It came to my attention that this blog makes me look awfully dull. Well, there’s a certain amount of truth to that (in fact, it’s pretty much 100% true) but I’m not that boring. Honest.

1:18 am | Posted in Randomness | No Comments »

I have absolutely no idea what is going on with this code. As far as I can tell, it’s not my doing. Basically tracked the error out to the file output module (as expected). However it seems that because I had two ofstreams on the go, it was causing some kind of data corruption and hence things were breaking all over the place.

No idea what’s caused this; whether this is expected behaviour or not. I’m fairly certain that I’ve at least got the code narrowed down now. There was some very odd memory management going on, but that was definately my doing. That is now sorted. However I woin’t be happy until I’ve determined precisely what is causing this very strange output.

My plan of attack is to try the code out on my desktop PC tomorrow. I’ve got a similar setup there but as far as I know, everything “works”. If I can replicate the strange oddities there then there’s got to be something wrong with my code and I’ll fix it. If not, then I’m stumped.

Either way this is something that I really don’t want to have to deal with right now. This program was supposed to be finished and I’ve even gone ahead and written the damn write-up of the project. To find that something is going critically wrong is quite disheartening, and I can’t even trust my own results anymore.

However I can’t do anything else on it tonight. I’m just too tired to concentrate anymore nad I think that this is just going to introduce more and more stupid errors into the code. Frankly I’m considering reverting to the old codebase and just starting with a fresh sub-class. I know the method works, but I can’t believe I’m having so many problems with these (comparitvely) simple output classes.

Gah. Not a good day.

3:10 am | Posted in Computing, Ranting | No Comments »

Seriously. This is getting a little silly now. All I want is a (reasonably) simple program which allows me to plot a great big 3D data set, export it as a good quality PS file and allow me to import it into my project.

But ooooh no. That would be waaay too much to ask. I’ve tried pretty much every program out there, from OpenDX to freaking gnuplot, and nothing is working. Absolutely nothing. It hasn’t helped that I’ve had to recompile vtk a number of times now, and on top of that I’ve been sat around for the past god knows how many hours waiting for numerous other packages to compile.

Now, I know I shouldn’t complain about Gentoo, because it’s not its fault. I just wish that things didn’t contain a gizillion lines of source code so that they’d install sometime this bloody year.

On the upside, vtk just finished compiling for the third time, so lets see if it works now, eh?

PS: It didn’t work. I now have to wait another 40 minutes for it to compile again. I hate my life.

5:51 pm | Posted in Computing, Linux, Whining | 2 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

I’m now having to recompile VTK. For the third time.

Not a happy bunny.

Also, ATLAS is a big pile of poo. Things aren’t going my way today.

5:08 pm | Posted in Computing, Whining | No Comments »

Well, I find myself sitting here in the maths department with very little that I can actually do for the moment; I have to say, this makes rather a large change from the norm, but there we go. I say very little, because theoretically I should either be working on Topology (can’t be bothered) or Combinatorics. However, I’m giving myself a break since I’ve managed to complete all but the last question on the assignment a week and a half before it’s due in. Warwick Accommodation form for next year’s hopeful on-campus place has also been submitted.

Anyway, thought I’d come on here and let you all know that. Not that anyone will be interested in a post that basically has no content and is generally useless to everyone. But never mind, eh?

I think I might go back to the house now.

7:18 pm | Posted in Boredom, Maths, Warwick Blogs | No Comments »

I’ve not been on here for a while again, mainly due to maths and far too little time, but I thought I’d give a quick update to let you all know how I’m getting on.

Firstly, the maths. Measure Theory has been a pig this week (those who are doing the course will love and cherish question 7 on this week’s assignment). I only know a handful of people who have completely finished it, and I’m certainly not one of them. I’ve managed to complete 2/3 of it, so maybe I’ll get lucky and they won’t mark the stupidly hard question.

Combinatorics has been going well. Got the third assignment in a whole 3 days earlier than it was actually due in, and with an (almost) complete set of answers. The lecture notes are excellent, which is always good, and I think the course is one of the most organised I’ve seen so far. Then again, Daan Krammer has always produced brilliantly organised notes and – touch wood – reasonable exams, so my hopes are high.

I’ve decided not to bother going to any more Rings and Modules lectures. Frankly, I still don’t even get what a module is, let alone tensor products, finite dimensional algebras, faithful semi-modules and the rest. It’s like a complete contrast of Combinatorics; appauling lecturing style and lecture notes (sorry), not enough examples that actually make sense and a complete disregard for any sort of coherence. I was actually hoping that somebody would take note of what was said on the SSLC forms for Algebra II, but alas, Dr. Moody doesn’t seem to have caught onto the problems. I’m hoping that with a good book and some time over Christmas, I can teach myself the remainder of the course. However, this just doesn’t look likely anymore.

Since I’ve now effectively dropped both this and Dynamical Systems, I’ve had to take up Topics in Mathematical Biology just to make up my CATS (without those two I would be doing 42 this term). The dynamics of systems has always intruiged me, and I wrote my second year essay on the topic. I’ve managed to wade my way through and copy up about 20 pages of notes in the past week, so I only have a little bit to go. In fact, I should be doing this as we speak.

Besides all the maths, I’ve not been up to a whole lot. One thing to definately note is my 2nd year of dating my girlfriend (Sarah). I cannot believe it’s been 2 years already – hardly seems like I was in Cryfield getting hideously drunk – but it was a nice day. We went to see Serenity at Star City, which is by far the best film I’ve seen in a long time. After that, Pizza Hut was consumed (it’s a tradition) and then just general lazyness watching TV for the rest of the day.

Also been checking Warwick Accommodation, and apparently forms come out on Friday for final year undergraduates applying for on-campus accommodation. I’ve been looking forward to going back on campus for a while now, but the first vestiges of doubt started crawling back into my mind. Perhaps a little more thought is required on the subject, but I’ll apply anyway and deal with it later.

Other than all of this I’ve immersed myself in implementing some rudimentary AJAX for a project. It’s all to do with tape librarys, but it’s extremely boring so I won’t mention it here. Re-considering my decision to have my blog on here – I do miss my old website, and am seriously considering moving back there. I even completely re-did the CSS to enable me to implement styles a lot easier (so I can have both the original and new styling on here). However, I’m still waiting on my host to update to PHP5 (I know, it’s not completely production stable yet) so I’ll have to put it off for a little longer yet.

What little time I have left out of all that has been spent playing Black & White 2. I especially enjoy throwing rocks at random buildings and blowing up people with giant volcanos of immense and utter doom. In my case it does still suffer from the boredom factor of the original; it’s cool for a time, but after a few days the monotony starts to set in (constantly re-building towns, blowing people up, hurling rocks at giant axe-wielding monkeys, etc etc). Oh well, I do have the shortest attention span ever, after all.

And now I’ve realised that this really is rather a long list and I should probably get back to copying up the remaining 13.5 sides of notes still remaining. Yay?!

9:21 pm | Posted in Maths, Warwick Blogs, Web Development, Whining, XHTML/CSS | 3 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

Just a quick entry for now, because I don’t have a lot of time before doing some Combinatorics assignment. However, I just thought I’d poke my head around the door to point out that I’ve not been beaten to death by a rampaging herd of slightly obtuse aardvarks. Let’s face it, that just can’t be good for your health.

But anyway, I will post later. Promise*.

* - Statement may be false. May not be used as a floatation device.

12:33 pm | Posted in Randomness, Warwick Blogs | No Comments »

It’s very good for you. Especially in Tesco Value ubersize packs.

On other less related matters, I’m bored.

10:10 pm | Posted in Boredom, Randomness, Warwick Blogs | 4 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

…I may as well talk about my motherboard. Or rather, the lack thereof.

I restarted my computer the other night, to find (to my dismay) that the bloody thing had frozen at POST. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just power it down, reset it and let it get its knickers out of a twist.” That was a mistake.

Something has completely buggered my motherboard over with a large – and possibly rusty – spatula. After 4–6 hours of attempted fixings – at one point with the motherboard running on my desk – and borrowing components from my housemate, I gave up and bought a new motherboard.

Now, as much as I wanted to upgrade my system completely I don’t quite have the money as of yet. I’ve bought a fairly decent motherboard, and hopefully it won’t screw itself up the day I get it. That would be rather annoying.

PS: I want an Nvidea 7800 GTX. And, preferably, an Athlon64 X2. Anyone think Santa will get me one for Christmas?

9:24 pm | Posted in Hardware, Warwick Blogs, Whining | 1 Comment » | Show comment » | Hide comment » |

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 »