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 »

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 » |

…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 »

So, I was just sitting here in the maths department, minding my own business, when all of a sudden a little thought pops into my head. “What exactly are you doing?” it said. Well, after I gave it a little thought, here is a nice itemized list of my life, and how exceeding dull it is.

• Get up.
• Mess around on the computer until my brain hurts, or do maths.
• Drop Sarah into work/wherever she wants to go.
• Go to the maths department and work, or mess around on the computers.
• Pick Sarah up, go back home, mess around on the computer.
• Sleep.

And there we have it - my life in 6 nice little points.

Now, personally I found this quite depressing, hence the iPod comes out and Linkin Park is turned on up to quite a loud volume in order to block out any remnents of thoughts - good, bad or otherwise. Unfortunately, this time it didn’t really do the trick and now I’m really quite down - hence the blogging.

I mean, Sarah has her singing, or goes out to work and has quite a nice little social life. In fact, everyone I know has some kind of social clique. Last year was great fun, and I used to go out quite a lot - now I’ve turned into some fucking maths-performing hermit. I want to get involved in something, but for some reason every time I go near the Union I just want to burn the place down. The sheer tedium of the politics and red tape there just makes me want to scream and beat people with overly large sticks.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll give WTV another go, but again the red tape annoys me. I’d quite like to make a professional quality video there, but I just can’t seem to find the effort.

It just gets on my nerves that everyone else seems to be having such good times, whereas yours truly feels like a big pile of poo 90% of the time. Maybe it’ll be different if I get back on campus for my final year. Bah, humbug.

Mental note: must stop feeling sorry for myself.

7:42 pm | Posted in Personal, Whining | No Comments »

Oh well, I’m probably going to not do so good in this one. Never mind; it’s the last one.

Will update later. For now, bed.

11:57 pm | Posted in Exams, Whining | No Comments »

As I write this, I’m currently sitting back in Coventry awaiting a phonecall from Sarah to get me to pick her up from university. This is a rather boring wait (I’ve been here for a 1/2 hour now) so I decided to boot up her computer and write something. I can almost bet that because fate loves me so much, the phone will be going shortly.

Anyway, I’ve not done a lot this past week - although I really should have. Not only do I have this goddamn essay to write, but I also have an assignment for a module called Modelling Nature’s Non-linearity that’s worth 40% - and it’s a pig. On top of that, I haven’t been to bed before 4am for the past week and, after having got up at 7am this morning (and going to bed at 4) I’m feeling rather worse for wear and a bit tetchy.

Hmm. What else?

Not a lot really. Mainly I’ve been playing CS a lot and generally been tired. I may be working down at Oxford this week, which is always good since I could really do with some money.

And rather typically, the phone just went.

Blah.

2:20 pm | Posted in Personal, Whining | 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 »