Grad Fair Fun

For three years now I've been heading out to the various graduate recruitment fairs in the autumn to chat to students about where they should work: specifically, at Microsoft - or this year, Thomson Reuters. It's amazing how easily my loyalty can be bought with a bunch of cash (take note people).

I love these things - it's fun chatting to some of the bright students but it's a lot more amusing to watch the dumb ones come up and make fools of themselves in front of the people who'll be recruiting them in future. Here's a few of this year's classic quotes:


"I'm at University but I don't really like it so I'm thinking of something else, can you recommend anything?"
Yes, not going to a graduate recruitment fair.

"Are you guys French?" No. "Oh so you're posh then?" ...

"I've got a lot of experience as a bakery assistant, and doing cake decorating" I don't think we're the right company for you "No no...look at my CV [two pages of catering qualifications]".

"I've got a psychology degree."


It's also amusing to see different companies' approach to recruitment. Aldi go down the subtle route, with an Audi A4 parked in the middle of the fair and "£40k starting salary" - I think it would be a bit redundant to ask what kind of hours their grads can expect. It was also fun to see Royal Mail had a large stand at the fair (and their exhibitors turned up) - and to listen to the grads ribbing them.

Finally, at the Birmingham fair I wandered over to the Aston University stand to say hi to the folks there, which ended up turning into a nice little meeting point for the various ex-grads who've managed to land themselves jobs now. I think I volunteered to have a profile of my [ahem] fantastic success in the new Undergraduate Prospectus.

Research

Lots (read: more than one) of people have been asking what I'm up to nowadays, which has led me to the conclusion that I'm neglecting my blog. The whole purpose of this exercise is to avoid frivolous conversation by publishing the answers to questions which form the bulk of small-talk; that my conversation time may be better spent. The inefficiency of giving the same facts to different people in different conversations is amazingly annoying.

So.

Having finished university (results are out on Thursday 18^th with luck), I'm now...at university. I'm working as a research student for ten weeks, working in the same area as with my final year project.

I'll hopefully be publishing a paper in AAMAS (Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems), and then presenting it in May/June 2010, in Canada. Also it pays for rent and clothes shopping over summer - but let's pretend I'm doing this for the advancement of human knowledge.

We're still finalising a topic - I'll post a dumbed down (read: jargon-free) version of whatever I do up here :)

Xx

PS: I have a small office with (inexplicably) 9 chairs, yet on the rare occasions anyone stops by for a chat, they generally stay standing. Explanations on a postcard please.

A dartboard

Well, my degree's over and I never have to do another piece of coursework, joy! More on that later, but for now, here's a still image from my final piece of coursework:


_{Click to embiggen.}

Unfortunately, that's a nicely rendered image and when played in real-time, the darts game actually looks a lot more...crap. I spent a lot of time choosing that word; it really is the most appropriate. Especially given that the networking (you can play the game online) is sketchy and the Wiimote controls are challenging at best.

Still though, looks pretty doesn't it?
Xx

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Blender Game Engine, Blender Render. Grab me if interested in anything else or if you want a copy of the game.

Disco Robot Teleporter

The coursework specification for my Computer Animation module reads:

"Model and animate something you believe will exist in 2050"

Could you ask for anything better?

I combined three of my favourite words, a lot of spotlights and various other fun effects into the following:

Disco Robot Teleporter


There was a proper disco dancefloor underneath all that at one point, you can see an awful quality initial preview of it here - I'm not sure where that went in the final rendering, but as it took a day to render what I have, I'm not going to bother re-doing it.

Also, here's what the teleporter originally looked like - I couldn't get the fancy particles into the final rendering either:



Enjoy.
Xx

PS: I made it all in Blender, and it's a Blender Render. Grab me if you want more techie details.

NUS Nazi Newsletter

A copy of the NUS newsletter just arrived in my inbox today, and I was quite surprised to find it entitled:

Vote Nazi?

A lot of the it was the typical tripe you'd expect from someone who loves cuddles and rainbows and everyone being nice to one another - 'let's all not talk to the BNP or invite them to our sleepovers'.

Now, I can't say I'm a particular fan of the BNP. For starters, their policies on expanding the country's technological framework are sketchy and badly thought through. However, I did find this newsletter to be frankly disgraceful.

It starts:

"NUS is an organisation which represents all students."

Now, I personally know (of) some students IN the BNP. Where's their representation here? Will a percentage of NUS newsletters be devoted to promoting the BNP, its aims and literature?

We then hear:

"We believe that everyone should be given the opportunity to participate fully in a society that celebrates diversity."

...everyone that is, except the BNP. They even encourage students to deny the BNP speaking platforms, events et cetera - hardly an incitement to democracy.

And so on. I could pick apart the newsletter point by point, but hopefully you get the idea.

Finally, I also love how on the NUS Campaigns Home Page there's a section nicely entitled 'Black Students'. Way to break down those barriers guys. In fact, why stop at some websites aimed solely at black students? Perhaps we could brand them all like cattle too..

--

Since emailing the NUS back this afternoon I've had two people grab me to bitch about how awful the newsletter was, and one ask me to proof-read her email back to them. I love you guys <3

Edit 28/03/09: I'm not in the BNP, I don't hate all black people, stop messaging me if you're incapable of basic reading.

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People are asking for the full newsletter. The majority of it is available here and I've advise you to mail your discontent to either susan.nash@nus.org.uk or campaigns@nus.org.uk.

Except black students.

The NUS doesn't think black students should be treated the same. Black students should instead email the black students' officer - bell@nus.org.uk.

Fun With Games

Faced with the choice of taking Immersive Environments and Games Design paired with Computer Animation - or Geographic Information Systems and Data Mining I tried, I really did, to pick the sensible options where I'd actually learn useful, re-usable skills for my future employability.

Alas, I failed, and I'm now spending half of my teaching hours playing with various games engines and 3D models. I'm not entirely sure what, if anything, I'm learning - but it's fabulous fun and mostly coursework based (which I thought was great, until I realised how much more work I've got left for my Final Year Project).

Here's some samples of the fun:

1. An Unreal level

No, not one of the exciting kind of Unreal, like Unreal Tournament - but just the physics and graphics engine. Oh well, I still made a fun little 'puzzler' out of it - and managed to submit the coursework with 13 minutes to spare. Let me know if you want a copy of the map (the runtime's free to download) - and here's some screenshots for now.


<sub>It has flames and noises and smoke and everything in game ^^


This holds a big glass ball, eventually - looks quite cool empty though I think.


Stained Glass; technically impressive, visually quite nice too.


The great outdoors.



Holes in the walls o.O


Another arty angle.</sub>

Also, if anyone cares, there's a step-by-step guide to how I made the level, that I submitted as part of my coursework, available here (yes I know one of the links there is dead, you'll work it out though, you're clever people).

2. Pacman 3D

The end of today's lab class simply stated 'Create a PacMan-like game'. I always wondered what PacMan would be like if he was actually a sphere, rather than a circle, and obeyed the laws of physics, bouncing off and around things. Now I have my answer; rubbish.


_{Yes, the graphics are rubbish - but I did knock the whole thing together in 30 minutes.}

3. Pumpkin

I was quite bemused when we were asked to create a small game whereby a pumpkin (complete with flickering candle innards) bounced around, opened a door and jumped off the end of the world. I had endless fun setting up the pumpkin to be smashed miles into the air by the force of the opening door though:

Considerations

In relation to my Trading project (actually it's a project based on Trust and Reputation...) - I've had cause to question a few assertions I made earlier on in the year, even though they were backed up by some credible sources.

Some items for consideration which I, at least, find really interesting at the moment:

When trading online, how much do the opinions of others about a potential trading partner influence your decisions, if you already have experience trading with that partner before?

Is there a limiting point as to how much others can influence you? Consider that you've had a bad experience with a trading partner. Would 100 people saying 'this partner is good' be any more influential than 50? Than 25? Than 5?

When trading online, how much does a potential trading partner's reputation (eg, eBay rating) influence your decisions, if you already have experience trading with that partner before?

How good is your memory of people you've traded with in the past? How much does this depend on how the community is set up? Do very good or very bad experiences stay in memory much longer? How much longer?

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I've got some good answers for most of the above, but any thoughts are always appreciated. Any academically referenced thoughts are really appreciated :P

Now for the hard part - expressing all this mathematically. Ouch.

Trading

Amongst many procrastinations, trips to the pub and baths I've been working surprisingly hard on my Final Year Project of late; a Christmas idly spent will encourage guilt that way. I've changed from a civil violence scenario investigating artificial intelligence, through a multi-agent approach to an investigation into trust and reputation in an e-commerce scenario.

Don't Panic.

Let's explain..

Imagine, eBay. You want to buy yourself some electronic gadget. Everyone, co-incidentally, happens to be charging the exact same amount for this gadget - but you still need to decide who to trade with. Here you'll be looking at the reputation of users - as shown through eBay's central reputation system.

Now imagine Craigslist, GumTree, et al. There's no central rating system, instead you need to get at someone's reputation through a distributed set of other users. You'll likely ask people how trustworthy another user is.

My investigation is into which model works better, based on a variety of factors. For example, changing behaviours, communication trustworthiness (see below) and 'noise' in the system (making it hard to see what's actually happening).

A problem that crops up with both of these scenarios is that of trust. Note that trust is your perception of how likely someone is to be good/bad at a specific task. How much can I trust eBay's central server? What if people have been feeding it bad information? What if I can't trust the people who are telling me about other users on Craigslist?

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I'm doing research into all of this, and it's getting pretty fun. The maths, however, is giving me some headaches - I don't like to see equations taking up half a page and filled with Greek. I think I'm over most of those hurdles, and I've been offered the chance to get some funding to stay on at Uni over the summer and put this together into a proper research paper, for publication in one of the fancier journals in this area of Computer Science.

Exciting eh? IM me if you'd like more detail on any of it :)

Update: Exams

It seems rather unfair that in my final year of University, modules that are no more important (and some - I believe - are far less important) than previous ones have such a stronger weighting when it comes to the class of degree that may be so important through my life.

I've just finished the examinations for the first half of my final year, and things went well...mostly. I'm fairly confident I got >70% in all four modules, and I know I got quite a lot higher than that in the various courseworks and labs that also contribute to the module marks.

I was, however, less than happy with my performance in the Business Studies Software Engineering: Management & Metrics module I had thrust upon me.

When I started at Aston, I was originally on a Business Studies & Computer Science joint honours degree. I quickly dropped the Business half of that, preferring to actually learn some hard facts, rather than discuss buzzwords. You can naturally imagine my dismay then, when I learned that a module based entirely around bad maths, silly graphs and buzzwords would contribute to more than 6% of my final degree mark.

Further to this, once in the exam I spotted what I believed were four glaring errors on the exam paper. This, please note, was an exam paper that had supposedly been checked and ratified by at least three separate groups of people. One was admitted on the day, two I mentioned to the lecturer during the exam but he was unable to understand them, and one was ambiguous, but I'm happy to accept wasn't an error - in retrospect.

I spent most of the exam seething at the lecturer's lack of English and Maths skills, and probably made some silly errors thanks to this. I was also extremely annoyed that any error could exist in a paper which was checked by the lecturer, a Computer Science committee and an external examiner.

Still though, I think it says something about how much of the joke the module is that I'm still sure I got >70% on it - despite not turning up to any of the tutorials after seeing quite how bad the lecturer's maths skills were in the very first one.

On responses to email

I really do quite like it when I see people and organisations acting professionally. I also get quite annoyed when I see them not bothering to do so. Being a geek, I see a lot of this through the Web, and often get in touch with a short (generally fairly friendly) note to let people know if they could do with improving their service (or indeed, if they're already providing a great one).

I have, however, noticed quite a disparity in the replies I get. I'd have thought that the ones I send positive feedback to would just nod and get on with their work. The ones I send negative feedback to would immediately look into the problem, take some positive action and get back to me with an apology and a listing of how they intend to improve.

As you might have guessed, that's not always what happens. Here's some key culprits:

People failing with mailing lists
Here's an example - today I got an email which was sent to all undergraduates in the school of engineering and applied science at Aston. There's a perfectly good seas_ug mailing list which would hide all of the addresses the message was sent to. Alternatively, there's always the 'bcc' field. However, this mailer chose to put all ~2000 email addresses into the 'to' field, for any enterprising student to harvest and sell/abuse.

I sent a link to the Data Protection Act to the offender, and some kindly advice about how to use mailing lists and email in general. Based on past experience of sending similar emails, I'm near certain I won't get a response.

Edit: What're the odds? They replied a couple of hours later. This is literally the first time someone's replied to such an email. Their excuse of 'incompetence' wasn't really too reassuring though, especially as the damage has already been done. They seem a nice enough person though.

Recruitment agencies/departments
I've been applying for some jobs recently. Some of the companies have unbelievably awful processes - I actually decided not to go for one particular job because their recruitment process is that bad. If they don't care enough about quality to at least glance at what they're putting live, I don't think I want to work there. I won't name names, as the agency which put up that tat is also processing some of my other applications at the moment.

For the companies that have been particularly awful (or particularly good) I've sent some communication outlining this, and suggesting simple methods for improvement. The good feedback has gotten me a 100% response, whereas the negative has gotten me a 0% response. Presumably if they're so unprofessional they put that kind of application process live, they're also unprofessional enough not to care.

People putting information online in proprietary formats
Hint: Not everyone has a copy of Microsoft Office installed. Yes, I'm aware there are sub-par tools I can use to get a rough idea of the content of your .docx, but if you put one up online you can expect an email asking for an open document type.

Feedback (and a document anyone can read) is about 50% from people I email with this one. Although, that's dropping since I started mailing recruitment agencies that are (shudder) using .dot templates to, presumably, automatically extract data into their Access databases. Classy. Remember that these are technology companies that I'm applying to.

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Right, enough bitching. Time to go back to coursework..

0.62% of a degree!

Final year's a bit more exciting than other years, even when it comes to just the little one hour practicals. Unless I found the subject interesting, it was hard to summon up the enthusiasm to do background reading and prep work for assessed lab classes in second year - given that they counted towards about 0.06% of my total degree mark.

This year I did put the effort in, and it's rather nice to have two 100% marks behind me (for quizzes that took all of 15 minutes), and 0.62% of a degree to add to the 18.75% (out of a possible 25%) I got from last year.

Now then, time to sell my soul and go and answer the coursework questions as set, rather than interpretations of them I find interesting, or digressing into long (albeit well reasoned) discourses about why the underlying principles behind the coursework question are at fault.

Not enough time

Since coming back to University I've been busy pretty much constantly, with no spare time to just sit back and relax, or even to complete the occasional ancillary tasks that crop up from time to time.

I'm in University early every morning, even when I don't have lectures, so that I can get some research into Artificial Intelligence and Multi-Agent Systems done for my Final Year Project. When I'm not working on that, it's preparation for assessed lab classes (each of which is worth 0.6% of my total degree!) or finding obscure references to satisfy the lecturer who's set the other coursework I'm currently working on.

When I get a break, I grab an orange juice and a banana or head down to the pool for my daily swim - I normally manage about 1Km a day before it's time to head back to lectures. Once I'm back home it's practicing and learning music for Tie-Dye Quartet gigs, more work on my Final Year Project and co-ordinating all my various extra curricular activities - societies, job applications, MS student partner stuff, all that jazz.

Mondays and Wednesdays are for Squash, Saturdays are for Ultimate and weekends in general are spent helping the homeless, raising money for charity and volunt...

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Ok, enough lying. Let's try all that again:

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Since coming back to University and getting addicted to Team Fortress 2 I've been busy pretty much constantly, with no spare time to just sit back and relax, or even to complete the occasional ancillary tasks that crop up from time to time boring paperwork I should really, really do sometime soon.


I'm in University early every morning, even when I don't have lectures [seriously], so that I can get some research into Artificial Intelligence and Multi-Agent Systems done for my Final Year Project. When I'm not working on that, it's preparation for assessed lab classes (each of which is worth 0.6% of my total degree!) or finding obscure references to satisfy the lecturer who's set the other coursework I'm currently working on finding amusing stories on BBC News, following link after link on Wikipedia and continually F5'ing in my inbox.

When I get a break, I grab an orange juice and a bananaa sausage roll and a bottle of Lucozade or head down to the pool for my daily swim - I normally manage about 1Km 500m a day before it's time to head back to lectures collapsing in a heap and needing resuscitation from the lifeguard. Once I'm back home it's practicing and learning music for Tie-Dye Quartet gigs, more work on my Final Year Project and co-ordinating all my various extra curricular activities - societies, job applications, MS student partner stuff, all that jazzPLAYING TF2 FOR HOURS AND HOURS UNTIL MY EYES BLEED AND I GO TO BED WITH DREAMS OF HEADSHOTS AND SENTRY GUNS PLAYING THROUGH MY BRAIN.

Tie-Dye Quartet Pictures

The wonderful Chris Lush not only took photos of Tie-Dye Quartet for our album artwork, but also comes along to the occasional gig and photographs us. Here's a few shots from our show on Thursday - be sure to click on each image to get sent through to the full quality pictures, the previews really don't do them justice.


<sub>Our good looking drummer, Pete Ford


Presumably this was a tricky passage...


Guitar solo!


Can't forget the trumpet


There was a very good crowd on the night


Seriously, people were queueing up outside the door, one in - one out</sub>

I'll also see if I can dig up some audio from one of the people who was either filming our set, or just watching the entire thing through a digital camera lens. Presumably the former.

Xx

First gig for a while

Last night was the first gig I've played with the Tie-Dye Quartet since recording and...whew. I think the best description for the night would be 'a bit Spinal Tap'.

Our guitarist got held up (after giving a guitar lesson, what are the odds?) and we were almost about to start playing without him when he came through the door. The stage set-up was, to be generous, not the best I've ever seen. Suffice to say that I could only hear the drums, as could the drummer. Lots of head gestures were in order. Oh, also my bass string snapped during the third song and we had to have a quick improv guitar & drums jam whilst I changed it in record time.

Still though, no matter how badly we thought we performed, everyone genuinely seemed to think it sounded great - even the other musicians in the audience. We even got offered a gig at someone's Ball in a fancy hotel, and sold a few albums once we were done playing. Clearly the acoustics were fantastic eh?

We're going to be practising hard now for some of the more important (and/or paid) gigs we've got coming up - this was just a free show at the University bar. If people thought last night was good, then I don't see how we can fail :)

I'll get some pics up once our official photographer has finished Photoshopping them to make us look good. I might even put a short video or audio file up too if I can find one which doesn't make me wince too badly.

Freshers' Fair '08

Today was the chaos that is Freshers' Fair, where hundreds of impressionable new students see the Guild Hall in daylight (and free of vomit and alcohol) for the first time, and cyncical final year students try every tactic they learned in their Business Studies lectures (which, let's face it, had to come in useful somewhere) to con the freshers out of their student loans.

I was on joint duty for CompSoc and LMS (Live Music Society), so it seemed logical to have the two stalls placed next to one another with Guitar Hero inbetween them. Unfortunately this rather impacted on my work ethic at times, but at least I looked rock 'n' roll:



Actually, it turned out to be a great idea, though it drew a lot more geeks over than it did musicians.

We got about 50 members for each society, which wasn't quite as good as I hoped, but we should get a bunch more over the next couple of weeks for each society. Now if you don't mind, I'm off to practise Guitar Hero III religiously for the next 50 hours straight. There was a chap there who could beat me at Dragonforce, and that just won't do.

We also sold a few more Tie-Dye Quartet albums, which was nice. Might need to print more if this keeps up ;)

Sell-outs

I was more than a little perturbed to receive an email today inviting me to a Credit Suisse recruitment event for IT students. The email was sent by a member of staff at Aston, and the recruitment event was scheduled for a Thursday in term time - when IT students will all have lectures. It seemed I was being actively encouraged to ditch lectures in order to visit Credit Suisse.

Bizarre no? I was sure Aston was meant to care more about our education than Credit Suisse's graduate scheme.

I did a bit more digging around and discovered this document. It's basically an offer from Aston Careers' Service to prostitute themselves for any company willing to pay for the pleasure. Now you see why I do all my job hunting away from the University - at least I can assure I'm getting impartial advice.

What I find even stranger though, is that it cost a mere £50 for Credit Suisse to have that invite sent to every technology student. These students though, numbering in their hundreds, all paid thousands of pounds for the education they're receiving this year. You'd think the Uni would ask for more than £50 before they suggested throwing that out of the window...

Paper

Sometimes, people mistake me for an environmentalist. It's probably something to do with the sandals, long hair and spectacular annoyance directed at people who print out things that were sitting perfectly happy on a computer screen.*

Seriously, I've seen people who will print out a document (that we can both see perfectly well on the screen in the room), scribble (in pen) the changes that we want to make, type the changes back into the document...and then print it out to see if everything is OK. To quote Mil - I have not the words.

Then we've got lovely, sweet, dear, Aston University. The Computer Science department in particular, who I'm sure you'd believe were a bunch of hip, switched on, technologically inclined folks. Right?


_{Woooooo, an orange triangle. That timeless symbol of intellect.}

We've started using a new system on placements now, called Profile, which allows students to keep an electronic diary of their placement. Tutors can view this in real time, and leave helpful feedback, as well as constant marking - rather than one big batch at the end of the year. This is implemented and working well in over a dozen Universities, including Aston. Just not in the Computer Science department...

Over here, the electronic system is completely ignored. Twice a year, students are ordered to print out the information (that the lecturers can access electronically whenever they wish) and Post It In. After much complaining, they now accept CDs...so I sent one in. They couldn't read it. So I emailed in my work. That's not good enough, it has to be paper or CD. Why? For a good reason? No, because the rules (that they wrote) say so. I suggested that they simply print out my email if they want a paper copy, I wonder how well that bit of logic will go down..


But I don't mean to rant.


I wanted to talk to you about the beauty of paper, and the few times I actually encourage its use. See, I'm not some eco-hippy after all. Despite the haircut.

Music. I quite like music, as you may have inferred. I'm up in Birmingham practising some music for a couple of weeks at the moment (more on that later), and now that the music itself is coming along nicely, I'm adding in some of the fringe details. Like lyrics for the vocal tracks.

Somehow, it just wouldn't feel right to write ('right to write', should be a campaign of some sort) these on a computer, no matter how hard I try. I don't quite see why - all of my other creative writing is done on a screen - perhaps it's simply that I enjoy the purity of music, and find that best represented through the human touch, and its untidiness (especially in my handwriting) and innocence. Perhaps it's that technology is one major part of my life, and music another, and I naturally separate them.


_{From the 'sketches' series at TDH}

I also love the drawings on Tie-Dye Heart (by the way, did you know I had a comic? Did you? Click the damn link), with simple strokes of pencil on paper. I know there's plenty of webcomics out there that harness the full power of digital art & effects, with each new image a triumph of technology..but somehow the purity and personalisation of this simplicity is far more satisfying to me.

Thoughts?

--

* _{This is an example of an unattached modifier. I leave it there, offering myself as a sacrifice, in order to bring this blight on the English language to your attention. Please, never commit this heinous crime in your own writing.}

Back in sweet Paris (pronounced 'pah-ree' thank you very much)

Ah, how I love Paris. The beautiful architecture wherever one chooses to look, the superb food (let's not mention that 4 figure bill though), the gorgeous clothes and the unique air of contempt for everyone that each and every Parisienne manages to harbour.

I'm sitting in the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) HQ at the moment, listening to some light jazz (Wes Montgomery if I'm not mistaken) and being paid for the priviledge too.

Soon enough it'll be back to work - I'm doing a stint as the official blogger for the Education Leaders' Forum, where a group of Secretaries, Director Generals, Ministers and suchlike are getting together to discuss the future of Higher Education (at the University level in particular). What's up there right now is just stream of consciousness almost - but by the time I'm complete it should be a fairly full reference guide for these important folks to review, get underlings to read and research - all that jazz.

It's also a great way to insert a student bias into the proceedings (given that it's my future they're all talking about!) and I'm also trying to make it fairly light and readable - providing links to the detailed and in depth resources as and where appropriate.

One of the coolest things I've heard discussed so far is the concept of Virtual Universities - already thriving in many places. There's also been some very cool discussions around the future of distributed learning, and collaboration, sounds like the future will be far cooler than the lectures I'm used to.

Back to work for me now anyway, but I'm off for a meal on the Eiffel Tower tonight, and I'm gatecrashing the Imagine Cup party in the Louvre tomorrow :)

Living like a student

Having thrown away twelve Microsoft branded pieces of clothing today, I'm pretty close to resuming a proper student lifestyle after a year's work. For those in a similar situation, here's a few tips:

• Don't go to sleep before 2am. Never wake up before 10am.


• If you accidentally wake early, on no account leave the bed. Not even to pee.


• If you don't wake up with a hangover, you're still drunk. Whatever you do, don't try to walk anywhere for a few hours.


• Tea must be consumed at least 5 times a day. Don't bother washing the mug inbetween brews.


• Spend no more than 3 seconds planning what clothes you'll wear. Aim to have either your thighs or nipples covered.


• It's always perfectly acceptable to wear sandals, wherever you're going.


• Plan the time of your shower carefully, it's the only thing you'll have to do all day, other than play XBox and watch Jeremy Kyle.


• The words 'in a minute' immediately absolve you of all responsibility for any household task.


• The words 'in a minute' immediately absolve me of all responsibility for any household task. Go do the dishes, it's your turn.


• Supermarket shopping should take at least three hours. Check every brand of every item - aim for exactly 100% of your RDA of a random mineral each day.


• Experiment. See which computer game you do best at by making the cat walk over the controllers. Mix all the out of date foods with one another.


• Opening your window counts as getting enough fresh air for the day. Rock Band counts as exercise.

Hope this helps, I'm off to throw away more junk that I've accumulated over the past year. I'm letting myself keep one pointless item per three I throw away. Sort of. Unless they're cool. All my stuff is cool.

Final Year Project Proposal

I've just submitted my proposal for my final year computer science project, entitled:

Centralised and Individualised Machine Learning in a Multi-Agent Simulation

Sounds cool eh? You can read the detailed proposal here.

The above isn't too technical a document, but if you're just too lazy to read it, here's a quick overview:

I'm going to create a virtual world, and fill it with 'people' that are capable of interacting with the environment and one another. I'm then going to give these people one of twenty of so 'personalities' that I've defined, to give the world a bit more flavour and sense of reality. These are my 'dumb' people.

I'm then going to introduce some 'intelligent' people that will originally know nothing other than how things are currently going, and how they want them to go. They'll use reinforcement learning (a type of machine learning/artificial intelligence) to get from A to B. These guys will then interact with the dumb people as they see fit.

Finally, I'll have some kind of 'chief' person that all the intelligent people will report back to. It'll therefore be the most intelligent person in the virtual world, and will be able to give advice/issue instructions to the intelligent people.

Read the next paragraph

The example I gave in the document is a super intelligent police chief, controlling intelligent police officers, looking after a dumb populace - but I'm not definitely going to go with that. So, any other suggestions of scenarios that I can put my three types of people into would be Extremely Welcome. Seriously guys.

Also, any other feedback, experiences in this field, technical advice, or links to useful documents/books/resources/code would also be appreciated.

Xx