Post-Dissertation Celebrations

• Still no burt.me.uk - will ring nominet tommorrow


• Still no 6230 release - current reports are next month


• Still not out of the woods as regards work

Yeah, the summary above pretty much says it all, although disseration is bound and handed in, I still haven't got very far with the enterprise java beans of doom. Last night was sort of an impromptue post-dissertation piss-up, I started drinking before my last lecture of the day, and spent most of the lecture being amused by the girl we dragged along to randomly come to a compsci lecture... Afterwards a friend was cooking for a whole load of us, so we had a proper roast dinner, accompanied by copious quantities vodka and lucozade - don't ask :)

Then there was the trip down town, where a generally good time was had, however, it took 1.5 hours to walk back up the hill after losing my phone twice and collapsing into bushes lots - all very urrgh...

Hmm

Another lovely today, and I really wish I had the time to lounge in the sun instead of sat in here panicing over Enterprise Java beans, the bank project I mentioned before. The dissertation was bound and is now sat safely at the back of my wadrobe awaiting handin on monday, when I can hang around in a smug manner ;)
It's strange, today there's a sort of fog over the centre of Aber, possibly due to the effect of the sea and the warm weather, it's now made its way up to the village, all rather strange. Tried to get a good photo of it, but by the time i got around to taking it, the fog had worked it's way up the hill soo there wasn't much to see.

Contacted nominet about burt.me.uk, apparently they are waiting for my previous registrant to confirm my details - this could be a tedious process.

Still no 6230 release - grr!

Relief

Finally, this evening I finished off a final draft of my dissertation ? all 88 pages and 21,000 words of it. All that remains now is to get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow morning and hand it to my tutor for a final check over before hand in (a week on Monday), and I?m already feeling very relieved it?s out of the way, and really I want to go out and get horrifically drunk in celebration.

Unfortunately, the software project we have to do (implement an online bank) in the next two weeks and those ?life tasks? such as buying food and having to clean my room (it?s getting in a bit of a state after two weeks of essentially being locked in here) has go in the way that idea.

In geek news, I was having problems using the version of ghostscript I have on my server to convert my dissertation to PDF, either there was some sort of fault, or it just refused to process a postscript file bigger than the system?s memory? Also the computer systems installations all didn?t seem to like my nice Microsoft word font embedding. Tried out the GhostScript for windows package, and it works surprisingly nicely.

Suddenly realised it?s 0400, must be bedtime :o)

Bah

Just looked at the assignment i have to complete 10 days after the major project and it looks to be a complete whore :(

Some serious productivity required in the next 7 days.

Also woke up this morning and my left eye was all swollen, possibly an infection or possibly an allergy I reckon... It was hurting a bit last night, but was quite bad this morning - had to sit with some peas on it first thing :|

Oh and the 6230 hasn't yet been released - watch this space

Quote

Just saw a great line in someone's MSN name that made me smile:

"The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"

:o)

Home
Well, I'm now home for a few days as a sort of "break" from my mountain of work at the moment. Currently typing up the ideas behind my project design, and how I diligently decided how certain classes were formulated, and I'm generally indicating that I was an all-round good egg.

Set off about 10.30 this morning, and after a relatively pain free journey (aside from the near RTA involving a volvo and a caravan) arrived at home about 12.30pm. After lunch went into Worcester on a mission to find out about the release of the Nokia 6230 which is the first nokia phone in about two years that I actually want... Yes it has all the w@w features such as video, picture messaging, "voice messaging" and all that shit, but it also has some useful attributes such as bluetooth, long battery life (12 days standby) and its not much bigger than my 8310... Ok, I'm a bit obsessive about phones when I find one I like, and this one is bloody great IMHO, especially after playing about with the one they had in carphone warehouse :)

However, its not yet available on Orange (my current provider) and I'm due an upgrade (I've had my 8310 for about 2 years now, if we ignore the whole SPV incident). After talking to the guy in carphone warehouse, there is nothing on their computer system about it, and after a call to customer services it is being released on monday, and they may well be able to dispatch me one then, if not then tthere's a chance that carphonewarehouse will have sorted themselves out and be able to offer it instead.. The problem with the latter option being that I'm planning on being back in aber come sunday :S

Ah well, nothing to do with acquiring technology is ever simple for me.

Regarding being home for the weekend, currently typing this in bed when i should really be doing project and disconnected from any form of internet access due to a guest sleeping in the same room as the gateway machine :) Even a quick wireless scan in the hope of broadband-enabled neighbours getting wirless has proved fruitless.

Anyway, time I did some design then hit the sack.

Oh dear

Shit, meet fan... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3608315.stm

Surely this is a very silly thing for them to be doing?

Website

Ah yes, www.burt.me.uk will be down for the time being until I can find alternative hosting arrangements. Watch this space.

Bah

Yesterday I got up to roughly half way through the write up, however, today I just don't seem to have the motivation. I think it's because the sun is out again, and earlier giving a friend a lift down the hill I really noticed that by rights I should be outside and not stuck in my cell doing work :)

Things are starting to draw to a close now, projects are starting to look something like finished, people are starting to look at jobs, masters courses etc for next year. Personally, I still don't know what I'm going to do do, it really is totally up to me I guess.. however, to get some options open I'm in communcations with a few different people about applying to do the Information Security MSc at royal holloway, which would certainly be in the subject area I want to work, and would be a good academic foundation.

But anyway, I guess I'm procrastinating, If only I had typed so much into my disseration in the last 10 minutes :)