Day 28 — This year, in great detail

Well. This is not going to be in great detail at all. I keep telling you I have a bad memory, don’t I.

January onwards I was still at university, doing third year things like my dissertation and modules and things, although I only had one module plus other work, it was pretty sweet. I was still doing my blog back in January so there might be some things on there and…oh! Hey, I just remembered. Finally, a use for facebook timeline! Right, so looking back, I was blogging, eating sushi, and getting drunk at something. IoD was still really new at that point as well, so we were setting up things in that. Not much else.

February: There was snow, a friend was moving to another university and was horrified to discover they have no games society, so we suggested she start one. I was doing ref things for LARP, doing my dissertation in the library, went to Nandos at some point, bought plant vs zombies in a steam sale and went to Animus soc which was it’s usual fun self.

March: Lots more IoD and shopping for IoD. I really should stop shopping for characters. More essay writing, because 5000-6000 words is a hell of  lot for a scientist! The shipping wall was born and thus started a run of angst since I wasn’t allowed to see it. Went to Great Yarmouth with my dad, had the 24 hours roleplay and stayed up for 39 hours to enjoy it. Dyed my hair red, again. More dissertation (screw references!) which I actually finished this month and then even more IoD. I have an obsession with it.

April: More IoD, that’s just standard. Though there was that awesome comic Irina drew about us. We managed to kill deathwing in world of warcraft. Bad weather in england – shocker.  I finished university work and started preparing for exams and for some reason which isn’t explained my boyfriend was awesome.

May: Revision was the first thing this month! Followed by IoD of course, although there was that utterly annoying national plot in changeling. More classic british weather. Then i did my exams and was free of the education system. Then there was a birthday party.

June:  I was a bit ill, and I think there may have been some sort of national that happened, either tha or leading up to it. there was talk of requiem at least. Oh yeah, this was the month where there was that mouse in my toaster. I got rid of the toaster and refused to open the new one until we moved house. Moved house and everything was good, even though I hate packing and stuff.

July: Has a visit from a friend, there was summer time fun in the garden, found a hedgehog in the garage. graduated. That was a big thing. British summer hit and I started to melt. I went with ym boyfriend to meet his nephew for the first time, and got some incredible cute pictures.

August: I rediscovered scrambled egg on toast. Hmm, might have to go make now as that sounds delicious. Kept leaving my facebook logged in around my friends. Lost my purse, found ym purse, but then that started off the whole chain of having to replace my debit card. More IoD.  Had a birthday at which I got very drunk and passed the rule that I am never allowed to drink wine. Ever. Walking dead game started up. I started applying for jobs and job seekers, those little bundles of joy. Moved again in my current house which is full of lovely people.

September: Applied for a job tht was door to door sales in disguise and was not impressed, but at lest I got to play with kittens. Debit card arrived. Went to my first adult event when two of my friends got married. It was an amazing wedding. Also went to her hen party before the wedding. Cineman doughnuts are delicious. There was a new expansion of WoW and I played the crap out of it, still am. And then there was the best shades downtime forever.

October: More job searching, job seekers and IoD in general. A good day happened as well, which was a surprise at the time. Apparently a rather boring month other than that, so I have to suppose that I was playing a lot of WoW.

November: Fireworks and NaNoWriMo started November. There was a lot of shades thing going on around the game.  More IoD and a day out in London with my mother which was awesome and amazing and I discovered tapas. Had my first job interview, which I didn’t get, but the interview was good experience. Broke my laptop and then got a netbook from a friend which I fixed up with help from my housemate. Well, he did most of it actually. NaNoWriMo was great as well, I won this year.

December: Christmas thinking, I learnt to knit to knit my presents for this year and broke reality by knitting a Möbius strip. Yeah, I’m not sure how that happened either. Did a christmas spring clean and realised that my housemates manage  to shove a lot of crap under the sofa’s, although I too m guilty of that. Went home for christmas, decorated the christmas tree, bent a spoon with my mind (and a mixer). Had about four roast over the period of a week, watched Dr Who, and cleaned out my room at home.

So actually, with the help of facebook, I can tell you about my year in detail. 🙂

April

Well, exactly a month since I last used this blog. Oops. In my defence, I discovered tumblr and created an IC tumblr account for my changeling character and it’s freaking awesome. And then I had work, and life stuff, and I am just a little bit lazy as well.

Easter is going alright, I didn’t go back home since I got distracted and I only had three weeks to do everything and I still haven’t done everything because everything is a lot. Stupid work. Found out that the presentation I have to give is on Monday, which is a lot sooner than I thought it would be, which is annoying. And I can’t seem to get into the groove of working today. Don’t know what it is because I’ve been doing awesome at revising all week, but today it’s just not coming to me. I have the weekend as well, but I know that I’m just wasting away today and it’s irritating, but I can’t focus and grrrrrrr.

On the plus side the gaming in my life is going very very well. The second sight mortals game has started up again and we has two sessions last week and a session tomorrow and I have my innocents game tonight. Might have to skip LARP on sunday though if I don’t progress on the presentation enough. Or just take it with me, or something. I am as obsessed as ever with changeling, and determined to lose at least a little bit of weight before the next game. If I cut out all the bad stuff I keep eating and then do some exercise then that should be a good start, and save me money as well. Sweets add up after all.

Finding a job is annoying. Need to go into Employability when term starts up again next week. Graduating. I keep thinking about it. It’s a funny thing. I don’t want the uni life to stop, but I’ve realised that my life would hugely benefit from more structure than it has now. And I do want a job after I graduate, it’s just a case of what I can find. Opened a fortune cookie the other day. It said “Your next interview will result in a job” which made me laugh. Now I just need to get an interview.

What else has been going on in April. Oh yeah, the guild has managed to kill normal-mode Deathwing and heroic mode Morchok in Dragon Soul which is sweet as (yes I am on about World of Warcraft for those of you that care).

Hmm, graduating. Still find it weird. Should probably book my robes sometime soon. Luckily my exams (the two that I do have) are spread out, one on the 4th, the other on the 22nd. So no rush, but it’ll come sooner than I would like it to I bet.

So that’s a summary of my month. Or the bits I remember. I am not good at remembering stuff after all. Well, some stuff.

Getting there

Dissertation is 98% done! That means I get to finish and tweak it tomorrow, and then actually hand it in on Thursday, which is its due date. So yay! Things have gone according to schedule! Thankfully. Then I have another essay and a week to do it in, but there we go. The work won’t stop til I graduate and then I have to get an actual job. The horror.

Need to apply for more jobs. I just has responses back from the last of the people I applied to over christmas, and it’s another no. Which is needless to say, annoying. Something to do over easter, as well as revising and working on a presentation I have to do in week 12. I’m glad it’s in week 12, if I didn’t have easter to do it then it would be very very bad indeed.

Still obsessed by changeling. Can’t wait for the next game, it’s going to be amazing. Been doing downtime roleplay with my motley mate, and she’s been drawing different things and they’re all really really good and this is only fueling my obsession, but I now have one of the pictures as my background and then I’m trying to do my own pictures, although I suck at drawing humans which makes it tricky.

But yes. Obsessions are pleasing. And then I will have easter, although it’s not going to be much of a break and more of a do everything, since I need to find a house, jobs, and do some work, and go home, and revise for my two exams. Hooray for only having two. Easter Break is not going to be much of a break.

In the library

So, guess where I am.

Yeah, in the library. Not exactly hard to guess given the title of this entry. I’m making this one as a break from writing my dissertation, which is going okay, I think. I have to hand it in, in two weeks and it’s nowhere near ready, but I should be ready by the time it comes to hand in, and then I just have to do another 3000 words essay. And a presentation on my dissertation. And yes, I know that 3000 words is not a lot to some of you artsy student types out there, but I’m a freaking scientist, and a half-computer one at that. I am not used to writing essays and now I have to do two in a term. Two big ones. It’s weird and I’m not used to it. And I still have to look up how to do references.

Extract of current work: He presents an improved empirical method for the plotting of field data and the calculation of tephra fall volumes, replacing the widely used plots of ln(thickness) against ln(isopach area), which are curved, suggesting exponential thinning of the deposits, with his plot of ln(thickness)-(area)^1/2 which provide straight line segments, proving the exponential thinning relationship. He also introduces a new value of B_t – the thickness half distance (the distance over which the thickness of the tephra deposit will halve.) Pyle (1989)

My dissertation is on volcanoes, particularly the model that was developed by the aforementioned Pyle which calculates the volume of tephra (tephra: anything that has erupted out of a volcano during an eruption, ash, rocks, ect.) as a function of isopach area (basically the distance away from the vent). I’m checking to see if the model still holds true for very recent eruptions (the basic answer is yes, but I need ~6000 words, so yes just doesn’t cut it).

My other essay is another free choice essay (I both like and dislike free choice essay. They are good because it means I can do something that I am interested in, but bad because I’m not all that good at coming up with titles for essays) but I’ve chosen to do one of the fairly standard topics: When did life originate on Earth. This is for the module Earth and Life, which is basically looking at Earth’s entire history and how life has evolved on it. This essay is interesting because the answer is we don’t know, but there are so many interesting possibilities. One of the reasons we can’t really tell is because fossils are only found in sedimentary rocks, and all of the really old sedimentary rocks from the time we need to look at have been destroyed through metamorphism or melting, so we have no records. Another thing is that around 3.9 Billion years ago, the earth went through a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment, where earth was pelted with meteors for a long time (we’re not quite sure how long that was either, but it’s though to be around 4.1 – 3.8 million years that this happened) and one of the questions is that if life was on earth before that time, did it survive that period? Or has life only been around since after the LHB? Normally life only like temperatures of 30 degrees, or there about, but we have found a bacteria called Hyperthemophiles which can survive at temperatures of 80 degrees and higher, which would have been necessary as the earth’s surface during the time of the LHB would have been fairly molten, hot and generally not a nice place.

Oops, I rambled a bit there, but I think it’s interesting. Hope everyone else is doing alright with their work and things. I keep having these mild panic attacks when I realise how close to the end of term, and therefore the end of my student life it is getting to. Four more weeks of teachings, two exams and then graduation. I need to find myself a job for when I graduate!

Third Year

Okay, so keeping a blog when you’re in third yer and have a thousand things to do already is maybe not such a good idea. I have a dissertation and another 3000 word essay to be getting on with. Lots of games and LARP (no that I’m a ref) are taking up some time as well. And then once again I have managed to screw up my sleeping cycle. I need to wake up earlier.

But yeah, so I haven’t had time for much, and even when working all the time I feel like I haven’t done anything and am starting to panic a little. I ill get it done, but I really need to buckle down and do it.

So yes, this is another sorry. Sorry for not updating regularly, and sorry for breaking my promise that I made at the beginning of the year. Although I read something interesting about promises “A promise is nothing but a statement of good intentions.” So I will once again iterate that I have good intentions for this blog, and I haven’t forgotten it completely. It just might not be updated as frequently as I would have liked whilst I still have all the work going on. Everything is due in by the end of March, so it should pick up after that, and I can start to work on some personal things like my creative writing after that.

I wish I could go swimming today, but I have a seminar today whilst the swimming is happening, and I think it is highly unrealistic to expect it to finish after only an hour. Oh well. Some many things I want to be doing, only a few that I should and can. At least I can take my laptop to the seminar and try to do a bit more on my essay. Tomorrow I get to wake up early (I will dammit! One of these days) and shut myself in the library and not come out until I have a first draft of my dissertation. I only have 2 1/2 bits left to write, so that shouldn’t be too hard to do in a day.

Oh, still need to look for more jobs. Stupid graduation.

Dissertation

In me defence – I’ve been ill over the entire weekend with a stupid cold, so not only have I not been updating this blog, I haven’t done as much work as I would like to have done either. So more than one thing has been neglected this week. Also I keep forgetting to eat, which reminds me of something I haven’t done today. I shall rectify that in a minute.

Gaming is at least going well. I felt horrible, but I did got to IoD on sunday. LARP was completely out of the question since I was ill, and there was snow, but apparently everyone else went omg snow as well, so no one turned up in the end. But IoD was pretty good. I have something to start to work on in Mage, and Changeling is just awesome. So much to do in Changeling, and far too few downtime action to do them in. Sigh. More resolve needed. On the other hand I have far too many downtimes and backgrounds to write – did sabbat last night so that’s one down, but that still leaves 4 downtimes and 3 backgrounds to write. I am sure I will get around to it at some point, but right now I’m trying to work!

Go work go! I hope by the end of this week to have 2000 words done, but since me week has been cut down by so much due to my stupid cold, the week is now not very long, so I have to get quite a bit done today and tomorrow, which requires waking up. Luckily Mark plans to come over tonight, so I can get some help with the waking up bit. As soon as I get into a working grove, which hasn’t quite happened yet, it shouldn’t be too hard. I have roughly 1000 words of planning and sketching out right now, which means that it’s bits of information and stuff I want/need to include, but haven’t written up into proper format yet. So I don’t think I’m actually in dire straights just yet. And then I can get that done and look forward to Mage, LARP and quite possibly Echo Bazaar at the weekend.

For those that don’t know my dissertation is on volcanoes. Yay explosions. I’ve also got another bit of work coming up soon, which will be a 3000 essay on a topic of my choice for earth and life. So I really need to get a fair chunk of my dissertation out of the way before that comes along, although I think I know what I’m going to do that on, as long as the lecturer’s think it’s an okay topic – Did life originate on Earth? Evidence for and against. I love this module, it’s really really cool.

Right, off to do more work. If I can get 500 to 1000 words of real essay done today, I’ll be very happy. Also need to do some more washing up today. Godamn washing up.

February

Okay, I’m sorry! It’s only just turned February and I know that I have already broken my promises to update regularly. I know it’s not much of an excuse, but I have been really really apathetic lately, not wanting to do anything but sit at my computer and waste my time.

Well now I am on campus and attempting to work, and it is working. Slightly. I should have gotten up earlier. And had a smaller lunch. But there we go. Tomorrow I shall endeavour to get up at a reasonable time, go onto campus, spend the day working, go to my practical, then go home and do nothing all evening, instead of doing nothing all freaking day.

Yesterday wasn’t a total bust. Well, it was work wise, but on WoW I got the drop from the boss that we managed to kill that I wanted, which was awesome, and then I got another piece of gear with my valour points, which means that I only need two more pieces from valour points and then I am done with them!

Oops. Just went onto the uni website and found that I have an overdue library books. On the plus side I have renewed it, and this means that I have a deadline of sorts. So I shall try to have the majority (majority defined as 90% written and not edited) of my final year project done by the 16th Feb. This is a little over two weeks, so I shall be in the library most days from now until then I would think. Yay for force motivation!

I shall try to write some more creative stuff as well, as I did promise more of that. But it is a little difficult with so much work to do. As well as the dissertation (which is 6000 words. Not long for a dissertation, but I am a scientist) I will have another essay to write for the module that I am doing this term, which is going to be 3000 words. Need to motivate self harder so that I can get a decent job. Also I need to apply for more jobs, which involves writing more covering letters, which I have never done before in my life. Why is it so hard to find a decent job?

 

End of 2011

So it’s the end of the year, and I have to say, where the hell did it go?!? Seriously, I can remember back to summer and that doesn’t seem like it was long ago at all, even though I’ve had a whole semester of university since then. Although I don’t remember the first half of the year all that well.

Quick review of the year!

January:  Year of Indulgence begins! Many 101 theme challenges. First 7/8 Character in LARP. Tonsilitis.

February: More 101 theme challenges. Hot Water Bottles. 24 Hour! I vow to never do the food order again. Early morning ramblings

March: 100th Post! Anime. Mafia popularity explodes. In the Hive. Graphics 1 Coursework. Seriously – Mumps? I had my jabs! Up to 47.

April: Still ill. From Wales to Strom in short succession. 2 updates on 101 Theme Challenge, I was slipping.

May: Exam time! Filled with revision, apathy and the drive to do everything but revise. World of warcraft.

June: More Strom! Scotland! Boredom results in Cleaning! Tuna BBQ!

July: 54. Stars. Tabletops. World of Warcraft. First level 8 character in LARP, all the 7/8’s in the world. Away from Norwich, back home. Strom again.

August: Moved into a new house, lovely new house. Boyfriend in hospital. Birthday and Underwear!

September: Laziness to the extreme! Also Geology in Greece, stupid hot weather. Start of the new term, lectures, pub crawls and all the rest.

October: Illness, unproductive due to world of warcraft. Mondays are not their own fault. Unhealthy food is the best. Careers fair – eek! I’m actually growing up.

November: Anime, NaNoWriMo, writing, lots of coursework and projects, go-go-go-go!

December: Unplanned date, finished coursework, yipee! DnD on monday nights. Back home for christmas, roasts, presents and family all followed. Should have posted more this year. Will try for bi-weekly updates at the very least next year!

 

So here’s to a good year gone, a better one to come, and many happy returns all round!

Freedom!

Coursework has been demonstration and the report has been handed in! Programming is done with for the term! Whoop whoop! I think I did alright. I have everything working apart from the camera bits, and I’m fine with having one things that doesn’t work, although my graphics weren’t as good as other people’s. Oh well, as long as a get a good (defining good as over 50%, its programming, I’m being slightly pessimistic/realistic) mark then I’m happy. And it’s only 40% of the module, the other 60% is the exam in the summer.

Also finally got a decent working title for my project, so I get to work on that over the christmas period, go me.

But before I pop home for christmas on monday, I get to have a couple of days of fun! This evening is the anime christmas party, with secret santa. Tomorrow I don’t have anything to do during the day, so I get to go christmas shopping or play on the Wii, or go onto campus and do the final bits of work before I go home for the holidays. Hopefully all three will occur, before the gamessoc christmas party in the evening. And then saturday can be a lazy day as I have the Coach House christmas meal and secret santa (yes, three days of parties and roasts, tis the season after all) or maybe do some more shopping, I’m not exactly sure on timings. The LARP on sunday, probably the last LARP of the year since everyone is going home early next week.

It’ll be weird at home, since both my mum and my brother are working, it’ll be all empty and weird. I still find it weird that my brother has a job and I don’t. Although that is another task for the holidays, finding myself a job and starting to apply for things! I should have started a while ago, but coursework happened, as it always does.

I need to get some tinsel I think. I feel christmasy when I get my hands on some tinsel.

Programming

Sine I’ve been working on it all afternoon, my post today is going to be about programming. The current language I am using is C++ with OpenGL for the graphics. I like C++, it’s a really nice language now that I’ve gotten used to it. Much better than Java. Although having said that, I haven’t used Java in forever, so it might just be that I’ve forgotten everything about Java.

Anyway’s, my current coursework is to create a graphical environment why you control a plane and land it on an aircraft carrier, and it’s going well apart from two problems. One is probably my fault in doing something I shouldn’t have, and the other is just weird and I have no idea why it’s acting like it is.

Programming is fun, despite how much I complain about it. Seeing your code working is very satisfying, even if I have just spent three hours screaming at my screen and contemplating throwing it out of a window, I calm right back down when the things actually works. And the code I have for my coursework right now is going to get me a pass, I’m just not sure how well of a pass, but there we go.

Favourite programming statement is a for loop. For loops are lovely, as are if statement. They are all over my code, all over it. If apple pie = lacking, add apple pie!