I could’ve sworn that I’d blogged yesterday. Oh well.

In site-related news, I’ve begun doing the changes I stated in my previous post. However, for the time being, they’re on hiatus - I’m not planning on doing any major projects any time in the next six months or so, hence I just got the feeling: “I can do this, but not just yet.” Too much going on at the moment for me to concentrate, really, and I don’t want programming to take up my entire life.

It’s results day tomorrow; I’m both dreading it and looking forward to it. At least I’ll know where I stand tomorrow, and that can only be a good thing. Checked my pigeon hole today, and got the new booklet entitled “Are you ready for Term 1?” Basically, it’s a list of introductory questions for a variety of courses taken in Term 1. Measure Theory has the delightfully named section “High-School Horrors”, doing integrals like:

I find it all rather intriguing really, since I’ve been wondering about these integrals ever since lower sixth form. But yes, I’m quite looking forward to the third year. I feel that I’m really going to get my teeth stuck into some interesting maths.

Interestingly, there’s a great big open outdoor Gala concert right outside maths which I’m planning on going and watching in a few minutes from the comfort of maths (there’s no chairs outside). Should be good fun, and there must be a thousand people all crammed onto the maths lawn. Brass Band, Wind Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra are all playing - I feel that I should really re-join the Wind Orchestra since it was quite good fun. But we shall see how much time I have next year.

Anyway, time to go and beat some servers. I shall be back later.

9:24 pm | Posted in Exams, Maths, Personal, University | No Comments »

I’ve not added anything new today (yet). There’s an annoying bug I have to fix with the logout function, but that should hopefully be a reasonably simple fix. In other news, I’ve coded a small bit of JavaScript that I think is quite funky. Whilst I usually loathe JavaScript to the extreme, I’m coming to see that small bits are quite useful when used properly. The problem is, loads of kids abuse it and have multiple flying things everywhere whilst saying “omg look aet teh c00lness!!!!112″ Basically, this bit of code fades out the sidebar and extends the content to the full width of the box. Yes, it’s a bit useless but it looks cool and allows for easier viewing. I might add it tonight if I can be arsed, and I can find a place to put the checkbox.

In other news, the Wing Wa meal was completed successfully today, with multiple fun and food had by all. It’s actually very reasonably priced; £5.80 for lunch, all you can eat and there’s absolutely loads of food to choose from. List of people: myself and Sarah, Alan, Emma, Alex and Katie, Helen and Dan, Lewis and finally Mark. Mo couldn’t make it, but that’s okay since he’s going to come around tomorrow to collect his present.

Anyway, I’m going to go off and post some stuff on SFN. Have fun.

5:17 pm | Posted in Personal, Site Development, University, XHTML/CSS | No Comments »

Forgot to post for the past couple of days. However, I do have rather a good reason for it. In fact, I have a very good reason for it: namely GTA: San Andreas which has just been released for PC. It’s rather a good game, and has taken up pretty much two entire days of my existance to get somewhere near completion. The map is so incredibly large, and there are so many things to do that I think I may have to spend at least the next week or two trying to get to the coveted 100% mark. Oh, what a hardship.

In other news, I get my exam results on Friday which I’m currently not looking forward to. So, in order to keep my mind off it I’m going to work on the site a bit (as well as playing GTA). I haven’t got around to doing anything yet, but I’m going to try and get the Mandelbrot set generator up and running in the Projects section today. It’s a pretty cool program, but I need to optimize it and generally get it to work better. I do have a minor problem in that I forgot to set the precision of cout and cin; by default, it only reads in numbers up to about 7 decimal places, so you can’t get most of the interesting shots.

I’m also not sure as to whether I should get the Photos section back up or not. There are a lot of photos - last count, over 500 - and although I have more than sufficient bandwidth for now, I can’t help but wonder what will happen if the site takes off a bit. I’m also considering putting some kind of Google AdWords on here, but at the moment the pendulum swings towards “no”. For starters, not enough people visit the site to make it worthwile, and I’m not sure that I could get them to blend in properly. I will only put them on if it doesn’t compromise the layout of the site.

The world of maths is looking quite diverse for next year. I’m considering what modules to do for next year, and this is quite a hefty challenge - the sheer number of courses on offer makes it quite hard to make my mind up. Like most other universities, we’re allowed to choose a variety of modules in the third year, totalling 120 CATS (module points) or more if we desire. Most of the third year modules are worth 15 CATS each, and the fourth year modules 18 CATS. Now, assuming that I actually get on the MMath course - which I really hope I do - I have to take two courses from the fourth year modules. At the moment, this is looking like it’s going to be Manifolds, since it’s needed for so many other 4th year modules and a choice of either Lie Groups (taught my my tutor) or Mathematical Recipies, which is more of an applied module.

My worry at the moment is that I’m not sure which “route” I should be taking. This year, I pretty much took a 50/50 pure/applied route. However, I’m finding myself inextricably drawn towards courses that concentrate mainly on the pure. I find that they’re extremely interesting and, for the most part, make me work harder on them. Metric Spaces went really well for me - it was a really nice exam, and although it didn’t have the same insane marking that it usually does for definitions, it had interesting questions that made you think, but were still managable. I have to also admit that the applied courses are also interesting, but my concern is that I’m going to screw them up, and I don’t quite have the same understanding that I do for the pure.

Of course, the other issue here is my postgraduate opportunities. Again, assuming I get onto the MMath and I’m finding the 4th year work enjoyable and I can cope with it, then I’d quite like to do a PhD. Even if I didn’t actually go on to do research and other insane mathematics then it would greatly increase my job opportunities. However, that’s a good two years away yet; not to mention that if I don’t get on the MMath, all of this talk is a complete waste of time.

Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. I’m going to concentrate on SFN now, and try and catch up on the backlog of posts that I have to moderate. Woo. See you all later.

3:13 pm | Posted in Computing, Maths, Personal, SFN, Site Development, University | 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 »

Hey all, I’m back again and this time with even less time!

Yes, for some reason I’ve gone and done it again and come back here in a (probably vein) attempt to write some various crap that may or may not depict what is going on in my life. I got inspired today whilst reading old bits of crap on the old website, and decided that it would be a nice idea to go off and recreate this thing. I got some new hosting for my other bits and pieces (all of £5.99/mo, whoa kids) and hence because of the bandwidth restrictions I’ve decided to take the photos off.
So, here it is, the new layout. Now, before you all start mithering about this and that (which, undoubtedly, no-one will) I’d like to point out how the site should look. The sidebar on the right is - or rather, should be - very pretty and took me a long while to work out (as well as learning a bit more about CSS locators). Not only is there the subtle transparency, but there’s also the added bonus of that little box thing that highlights as you roll the mouse over the text. Add to that the fact that you have a picture in the background and it’s like being hit in the face with a brick, but in a good way (note to self: take more pills).

However, some of you of the Internet Explorer variety will notice that either the transparency doesn’t work, the mouseovers don’t work very well or both. Also, those with SP2 will notice the extremely annoying pop-up thing that keeps coming up with the active content filtering thing. Rest assured, I’m not trying to l33th4×0r your box with my h4×0r sk1llz. I’m simply trying to get IE to recognise that I’m trying to make a box transparent. See, that’s how completely stupid it is.

Tip of the day: Download Mozilla Firefox and use that instead.

So, apart from typing this ridiculous amount of text, what have I been up to? Not, as they say, a lot. I’ve got myself a new car (which is a Citroen Xsara 1.4i Forte for anyone who cares) and travelled around a bit. Seen Sarah a couple times over the holidays but I’m kindof getting used to that quite a lot of late. Last few weeks have been spent working, intertwined with a visit from Sarah and before that a holiday in Ireland which is always good for a laugh. You can sum up my holiday in just a few words: Sarah, work, Ireland, car. That’s about it really.

Anyway, I’m back to university tomorrow so I am going to make a concerted effort to keep the site updated at (fairly) regular intervals. Hopefully I can go at least until Christmas before I stop updating again. So tell your friends, and maybe I’ll put the forum back up if anyone still cares about it.

Catch you all later.

1:53 am | Posted in Personal, Site Development, University, Web Development | No Comments »