Parallels

Written Thursday 11th August 1994 at 2am (not by me):

I have no life. I never see any of my non-work friends, and I'm wasting away my one and only youth. I ought to be out doing fun things and active things, the kind of things I won't be able to do when my mind and body finally decay. But instead I'm stuck inside under fluorescent lights, pushing bits around inside a computer in ways that are only interesting to other nerds. I glanced at a movie listing and there are movies out that I haven't even heard of. How did that happen?

Far far too true, except I do see non-work people occasionally I guess.

Maybe once my RDC submission and the project review meeting are out of the way, and no doubt several important visitors and miscellaneous demos for other things, and possibly all the reading I've been getting behind on, maybe then I'll be able to... I don't know... eat?

Sleepy Kemp

Today (well, yesterday now) was the day of the 3D-Mintegration conference thingy, which is a contraction of miniaturisation and integration in case you were wondering. Despite my preconception of this sort of thing being very stuffy and academic it was actually quite fun, all the people I met were very nice (even the ones with some control over my funding) and free food is always welcomed by poor students such as myself =P As it was at Loughborough Uni I decided to stay at my parent's house tonight (it's like 10 minutes away) and get some things done, such as getting my hair cut and organising things for my graduation which is creeping closer each day. Also Sarah (home Sarah) is getting a new kitten tomorrow morning so I'll probably go say hi to it before heading back to Cov.

Anywho, not as much sleep per night as I'm used to plus wine with my dinner makes me a sleepy Kemp, so I'll be off to bed now.

Back

Yes, I'm alive still and I finally have a connection, though for various reasons it's slightly unstable right now and maxes out at a mere 2Mb/s but I have plans to fix that. I'm (kinda) enrolled on my PhD at last, just a few more things to chase up, things were easier as an under-grad when things were done for you, lol. Other than that I'm pretty much catching up on what I need to know for what I'll be doing, mainly the documentation for things mentioned here and stuff for the module I'll be lecturing in (yes, they're letting me loose with real people, no, they won't be subjected to me every week =P). Don't think there's really much else to say at the moment, plus my muse is on vacation so writing isn't my strong point right now. Adios.

Edit:
On a random note, I've reinstalled Dawn of War and I've been downloading the patches (they must all be applied in order). I noticed this little gem in the patch notes:

v1.30:
Reduced Scout accuracy while moving from .55 to .35.

v1.40:
Scouts were inadvertently given an accuracy penalty while moving in the 1.3 patch. This penalty has been removed.

As Overlord said, "Inadvertant my arse".

Final Day of Home

My final countdown post, off to Cov tomorrow and all the lonliness and lack of connection inherent therein *tiny violin plays* Not much happened today really, just checking all my packing and wondering what I will end up remembering tomorrow and packing at the literal last minute. Watched Metallica's S&M concert again and was reminded of the unhuman speed and accuracy Hetfield and Hammett have on their guitars (Hammett in particular), some of the closeups are quite insane. Iris has a new layout on her blog which I quite like. Think that's everything. Ciao to everyone at home, and hi to everyone at Coventry (which is almost no-one until term starts really).

1/18/21/22

Guitars, Hedgehogs and Packing

Time for today's countdown post I believe, we'll conveniently ignore the fact that it's nearly tomorrow.

I was randomly improvising on my guitar earlier and accidently came up with something I actually like the sound of, which was a surprise with me not exactly being amazing on the thing yet :-P I messed around with it a while and then recreated it in Guitar Pro for further messing around without having me screw it up. Added a bit of percussion to it and extended it some and I'm quite fond of it now, it may be sucky compared to almost anything out there but it's mine :-)

As for packing... yeah... it's kinda moving along at about the pace of a sleeping snail. It'll be done of course, but it may require some last-minute chucking of things into bags. Then we have to fit it all into the car, which is a task in itself as no matter how much I leave behind there's always more than the last time, I think my stuff gradually expands to fill the available space in the bags. This one looks like it may be the first two-trip job ever despite me not bringing anywhere near the amount of junk I normally do :-S

Changing topic again, I saw a hedgehog today! A real one. I can't believe I've never seen one before (well, not one that is in one piece anyway), but I have now :-) It looked to be quite young and it was pretty damn fast too, I was quite amused at the way they walk with the legs frantically moving under them and how they almost seem to glide despite the aforementioned frantic moving.

And changing topic once again, for the last time and strangely enough going pretty much back to the first topic, I'm moving to my new place on Saturday (or Sunday possibly) so Friday will be my last countdown update. Ciao until then guys and girls :-)

2/19/22/23

More bits

Extra (and entirely coincedental) discussion of dubs versus subs here. Also, I just realised all the options for the dubbing and subtitles in both english and japanese were available to me if I'd have bothered to look *slaps forehead* Guess I'll just have to watch it again with japanese dubbing and english subs ;-)

I'm currently in the middle of packing (or trying to be bothered to pack). I really can't find motivation, I have waaaay too much stuff hanging around here and once I've sorted out the stuff I'm taking with me I need to make the stuff I'm leaving behind all neat. Speaking of money (how many would notice the incorrect bridge if I didn't point it out?), I went to the bank and increased my overdraft limit a bit so now I only need to scrounge together £30 rather than £380. That's rather a large difference and so much easier, I can once again cease worrying about where money's going to be coming from. Just need to make sure I get paid before the end of October :-P

Think that's about all in terms of today's updates. Stay tuned for more soon.

3/20/23/24

Soon to be departed

Just a heads-up in case my lax updating schedule becomes even more so. I'm going to be moving into my new place next Saturday (the 2nd September) and I won't have a net connection for at least a month probably while I sort it out. In the freakish event that I don't even have a phone line to shove ADSL down I'll make a post from somewhere else to let you know (the two or three people who occasionally glance in here). It's going to be wierd without my own net access (obviously I'll still have it in the labs or library basement in the worst case, I hope at least). I went a single night without it when the router messed up and I couldn't be bothered reseting it and probably waking everyone up in the process, and that was annoying as hell. I didn't realise how much I rely on the net as an information source and a way of having contact with people at strange hours of the day/night. Simple everyday things like grabbing some guitar tabs or checking the news weren't possible, and I lost count of the number of times I did something that relied on having a connection without thinking. Oh well, guess I'll have more time to spend doing other things, though exactly what these things are I have no idea. Addicted to the net? Me? Never.

On the coding front I've been getting back into writing things for my OS, once again in order to teach me things outside of OS deving. In this case it's the idea of lock-free linked lists (concurrent traversal/insertion/deletion without the overhead of locking access to the list) and fine-tuning some of my C++ techniques (it may not be apparent, but I do have techniques =P).

Anywho, 7 days til I move into my new place, 24 days til enrolment, 27 days til I see Gina again, 28 days til I see most of the rest of the crowd again, the countdowns continue.

Last Couple of Weeks

Iris Murdoch : Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph

Amen to that :-)

Anywho, onto the actual post... I can't actually remember much properly so I'll just stick things down and hope they are in some sort of sensible order.

First up would be my new place for at uni :-) I went down to look at a place on Lower Ford Street being sorted by Bluewood Letting (nice people btw) but it was kinda small, like really small. So anyway, I'm flicking through their properties list in the office wondering where to go next and suddenly I see Priory Place. The same Priory Place as I've spent over a year looking at thinking "If I had the money I'd be in there." Then it occurs to me I have got the money now. Guess what the next place I looked at was... The apartments in that place are lovely, compared to some of the student housing I've seen they're huge, though you'd hope so for the price tag on them. So anyway, I put in an application for the place and waited, this was wednesday before last I believe. Monday rolled around (last monday, a week ago tomorrow) and I got a call, my application all checked out and everything was good :-) Went down on thursday to finalise it all and put down my deposit and the place is now mine :-D That place literally had everything from my "wants" list, double bed, all the appliances I need, fully furnished, close to uni and my mates, not mention I'd been wanting to live there for ages. So all's good in that department, now I just need to make sure my first two months don't take me too far into debt.

What else? Ah yes, the LAN party at Ben's. I end up at about one a year these days, and play about as many games :-P I spend most of my time on the trampoline (those things rock) and the others alternate between pool, deathmatches and trampoline. I'm not one for FPSs you see, the only way I could be entertaining to kill would be to give everyone rifles, stick me in a trebuchet and launch me across the map. I did join in with the usual game of Risk II though, which is always fun, even if a certain unnamed person quits early and thus prematurely ends the game... Also entertaining was the young'un (2, nearly 3, something like that), even if she did step on my face on the trampoline once, not maliciously I assume (hope). She was fun though, especially when she made comments that she didn't quite catch the implications of, or started telling birds to go away, or ran in circles around the trampoline for hours on end without getting bored. I'm not getting broody or anything, lol, at the risk of sounding sexist that's for girls (don't hit me please =P). Anyway, thanks to Ben for hosting us all and providing much munchy goodness in the form of pizza and lasagne.

Hmmm... what else is there? Oh yes, I went to Lincoln to hang out with Hastings on Wednesday and Thursday. That was fun, I haven't seen him in like a year or something crazy like that. Caught up on random things, met people I'd only heard stories about previously, and went to the Big Wok (all-you-can-eat Chinese place) :-D Though as Hastings mentioned guy in that show saying, it should be "all you want to eat" not "all you can eat", too much competitiveness implied in the latter :-P Didn't get to speak to Gina that day though (Thursday being our usual phone day) as I was on buses at the usual time and no-one picked up when I was finally free. She should be down in a week and half or so though, so all should be ok :-)

Anything else? I guess there's the various tech support calls I've been on for friends and stuff, but that's all boring so I'll skip them. Guess that's all for now then. Longest blog post evar!