archive for May, 2003

Aiieeee

University Saturday 31st May 2003

Stuck…in…library….slowly…going….insane.

I can’t wait for exams to be over.

But, there is much comedy grafitti on the desks to keep me occupied. Here are some glorious examples of student humour:

“I eat Motherf*ckers for lunch”

and then underneath

“you are what you eat!”

and one from angst central:

“Help! I’m in love with my flatmate!”

this is what keeps me going…

 

Top 100 Movies

Movies & TV Wednesday 28th May 2003

In a move completely ripping off tef, I’ve gone through imdb’s top 100 movies list to see which I’ve seen. Exam procrastination ahoy!
read on…

 

Wireless

Edinburgh Tuesday 27th May 2003

A few of our buddies are involved in the BackNet project in Edinburgh. Their aim is to provide a community-run network, mainly utilising wireless technology. Adam has just drawn up a nice map of the current nodes and their coverage. Although it doesn’t look much this is quite an accomplishment, a few nodes are also coming online soon that will hopefully link up the nodes in my area (the bit at the centre left) and the cluster at the bottom.

 

Nice..

Links Tuesday 27th May 2003



 

Woooo

University Monday 26th May 2003

Avoiding revision in the library and reading the uni computers services webpage I came across this in their upcoming projects section:

UN12 SMS Text Messaging Gateway
A project is proposed to implement a pilot centrally-managed gateway to a commercial SMS provider for the purpose of communicating with staff and students using SMS messaging. Services provided could include SMS paging service, email notification and University notices. The project would investigate cost recovery mechanisms and ongoing costs of the service. If approved, this project would be completed by May 2003.

UN13 WAP Interface for Mail
There are requests for additional interfaces to the University staff and student mail systems for mobile access. This project will investigate the suitability of a WAP interface for mail. If approved, this project would be completed by May 2003.

not bad I thought.

 

Just To Re-Iterate

Links Monday 26th May 2003

Funniest Site In The World

 

Gah!

Me Monday 26th May 2003

Windows XP has broken.
Again
Or it could be just that IBM drive…..

/me eyes HDD suspicously….

 

Technology And War

Links Thursday 22nd May 2003

www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield_pr.html

 

Matrix Reloaded

Movies & TV Thursday 22nd May 2003

Saw the film last night, here is my opinion of it (spoilers)
read on…

 

The Most Fun Since A-Funny-Time-Long-Ago

Links Tuesday 20th May 2003

Stumbled across homestarrunner.com last night, and managed to spend ages chuckling over Strongbad’s emails. Especially this one, the BURNINATOR strikes!!11.
Superb voice acting and nice animation along with ker-azy characters make for the funny.

 

Half-Life 2 Trailer

Gaming Thursday 15th May 2003

http://pcmovies.ign.com/pc/video/halflife2_teaser_051403_320.mov

drool-tastic

 

Its Funny and Terrifying

News Thursday 15th May 2003

George ‘DUBYAH’ Bush’s résumé

[via boingboing]

 

Matrix Reloaded

Movies & TV Thursday 15th May 2003

Oh yes, I think we do have tickets already. Wednesday 8:20 pm will roXor.

 

Another Blog

Links Thursday 15th May 2003

My main man Graeme (AKA Flinty) has just inserted his mind into the matrix here:

http://www.p2thepowerofm.com/pirateninja/

niiiice url 🙂

 

Ahoy!

Me Sunday 11th May 2003

Time for a m-m-m-m-monster update.

Friday was the dealine for the aformentioned System Design Project. I would say this last week has been one of the most stressfull and emotional of my life. Late nights, junk food, my insane team, JCMB basement, lego, robots, the cs3 possee, making friends/enemies, team-working and alcohol make for an ‘interesting’ time.
I feel like I’m awakening from a dream, this morning I bolted awake in bed, my mind screaming:

“OMG! OMG! I’VE MISSED THE DEADLINE!!”

Then the ThursdayFridaySaturday blur washed over me and I realised it must be Sunday. Not sleeping on Thursday night didn’t really help either. The project revolves around builidng a robot that can perform shopping for a web site user (stupid, I know). So we had built a large-ish model of a supermarket complete with toy packets of food for the robot to navigate around. At 1am Friday morning we realised the model was fundamentaly flawed and our genius conveyor belt idea would not work, unless we pullled everything apart and rebuilt it. Which we did. I don’t know where the time went but it was suddenly Friday 7am, demonstration in 2 hours. Somehow we managed to pull everything together, go home and get dressed up, and come back and do the demo, without falling asleep. The ‘board’ were very impressed and actually ran over they’re alloted time quizzing us about a certain ninja feature we had worked 😀 After sitting through hours of sales presentations in the afternoon we were all dropping off so we decided to go the pub, what a great idea. This turned into a marathon session which ends in my head at about 10pm but actually continued in real life until 3am (I’m told).
Anyway, today is Sunday, that means work.This helped to ground me a bit more in the ‘real world’.

I’m still not comfortable with pouring my every whim and fantasy onto my blog (I ain’t some livejournal user) so I’ll just say that I seem to have reached a point where I really think I need a girlfriend, a real one.

Speaking of points, I was thinking that there were two points where I felt I’d reached another stage in life, both can be connected to books. The first was reading a dog-eared hard back copy of Neuromancer (William Gibson), borrowed form the council library, whilst on the train to Edinburgh. I think I must have been still 18 and was visiting Edinburgh University for the first time and seeing Edinburgh as a city for the second time. I finished the book in the journey. Ending up going to Edinburgh uni and have lived in this fantastic city for almost four years.

The second point was reading Generation X (Douglas Coupland), again on the train, but going home for xmas this time. I think ‘being 21’ was finally sinking into me, and the character in the book was visiting his parents for xmas aswell. It just fell nicely into place. I think I felt it was time to ‘grow up’, don’t know how successfully I managed it though…

(Do not fear brave readers, monkeys have not taken control of my mind)

 

Rules Of Attraction

Movies & TV Sunday 11th May 2003

Watched this last night, was kinda like a dark American Pie with some Memento-like reverse plot jiggery-pokery. That is all.

 

Things I Need To Read

Books Sunday 11th May 2003

I Lucifer – Glen Duncan
Cheese Monkeys – Chip Kidd
Microserfs – Douglas Coupland
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Broken Angels – Richard Morgan
More Murakami (although not when feeling depressed)

please add others…

 

Richard Morgan

Books Sunday 11th May 2003

Big up the Richard Morgan massive. He seems to have finally relented and gotten himself a website:

www.richardkmorgan.co.uk