radiac.net

Yes, for the sixth year in a row, it's Christmas time in radiac land. Yes, that's right, despite my hectic schedule and extreme workload, I have managed to wheel out the decorations yet again, loaded up my Christmas playlist, and am currently playing Slade rather loudly.

As ever, these won't be the final decorations for the year; I'll be adding to them over the next few weeks as and when inspiration hits me in the face with a 2x4. Back (by popular demand) is the TCMI, and I'll be carrying out the TCMI watch like I did last year - if you run the TCMI on your site, let me know!

So, Merry Christmas everybody!

Hi everyone. I am very disappointed that so many people have looked at my website, but only 3 people have commented.

So disappointed, in fact, that I very nearly didn't give you this wonderful link (thanks Andrew, who has Christmasified his site again this year, although still no TCMI - shame on you) - and the save function actually works! Yay for web games.

And don't worry, Leslie, I feel your pain. I get it almost every day. At least yours isn't genetic...

And damn!

How appropriate that the BBC should run a punctuation quiz the day we talk about spelling in the BCSS lab.

In particular, question 4 (which I got wrong just to see what they said about it):

It's wrong... [sensible people put] the last full stop outside the closing speech marks.

So you suck, Tristan.

I want everyone to now go and take the test, and post their results back here. I got 10.

Awwwwww!

Just got back from the BCSS pub crawl. Sorry, pub tour. Heheh it was a bit of a disaster :)

It was just 5 comittee members (Me, Laura, Laurence, Leela and Peter - note alphabetical impartiality), plus Hannah (who I dont think is actually even in the society) - it was fun, but not quite the success we were hoping for :p

Anyway, time to get back to the work!

Tonbschl site nearly finished now! Yay! Back to the coursework...

Yesterday I worked out why my contact lenses are sucking at the moment; they're monthly ones, and I should have started wearing the new ones on monday. And they always get bad towards the end of the month anyway. Of course, I have 3 months worth of new lenses waiting for me at home, but I'm not going to be home for another couple of weeks. So I've sent instructions for someone to pick them up and post them on *giggle*

But of course I have run out of contact lense solution, so I had to go into Boots to get a new pack - £8! What a joke, I've got loads just sitting at home, doing nothing, never going to be used. But it's not all bad; my contact lenses are paid for by direct debit from my mums bank account, but the Boots account is in my name. A few months ago, they changed the type of cleaning solution, and the new stuff is cheaper than the old stuff, and so today, they sent me a refund - a cheque for £12.80, made payable to me! Yay :)

So anyway, coursework. Yep, really should get on with that.

I have re-launched the tonbschl site! For the third time! ;)

Still lots left to do, but with my coursework load, I'm not going to get most of it done till next week. I told them this, and they were keen to go with what we have.

Took me just over 2 hours to relaunch it, and now I'm going to go to bed, because I have a 9.15 and I am tired. So very very tired.

I've been working on compilers ALL afternoon. Aren't I good?

And Weebl rocks.

Ok, maybe not all afternoon.

Hi everyone, just thought you'd like to know that, in light of my recent realisation that I'm going to fail my degree, I have decided to launch my male modelling career. Look out for my 2004 calendar, in all good calendar retailers from Monday!

And I hope you're all as outraged at this news story as I am:

Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody has been dropped from an airport playlist after it was panned in a passenger survey.

How can it be Christmas without Slade? It's the first song I play at midnight on the morning of the 1st of December EVERY YEAR (as a quick trawl of the archives will no doubt prove). It's blatently the most Christmassy song around!

So anyway, today I got a surprise lift up to uni this morning, I made my 12.15 lecture, and I got home to find a box of chocolates from my boss person at tonbschl! Excellent :)

Shame about the project meeting - he had a go at me for not doing enough work. Well, he had a go at me for not doing any work. Which is fair enough, I guess. And then he told me about someone who's already basically done my project, only they've done it better than I was going to do it. But never mind :)

Now to break the back of the compilers.

Check out the top google result for a search for miserable failure - "Biography of President George W. Bush"...

I'm sure that my loyal readers would like an update to find out about my weekend.

Well, it sucked. A lot.

Not least because I had a load of coursework to do. After 4 days of working on it (with an unavoidably low concentration level of about 5%, admittedly), I am 1/4 of the way through it. This is a bit of a problem, since there is 1/2 due today which I haven't really started, and the other 1/2 is due tomorrow.

So I'm going to concentrate on the compilers for tomorrow, and take advantage of the 'hand in 5 days late to get a maximum of 40%' for the literature review - since it doesn't actually get a mark, I figure 40% will be just as good.

In the spirit of all things coursework, allow me to introduce my friends snow fight and fan and ball.

And for the first time in a long time, I'm up later than my flatmates...

And right before your very eyes, radiac transforms into Midnight Radiac! (Cue scary music) Just like clark kent transforming into superman in a phone box! Apart from not really, because you can see radiac putting his headphones on, and it doesnt look anywhere as near as cool as the funky blur effect they get in superman films. One day... one day...

Yeah, so it looks like I'm in for an all-nighter. I hate these things, I usually do much better if I get a couple of hours sleep, but I dont think I have time tonight - only 11 hours left! In fact, what the hell am I doing talking to you?

And I really wish I hadn't smacked my head into the roof of the stairs earlier, I've got a splitting headache now :p

And thanks, Peter...

My code can add two numbers together!!!

So anyway, that's that coursework finished. In the end it really really sucked, it didnt work, and I gave up and handed it in. Never mind.

Now I have to finish my literature search (read 'find some relevant papers'...) and write my literature review, which was due in on Monday. Preferably by the end of today, because I don't want to do it tomorrow.

Hmmm.

I just slept for 12 hours. Well, before that I hadn't been to bed in about 40...

Time to work!

After what, 7 hours, I have started work.

In that time, I have:

• Showered, shaved and dressed myself - yes, I do want a gold star
• Talked to friends - always good
• Tested winamp 5 RC10 - and liked it
• Watched television - it was the pre-budget report. Labour (who still suck) kept shouting the poor tory guy down, and the TV people cut him off mid sentence
• Tidied my desk - need to read books!
• Watched alias - get it out of the way so we can work
• Noticed the time - oh dear.

Right, so anyway, time to get back to the work!

But before I leave, Google calculator rocks. And this guy is freakin nuts - watch the video.

Right, well thats the literature search done... mostly... Hmm. Going to do my dissertation *before* the last week of next semester...

Having a party here tomorrow night - the first Lunatics Annual Atrocious Films Festival (LAAFF, pronounced LAAAAAAA-FFFFFFF, with an odd expression on your face). We will watch bad films and eat food. It will be glorious. And annual, so those of you who miss LAAFF 2003 will get to turn up to LAAFF 2004. Please note that just because it is annual, it does not mean that it will only happen once a year, and neither does it mean that it will happen at the same time every year. For example, in 2004 it would be conceivable that there may be three. And it would be silly if they were all on the same day.

The most important rule of LAAFF is that I'm there - it's not LAAFF if I'm not, so you placement people had better remember to invite me. Unless I have died in some tragic bad-film-related accident, in which case it will be a fitting tribute, but I demand that a wall-sized poster of my face be present and unfurled behind the television at all times during the proceedings. Unless holography has been invented by then, in which case I want to be put in the corner doing a little dance, that would be cool.

The second most important LAAFF rule is that there is food and drink. Should be able to manage that.

And the third is that the films should be bad, but in a good way - this year the attendees will get to choose from Shadow Run and 3 classics. But they get no choice in the feature film for the night; Black Christmas, the most perfect choice for a Christmas LAAFF.

Tristan and I skipped the trip to the melting pot after our agents lecture, because we have work to do before the party tonight. Only we waste an hour on the way home, and then the internet doesn't work for an hour or two, and so now we apparently don't have time to do the work and have the party, and I sadly have to agree. I am gutted.

So to clarify, the party's cancelled. Might try again sometime.

So, it looks like I finally got something right! There was no way I could get my literature review finished before the party. But what am I talking about? It's a 24/7 party in the House of Radiac. Take right now for example; I am listening to Queen, with my christmas lights on, checking I have my facts about the fundamental flow constraint correct. But I'm afraid admission is by invite only.

Time for some compulsory late-night lyrics:

Don't stop me now I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time just give me a call
Don't stop me now ('Cause I'm having a good time)
Don't stop me now (Yes I'm havin' a good time)
I don't want to stop at all

Ok, and ... ... ... back to the work.

We had a party!

Finished my literature review this morning (uh 'this' as in Friday) at about 7ish, had some lectures, had some food and collected my new glasses, which look like my old ones, only better. Not that anyone sees them, because I mostly wear my contacts.

Anyway, the party. I made cakes (which were very nice, or at least I thought so) and cheese biscuits (which would have been OK if I hadn't burnt the first batch and under-cooked the second), Tristan made pizzas, and we watched a terrible film. It was good.

I have, however, just spent the past two hours cleaning the dirty plates/dishes/bowls/cutlery and tabletops in kitchen. At least now it all looks pretty and shiny and nice :)

And I've just realised that I woke up at about 7am on Thursday, and haven't been to bed since. Hmm, guess that's, what, about 45 hours... So if you will excuse me, I think I'll go to sleep :)

So I'm home again!

Right, what have I been up to.

Well, I went to be at about 4.30am (yesterday) after being up for about 45 hours. Then, at about 9.30am (peter: yesterday. everyone else: today), I get a phone call. It's from Jason, my flatmate...

"Hi, yeah, I've locked myself out, can you come down and open the door?"

AAAARGH!

So I opened the door, then went back to bed, slept till 3, packed and came home. Nice.

Yet another day with no work done. I know, I know, it's the holiday so it's ok, but it's less than 3 weeks of holiday and I've got a lot to get done. Got tonbschl and agents to finish, and project to start on. Hey, no! I ordered my webcams for my project! That's work, right? Sweet :)

I have decided that once all my work's out of the way (ie in the summer) I'll write some exciting webcam software using what I've figured out for the project; reading from a webcam and performing shape and movement recognition - could be fun...

Went to the pub with Chris for a bit this evening, and he's said he'll stop smoking next weekend! Yay! He even put £10 on it and gave me permission to destroy any future cigarettes I catch him with, so he must be serious :)

Well, all my friends have gone offline, I've played vice city and counterstrike, Gentoo is updating itself in the corner and has taken about 2 hours to get to 6/29, and it's too late to start work on tonbschl or watch a film, so I'm going to go to bed. Night all...

In a year and a couple of weeks, I have posted 300 diary entries. No doubt some of you remember entry 500...

So, what earthshattering news can possibly be worthy of entry 800? Well, Winamp 5 final has been released. Get it, it's good.

I'm afraid that is all.

So anyway, I was bored again...

I looked at dabs.
I looked at my credit card.
I looked at dabs.
I looked at my credit card.

What to do...

I looked at The Coin.
I flipped The Coin.
The Coin said "BUY!"

So, on Saturday, an ipaq (HP 2210) and wifi cf card should be dropping through the letter box. Yay for The Coin!

From now on, I am going to let The Coin make all my important decisions for me, because it's obviously far wiser than me.

What's that, Coin? You want me to kill?

My PDA has been shipped and should arrive tomorrow, dabs are SILL saying 1-3 days for the webcams (grrr), and I have been to Tescos and Sainsburys and the McDonalds drive-thru (*shudder* - don't ask).

Other than that, this week I have very efficiently done nothing.

And in a minute, I am off to the pub. Whee!

My ipaq arrived today! It's small and pretty and shiny and totally doesnt work with the wifi card I bought :)

Found some beta release drivers which kinda work though, so all is not lost!

Went to the pub last night, it was crap. Going again tonight, it had better be good, otherwise I'll stay home and work next weekend. You OTs+friends have been warned...

So I wake up this morning and try to turn my computer on. It goes through the normal booting stuff, gets to the last bit of the W2K booting screen thing, says 'Nope, can't read your registry, here's what I think of you...' and promptly reboots itself.

I think to myself 'Hmm, that's just not cricket.'

I reboot it, wait, it does it again. 6 times in total.

For some reason I decide to try a 7th time, and it boots up magically and without any errors.

So I have spent a lot of the rest of the day copying all my important files (uni work, websites etc etc) onto my file server in case it does it again tomorrow, and refuses to come back up...

Hope everyone has a nice day - hope you give and get some nice presents, and don't eat too much!

I have come to the conclusion that I am sleeping too much. Need to do more work... coursework is due on the 6th, and still haven't started it :/

Here are some amusing adverts for you to look at.

And now you can't complain that I haven't made a diary entry :)

It's out with Christmas, and in with the new year, so I've taken the decorations down, changed my playlist from the Christmas songs etc...

Tonight I am going over to Anton's house to watch DVDs and stuff. Should be good. Sorry to those of you who have invited me to do other stuff, hope you have a good time. And those of you who aren't doing anything tonight, it's Hogmanay Live 2003 on BBC 1 at 11:50, Jools Holland is doing his thing again on BBC 2 from 11:05, and ITV is showing Big Ben chiming midnight at 11:55. I therefore advise you to tune into Channel 4 at 9pm, and watch their re-runs of Wife Swap through until 12:10... But it's not all bad, you can pencil in a 2004/2005 New Years LAAFF...