Well, after the complete downer at the end of term, things are looking up. I’m spending a week down in Plymouth with Sarah, and it’s been nice and relaxing so far. I’ve spent quite a few hours coding on the website tonight, trying to get things done by the end of the week. When I get back on Saturday, I’m going to have an awful lot of revision to do and not a whole load of time, so for the main part I will probably not be blogging or doing much else than revision.
My first four exams are at the beginning of April, and I’m not looking forward to them that much.
- Topics in Mathematical Biology
The course itself doesn’t seem to be too hard. Sure, there’s non-linear PDEs and all that jazz, but we don’t seem to actually do an awful lot with it. The problem with this exam is definately going to be the sheer amount of things that we have to know. And, unfortunately, there’s just no way around that apart from extensive revision.
- Introduction to Topology
I’d like to think that at this point in time, I understand topology fairly well. Again, there’s a fair amount to revise for but this is something that I can tackle, and it certainly isn’t insurmountable in terms of understanding. Which is always good. I just hope we don’t get a nasty exam.
- Measure Theory
This one has me a little worried. The problem is that there’s a lot to revise for and it’s also quite challenging from the standpoint of knowledge. We didn’t have the best lecturer, so that doesn’t really help matters. Really need to get going on some past exam sheets and do some questions.
- Combinatorics
I understand and enjoy this course. My only worry is that the lecturer, Daan Krammer, sets a nice(ish) exam. Last year’s was pretty nasty, and although it’s fairly easy to do, it takes a lot of time - not something that you have an awful lot of in the examination rooms.
Anyway, this is all worrying about nothing at the moment. I’ll worry more when I get back to Coventry and get going on the actual revision. For the time being, I’m going to drink some tea and enjoy myself here (as much as I can).
On the website front, I’ve finally got the “proper” CSS coding in place which means user-selectable themes! I know that’s what you’ve all been begging me for in a completely silent fashion. But yes, I have three CSS templates for the new (WB) theme, the default theme and also the old theme which did mainly suck. But there we go. Just need to write the appropriate bits for password changing, selecting themes, profile information perhaps and a couple other things, then I’ll have something that closely resembles a proper website.
I’m also going to make a distinct effort when I get back to catalogue all of my loose pieces of code here and there that do minorly useful things. I really want to put them on the web, since at least some people might e-mail me. I like e-mails, after all.
On top of that, I hope to accomplish the image catalogue as well as putting the photo galleries back online. I’d also quite like to optimize the scripting so that it all runs a lot faster and uses less SQL queries. Also, the CSS could, as always, need some work but I think I’ll leave that for the time being.
I can’t wait to get this thing finished. It’s been a long time coming and, considering the amount of work I’ve put into it, I’ve not had a lot to show for it. Certainly the coding will be most of the work, but I must sit down and actually write some content, otherwise this place will be nothing more than a skeleton. I’m more determined than ever that during this exam period I will blog more than I have done before. I need somewhere that I can vent my frustrations and not bombard my poor Sarah with rambling maths questions.
Anyway, I must stop writing now as it is certainly time for bed. Tomorrow, I think I’ll mainly concentrate on the user control panel and get that out of the way. Once I get that done, I can move on to sort out the other bits and pieces that are more shiny.
1:16 am | Posted in Exams, Maths, Site Development, University, XHTML/CSS
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