass.

3:56 pm | Posted in Maths, Revision | No Comments »

So, I’m back again - and this time with some new features.

Some things you can expect from this website soonish maybe:

• A commenting system for you guys
• Forums, if I can be bothered.
• A new layout; this one is starting to grate for some reason. Might be a while though.
• Possibly a return of the pictures collection, if I can write the code to fit in with the layout.
• Much, much randomness.

So, all in all, a fair amount to come. I’m also going to make a concerted effort to completely remove the new toolbar I put in, because it is now starting to annoy me and I quite liked the old one. However, to get it working with crappy IE5/6, I’m going to have to muck around with JavaScript. Oh, the fun, the fun of it all.

Anyway. Enough ranting. In a meaningless attempt to try and organise my life, I am now going to present to you the life of Dave in concise, bullet point notation.

• I went back to uni.
• I did lots and lots and lots of maths.
• I drove around a bit and got some nice shopping.
• Again, the maths thing.
• I did a little work here and there when I had time.
• One of my housemates left. Which annoyed me.
• Maths. Lots.
• I finished term, and went down to Plymouth for a week and had a lovely time, thank you very much.
• I came back to sodding Walsall and did yet more bloody mathematics of a crap nature.
• On the upside, I went out and saw Paul and Jo yesterday and Sam today.

So, there we have it. My life for the past three months. Isn’t it great?

No.

(Apart from one obvious thing which doesn’t need to be mentioned).

I will update later. Right now, the toolbar calls. Which is quite wrong and somewhat disturbing really. Oh well, never mind.

2:17 am | Posted in Academia, Maths, Personal, Site Development | No Comments »

Hey all, Dave’s back with more wierd and wacky stuff from the world of the penguin fishcakes. Or not.

Today, I want to have a bit of a rant really. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before on here, but I think I’m going to start posting stuff on my opinions on world affairs, just to make myself feel better about the world.

So, a little background writing. I tend to think a lot about the current state of affairs in the world and I make sure I check the news (BBC News, of course) at least 4-5 times a day. Ever since the late 1990’s, I have never been as worried as I am today about what is going on in the world. In the space of 5 years, we’ve seen the biggest change in military warfare and tactics that we’ve possibly ever seen, ever. With the onset of the World Trade Centre attacks and the general “war on terror”, we’ve had to change our idea of warfare quite considerably from what it was 10 years ago.

I will say this now: this little rant is laced with my opinions on a lot of things. I do not like George Bush. I do not like Tony Blair. I am not biased extremely to the left, but I am definately not to the right.

The best place to start is, I suppose, with the election of George W. Bush - that fine, extremely colloquial example of a man. I mean, come on! What was your Average Joe thinking when he ticked the little box saying “Hey! I’m an idiot! Vote for me!” on the ballot poll? If there was ever a worse president to handle the current situation, then they managed to find one. I have never seen a muppet trying to run a country, but as muppets go, he’s a pretty crap choice. The fact that he got elected because he called some favours in really just rubs it in.

I’m not going to rant about what he was supposed to do with the entire WTC thing. I don’t know enough about what went on then, but I do know that another person in his situation would almost certainly have done what he did. I also won’t comment on Afghanistan because I don’t want to and this is my rant, but I will say that I do think that was very much for the better.

However, I think exactly the opposite of the situation in Iraq. Not only was that unprovoked and based on completely untrue accusations about that good old phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, but America comes along and decides who can do what. It just pisses me off.

I was planning on writing more, but I’ve definately decided I can’t be arsed. Rant over.

Other than ranting, I’ve done a lot of maths and gone out a bit to get drinks and whatnot, so it’s all been fun. I’m taking some good modules (Vector Analysis is fun) but others (i.e. Analysis III and Algebra I) are definately unfun. I’m going to have to burn the maths department down, there’s just nothing for it

Will post something later maybe, probably more like tomorrow (or later in the week… or next week… or something. bleh).

Later all.

10:31 pm | Posted in Academia, Maths, Politics, Ranting | No Comments »

Well, it’s been a week or so since my last update, oh well. However, this week has been extraordinarily busy, so that’s my excuse. So there.

So, I’ve been up to the usual old crap. Lectures, work, assignments, etc. Seem to have come slightly out of the “maths should be burnt to the ground” mood, but it’s still lingering somewhere around my head when it comes to Analysis III. Which, of course, is the devil.

Finally got the internet working over here properly with both mine and Sarah’s computers (which is nice), and now I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that I can’t do what I did last year and spend every conceivable minute of my life on here. Apart from that, the house has been pretty good to live in recently. No big arguments with anyone, so that’s always good.

Other than that, I’ve been driving a lot between here and uni, so that’s always fun. Only been home a couple times, but it’s nice to have the option to get back as soon as I want to, when I want to. I’ve also joined up with Warwick TV which a society set up by the Union encompassing creation of TV shows and the like. I’m apparently being a departmental editor - which is nice - and we have a huge meeting thing this evening, which isn’t so nice. But yeah, check out the documentaries from time to time, fair bet I’ve had something to do with them in a couple weeks time.

Right, I’m off now for a while. I will be back with another update (hopefully) tomorrow at some point.

3:18 pm | Posted in Academia, Maths, University | No Comments »

Hey all, back again.

Well, this week is completely sucking so far. Just got back from my first day at uni, and I have to say it was a complete pile of shit. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’d quite like to burn down the maths department using an overly elaborate setup involving liquid C4 and a small hamster. I don’t quite know why it’s sucking so much at the moment, and I’d quite like to blow things up, but I can’t; damned police.

Went to Tesco yesterday. Bought food.

That’s about it. Bleh.

Can’t be arsed writing anymore, going to go and eat pie and make myself feel a bit better about life.

6:39 pm | Posted in Academia, Maths, University, Whining | No Comments »