After many years of wanting to visit the States, I’ve finally got the chance. Sarah and myself booked a holiday in New York City back in January, and we’re leaving tomorrow! Seriously, I think it’s the first time in about 5 years that my passport’s got a proper workout.

Anyway, we’re going to do the usual tourist crap, but of course I will be taking as many pictures as I’m allowed to by Sarah. Hopefully with a bit of luck I’ll be able to do some diaries or something on here as the hotel has interweb capability.

That’s it for now — back to packing.

11:26 am | Posted in Personal | 1 Comment » | Show comment » | Hide comment » |

Like pretty much everybody else out there, I use Google Analytics to help me figure out how much traffic I’m getting and where it’s coming from. And finally, I’m starting to get some more visitors!

Until very recently, it looked like this site was pretty much blacklisted by Google. I’d type in my name - in quotes - and find this site on about the tenth page. And hell, it’s not like my name is even common. But I noticed a week or so ago that I was getting 30-40 visits per day, which is far higher than is usually logged.

Pretty much the most common keyword is linked into my CheapVPS review; in fact, I was pretty surprised to see that it’s actually the fourth result for CheapVPS. I’ll be writing a follow-up to that story soon.

Other than that, better photoblog integration is on the way, just as soon as I can find some time. We’ve got about ten different things going on depending on the day thanks to Christmas, and finding the time to sit down and figure out something to write is pretty slim (hence why I”m writing this at 3am… whoops).

3:22 am | Posted in Personal, Site Development, Web Development | 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 »

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 »

I don’t often appeal to the political correctness brigade, but to all of you out there who don’t believe in saying “Merry Christmas”, I hope you had a really nice holiday.

I was extremely happy to receive a lot more than was expected this year, and because so many people have now asked me what I got, inevitably lots and lots gets missed out. So if you’re interested, have a look at my present list!

To be honest, there’s an awful lot to keep me occupied and this just isn’t a good thing. I haven’t really done any work at all, but there is a plan now that some things are out of the way. Whether that plan actually succeeds or not is yet to be discovered, but we shall see!

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Continue reading “Happy Holidays!”…

8:53 pm | Posted in Maths, Personal, Photography | No Comments »

Well, it’s been a fun weekend; basically involved quite a lot of drinking and alcohol-related goodness on Friday night, followed by a trip to the Kenilworth fireworks festival yesterday evening with Mark, Alan, Vicky and Tom. Somehow, they convinced me to resurrect my old Facebook account and actually do something with it. I will be posting the photos on there, probably within the next couple of days if I can actually get around to it.

I’ve been to a couple of fireworks festivals, and this was pretty much a standard one. I do love fireworks, so it’s all good. Again, I took my camera, but to be honest, most of the pictures haven’t turned out to be very good, since I didn’t have a tripod and hence was trying to get good 3-4 second exposures hand-held; clearly this was not going to happen. Also gutting was that, for some reason, my camera decided it didn’t want to take any pictures just as we got to the best bit. I have no clue what happened at all there.

There was a lot of people there - they say about 15,000 or something silly. The actual event is held on a big, big field which is conveniently sloped, so everybody has a great view. I’ve promised myself that I’m also going to get around to posting a load of photos on here - honest!

For now though, it’s dinner time.

5:57 pm | Posted in Personal, Photography | No Comments »

Not been a great day, when all’s said and done. A friend of mine has, frankly, shown his true colours this afternoon and to be honest I’m quite annoyed about it all. I don’t think he reads this blog, but in case you do; I don’t consider you as a friend any longer. Don’t expect anything from me in the future, because you’re not going to get it. Grow up.

Basically that’s spoiled my day up until now. We had Pizza Hut tonight, which was nice, but honestly I’ve never been quite this angry with anyone before and I don’t particularly like it. I just find it hard to believe that anybody could be quite so immature and idiotic, but there we go.

So, I’ve decided to come back to Coventry tonight instead of doing the usual Maths-fest. I have to pick Sarah up later, but I do have two episodes of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares to catch up on and I would really like to work some more on the website tonight. I’ve patched up most of it to use my new templating system, and it seems to work a treat. I’m still not 100% sure about the performance, but I reckon I can get away with it pretty easily. Perhaps if I do some database work and tidy the OOP code a little, it can be enhanced a bit more.

Still, load times of about ~0.01 seconds per page aren’t too bad. I just want it to be able to process the databases efficiently. I’d better get on with it then, I suppose. Bleh.

8:53 pm | Posted in Personal, Site Development, University | No Comments »

We had a good one today. Sat around for 20 minutes waiting for a lecturer to turn up to Groups and Representations. Another lecturer comes in, saying that the lecturer for this course decided that he didn’t want to do the course this year – as you do – so he’s going to run the Representation Theory module this term instead of next. As I was undecided about taking the module, I suppose it’s a good thing really since I don’t have to make a decision.

For those that care (regarding my previous entry), I decided to take Dynamical Systems and Manifolds, since Lie Groups isn’t running this year. Also, did anybody actually understand the notes written in Rings and Modules this afternoon? I have no clue whatsoever.

I’m signed up for a stupid amount of modules, but I’m thinking that it’s probably going to be a good idea to drop most of them in favour of taking some 3rd year modules next year. Having multiple clashes everywhere with everything just isn’t good – inevitably I have to write the notes up. Also considering dropping Continuum Mechanics (because it sucks) and the aforementioned module (because… it sucks).

In other, less maths related news, went out the other night to The Bar with Sarah Helen and Griff to karaoke night. Much fun was had by all, although I could only have a pint through the need to drive cars afterwards. That’s about it on the social front – I’m just too busy with lectures and other things to summon the energy to go out, which is a pain.

Anyway, I’m going to write a poster now. Going to be selling my copy of “Numbers and Functions” (RP Burn). If anyone’s interested, e-mail me or something.

7:04 pm | Posted in Maths, Personal, Warwick Blogs, Whining | No Comments »

So, this is my last entry. Browsing back through the past 6 or 7 entries, I understand that I didn’t really do much in terms of explaining what exactly went on while I was here. I promise that I shall at least try to explain what I’ve been up to in the past 3 and a bit weeks, but at the moment I don’t really have an awful lot of time to do so.

Looking forward to getting back home though to be honest. It’s going to be nice to sleep in my own bed and not have to worry about paying for hotels and all that. I’m also particularly looking forward to getting back to a permanent internet connection. Quite frankly, it’s amazing how much I’ve missed it - not having access to instant information and communication really does push home the point that we’re much more of a globalized nation now.

Apart from that, the trip home tomorrow could be quite interesting. Weather’s not looking too good with visibility pretty low, but so long as we get back in one piece I don’t really care.

10:03 pm | Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Will be going home on Monday, but for the time being am in Waterford. No real time to post at the moment, but will be at the hotel in a bit so shall post then.

7:18 pm | Posted in Personal | No Comments »