As some of you may or may not be aware, part of my fourth year project was to give a presentation of my work over the first two terms. Naturally I’d already written a lot of LaTeX code for the project and produced lots of lovely PostScript figures, so it seemed pretty natural to go ahead and use Beamer, with evince in presentation mode.

However, because I like to look a bit swish, I decided to do something to make my shiny Sony Ericsson W950i switch through the slides for me without having to touch the keyboard. Since nothing was apparent from much Google searching, I sat down and figured it all out. After a long time of sitting on this code I’ve finally found the time to sit down and package it all up in a neat bundle.

So, if you have a decent phone with Bluetooth enabled, visit the project page if you’re interested!

The project report and presentation slides will be going up tomorrow, I just need to get around to writing some CSS.

12:28 am | Posted in Computing, Hardware, Project | 2 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

Well, it’s taken me a while to blog it, but I’ve completed the very last part of my fourth year project, which was a simple 20-25 minute presentation with questions at the end. All in all, it went pretty well. Alan kindly stayed on after he completed his own talk and listened to the ones given in my group. They were quite interesting: the first was on some kind of 2D projection technique to model 3D Navier-Stokes equations, and the other on the spread of disease throughout a tree-like structure.

Most surprising was that I didn’t feel nervous at all; having spent so long typing up the project and fiddling around with code, I knew the algorithms pretty well and I think that I did a good job of summarizing the key aspects. The reaction seemed positive enough, and the questions at the end were reasonably managable.

For anybody who’s going to do this sort of presentation, I’ve collated some handy tips that I found useful.

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Continue reading “Project Completed!”…

1:51 pm | Posted in Exams, Maths, Project | No Comments »

Well after much blood, sweat and tears, I finally finished my project. In total, it was 33 pages long (including references), so not an unsubstantial amount of work! After it’s all gone through the system, been marked and I’ve got my marks back, I plan on posting a copy on here. But I want to ensure it goes without a hitch first.

Anyway, that was finished about 2 weeks ago. I took a week off which was quite nice, in which I’ve bought many things, most of which are yet to be delivered.

They include a 160gb laptop hard-drive (for the bargin price of £75 with free shipping, thanks to eBuyer); 512MB of SODIMM RAM for my laptop; an excellent 2gb SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash card; the Canon RC-1 Remote (from eBay, only £11); a 10/100 ethernet switch and a CompactFlash reader.

Unfortunately this spending spree was started by me looking at the Canon 100-400mm f/4-5.6L which, at ~£1000 is a little out of my budget at the moment. However, something had to fill the void, so…

Anyway, revision’s started now. First up is Asymptotic Methods, and it’s going reasonably well at the moment. My plan is to start early and finish early, leaving time for TV and other assorted good things.  Hurrah.

7:13 pm | Posted in Academia, Exams, Hardware, Maths, Personal, Photography, Project | No Comments »

This week has been a really good week. I was extremely worried on Saturday that I might not be able to implement the flatPERM method that I needed for my project, but on Sunday something clicked and I managed to fix my code. Ever since then, things have been pretty much slotting into place and I’m getting very consistent results between all four of the methods I’ve implemented.

I’ve been marred somewhat in that computing resources at the CSC have been under quite a lot of use, but just before the holidays this is somewhat understandable. With a bit of luck, I’ll get added to another queue which isn’t quite as busy, enabling me to do some really long runs with large amounts of fun. When it’s completed, I’m certainly going to try to post a copy on here for everyone to see (as some people have asked), but that will have to wait until it’s been marked.

In other far more exciting news, I got a lovely e-mail offering me a PhD position in the maths department. Now, this doesn’t guarantee funding so I’m certainly not counting my chickens yet (in fact, not by a very long way). However, I’m one step closer so all is good.

Finally, I finished my marking today, so I have nothing more to do on that front until possibly October (if I’m back). Also, after having attended and helped out at every single open day since my first year, I finished up yesterday. So that was a bit sad.

Anyway, enough rambling. I’m going to press on whilst my luck is still moderately good! (I’m touching wood constantly these days).

10:31 pm | Posted in Project | No Comments »

My apologies for the lack of either photographs or similar word entries. It’s an exceptionally busy time of year; end of term is creeping up extremely quickly, and there are a number of things to get done before Friday of week 10. So, expect a similarly large lack of time before the next couple of posts.

Mainly my apathy has been because of the immense amount of research that I’m doing for the project, which is turning into quite a large beast very quickly. However, it gives me a good idea of what research might be like at the graduate level, and it’s generally interesting. With a bit of luck, when everything is finished off I will post the project report on the blog and people can tear into my code.

Anyway, hopefully you’ll enjoy the snow photo that just got posted. Hopefully I will be back around here soon, and maybe after my project is finished I’ll even have time to finish the site off!

6:00 pm | Posted in Project, Site Development | No Comments »

It’s been a reasonably productive day; I completed the majority of the things I set out to do and handed in my latest Fourier Analysis assignment. Also managed to complete the Fractal Geometry assignment so I’m happy. Additionally, I got the latest build of emacs working with XFT. Ho ho ho, that’s very sad.

Tomorrow is project day - the day in which I attempt to catch up for a reasonable amount of neglect on my part. Hopefully I’m going to overcome some of the nastier problems found along the way, and start on the writeup.

I just can’t wait.

On the upside, I have a new photo that I’ll be posting tomorrow. Well, I say photo… maybe it’s a bit different than the usual stuff.

12:33 am | Posted in Maths, Project | 1 Comment » | Show comment » | Hide comment » |

I find that increasingly these days I’m using the phrase “I don’t quite have the time at the moment…” For those who think I’m putting it on to get away from talking to them, I assure you it’s quite genuine. Right now, I have rather a large to-do list.

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Continue reading “Time sucks”…

4:32 pm | Posted in Maths, Personal, Project, Whining | No Comments »

Well, my long absence from here is pretty much down to me having far too much work to do. Unfortunately, having done far too many purely assessed modules this term, it leaves me with very little time to do much else, and my project work seems to slot very nicely into the “spare time” category. Research takes a lot of time, and does indeed suck the big ones.

Apart from this, life is pretty good. I’m developing what some might call a social life (albeit one spent mostly in the maths department) and I have a lot to keep my mind occupied. I’m very much looking forward to the Christmas holidays, although I know that I have to spend at least two weeks of them working on various tasks - of course, including my project.

I am now going to spend the next couple of hours getting this blog sorted. Honest, guvnor.

4:42 pm | Posted in Academia, Maths, Project | No Comments »

Reasonably regular visitors to the site will know that I’m now in my fourth year of a mathematics degree at the University of Warwick. A good sized chunk of this year’s credit is given for a dissertation on a subject of our choosing; we can either choose to write about some kind of mathematics in action (the MIA project) or a research project, which involves finding a supervisor willing to sponsor you on a topic of your choosing.

As I’m hoping to continue further with my education, possibly going onto a PhD, I chose to do a research project. This post is basically an entry describing my particular woes finding an appropriate project, and it’s quite long; unless you’re interested, it’s best not to continue further!

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Continue reading “Is it really this hard to find a dissertation?”…

3:53 pm | Posted in Maths, Project, Whining | No Comments »