Meep

Meep

Just got back from my video interview with Microsoft (well, with Stepstone Obvious on behalf of Microsoft), and I'm pretty nervous about it, although it did go well. The day was really good in general, very friendly and fun and informal, but there's still a lot of good competition left for me. The interns seemed fairly confident I'd get through to the next stage because I was an MSP, and my interview went well...but I still can't feel good about it. If I don't get this one I'm screwed.

Xx

Espedair Street

Another great book by Iain Banks, this one is a bit less apocalyptic than usual, but no less dark or gritty for it. The novel is the biopic of a fictional famous rock star, from the era of Bowie and Rod Stewart. Set after the collapse of his band, but told mostly through flashbacks, we get a harsh and thoroughly realistic experience through the eyes of (but of course) a highly unusual man. An enthralling book, that blends in Banks' more traditional views on ethics and morals with his flair for good old fashioned adventure. Also, I'm not sure about the title, it looks like it should be an anagram for 'Despair Street' (think Desperation Row), but what's that extra e for eh?

We join armies, we enter monasteries or nunneries, we adopt the party line, we believe what we read in ancient books or shit newspapers or what we're told by plastic politicians, and all we're ever trying to do is give somebody else the responsibility for thinking.

Get some free stuff!

You know all those 'get rich quick' schemes you see lurking about the internet? Most of them are pyramid based, and pretty much every one of them will take your money and run. However, a nice respectable one has finally been set up - Gatenby's. This one has been featured on the BBC, and checked out by the relevant people, and is actually giving away things.

The premise is, of course, simple. You sign up using this link, and then take part in one of their advertising offers. These range from some things you may find useful (pet insurance, car insurance, blockbuster...) to simple cash game websites. All of them require an expenditure, except the 'blockbusters free trial', but I think that one's expired now, so check the T&C's on the blockbuster site if you want to sign up for that.

Personally, I'd recommend that you sign up for one of the 'play for cash' websites, and deposit and play the £10 minimum. You've got a 40/60 chance of at least winning your money back (at which point you can withdraw it from the site), but even if you've lost, it's only £10, and you're on your way to wining a Wii, or an XBox360, or £200 in your Paypal account. All you need to do is to give your friends your referral link and get them to play.

So, yeah, it's a bit of a pyramid scheme, but it works, and the logic behind it for the organisers is plain to see, it's nothing like those 'too good to be true' ones you see. So, sign up for it today, get me a nice Nintendo Wii, and then go get yourself something leet too.

And remember, when you sign up, use my link!

Xx

Jazz recommendations (Part 2)

3) Nina Simone - Pirate Jenny (4:46)
This passionate song has a bit of an odd lyrical track - Nina's singing the part of a pirate girl who's working as a servant, but musically it's stunning. There's only piano and percussion accompanying her, and even the percussion barely uses any cymbals. Instead, all we hear all the way through are muted toms or pauses from the percussionist, but the rhythms and dynamics are so cleverly done and passionately played that you can just sit back and listen to the percussion if you wanted.
However, good luck doing that, because the constant shock of the discordant piano throughout is really quite hard to ignore. It's one of the hardest tricks in music to compose an entire piece out of discords, and I haven't heard it done this well except by Claude Debussy - thanks to this, the overall air of the song is intense and dramatic.
Not traditional Nina Simone, for that try something like Ain't Got No/Got No Life or I Put A Spell On You - but really highly recommended all the same.

4) Ray Charles - One Mint Julep (3:05)
A mint julep, by the way, is a cocktail from the southern USA. This song was originally recorded by The Clovers, but Ray's interpretation of it is a real masterpiece.
The introduction is stunning, with four or five brass/reed parts overlaying one another in a veritable orgasm of counterpoint. Ray soon joins in, and throughout the song plays an organ instead of his usual piano, but does a great job of doing so. The trademark pauses with indecipherable vocal fills are all present and correct.
Lots of very bluesy and laid back organ playing, reminiscent of something like Green Onions, but with passion added from the many layers of brass combines to make a very memorable and fun song - again, a bit different from traditional Ray Charles, but still one to get.

Part 1 can be found here.

WildCharger

Well, we've already got wireless radio, wireless networking, wireless USB connections and pretty much everything else you can think of - so one company has decided; Why do we need a separate wire for charging every single one of our devices?

The WildCharger is a portable, wire-free charge-by-contact solution for pretty much any mobile device. So, that's your DS, your PSP, your mobile phone and your laptop all covered from one fairly small pad, along with everything else you're carrying along.

The marketing is a little confusing, as the device still needs one wall socket, and you almost get the impression this thing is completely portable, but it can charge many devices at once, at their full normal charge rate (or such is claimed anyway), which would be damn useful, and of course, save a hell of a lot of carrying.

For some more information, try the official FAQ out - though remember who wrote it...

LAN

Was absolutely awesome! Sleep patterns have been a tiny bit messed up since then, which is why I've only just woken up, but that's only to be expected.

I finished lectures on the Friday at 4pm, and straight from there went to organising things for lan - getting the monitors, t-shirts, forms etc. Rich was also a complete workhorse, he started driving people in the minibus at 3pm and wasn't back till about 8!

We had 5 challenges running for the lan:
1) Soldat knockout tournament
2) N time challenge (episode 13)
3) Plasma Pong knockout tournament
4) Twister - 2 scoring games each
5) Tron knockout tournament

And gave out six prizes:
1) Remote control car from Microsoft (really nice one)
2) Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Poker Set from Game
3) Courtney Love's diaries from XTaster - via Terra, who didn't want them in the first place but managed to win them back!
4/5) 10 day passes to WoW (heh)
6) A CD I'd found in the building

So, not all as high quality as you might have imagined. The gaming was great, we had UT2k4, BF2, Bloodmasters, Singstar, Guitar Hero, Smash Bro's and a bunch of other games all going, along with the tournaments. I brought my new DDR game too, but we never got around the playing that.

Great fun, and I'll link up the pictures as soon as they're hosted! :)

Only one left...

So, I heard back from Fujitsu yesterday, and apparently they won't want to call me back for a final placement interview! Was quite surprised, as I was sure I gave a great presentation - even all the people I was competing against agreed with that!

Maybe I was let down in that group bridge building exercise, or by being the only one there not wearing a suit. Ah well, I'd have rejected it anyway, but it's still a bit scary not to have been offered the placement, I'm not so confident about Microsoft now.

Assessment day with them this Wednesday, wish me luck!

Help to make the internet a better place.

You may feel that you are but one insignificant user on this massive internet superhighway that connections tens of millions of people worldwide, but you can really make a difference to the internet today, with two simple actions.

If you're a last.fm member, then please visit the artist pages of both Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder.

On the top right of their artist pages, you'll see 'User tags', which will have a bunch of popular tags for the artist underneath it. Under the popular tags will be a button labelled 'tag this artist'. Click that button, and tag each of them as blind. The internet needs your help.

If you're not on last.fm for some reason, I advise you sign up for it.

A nice day out

Well, just got back home from my Fujitsu assessment centre, and it really was quite an enjoyable time. I spent last night at Will's pad in Reading, so that I didn't have to travel down early, which was ace. Some lovely cooking from Ali, writing my presentation for Fujitsu whilst watching Desperate Housewives (which I'm now going to download, shame on me), and getting my ass handed to me in Doom on Will's XBox in the morning would be the highlights of that visit.

So, after a bit more travelling I got to the Fujitsu building in Bracknell, not exactly glamorous, but still fairly modern and high-tech. Met my fellow candidates in the reception, and they all seemed really nice - pity we're in competition eh? :)

Turns out there were two other people (out of the total nine) there from Aston University, one of whom was doing a Business-ish degree, so I can be excused for not knowing her, but one was actually on my course, and I've never seen him before. Wierd.

The first exercise was a group one, we had 25 minutes to design and build a bridge that would support pads of post it notes, out of paper, blu-tac, and a couple of other bits and bobs. We failed pretty spectacularly there, our final effort was only capable of holding up one pad of paper, but I think we all showed some good teamwork skills - which is what they were really looking for.

Second part was the presentation, on "What are you passionate about? And what skills, abilities and attributes make you suitable for a job at Fujitsu?". I did mine on Jazz, and then kept relating jazz back to my various coding qualities - ie; in both jazz and programming, you need a high degree of creativity, within defined rules etc, you get the idea. For a full copy of my 'slides' (it was a paper based presentation, so I just held them up one at a time) and notes (which I didn't use), see attached. Thought the presentation went really well, I was very natural, had a couple of jokes and had a very good basis to present from too.

All in all, very good. We were in the last 40/50, and there's 10-20 places going, so I should hopefully be through to the next round :) Karaoke tonight!

Xx

.NET visits Aston. Not expected to return.

Well, just got back from a .NET and C# presentation at the Uni, which was a bit fun. I get the distinct impression that there's a bit of a long-standing debate going on within the CS department concerning .NET vs Java, and I'm not entirely sure that this presentation wasn't just another move in that little conflict.

A good, informative lecture nonetheless, I learnt a couple of sweet new features I hadn't seen before in CLR, such as Delegates and Events (thank God! I've wanted them for so long), and even managed to teach the guy running the presentation something new - he told the entire room that you couldn't convert back from a null Object to an int...course you can, just has to be a nullable :)

I did try and convince the CS staff at the end of the lecture that we'd really, really like a .NET module please, as a final year option, but given that the guy overall in charge's first question after the seminar started with "This was just a Microsoft 'oh look how great is our product' java bashing course you went on, therefore..." - I'm not hopeful. Ah well, students don't really matter much in Universities do they, it's all about the commercial research.

Vista's so hot

Here's a couple of screenies from my Vista. The wallpaper is just a screenshot of Plasma Pong. The odd cut down the middle is due to the fact I have two monitors, one at 1600x1200, the other at 1280x1024. Hot or what?

Look after your comatose mates!

Was bored inbetween lectures today, so I leafed through some of the advice leaflets in the Guild. Came across this absolute classic. The picture below is taken from one of those 'Look after your mates! Make sure they don't have meningitis' leaflets. Note the last of the points which should induce you to seek medical help:

LAN This Friday!

Can't wait! For those of you who are coming, make sure you read the following asap, and in full.

LAN Notes

Better go prepare that presentation for Fujitsu now, off to Reading tomorrow to stay with Will, and then got my assessment day in Bracknell the day after.

Double Maze

A nice little flash game, Double Maze is two fairly simple mazes, where you have to get a ball around a maze onto a star. The catch, of course, is that your keypresses move both balls simultaneously. Very tricky, level 8's my best so far.

Jazz recommendations (Part 1)

Just a couple of tracks I've been listening to recently. I suggest you obtain them, one way or another, and give them a shot.

1) Jaco Pastorius - Broad Way Blues (12:42)
This live track, from his album Heavy 'n Jazz is a trio masterpiece, with bass, guitar and drums, any one of which can be taken as the lead instrument. Some beautiful and very funky grooves with the bass and guitar doubling up comprise the intro to the song, and then we're treated to a beautiful jazz guitar solo reminiscent of Wes Montgomery's earlier playing, but with just a touch of experimental/fusion in there. Naturally, the bass and drums backing this up are worth listening to just on their own. Following some experimentalism, and a return to the opening grooves, we're treated to a drum solo, later backed up with some solo bass with distortion in the high register - one of Jaco's trademarks and not to be missed. He finishes off the bass solo by simply playing (because they can never be improved) Paul Chambers' riffs from So What? by the Miles Davis Quintet. One more drum solo leads us back into the main themes and the outro, a truly stunning piece, and one that can easily be listened to for the full 12 1/2 minutes without the listener ever losing focus or interest.

2) Jacques Loussier Trio - Sleepers, Awake! (Wachet Auf) (4:19)
Jacques Loussier, one of my favourite artists is a French jazz pianist, famed for his interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach's works. This gavotte is taken from Bach's cantata "Wachet Auf, ruft uns die Stimme" (BWV 140), already a masterpiece in its own right, and the interpretation is simply sublime. The double bass leads in with the main theme from the cantata, and is soon joined by some sublime piano accompaniment. Jacques then proceeds to play through the piece, although he adds so many dynamics, graces and extra fills, with both hands all over the keyboard that the original is sometimes almost unrecognizable at first impression, though once you look closely at what he is playing you realise that it is uncannily true to the Bach piece. Following another gorgeous bass solo, based around the original theme, Jacques Loussier leads the piece out by simply playing some of the main themes at speed, with his perfect grasp of feeling. The percussion throughout the piece is extremely interesting, and manages to really give the piece some rhythmic tension without ever standing out above the other two pieces.

Not something you see every day...

Upgrade?

So, I just got invited to upgrade my Windows Live Messenger. Naturally, I took up the offer, and I'm now on 8.1. However, I can't even see enough new content in here for a standard upgrade, let alone a new version number already. The only difference I've noticed is that the word 'beta' is written across the top. Oh, and that it likes crashing. Not recommended.

I need glasses!

Phew, left the house very early this morning, and only just got back now. Was out all day at Boots, first playing jazz, and then getting my eyes tested. Instead of paying us with cash, Boots offered to pay us with some expensive designer glasses too, and threw in free eye tests for us as well.

So, after picking out some nice Ben Sherman frames to get sunglasses made out of, I found out that I'm a bit short sighted (-.75 in each eye) and got real lenses put in instead. Got some nice fancy lenses too, which took the total cost up to a bit more than the ~£200 they'd said we could spend, but still got them free, which was sweet.

Gig went well, we had some really interesting jams going, did a couple of very experimental things and really managed to tighten up as a group, and move in some new directions too - we're getting a lot closer to trad jazz rather than our usual fusion blend now when we play, which I personally think is great - it just takes the confidence to improvise freely instead of sticking to well known themes and patterns.

All the Boots staff said they loved us, that we sounded completely professional, etc, and the public seemed to enjoy stuff as they walked past (or, on occasion, hung around to watch the show) - but given that I'd have done all that for free with no audience, didn't really mind either way.

New glasses ready on the 29th then, eep!

Jammin'

Pretty sweet day all round today. Julie-oh came round fairly early with her gorgeous Strad and me & her had a little jam, just to get used to improvising around one another again. Then she wandered off and I got to play with her trumpet, which, much though I love my purple one, is *so* much nicer. Really easy to hit clean notes on and such a lovely tone.

After yet another game of chess with Ju on her modern-art chess-set, had a real jam for a couple of hours with Tim Finch & Tim Miller, and Julie-oh of course, to get ready for tomorrow. Got a couple of nice new jam rhythms out of it, and 'taught' drummer Tim our songs (by which I mean, played them each once for him, he's pretty awesome though, so the odd time signatures shouldn't bother him, and he can hit any groove). We're going to play I Will Survive in a full on 70's disco style tomorrow too, just for Tim Finch, 'cause he loves his disco and funk.

Also, in more brilliant news, Genevieve just arrived and gave me a Guitar Hero II t-shirt and a book of Bach's cello suites, I have some pretty interesting ideas to do something with BWV1012's Gavotte in D Major, and maybe the Sarabande too. Life rocks! :)

So, 5 hours playing jazz in Boots tomorrow, £200 of free sunglasses as a reward, though I'd do it for free, can't wait!

Xx

Jazz In Boots

No, that's not a typo. Apparently Boots Opticians are celebrating their 20th anniversary and as such, want me & some jazz buddies to go play in their store to the public for 4 hours or so next Saturday, which'll be an interesting one to say the least.

We all get designer sunglasses or glasses though, which is pretty sweet, as apparently we're picking from a nice high-price range. Going to do the gig with Julie (Trumpet/Vox), Tim Miller (Guitar) and Tim Finch on the drums - never played jazz with him but he's great when I play ska with him, or just jam, so shouldn't be a problem. So, if you're about in Brum town centre this Saturday...

Good old wind tunnels...

******************************************
TO ALL STUDENTS AND STAFF

WE ARE EXPERIENCING SOME EXTREMELY STRONG WINDS AT THE MOMENT, RESULTING
IN ONE WINDOW BEING BLOWN OUT OF THE TOP FLOOR OF DALTON TOWER.

AT THE MOMENT WE HAVE AN AREA CORDONED OFF BETWEEN DALTON AND GEM SPORTS
WHILST WE ATTEMPT TO REMOVE ANY DANGEROUS GLASS. CAN ALL PERSONNEL
ENSURE THAT THEY ADHERE TO THE SAFETY TAPE AND BARRIERS WE HAVE PUT
AROUND THIS AREA.

IN ADDITION CAN EVERYONE DO WHAT EVER IS NECESSARY TO CLOSE ANY OPEN
WINDOWS FOR THE DURATION OF THIS GALE.

ALSO TAKE EXTRA CARE WHILST WALKING IN AN AROUND THE TOWER BUILDINGS
WHERE THE EXTREME VORTEXES ARE PRESENT.

MALCOLM TONKS
ESTATES MANAGER

Apologies for the caps, just pasted that straight, clearly he wanted everyone to know how important this is.

I'm quite surprised this has never happened before, back when I lived in Dalton, you could really notice how the nice, narrow paths between massive high rise buildings created crazy wind tunnels. You could move from shelter to a full on gale with only one step at any point, while the world outside of campus was only experiencing a mild breeze.

Inside the towers it was even worse, due to the couple of permanently windows at either side of the tower, with a very narrow corridor inbetween them. At times I had to wait for a pause in the wind just to open my front door! The wind pressure was a hell of a lot stronger than me.

Off to install Vista now, so hopefully see you soon, but who knows?

Xx

Vista on Aston MSDNAA! (At last)

Well guys, if you want a copy of Vista Business, then provided you're an Aston student (though it may only be for Engineering school students, not sure) you can go grab one from the MSDNAA.

Your login name will be your Aston unix id followed by @aston.ac.uk, and your password will have been given to you at some point. Search your webmail for it, and if you can't find it, contact the EAS guys to get a new one. Then, just login to the site, and press download! It's a DVD iso, complete with CD key.

It's rather interesting how we've finally got this, I've been whining at the EAS guys on and off since December 9th (official MSDNAA Vista release data) to no real effect, so I really started having a go at them recently. Yesterday I recieved a very final email stating:

There are no plans at the moment to be able to get MS Vista from MSDNAA for Aston.

And following a reply from myself, informing them that according to Microsoft, Aston had indeed purchased Vista, and that their excuse that they were waiting for ELMS to update their site was a joke, as e-academy had been running with Vista since December 16th, I got this email today:

Windows Vista is now downloadable from MSDNAA.

They're even signed by the same EAS guy.

If you're not from Aston, but you are at Uni, then check to find out if your Uni is registered with MSDNAA, and if it's not, then damn well suggest it! ;)

Xx

Almost done/Temptation

Last exam in an hour and a half, whoop! Then comes the temptation, the sweet, sweet temptation.
Why did Blizzard have to release The Burning Crusade a mere day or so before my exams were over?
Why did Aston have to give me 5 sweet, free, clear days with nothing to do inbetween my exams and lectures?
Why did Clush and Liam have to each give me a 10 day free pass to play WoW?

:(

10 Reasons you should be an MSP.

That's 'Microsoft Student Partner', by the way.

1. Free trips to various places around the country, all expenses paid, to learn about new developments.

2. A few social trips every year - next one is free boat trip down the thames and then a nice hotel next month, for no apparent reason.

3. Free entry to conferences that are £400 to register for. Preferential treatment too so you can get in before they're fully booked.

4. Tons of free textbooks, t-shirts, mugs....etc

5. Looks awesome on your CV.

6. Lots of training and development support.

7. The MSP Mentor scheme - you get a MVP IT professional answering all your questions.

8. Free Zune, and lots of chances to get a 360 or various other things given away to you. Top 3 MSPs also get a nice trip to Europe.

9. Meet a bunch of cool people, and also find a bunch more people who are even more geeky than you.

10. Free MSDN subscription for a year. ie: Download any MS products you want free of charge for 12 months. Which will obviously be all of them. Includes professional licenses. Also, you get betas et cetera early, and during your year as an MSP you won't need to use up the MSDN subscription, as you get most things free anyhow.

Want to be one for next year? Send me an email (macgilli at aston dot ac dot youkay). Also, if you're interested in being an Student Representative, which also gets you some cool stuff and doesn't involve any work really, then let me know too.

20k scrobbles!

Well, that's 20,000 plays recorded for me now through the joys of audioscrobbler, now hosted on Last.fm so I thought I'd give you all a post on it. The 20,000th song played, in case you're interested was a masterpiece by Nina Simone by the name of Sinnerman - you'll probably recognize it from the odd film or advert, absolutely beautiful and really passionate. Pretty hard to play on the old piano too.

So anyway, Last.fm, or audioscrobbler to the old school. It's a lot like the Pandora project, except that instead of merely taking in the names of a band or two that you like, and telling you what you might like, this takes in thousands of bits of user data every hour and fits them all together. As such, you get very intelligent recommendations not based on genre or style, but on what other people who like <song>, like.

Firstly, just the novelty of the thing is pretty fun. It records everything you listen to, and you can find out what songs or artists you've listened to most, and unlike iTunes or whatever your media player is, it'll hold over a resort of your music collection, or a new computer etc. You can also see what embarrassing tat your friends are listening to, always good for a mocking.

It assigns you musical neighbours, and does a damn good job of it, and your neighbours will have similar tastes, but sometimes a widely different range of top bands, and quite often in their recently played, or most loved sections, you'll find something you've never heard of. Likewise, there's groups for like minded people, or just for friends, which can simply be used to see which bands are top among those members that week, or more importantly, as a way of getting into the community and getting some fab recommendations or rare recordings.

The community there is pretty fun and vibrant, though I'm not really too involved with it - little time, and you find some right idiots on there to laugh at too, which is always fun. Still though, you meet some cool people and get recommended some great stuff, and if you're ever looking for something new, try their various radio stations, all user-generated (not picked, generated) - you can get some very interesting things up there.

Some other cool features - picture blankets generated based on whatever you, or whoever you're looking at has been listening to, charts generated for forum signatures etc, shoutboxes, tags, journals, free tracks...

So, Sinnerman's great, audioscrobbler's great, what're you waiting for? Go sign up.

See the 'about me' bit for an example of my charts, here's a screenie of my homepage there:

Dying for a Wii

Californian woman dies trying to win a Wii

A Californian woman died a couple of days ago, after taking part in a water drinking contest to win a Nintendo Wii, catchily titled "Hold your wee for a Wii". I think the most amusing parts of this article are;

a) That she didn't even manage to win one.
b) That she was 'doing it for her kids' - great, now they've got no mother and no Wii. Poor kids.

Wonder if the radio station will give them a Wii anyway...

Twister!

Went to a 'house party' (though less wild than you're probably imagining) to celebrate Gen's 21st last night, which was pretty ace. Got there relatively early in the evening to find a chocolate fountain already set up (I recommend Doritos dipped in chocolate) and a barbecue warming up.

Played a bunch of silly party games, had lots of nice food - including home made vanilla ice-cream - and ended up having a rather large Twister session. Was great fun with over 20 of us in a small room, with a Twister mat just fitting on the floor and 4 people playing at once, but there were only a few pulled muscles.

Went out for a walk with Julie after, when most other people had gone to Flares, and actually managed to find a 'lake' and some grass within 10 minutes walk of my house, wow.

2 down, 2 to go

Well, finished my first two exams of the second year, and I can certainly say that this year's a hell of a lot harder than my first one was. My programming courseworks took at least 30 hours apiece, and these exams were anything but easy.

Pretty sure I aced the Data Structures & Algorithms exam - that's pretty much just all programming, though I managed to throw away 2% by forgetting to answer part b) of a question after spending half an hour on part a) - all I had to write for that 2% would have been n^2.

The Professional and Social Aspects of Computing exam I may well have blagged a pass in, which I'd be happy with, given that the module's a joke and the lecturer even worse - I maybe turned up to 10% of the lectures, and unfortunately very little of what I revised the day before came up.

Graphics (ouch) and AI exams coming up now, so I should get back to revision!

No wonder there's no trees in Birmingham

So I've just printed off my submission for my coursework - which was to create an Intelligent Knowledge Based System (IKBS) using lisp, and it's ridiculous. We were asked for some unknown reason to print from the line printer, and the result is that I've got a small tree sitting next to me right now.

The lecturer marking my submission hasn't even asked for the actual program to be submitted to him, merely a printout of the code and a printout of 'sample conversation' with the program, which I could really easily have hacked. So, given that my submission could have been of much higher quality if it had been electronic (printing screwed up a bunch of my formatting too, as line printers wrap after every 72 chars), I'm naturally rather annoyed that I just spent two hours and a couple of pounds to waste a ton of paper on this submission.

Here is the letter I therefore sent to the lecturer, and cc'ed to the CS2 year tutor and the Courses Director, if you're interested. Revision again now.


Hi Chris,

I've just finished off my CS2250 coursework for final submission (a bit late I know, but the code was finished a while back, I've just been getting user input for the database) and I'm afraid I'm rather unhappy with the submission specification.

I've got 40 pages from the line printer sitting next to me, and though I was prepared to write off the extra effort and cost of printing via that medium, I hadn't realised quite how much paper the line printer took up. Contrary to what your specification says - it's certainly not standard practise to print from the line printer - no-one's ever asked us to do that before! So, my first concern is the environmental aspect - I'm sure there's at least a hundred students on CS2, and I dread to think what portion of a forest you're going to get handed in to you from all of their submissions, I'm sure there's a small tree used up just for mine. Also, incidentally, I doubt you'll be able to read any of the scoring tables in my code, as the line printer cuts off lines after a certain number of characters, which really messes up the formatting of the code.

Secondly, I've created a very intuitive, user-friendly program which actually manages to provide pretty good advice. However, it seems you'll have to just take my word for that, because you don't actually appear to want the program that you're marking submitted to you. I've attached my actual knowledge database to this email, because you haven't even asked to see that, which really makes me wonder how you can tell if my program is delivering good advice or bad. In my database, I could very easily have hacked a certain value, so that one particular film will always come up as the most recommended, and then asked for all the features of that film in my dribble.txt file - and you'd be none the wiser. You also lose out on the entire feel of the program, and unless I spent 20 minutes in front of the console with dribble turned on, you're never going to see the output of everything you can do with the program.

Therefore, could I suggest that in future you merely ask for electronic submissions of coursework? It would save every student time and money, it would save the environment a very large amount of paper being wasted, and it would allow you to see the programs that you're marking. You'll be able to see all the code nicely formatted and be able to try out any functions that aren't immediately obvious in their intention, instead of working through reams of paper to attempt to visualise their output and how they fit into the program as a whole.

I've cc'ed Sylvia Wong & Lesley Wood into this - could I suggest that for the reasons above you review the 'standard' practises for CS and consider electronic submissions as a rule where possible, and any form of printing for submissions where a physical hand in is absolutely neccessary? The line printing doesn't really add any extra security - with a bit of effort I'm sure any CS student could bypass whatever it is the line printer is meant to be securing, problem solving and hacking are pretty much what we're learning here :)

Finally, please don't take this as a negative comment about the course - I enjoyed your lectures and I've had great fun learning lisp and doing my coursework and I'm sure it'll come in handy for me in the future. My IKBS is already being used as a real-life application by myself and friends to find films to watch, and it'll only get more and more useful and reliable as more films are added to it every time it's used. My concerns are only with the actual hand-in specification.

Cheers, and happy new year.
Ian.

Xx

No job for me at Rare! :(

Well, went for my assessment day for Rare today, handily located just in Birmingham town centre. I'd expected this to be a massive event with a couple of hundred students, but when I arrived there were only around 15 of us there, and 5 of those were for the graduate scheme - not the internship. Additionally, only Dean and I were there from Birmingham, people had travelled from all over the country to the centre.

I later found out what all this was about - it seems out of the many applicants (1500 last year I heard, and I imagine a similar number this year) we'd been narrowed down to the last 40 or so, which was pretty sweet. What wasn't so great was that we than had to sit a three part test for our assessment.

The first part, multiple-choice was fairly easy, just graphics and general tech questions, with one or two about games thrown in there. The second part was the toughie - 10/15 of us failed it (including most of the graduate applicants, ouch) - it was some fairly difficult maths, lots of vector stuff and some hex things I'd never even seen before. Ended that one on 5/18 (needed 9/18 to pass). Third and final part was pure coding based, so did well on that, but unfortunately they didn't take an overall mark, they did it section by section.

So, that narrows it down to either Microsoft or Fujitsu for me, and I expect to get offered at least one, if not both of theirs. A word of advice - if you're looking for a placement at Rare - get studying your maths! Apparently after this stage there's an even harder test with some really hardcore maths on it.

Back to revision and coursework then!

Xx

Back in Brum!

Well, there goes any hope of me getting my coursework finished then. Had an eventful trip up the motorway, with the occasional diversion, and the occasional bit of bad directing from me getting up a bit off course, but got here eventually.

Found Gib here when I arrived, so he Tim and Terra were the witnesses to my first attempt at Free Bird on Expert mode. Unfortunately, I rather let myself down at the 74% mark (halfway through the solo) and sort of....died. Oh well. Then (after some evil LISP) Xander came home, and I had some face-off duels with him. Obviously, I won, but it was quite close - which may have been due to the fact that I was playing my guitar through my legs, behind my head, and cross-hands (though not all at the same time). Additionally, I now have a partner to ace co-op with! w00t. Additionally additionally, 5* on every song on Hard baby ;)

Watched 2001 after that, which was ace. We now need to find some still images of the film to write all over, because we've got some kickass taglines for them - I'll let you see once we do them. Time for coding now :(

Xx

Get into the festive spirit!

Well, now that all that Christmas rubbish is over we can start preparing for the real festive season - Winter-een-mas. I'll be wearing a Winter-een-mas crown to all of my exams, and just generally, and I'd suggest that you all do the same.
Here's the link for printing:

Print your own Winter-een-mas crown!

Any TV show you want, streamed.

tv-links.co.uk

Haven't had time to check this out properly myself (damn you coursework!), but from what I can see this is a pretty well maintained database (list) of where you can find any episode of your favourite TV show available for streaming on the net - generally via YouTube or whatever.

I'm not entirely sure this is any more legal than torrenting the stuff, so I'll still probably do that if there's something I want and it's not released on DVD, or is released and I can't afford to buy it. In other news, I got series 5-8 (Just the shows!) of Red Dwarf for Christmas, so I've got the full set. Kickass.

The more things change...

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
George Orwell, 1945.

Myspace.com Artists Concerned About New Mypurchase Service

So, remember a few years ago, when the music industry suddenly noticed that everyone was ripping off their songs on p2p, and had to make a decision about what they should do? They came up with a lot of lovely soundbites, such as:

"Music itself is art, but there's a lot more to it with lyrics and cool artwork (inside the album cover)," he says. "And you get a much better sounding copy of the songs"

To try to persuade people to buy albums instead of just downloading them for free. Eventually they realised the way the market was changing and offered their songs for paid download via iTunes music store, and other such similar projects.

Well, now it looks like all of the ultra-hip indie (as in independent) myspace bands are soon to be faced with the same decisions the big labels faced a few years back, thanks to mypurchase. And given that the above quote isn't from a label, it's from one of those myspace bands, I don't think it'll be too long before all these bands sell out and start threatening p2p client providers and guitar tab websites with lawsuits. Say goodbye to the wonderful community of indie bands, where music was made just for the pleasure of making it.

Oh well, I never used myspace anyhow ;)

Who needs mars bars?

Best idea of the day.

Clushje says:
Sometimes I wish I took fashion design for uni instead, could try on my own dresses then... would be kick ass don't you think? Man we should drop this and do fashion design asap.

I hate UML

So, I spent most of the day round Lucie's drawing UML diagrams. With a pen and paper. I felt like some kind of prehistoric savage, it was a real challenge recalling the motor skills used to actually manipulate such a crude instrument.

I'd recommend having someone nearby if you're ever going to spend a long time doing UML, because sometimes the urge to just get some razorblades and finish it all is nearly overwhelming. Thankfully they're nearly all done, time for revision soon though :(

On a more positive note, I've got an assessment day with Rare on the 9th, which should be pretty fun - though I'm not expecting to get the placement, I heard there were 2k applicants for 2 jobs! In other placement news; assessment day date for MS is still pending, Google told me to go die and I've told Fujitsu they'll have to wait another month to see me, because the second assessment day they offered me clashes with Rare's. w00t :)

So what's your new year's resolution?

Guitar Hero!

So, so close to getting 5 stars on every song on Hard. I've still got Psychobilly Freakout, Carry Me Home and Misirlou to go. The first two are doable, but I can't even get 4 stars on Misirlou yet, it's just too damn fast. Interesting side-note though, the Free Bird solo contains more notes than the entirety of Misirlou. GHII is a lot harder than GHI.

Lots of Irritating Silly Parenthesis

..says Will, and he's right. Even adding requires some brackets in Lisp - it's (+ 1 2). Anyhow, I might finally be done with this coursework, from a programming-thinking point of view anyway. All I need to do now is write a ton of code to read and choose one of the thirty or so features that make up a film, and then to devise a scoring system to give users intelligent advice - got all the codebase there though, thank God.

Next up is UML diagrams, so I'd appreciate a phone call every couple of hours to make sure I'm not contemplating suicide whilst drafting them :(

Oh Lisp, why do you hate me?

So, spent most of the day doing AI programming with CLisp (Common Lisp) and it's an absolute bitch. The entire syntactic structure of the language is completely and utterly dependent on a whole ream of brackets thrown in everywhere, which makes reading the code fairly awful. Also, the tiny scraps of documentation that are out there are pretty much just memory-joggers - they're not designed for learning from!

Managed to get something done at least - I've got a program which talks to you, a good data-structure laid out to symbolically encapsulate the features of a film, a database of films to work with (thanks mum!) and the ability for a user to add new films to that database. Unfortunately, I can't get the new films to save across sessions yet though, need to work out how to file-write with lisp first, should be fun fun fun.

Next stage is making the program actually think, so it can recommend films based on criteria given to it, or on a choice of one of the other films it has. I've got my head around the concepts involved, it's just a struggle with lisp now :(

Happy new year!

Happy 2007 all, hope you have a good one. Last night was pretty fun, popped over to Claire's house with Lu, Louise & Chinny and had a nice night in with various board games. Twister was legendary as usual and Articulate produced some rather amusing quotes, if you haven't played it I recommend you try to find a copy. The fireworks on TV were pretty impressive too, can't help but wonder quite how much of the 2007 tax budget was spent on that little display though. Oh well, I'm sure the people who had seizures from the display won't mind waiting an hour or two longer on the NHS for treatment.