じじいロビン's LiveJournal

Time:	5:10 pm.
Music:	Adam F - 73.

The sun was going over the horizon as I walked to my lecture at 4pm. It must be nearly the shortest day. Actually, that was my last computer science lecture of 2002. I've got some Japanese next week, but apart from that I'm off for the year.

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Time:	1:20 pm.
Mood:	amused.
Music:	Dredg - Movement 1: @45°N. 180°W.

Ever seen 2DTV? They had the best bit of satire last night :)

Enter Tony Blair stage left
TB: We can prove that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
Brandishes papers
TB: Look, we kept the invoices!

Funniest thing I've seen on TV this year :D

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Time:	11:53 am.
Mood:	intimidated.
Music:	Roni Size - Siren Sounds.

Last night I'm thinking about my third year project, and trying to make it simpler and more user friendly. The major bone of contention I think the users would have is having to learn the event scripting system. "Aha!" I think, let's do away with it and replace it with a nice user-friendly graphical system with linked icons detailing the events and their relations. Not would this make it way easier for the users to use my program, but I wouldn't have to bother inventing and coding an object orientated scripting language (a prospect that was scaring me quite a lot).

So I get up for my 9am meeting with my project manager, having prepared a bit of a speech on why this approach is good. I even get half way through said speech, before it hit me.

The user friendly interface doesn't replace the scripting language, it sits on top hiding it from the user.

So I've given myself so much more work to do ;_; Bollocks.

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Time:	12:51 pm.
Mood:	scared.
Music:	Captain Tinrib & Various Collaboration Artists - The Best Of Tinrib '96 - '02 - Mixed By Captain Tin.

From the last part of my Information Systems Development assessment:

The two main phases in software design are the specification phase and the design phase. During the specification phase, the system designer will document the objects in the system from an outline provided by the customer. Then, during the design phase, the designer will add detail into the objects and their interactions uncovered during the specification phase. A collaboration diagram's function is to detail the collaborations in the system. A collaboration can be defined as "the objects which interact to perform some task, together with the links between them" [Stevens & Pooley '00]. Because the process of collaboration diagramming reveals the links between the objects within a system, this would fall under the design phase of systems engineering.

I'm sounding like a technical textbook ;_;

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Time:

1:52 am.

Haven't updated in ages. I'm sure you lot haven't missed me ^_^

I've been working a lot recently. Stuff had piled up, and just needed to be done. I managed to get the first phase (you'll need OpenOffice) of my third year project completed last week, which finishes the research phase. Now onto design! I also managed five and a half hours of Japanese this morning, got most of my outstanding work blitzed. Tomorrow, I move onto the first InfoSys Dev coursework...

One of the reasons I've had to do so much work is that I took all of last weekend off to go and see Libby (

leadfoetus's sister) act in a play called Children of the Sun. Libs was excellent, a good thing because the theatre (of 52 seats) seemed to be packed with agents ^_^ This weekend I'm off to

dock's with what seems like hundreds of other people (that's hundeds as in twelve), so that's another weekend out. Although it's fun, it means that I have to put serious work in during the week. Work hard, party hard - yeah, that works.

( Tech stuffs... )

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Time:	12:19 am.
Mood:	drunk.

Got up early today to go to Paignton with

keiichi_fire,

catkin,

quiettime,

zakarius and Hikari. We ended up getting the bus to Brixham, having fish and chips there then walking back to Paignton. There's some great beaches along that coastline, all round pebbles and worn glass. Back at Paignton we met up with

ruadh and

phuzzi. QotD: the woman in Jade's Cafe handing

ruadh his cream slice loaded with piles of squirty cream and saying "You look like a boy who could do with some extra cream". It's so true in ways that I can't quite define.

Finished off the day with lots of DDR, a funfair (which Hikari seemed to enjoy), candyfloss, beer, and a pretty cool fireworks display. Yeah, I've had fun. And my feet are knackered.

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Time:	10:25 am.
Mood:	caffeinated.
Music:	Capdown - Dub #2.

My brain is rebelling. It's refusing to think about the huge workload that I've got this year. To make matters worse, it's decided to settle on what I can do after this year is done and dusted. So far it's come up with:

Get a flat
DIY said flat in beech and stainless steel (minimalism Go! :P)
Take up cycling again
Get a job I enjoy with workhours that stay between 9 and 5

I think the last one is telling ^^;;

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Time:	11:56 pm.
Mood:	exhausted.
Music:	The Lemmy thumping.

I spent the day with my brother cabling his house. The cable broadband guys came and went leaving a telephone socket and a cable modem. Then it was up to me to cut and crimp enough cable to satisfy him and his mates computers. Quite satisfying in a I'm-doing-stuff-with-my-hands kind of way. Amazingly enough, I only had a couple of small problems getting the whole shebang set up, if you discount the major problem of his account not being activated until monday.

Went to see 28 Days Later. Think Day of The Triffids, but replace the triffids with very fast zombies. It works really quite well, although it was a bit hampered by a couple of mistakes in the plot (in the most literal sense). Having said that, the zombies are different enough from usual to make it worth going to see if you're bored.

Me, Jonty (my younger brother) and Al (his girlfriend) tried to get into his local. The bouncer IDed him, then IDed Al, then to top it off IDed me and forced me to tell him my starsign before he let us is. I'm 4 years over the limit, this shouldn't be happening to me... Then to add insult to injury the pub was heaving with people in tuxes and cocktail dresses, and someone stole Jont's cap (we only got it back after Al went and found the person, had a word). Suffice to say we left and went to the offy instead ;)

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Time:	11:09 am.
Mood:	hungry.

Just managed to miss a day. I woke up yesterday morning feeling really sick, and only felt a bit better if I lay down. Well, one thing led to another and I spent pretty much all of yesterday asleep. Missed all my lectures as well. Still, I'm feeling better today. The remainder of the nausea is probably due to the fact that I ate nothing yesterday...

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Time:	5:54 pm.
Mood:	good.
Music:	The Roots - Double Trouble.

Whoo. That was a bit crazy. I saw

liono off this morning, which completed the weekend :) Now to try tidying up... Well, that or the vast amounts of 日本語 I've got to do. So anyway, the combined birthdays were great.


liono	phuzzi

But the best photo has to be this one of my brother,

liono and

leadfoetus ^_^

Addendum:

10) Go and see Lilo & Stitch.
20) GOTO 10

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Time:	2:18 pm.
Mood:	cheerful.
Music:	Roni Size - Sound Advice.

Off to Sainsbury's in half an hour to stock up on alcohol for the weekend. It's

liono's 20^th on Saturday and

phuzzi's 19^th on Sunday. Everyone's so young! Oh yeah, and happy birthdays to

dache (17 today). Anyway, the upcoming birthdays coincide with another one of my flat's parties ^_^

Work that I'm going to be able to do this weekend: none.
Work that I have to do by Monday 9am: lots

Oh.

My weekends are filling up actually. Next weekend I'm down in Plymouth, on the 16^th of November I'm going to London to see a play that Libby's got a lead role in (Libby being

leadfoetus's sister). Then on the 22^nd I'm off up to

dock's for a big meetup.

I picked up the new Roni Size album - Touching Down. It's a great return to form. In The Mode was OK, but not as good as New Forms. Touching Down is in the vein of the dancier stuff from New Forms, but mixed into one 70 minute set. I approve.

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Time:	6:51 am.
Mood:	awake.
Music:	Eminem - Lose Yourself (it's stuck in my head from the 8 Mile trailer).

It's

liono's and

phuzzi's birthdays next weekend, and this is coinciding with another flat party. Swedish has posted the rules for this party which seem more stringent that before - entry has gone up from 'a bottle' to 'either 1 x 40% spirits or 2 x bottles of wine or 24 can crate of beer'. This is going to be interesting... And scary ^-^

I nabbed a 300m reel of CAT5E cable off

zakarius, so now I'm on a hunt for a crimper and RJ45 ends. My brother's getting cable net access in a couple of weeks and I've offered to cable him and his flatmates up.

siliconslave, you know where to buy these things. Pointers?

~Ask not what this hour can do for me, but what I can do for this hour...~

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Time:	6:52 pm.
Mood:	okay.

Yep, the cold (which I mistyped as 'sock' o_o) got me. I'm sitting here sniffing, with Lemsip on one side and tissues on the other. Hopefully I won't be out of it for too long, it's been ages since I last came down with one.

You (in general) must buy Amon Tobin's new album, Out From Out Where. His stuff's utterly detailed. Ususally I go for mimimalism in my music (see Photek, Daft Punk, The RZA to a certain extent) but Amon Tobin is the opposite. Every piece is crammed full of little touches that makes them a) very worthy of repeat listening and b) difficult to fully appreciate the first time through. This album seems to be darker and more inaccessable than the previous three, so I'd suggest getting those before you pick up this one, unless you're a masochist ^_~ Not to imply that it's bad, far from it. It's easily up there with the earlier ones, just takes more effort.

Got everyone together to watch Waterboys tonight. I know

catkin and

keiichi_fire are going to like it (a cover like this can only help ^_^).

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Time:	11:37 am.
Mood:	annoyed.

Number of time the word meta used in todays Information Systems Development lecture notes: 48

Microsoft are bastards. Well, past the obvious. It looks like I'll need a copy of Visual C++ for my 3rd year project, but they've stopped student licencing for everything apart from a WindowsXP/OfficeXP bundle. So now I'll have to look for alternatives, use emacs/gcc, or shell out for a full priced copy.

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