Snow!

Well, starting yesterday evening there has been a downfall of snow in aber, which is quite unusual for a coastal town, there's even snow on the beach!

Been very busy the last week or so, trying to balance work with keeping some sembalance of a social life from time to time. Monday night went to Inn on the Pier, then the snooker club with two coursemates who do my DILS* module, Mark and Mike and my housemate james (he took over their IY job last year), overall was a splendid evening, but having had quite a bit of beer, went to the bay afterwards and i managed to down a few smirnoff ices - which is never a particularly good plan, especially as I'd had a dodgy almost-gone-off stir fry for my dinner. I was fine up until the point where after runnning up the hill i decided to down lots of water to keep myself from being groggy due to dehydration... all i remember is throwing up in the shower :s

Been really trying to be productive this week and ended up not really achieving all that much, one of my deadlines has been extended which is welcome, but the major project is really starting to creep up.


[*DILS = Department for information and library studies, yes I know it's changed it's name, and no, I don't care]

I have five weeks to write an online bank in JavaBeans, that i know nothing about...

IT's all his fault, I'm sure of it.

Will do a catchup blog tommorrow afternoon.

Right, essays on "professional ethics" and "labour law" completed this morning, except a bit of tweaking i need to do to the ethics one.

This afternoon cleaned the bathroom for the inspection tommorrow, and bloody hell did it need it!

Bah,

I've spent all weekend trying to write a bloody essay on ethics of computing, and I've got another employment law one to do next week :(

I get the feeling i'm a bit snowed under :/

Well, it's 3am, and again i'm having trouble sleeping. I think this is due to all the work i've got to do at the moment, which is playing on my mind, but really all the work is only playing on my mind because I'M SO EASILY DISTRACTED and procrastinate most of the day.
Will disable all network access tommorrow afternoon and do some sodding work instead!

Procrastination

To aid in my procrastination, I've decided to list my current assignment workload

• CS380 Professional Issues Assignment 3000 words essay, due 4th March


• CS390 Major project - ongoing implementation and starting on the actual dissertation - Due 26th April *panic*


• CS312 Software Engineering Assignement - Released Friday 6th

Bah. I've got too much do to.

Embarrasment

I just almost died of embarrasment. Returning from my first lecture, I was walking accross the paved area outside the arts centre and the union, just near the top of the steps. At the same time as i was walking accross the top of the steps, a blind lady with a stick was walking up them just out of view, and put her stick accross my path just at the wrong time meaning i didn't see her emerge and I then knocked her stick from her hand. I almost died of embarrasment at this point, and instantly picked up her stick and passed it to her, not quite knowing how to apologise as i just wanted to die on the spot. But she luckily was quite cheery when i apologised and asked if she was alright.

I hate it when awkward things like that happen.

The Calm Before the Storm

Right, that's the end of the celebrations for quite some time as far as I can see things. I've done worryingly less than I intended to on my major project, and I've got to pull my finger out in a major way to get back to where i want to be, but then again at the same time i want to enjoy the limited time that I have remaining at the end of uni.

Good weekend all-in-all, if not a bit random. Final exam went well, managed to fill a 12-page answerbook in the two hours, and strangely for me, stayed to the very end of my exam for the first time ever, and I think I said everything that I wanted to say... Even got a quotation from Bruce Shenier in about the security of public-key cryptography (i.e it's all based on our inability to factorise large primes, and if we figure out how to do that, it's all going to go tits up :o) )

Then began the celebrations, and friday was a very manic, but splendid evening. Went to the union at 3pm for a few drinks, and eventually left there at 7pm, (after watching neighbours and the simpsons there) for some dinner and chance to get myself sorted out... Then went downtown, met up with coursemates and wormed our way through the aber pubs, eventually reaching the pier, which wasn't great, but it eventually got to playing quite a few good hip-hop and dance tracks, which was good, and as we'd all been drinking since 3pm there was quite a bit of dancing going on. Towards about 1am, most people were getting bored, and everyone headed home, however, it occured to me that i'd not yet met up with Big Al for his birthday celebrations, so I phoned him and found out they were still in the bay, so headed over there. Got there at 1.10am, got in free, bought al a drink, then realised that the music was quite good... by the time i'd got there they were playing a good mix of what i can only describe as a mix of "indie anthems" and oldies (for example, they played Blink 182 - all the small things, The buggles - video killed the radio star, and Queen - don't stop me now... Basically all the good stuff that you can dance and sing along to when you're a bit pissed :o) All in all a splendid evening, and I had no hangover when I awoke on saturday, so happy birthday Al, and bye-bye exams until June.

Saturday night, I was going to stay in and do some work, however, after making a curry and having a couple of beers with it, i started working out some good arrangements in iTunes, and this sort of got me in the mood for going out again. So I dragged james up from town, and met with the other guys in the union that had talked about going to Reload (sort of 60s thru 80s party mix night, for the uninitiated) had another good night, didn't really drink all that much, but had a good calorie-busting dance, and really did sleep when I got back... Oh yeah, and there was a large contingent of emergency services out - Leggy police women with squeezy batons, a few nurses with fluffy hats, and at least one lara croft lookalike 8-)

Well, anyway, as I said, lots to do over the coming weeks, and I have a few people I want to see over the next month or so, so I shall have to see how the timetable and dissertation pans out... not looking immensely bad at the moment, but I've yet to sort out practicals... urrgh.

Currently listening to the judge jules saturday night warm-up from radio one, quite good music to do odds and sods to, actually (on the bbc radio on demand service).


Have a few things I want to do at some point in the future also (low-priority work stuff)

• Implement a proper online photo album for my photos


• UPDATE MY WEBSITE as I never finished it in the first place


• Get a tripod and take some good photos of aber by night, and perhaps in the fog or similar

Right, well now to complete the seemingly loads of emails I've written today, then get some kip ready for a long day tommorrow... The plan is to get up early and go for a run, but I am not 100% sure if that will happen yet :)
Sheesh, I've been typing for ages!