Save the House from Burning

So as you can probably tell, I’m pretty sure my sleep pattern is completely screwed. I was up tonight writing a report for Interface Design, which ended up clocking in at about 8,000 words, including the transcript for Sunday night’s focus group, which I typed up this afternoon. Not a bad effort, hey? I was pretty pleased with myself, and headed off to bed at about 1:30am or so, reasonable enough. But then I couldn’t get to sleep, so I got up and did Spanish homework, and now here I am, blogging about it. Woo.

I should mention the focus group, actually. It went so much better than expected, thanks so much to everyone involved: Jones, Bobby, Stove, Fox and Capricorn (I can’t say their real names, as it’s all confidential), I am very very appreciative! If any of you want a copy of the recording, just ask me, it’s pretty funny if you’re into that kind of thing, and Bobby’s iPhone did a wonderful job of capturing the whole lot, despite our worries.

So, hectic life much? Pretty fun though, I’m slowly learning to manage my time better and be more responsible I think, although I could’ve probably done some work Sunday night after the focus group. But hey, better things came up, and I’m not one to say no to that.

I’m pretty set on going to Santiago now, after talking to numerous people about it, and even garnering some wonderful advice from the wonderful blogger Eileen. Somehow or another, I got up the courage (I was pretty desparate…) to email her, and her reply was nicer and more useful than I ever could have imagined. I tried to email in my preferences, though, and I got a failed send right back at me, so I might have to drop them in. Not that that’s an awfully big deal, what with Uni being a whole 10 minute walk away.

The rest of the week looks like being pretty hectic too, I think. Gotta finish collating this Interface Design report tomorrow, then finish Data Structures & Algorithms by Friday, then Web Services Development by next week. Actually DS&A reminds me of something funny… Steve trying to find obscure bugs after no sleep and drinking a little too much!

Anyway I’m starting to actually get tired, so I’d better try and get what sleep I can before having to get up in the morning for Spanish &etc. Night!

P.S. Here’s a little something via nomoreundead… MGMT vs. Daft Punk (and maybe even some Doors?). I might put it on njv later.

Sweat

As much as it may seem a little odd, I love the feeling of sweat dripping down my body. Not the icky humid kind of sweat, but the kind you get after a good physical workout.

The possible reason for my new-found love is that up until fairly recently, I hadn’t really had the experience. Back in high school, I used to be able to play a couple of good games of squash or racquetball, walk off the court, and only need to give my forehead a quick wipe. I even had numerous mentions of the phenomonen. How things have changed, however, and I can easily enough work up a pretty good sweat running a quick lap of Wentworth Park, as I did tonight.

Not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but I assume it’s something to do with my lowered level of fitness. I know I keep saying I want to get back into squash, but I really truly do! Just need to find the time and lack of procrastination.

Thursdays

Thursday afternoons and evenings are an odd bunch for me. I always tend to plan on them being productive wonders, as they’re the one time a week where I have the whole day free from 3pm onwards. Study, study, study! But alas, this is rarely the truth. Case in point: tonight! Tonight I sat down, feeling awfully tired, to do some programming for Data Structures & Algorithms. My program had a strange bug, which, although it’s now fixed, got my head in a tangle, and I was forced to lie down and have a nap in the early evening. This lasted a few hours, before I decided to get up and have some food. Namely toasted sandwhiches, of which I ate four. So now I’m not only feeling tired, but bloated too! Woo.

This morning was actually more productive, unusually so. Well, productive in ‘life’ terms, rather than study. I got a text from my bank asking me to call them on a certain number ASAP. I did, and I was told that somewhere I had shopped with my Visa card had had their card database compromised, so they were going to cancel my card and send me a new one. I said sure, that’s cool, and the lady asked me if I wanted a chance to go to an ATM first. Yes, please! So I did that, and now my card is cancelled, and I only have cash to live off for the next week or so. Positive is that I was going to have to ask for a new card soon anyway, as my current one expires when I’m overseas next year. So no harm done, I think.

Anyway, yeah. That’s my day! How was yours?

Useful and Useless

Today I had one of the most useless classes ever, but also one of the most useful conversations.

The useless class was Web Services Development, because we learned about basic XML in the shortened lecture, then most of the FIT network was down (including the lab computers themselves) for most of the tutorial. So I left and came home to blog about it.

Before the class, though, I caught up with Silke, because she asked me to do something with her Mac (change a configuration xml for Skype). I did that, (not difficult, it’s just that Macs don’t seem to like you editing files like that in a graphical editor, so I did it in a terminal) and then we were just chatting, and, as usual, her way of saying things made problems I’d had going through my head for ages just kind of click. It’s quite amazing, really. Life would be so much easier if I just had a Silke following me around giving me advice all the time.

Further Study? Ha.

So Lexie just asked me if I was considering doing further study after my current degree. I’m pretty sure it’s still too far off to worry about too much, but I was thinking, and maybe if there’s something related to interface design and making? I’m enjoying that at the moment, and I’m not terribly sure how much I’ll learn about it before I finish. Would I need further study anyway? I don’t know. I guess it’s something to leave open, though.

That said, in all likeliness I will not be in any rush to do any further study straight off the bat. Get a job, I will! Hopefully. Unless the GFC keeps getting even worse. Eek.

Steve’s 21st!

As some (most?) of you already know, Steve’s 21st party was Saturday night, and it was an absolute ball! We started off at Wagamama at King St Wharf, which was pretty delicious as usual. More people came than was expected when Steve booked the table, so we were pretty squished, but it probably just ended up aiding the exuberant social atmosphere. I met a number of Steve’s church friends for the first time, and I must say, they’re all incredibly nice!

Halfway through our meal, it started bucketing rain and thundering, and we struggled to get to our next stop, the Bavarian Bier Café, without getting wet. Well, we failed, really. Still, the destination was worth it, and downing a litre and a half of delicious German beer certainly helped make the rest of the night more entertaining. The conversation kept surprisingly fresh, and I found it wonderful that Steve’s two groups of friends mingled almost seamlessly. Everyone seemed to have a great time. Except, of course, Lexie’s beanie-wearing friend, who went home empty-handed.

A number of people went home after the Bavarian, but I was convinced to stay on and go to Oxford St. Yes, Oxford St with gay bars and whatnot. One of which we went to. I probably wouldn’t have gone, except the precence of Lexie, Evan and Brendan made it a slightly less daunting idea. So yeah, we ended up at Stonewall, a well-known gay bar, and I somehow ended up dancing the night away happily. Very happily. Admittedly I didn’t venture out too far, but I felt comfortable, and I didn’t even get hit on!

I may have also done some things that Steve disapproved of just a little, but it was all above-board. I was perfectly aware of what was going on and able to make rational decisions (okay, so they may have been somewhat affected), and in reality I was just having an insanely fun time. Lexie and I headed off at fairly late, but Steve and co. stayed out even later.

In the morning I had to get up for TRS work and answer a number of questions about my actions the night before. All in jest, though! Mostly. Somehow we even managed to have a productive work day, and I’m super looking forward to showing Anthony what we’ve done, I think he’ll be as excited as I am. I must say, though, Tom is invaluable for his math-whiz skillz in working out map navigation! Also Tom is invaluable for his excellent family, who are excellent and nice. Um that is it I think, I’m kind of supposed to be doing Spanish homework. So much this week, it’s crazy!

Oh, and random rant unrelated to previous material: I love how MS Word has lovely simple keyboard shortcuts for accents, but hate it how every other fricking application has no such thing. Grah!

New Server

Alrighty then, so this is on the new TRS server! It should be faster (maybe?) and just more better and reliable in general (no MySQL randomly crashing). Also some of the past links won’t work because I changed back to pretty permalinks which is nice. I was also going to edit the theme a bit to cut down on bandwidth (it’s like 2mb to load my blog… eek), but I’ll see when I get time. Anyway, I guess it’s home time now. Night!

I’ve Seen Your Hands Man, They Couldn’t Be Whiter!

I think I recently accidentally made one of my best playlists for quite some time! I doubt you’ll be able to garner any meaning from the song list or playlist title (‘White Hands’), but I guess it was made with intention. I mean, it’s not just a ‘favourite music of the moment’ list. Anyway, today I whipped up a bit of a ‘viewer’ for the playlist, so you can see it here. I’ve had plans in my head for a rather more extensive music thing, so I guess this is the (very basic) start of it. Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry about the Flash requirement, but that’s what you get when you want nice pretty things. I thought about doing it in JSP, but that would require too much screwing around with servers and stuff. You should really have it anyway… Right?

Work-Life Balance

So I just had an idea: work-life balance is a load of crap. See, in an ideal world, your job would be interesting and motivating enough that you want it to be a part of your life, so then your whole life would be your… Life. Well, the life part of the balance. I think that’s a new goal for me, once I finish Uni: not have a work-life balance, because I enjoy my job enough not to need it.

Where, Oh Where?

Just got an email about In-Country Study next year (ie. my exchange), and we have a meeting next Friday afternoon. Think is, I think I need to decide where I want to go before then. I’m pretty much set on Chile rather than Argentina, I think, but where do I go in Chile? There are three choices – Santiago, Valparaiso / Vina del Mar,  and Concepcion. Their pros and cons are as follows:

Santiago: The capital of Chile, it’s located an hour or two inland from Valparaiso, in between the coast and the Andes. It’s apparently quite smoggy, and being a larger city, and the capital, it can be more dangerous than other places, but it also has a large University with lots of different course possibilities.

Valparaiso / Vina del Mar: God, I wish Chrome had keyboard shortcuts for accents like Word does. Anyway, these cities (next to each other) are on the coast, Vina being a summer hangout for the wealthy of Santiago. It’d be lovely being on the coast, although I don’t know what the beaches are like, but the University is quite boring… They only really do Law and Business, which aren’t the most exciting options.

Concepcion: This isn’t completely out of the books, but it’s probably lowest on my list. It’s down south a fair bit, so it’s going to be colder than either of the other cities. It’s also a bit of an industrial port city (Newcastle, anyone?). That said, I’ve heard good things about not only its University, but also its indie music scene.

Anyone have opinions or suggestions?