2001 Blog
Miscellaneous Updates
Whoa, 2 weeks have gone by in a flash so I guess I'd better explain
myself 
. In the week following my last exam I contacted Network
Harmoni (sponsors of a uni prize I won before) and they wanted me to come in
to discuss a position. An offer was made and they suggested I work for the
2 weeks before leaving for Sydney (this Saturday). This was despite my
choice to postpone a decision of whether I'd take the job until I had a chance
to look for work in Sydney too.
As it turns out I decided to go in and work so that's why I've been so busy. On Tuesday this week I decided to take the job because they wanted to include me in a team that will be working on a project in the US. This is in early January which means I'll have to cut my Sydney holidays short and also miss the 2002 Linux Conference.
The Annual General Meeting for PLUG was held on Tuesday night and I was elected Vice President. Hehe, sounds good but as it turns out I was the only nomination. In fact, each position only had a single nomination!
Ruwani and I saw Lantana last week. It was a great movie, I'm glad to support the Australian movie industry...
OOohhhh Uni results came out today and I passed everything
Yes I am happy! I'll update the
uni section with my results.
Grrrrr, Qantas won't change my original flight even for a fee :(. That really sucks so I've had to book another flight and I'll return to Perth on the night of January 3rd. It's another return ticket since it was cheaper than a one-way flight! Unfortunately it's also non-changeable so I've had to 'guess' a return date that I may be able to use. What I've done it make it the 5th of May (way after the US trip) so hopefully I can take some holidays then.
Weekend
How bout dis:
- sat arvo, bbq helen's, sat night, drinks and vid (Series 7).
- Sun morning, breaky at the Blue Duck - PLUG.
- Sun night q3, we draw with 2nd team.
- Cold is pretty much cleared up now.
- Want to get DVD drive after sat night, they are awesome
Grrrr! On Saturday I woke up with a terrible sore throat and I knew I was coming on with a cold or flu. It's now Wednesday and I'm past the worst (yesterday) and hopefully it should clear up v.soon. At least it wasn't during the final exams like last semester!
I've been feeling pretty shocking the last couple days, but at least no more headaches today (or very mild) so I'll get started with the job applications.
I've Finished Uni!!!!!
Yes indeed, it's all over once and for all! Well that's assuming I pass all 3 exams. TFCS on Thursday was pretty tough and I am a bit worried about it, CC the week before was easy but required way too much writing and I couldn't finish. DS on Friday was easy too but as if I studied everything so I couldn't really answer the last 2 questions that well although they weren't worth that many marks.
I went out on Friday to celebrate with some friends, then again on Saturday with Ruwani for dinner. I can't believe it - finally! hehe as you can see I'm excited. Well Tomorrow is Monday and I have to look for a job, better get off to bed now.
Last night there was a terrible electrical storm over Perth and I didn't escape unscathed. I was watching TV (The Thin Red Line) when it was starting to really get active over head and decided to shut down the computers. When I went into my office there was a HUGE (bold text just doesn't convey how massively loud this was) "CRACK" or "POP". I thought, "oh no" but the lights didn't flicker and my puter was still working away in front of me. Outside the street lights had all gone out though. Next I quickly powered down and unplugged my main system, then the gateway computer. I noticed when powering down the gateway computer my ADSL modem status lights were not quite right.
So maybe an hour later the activity had died down and I decided to power things back up. I probably would have gone to bed for the night, but that loud lightning strike outside had me worried. The ADSL modem powered back on, passed its POST but failed to sync with the other end (exchange). Not only that but I couldn't get a link light on the ADSL modem or ethernet card it was connected to. Also, my main computer couldn't communicate on the LAN. After a bit of messing about I gave up and went to bed.
This morning I rang Telstra and they escalate the problem in order to get a tech out here to determine whether it was a line, exchange or ADSL modem problem. I replaced the network card connecting the ADSL modem in my gateway and was able to establish a link. Looks the Telstra supplied network card was kaput! After extensive testing on my main system it turns out the network card was somehow damaged, and my spare was also damaged (not related)!!! I went out and bought a 2nd hand replacement. To finish off the day in a nice way Telstra managed to schedule a technician to come out (OMG this is like winning the lottery). The ADSL modem was cactus and he replaced it immediately, problem solved and he was out of here after about 10mins.
Ruwani has been looking online for Perth positions that I could possibly take. I've just finished updating my resume too. Even though I haven't finished my exams just yet I'll start applying for positions from tomorrow.
When switching from B.E. Software Engineering to B.Sc. Computer Science at Curtin none of my exemptions were carried over. I was meant to go into Uni during the semester to get it sorted out but forgot! So on Tuesday I arranged an appointment to fix it up. As it turns out I was rather lucky because the Uni needed to know my intention to graduate by the 15th of November and I couldn't have done that without first having enough credit points to pass (including this semester).
On Tuesday night I went to the November PLUG meeting, this time held at
IBM! Indulis Bernstein talked about what IBM was doing with it's US $1B that
it had committed to Linux and open source software this year. It was an
interesting talk and the good news is they're committing another $1B next year.
IBM were great hosts too, providing some small eats with beer and wine. Perhaps
we could have a few more meetings there
Well the CC352 final exam was on this evening. Yes strange that it was on Saturday at 5:30pm. Anyways, no problem passing but it was way too long. Not too difficult and if done right wouldn't have been too long either. But too many questions were pretty much "write a program by hand" which was a waste IMO. It wouldn't have shown any more understanding than concise steps (with appropriate function call references), yet took up 4x more space and took 4x longer to write out. My hand was killing and I didn't get to complete everything...
TFCS352 and DB362 exams remain for Thursday and Friday coming up!
I picked up my CC352 assignment 2 and the 2nd DB362 test. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get full marks for the CC352 assignment because of missing out 3 words in the printed hand-in: "Known Limitations: none". We weren't told to do this and it wasn't a requirement of the first assignment. I'm happy with my DB362 test result though. That's all of the unit assessments back now so the University section has been updated.
My ADSL service was down until Monday 10am so I did miss the q3 game. Luckily we had enough players but unfortunately we lost. Things aren't looking good at this stage, we've lost 2 out of 3 matches so far, and this from the Div2 Champions last season. Unfortunately for many of the players, myself included, this is a very busy time of year so not much time for practice.
Joy and Guy were over for dinner on the 4th. They offered to take me and Ruwani to dinner but I thought it'd be nicer to have them come over instead. I'll see them again at Christmas which reminds me, less than a month to go!
A month since the last entry! That must be a record for me since starting this thing. Well it's been a hectic month as the Uni semester drew to a close. Many assignments, another test and the big bad project report. I now have 3 final exams ahead of me on the 17th, 22nd and 23rd, then Uni is all over!!!!
- Did well on the 1st CC assignment despite handing it in 1 day late. Also did well with my TFCS assignment. The results for the 2nd CC assignment are out next week some time.
- Don't know my result for the 2nd DB test.
- A bit of inside information tells me that I've passed my Computing Project with a Distinction!
- Using kernel 2.4.14 with ACPI rather than APM and a little util to enable something that allows my CPU to operate at around 12 degrees cooler!!!!! Also using ACPI rather than APM on my older K6-2 machine (without the util cause it's Duron/Athlon and motherboard specific) seems to give good results too, around 10 degrees cooler normally.
- Matrox released some updated drivers that I can now use with XFree86 4.1.0, yay.
And the latest bit of info is that my ADSL went down today for the first time in quite a while. Since 3pm this afternoon, hopefully it's back up in time for our q3 game tomorrow!
Oh, I've got to start looking for work now. Although rather optimistic, it does look like it'll be tougher than I thought because of the down-turn in positions available for whatever reasons. We'll see how I go.
Last night I watched the movie Hackers. It was unbelievably
bad, so much so it was almost hilarious. Well at least I got a laugh out of
it .
Other things going on. Hopefully I get back to regular updates and avoid these point-form entries!
- Results back for my mid-semester tests, TFCS & DB362 = good, CC352 = scrape (51/100!). CC352 on it's own looks pretty poor, but considering (and this is straight from the lecturers mouth) 50 students failed from around 110 I didn't do too bad. On hindsight I wish I'd done by assignment early cause that would have knocked my score up around 100%
- TFCS352 assignment is due in a week. Getting it sorted now.
- CC352 assignment 2 is out and although due on the 29th, I've almost finished!
- Trying to get the above assignments out of the way to get ahead and spend some quality time on my project.
- Went to the monthly PLUG meeting yesterday but the scheduled speaker couldn't make it so we had a general chat session instead. Looks like James will be organising another trip for the next Linux Conference. I'll be in that.
- Now using the 2.4.10 kernel with preemptive kernel patches. Pretty nice except the VM subsystem is a little wonky (and same in previous 2.4.x releases). At least I've had almost zero OpenGL related lockups since 2.4.9!!!
Whoa, yesterday was the last day of our mid-semester break so Stephen,
Ryan, and I decided to have a night out . Summary for self:
dinner+drinks, walk to train, train to northbridge but alight burswood
(casino), Irish pub at casino, casino, thrown out of casino, walk into city,
catch train back around 7am, walk back to Stephens...
Went to see "Bridget Jones's Diary" this afternoon. I wasn't expecting much but it turned out to be pretty funny!
Whoa, close to a month since the last diary entry but I'm still pretty busy. Here is a run down on what's been happening:
- Was about a day late in completing the CC352 assignment. I'd actually done the majority of it by the due date and time but I didn't want to hand in incomplete work. I don't care about the marks that much anyway. At least I was able to complete the DB362 assignment on time.
- Had 3 mid-semester tests. All of them were fairly straightforward. I'm waiting on the results...
- I have to do some assignment marking for students in my tute classes. First time for me so this should be interesting!
- My project work had stalled while I was busy with assignments and tests. I really got to get moving on this one.
- Missed the PLUG talk on debian packages and APT because of a test on at the same time. I was looking forward to that talk :(
- (as if anyone missed this one) WTC and Pentagon attacks.
- The clan I play Quake3 for won the division 2 Oz Quake3 CTF League (OQCL) season. Well done to the team: DK, cyKO, xFactOr, bally, Dragon, and me. Great bunch of fellas. Don't think I'll be playing so much from now on though, I'm already stretching myself thin!
- Re-arranged my office a bit to free up some desk space. I'm also using
the SGI indy as a monitor stand. It looks pretty good so I should take a
photo and post it up here .
I have a couple Uni assignments now and I'm a bit behind with pracs and my project so it looks like I'm going to be fairly busy. Not much else is happening at the moment.
Oh, did a bit of research and found the X monitor timings for for 1600x1200 @ 75hz (VESA) that my monitor supports. Good stuff!
PLUG Install Fest today. I don't think it was as successful as the year before, but still a good turnout.
Last night was the Comsa Quiz Night, if you remember last year we
entered and came last! This year we were already off to a better start by
combining our forces with 3 other people to make a full table of 6.
Unfortunately at around the half-way point we realised we were hopeless and
changed our strategy to come last . This time the last prize
consisted of a bunch of kids jigsaw puzzles. Stephen and Ryan were nice enough
to donate their puzzles to me and I'll be sending them off to Lucy in
Sydney!
The cold I have has pretty much cleared up so I'm going back to Uni today!
On Tuesday night I attended this months PLUG meeting. Ian Kent was giving a talk about RPM, and despite me using RPM quite a bit I still learnt something! Afterwards we went to Gelare and had half price waffles. I think I got a bit greedy and had a large waffle with 2 scopes of ice cream. Rather than enjoy it I had a hard time trying to fit it all down. The installfest coming up on 25th August was also discussed. I should be helping out again this year.
See the site news, but I've setup some intro music for my web site, yay!
A replacement CPU was delivered on Saturday but after rebuilding the new system it still didn't work. That meant the old CPU and motherboard were both cactus. Later on Saturday I returned everything and I'm waiting to see what happens.
On Sunday I was getting pretty pissed off with not being able to install any system-wide libraries and without the hardware situation being resolved any time soon I decided to work out what was causing the problem. It turned out to be a little directory called /lib/i686/ which is part of the i686 glibc package. Although I thought I had over-wrote all the glibc package contents but that directory remained. One command later and I could successfully run ldconfig, double yay!
Some of the people I play Quake3 with have been getting rather stroppy
because they don't get a mention on my web site. So ...
shouts to DK, Bally, cyKO, Dragon, xFact0r, TP, SuBa, Bub, Mozzy,
m0j0, Banjo, and Nookie. Just a reminder that they'll be banned again if they
keep knocking me .
I caught another cold or something similar and it hasn't even been a couple months since the last one -- not happy! As a result I decided to take the week off Uni and sleep in late to get over it as soon as possible. I have gone in to take the 2 tutorials I run, but that has been all. Actually I guess I'll have to go in on Friday for the CT seminar too.
I'm still caught in the middle of computer troubles though. The other night I went over to Ngeow to test out the CPU. Well it didn't work so it's not the motherboard afterall. Anyway I've returned the CPU and I'm waiting on a replacement. However, in the meantime I can't install any libraries (ie: stuff that requires ldconfig). This has pretty much stopped me from doing any actual coding with my Computing Project.
How about I start this diary entry with a picture of my cute little niece Lucy! She is about 10 months old now and I can't wait to see her again at the end of the year. (click for a larger image)
I've been busy since Saturday setting up my new hardware! I took the opportunity to install RedHat 7.1 too. But during the middle of all this I started to get some weird problems and then on Wednesday night I couldn't boot any longer. After lots of my own testing it appears to be the motherboard but I don't know for sure. I'm going to have to return them both.
So yesterday was spent doing some testing and then I finally accepted something was wrong. Next step was to restore the old system because I need my computer ASAP for both work and Uni. At least while this was happening I could use my laptop for email/ICQ/Web. Anyway, going back to the old system proved to be a nightmare in itself. RedHat 7.1 installs platform specific kernel and system library packages. These wouldn't boot with my old CPU :( I then had to spend a long time with boot floppies and the rest of it till I could finally boot into my system. In fact I ended up installing a bare-bones copy of RedHat 7.1 onto a different drive.
All up it's been a rather frustrating week, no wonders I wanted to get this out of the way before uni started back up.
On a brighter note, I went out to Northbridge for dinner and drinks with
Stephen and some of the ATRI people the other night. Pretty good, but I had to
contain myself since I was driving .
I took my first SPD251 Tutorial yesterday. Unfortunately I think I was
going a little too fast finishing in around 40mins rather than the full
60mins. I'll get better as time goes on. I need to work on trying to loosen up
the students, they are all so quiet! Also, some people at Uni thought I had
used a permanent marker on the white board (I didn't) so I was receiving some
nasty emails and death threats .
Telstra have finally acknowledged that huge downtimes on their
ADSL product is not acceptable. I guess they woke up with the media focusing
on a class action lawsuit against them for poor quality service. Telstra
are now giving a full refund on the July re-occurring charges and 50% off the
next 2 months. Unfortunately it's one small step forward and many steps back
with their 3Gb/month cap on broadband products like cable and ADSL.
There are enough sites that bitch about the cap without me going on though
.
My uni timetable is in a state of flux. I've been making changes every day of the week so far and I can see a few more happening too. Hopefully it'll be fixed by next week though.
Tomorrow I'll be getting a new CPU (Duron 850Mhz) and motherboard, 128Mb RAM (in addition to the 256Mb existing), and a new hard drive. I was kinda hoping everything would come together before the holidays finished so I could get it up and running though...
The first day of my last semester at Uni started yesterday! I went in earlier this evening for a DB362 2hr lecture but it turns out the TFCS352 moved from Wednesday to be straight after DB362. Next up I was getting rather hungry and hadn't packed anything to eat/drink. So I tried to get a hot chocolate only to find the machine took my money and dispensed the drink without a cup. You don't know how frustrating this is because the vending machines at Uni almost always screw me over. Last of all it was freezing riding home on my bike at 9:30pm!
I bought myself a Silicon Graphics Indy. It's a fairly old computer but
top of the line when it was out at the time. I've been meaning to get my hands
on some non-intel hardware for quite a while. Originally I was going to buy an
old Power Mac but the Indy was just too cool to pass up .
Unfortunately it didn't come with the monitor, IndyCam (video camera), or
floptical drive. I'm pretty sure I can get a cable together to drive a
standard SVGA monitor and get it up and running one day!
I went to Uni this morning and sorted out my enrollment. However, I still have to re-apply for all the exemptions originally received when starting out with the B.E. Software Engineering course. Anyway, I will update the Uni section of the web site later today. I also had a chat with Andrew Marriott about taking some Tutes. I think I'll take some SPD251 tutes!
I'm making juice at the moment. The most I've ever done in one sitting, something like 2kg of carrots, 700g of apples, and half a pineapple. This is going to be HUGE.
Tonight Ryan and I are off to Esoteric Live v2.0 featuring David from Uni playing live. Should be a good night.
Congratulations Joseph!
Congratulations to Joseph and Leigh who were married today back in good old
Sydney. I'm disappointed to have missed the wedding but Dave was kind enough
to send along photos almost immediately (digital cameras are great!). I wish
the very best for them and I'll hopefully catch up with them at the end of the
year.
I went into Uni on Thursday to try and sort out my timetable for next semester. Unfortunately the lady I needed to see was booked out for days! So I'll be going back in on Wednesday. Anyways, while I was in the Computer Science office I noticed the plaques they have up for top students etc... Then I noticed one from Network Harmoni for the communications award. Looks like my name will be on one of them, lol!
I've finished off weeding the front garden. Well, it'll still need another going over in a couple weeks to get the few remaining buggers. Those weeds have been growing like lightning and are resistant as. Out the back we had a pile of broken up branches with some weeds mixed in. This was sitting on our driveway but the weeds kept growing. If I had a digital camera I'd take a photo!
Haven't been riding for a long while now but every time I think about it,
it's way too cold . I have to start riding again cause Uni will
be starting back up in a couple weeks and I'll be out of shape!
hehe, I'm on holiday and my diary frequency is even worse! I've basically been working, gaming, and getting stuff out of the way that I didn't get a chance to during the Uni semester. I attended the PLUG meeting tonight with a talk given by Mark Nold on PHP. Good stuff.
The other day I picked
up a new mobile phone. It's a Nokia 3330 which is basically the 3310 with WAP
capability (not that I'll ever use WAP). Since my old contract had long gone
by, I signed up on a new contract and got the phone for free.
I'm really considering getting a digital camera. The important points for
me are image quality plus resolution, small physical size, and price. I'll try
to make a decision soon cause I'm always missing out on great shots
.
RAM is so cheap I'm adding another 128Mb stick for a total of 384Mb!! I'd have bought a 256Mb stick except my motherboard cannot handle larger than 128Mb.
Last Wednesday I visited Network Harmoni, the guys that sponsored the Award I won at University not so long ago. It was mainly to get a good picture of the company as a whole and what they were up to here in Australia. They appear to be doing some exciting things!
Well Uni is all over for this semester! I've now got about a month worth of holiday which I'm hoping to spend productively. Part on work and part with stuff I've been putting off because of such a busy semester at Uni.
The PLDC and AGV exams on Thursday and Friday didn't go too well. Not only did I have a cold but they just happened to the the worst days. I felt so lousy in PLDC it was hard to think straight. For AGV I decided to take a codral, I didn't for PLDC because I may have a mild allergic reaction to paracetamol but don't know for sure. Anyway, I'm just hoping for a pass.
It was great to meet up with Guy on Friday night for dinner. Had a good time!
Forgot to mention that I've got a cold or something like that. I
caught it from Ruwani which is a little strange cause she hasn't been sick in
ages. Anyway, I'm pretty sure she set this up to line up with my exams too
!
With the end of semester assessments, exams, and the cold weather, I've pretty much stopped riding my bike. This is a little unfortunate so I hope to get back into it as soon as my exams are over. The only valid excuses should be if it's raining or I'm sick.
Guy is currently in Perth and I'll be meeting up with him for dinner. This will probably be on Friday night I think. Hopefully Ruwani can make it but that depends on work.
I've now done both FCS351 and SE351 exams. The FCS351 was pretty good and I think I'd have done fairly well. The SE351 was rather lengthy, and in typical fashion my timing was terrible. As a result I'm sure I missed out on quite a few marks. Hopefully I will get an OK mark. Next up, PLDC352 on Thursday and AGV361 on Friday.
I'm sure no-one will be surprised here, but my ADSL is down yet again! That's the fourth time and it's the same problem. It'd be great if Telstra actually fixed it (where "fix" means the problem doesn't occur again).
The PLUG meeting was about Amateur radio. I doubt whether I'd ever get involved, but it's still good to know and I enjoyed the talk.
Wow! Telstra finally restored my ADSL service yesterday. It took a whopping 7 days but they managed to do it. I don't hold any hope the problem is actually fixed though, no doubt it'll go down next time the ADSL session is terminated (seems to be the trigger).
Tomorrow is the first of four exams, FCS351 at 12:15. Amazingly I have been studying quite a bit (perhaps this has something to do with my ADSL being down). To give myself a bit of a break I'll try to attend the PLUG meeting tonight.
I'm currently on study leave before the exams begin next week. My first exam is on the 13th and the last on the 22nd. I had planned to spend the first part of the study week getting some urgent work out of the way but unfortunately my ADSL went down again on Monday night. In fact it's still out at time of writing this entry. I did some of the work but I guess it'll have to wait now cause I can't put off study any longer.
Yesterday I went into Uni to receive my Network Harmoni award (see
2001-04-14). It was good to identify other students that have been performing
well and meet some representatives from sponsoring companies. Unfortunately
no-one from Network Harmoni was there.
The SE assignment was due last week and I'm sad to say mine was a sorry job indeed. I put it off too long and as a result didn't have enough time to complete it let alone do a well job. They are being handed back today but I'm scared to pick it up!
Ruwani and I visited the Burswood Food and Wine festival over the weekend. We had a great time walking around, wine tasting, and also watched a few cooking demonstrations. At the Agriculture WA cooking demonstrations they handed bottles of wine to the audience, how nice!
It's freezing over here.
Funkenhaus
Tonight I'm going to Funkenhaus@geisha with some friends from Uni.
Should be a great evening with some funky music so I'm looking forward to
it.
My regular diary entry habit has died somewhat over the last month and a bit. Possibly because I've been doing quite a bit of Uni assignments and the like. Recently I received marks for the PLDC, SE (assignment 1), AGV (assignment 1), assignments and I'm quite happy with the results. Tonight I've just finished off the second AGV assignment. The code was done a couple days ago but I needed to do some polishing/tidying as well as generate a written report and the corresponding web-based user manual. All done I'm happy to say, now I can concentrate on the second Software Engineering assignment.
Tonight I attended the Golden Key Careers Night for 2001, the first GK
activity I have participated in since joining the society . It
was actually quite interesting with Industry panelists from: Curtin
University, Andersen, ATcrc/ATRI, Contact Singapore, International Research
Institute of Competitiveness (Curtin Uni based), Schlumberger, and Telstra. The
evening was designed to help students understand what these types of companies
are looking for in university graduates. After each company representative
providing a brief introduction the floor was open to questions. Afterwards we
had a chance to speak directly with the panelist while getting some eats and
drinks!
Not everything is ginger peachy however. My ADSL service with Telstra has
just been a shocker the last week. On Friday (18th) my service went down and
was not restored until Monday sometime. I say "my" service because this is a
problem occurring at the local exchange, and in particular, effecting me. So
after 3 days of outage I get one day of usage before it goes down again on
Wednesday. Hopefully it will be restored tomorrow (Friday). The
ironic thing is my problem is triggered by Telstra trying to solve a different
problem they have. According to the tech support people they have some kind of
ongoing authentication issues and their solution is to kick everyone off the
service. After being kicked the ADSL network no longer responds what-so-ever
for me. In fact, I get just as good as a response by unplugging my ADSL modem
.
I have to buy socks and it's been raining quite a bit.
I've completed the FCS assignment and will be handing it in tomorrow. Nothing really difficult about it but took me longer than I thought. Anyways, gotta get some work outa the way before getting stuck into AGV! Even then I'm not off the hook, still a Software Engineering assignment to go.
Happy Birthday Chantal!. I should be following this up with a call...
Well this week I pretty much got the PLDC assignment out of the way and I've just started on the FCS assignment. Shouldn't be too hard though. Otherwise not much else has been happening
I've been meaning to put in a couple diary entries but kept delaying it... A quick update on the garden first of all; it's looking great. We're watering it regularly and you can see the growth. Unfortunately the weeds love it too so I did a little weeding yesterday and today.
On Saturday Ruwani and I visited the Swan Valley again but we also stayed
the night. The first stop on Saturday was the Chocolate Company of
course . After that we visited a cheese factory but they didn't
have much on offer, weren't actually making any, and it was quite smelly!
From there we visited a couple shops and things then had a late lunch before
heading to our accommodation. After a bit of relaxation we left for dinner at
the Swan Valley Oasis Resort. My meal was delicious!
Although we had planned to stay most of Sunday in the Swan we ended up coming home after a great breakfast in Guildford. I have too much uni work!
One long day today. Mr Lim came over early in the morning and our goal was to transform the front/back death gardens into something new and alive. This basically involved pulling everything out, digging up all the soil, saturating the soil, mixing it up again, adding manure, mixing it up again, and finally planting. Mr Lim is a pro at all this and the work didn't phase him one bit. While I didn't really get tired at all, the skin on my fingers and my back (for the bending) didn't really want to work all day. My fingers are so wimpy.
The results are good so far and as long as Ruwani and I water the garden it'll really take off. In the back we've planted some vegetables and herbs, while in the front we planted some pretty things and pineapple. Mr Lim grows pineapples that are great so I've planted a whole row worth of them!
Woohoo, I'm on my Uni break! Today Ruwani and I drove up to the Swan
Valley and visited the Chocolate Company and a winery for lunch. I must say
the Chocolate Company chocolate is just great. They had these 3 large wok
sized bowls with drops of milk, dark, and white chocolate for taste testing.
I think I got my fair share . I picked up some chocolate with
sultanas (they were fantastic too). It worked out to be about a 30min drive so
Ruwani and I will go up there again soon!
Lunch at the winery was great too. A nice glass of wine with potato and leek soup. I'm not usually fond of soup but this was very nice. The soup was served with some bread, cheese, and grapes.
Yesterday morning Ruwani went out a searching for easter eggs
. On Thursday night I went about hiding eggs all over outside
and inside (kitchen/living). She found the majority of them pretty quickly but
others were not found until late in the afternoon, hehe.
Oh yes, good news from the Uni. It turns out that somehow I managed to be the best second year student in the communications stream of Computer Science. The good part is that I won a $500 prize award. Now that's worth it!
We just managed to pull the SE351 assignment together, get it printed and bound, then handed in on time. Unfortunately all the last minute formatting etc... ate all my FCS351 study time. Well, I did manage to put in about one hours worth but that's pretty poor. Luckily the exam wasn't too difficult and I answered most of it. Now I've just got to wait on the results...
I'm excited because my ADSL service was installed yesterday by Telstra! A short while after the Telstra guy left I also had it running under linux too. So far I've been very impressed with the speed and latency (close to that of ISDN). I guess the only draw back is I can't access the iiNet game servers :(.
I passed my PLDC352 mid semester but have the FCS351 test remaining next week. The SE351 assignment is also due on the same day! At least I get a week holidays after that.
The "almost done" from my last diary entry about the AGV assignment wasn't quite true. I still had keyboard/mouse motion remaining and they took ages to get working correctly. I also discovered some inconsistencies regarding normals and polygon drawing that needed to be fixed for back-face culling to work. Now I can say that it is done except for bugs that may surface and the written component (user manual).
I was in at Uni on Sunday working on a SE351 assignment. Some of the
time was spent searching for ISO 9000 information when we came up
with a site that contained links to porn sites! (sorry, the URL I copied down
was broken). What makes this so funny is that IS0 9000 is
a serious (and seriously boring) topic and it's just amazing to what extent
some people will get up to to make some money .
My AGV assignment is going really well. Almost done and of course I'm
spending a little extra time to make sure it runs extremely fast
. Unfortunately it's been biting into my PLDC should be
studying time but I think I have that under control. Just about to go to bed
and get a good nights rest for the exam tomorrow afternoon.
I took my bike in for servicing this morning. Just a quick thing to
adjust breaks and the gear changing mechanisms. Anwyay I decided to buy a
little trip computer. I used to have one that did everything this one does but
somehow lost it between my Sydney -> Perth move. Now I can't wait for my next
ride to see how I do .
I picked up my monitor on Monday afternoon and it's been working like a charm since then, great!
At the moment I'm trying to do an OpenGL assignment for AGV361. Although I
have the programming side down pat, I'm having troubles getting my head around
working with a 3D environment (with OpenGL). I'll keep at it
.
Next week I have my first exam for PLDC351! It's only 45mins so hopefully can't be that tough.
I took my monitor in for repairs on Wednesday and although it was ready yesterday I'll be picking it up on Monday. Hopefully the problem has been fixed cause the guy was a little unsure of being able to locate the cause 100%.
Last night Ruwani and I saw Traffic. Pretty good.
I think my Mitsubishi monitor may be broken. Most of the time it's OK, then the brightness level will increase and drop back to normal. Sometimes it'll continue like this for a while at varying frequencies. It's as if someone is playing around with the brightness knob! I've plugged the monitor into my laptop to see if it really was the monitor and not my desktop video card. Same thing. Oh well, at least the monitor has a 3 year warranty, but it's still a hassle!
My Birthday
Yup, another year has gone by for me. Tonight I'm off to dinner with Ruwani and Mrs Lim followed by a Rambert Dance Company production at His Majesty's Theatre. [later] Pretty good show!
The news tonight just confirmed what I had been feeling, it's way too hot. Apparently the daily average temperature for the first 6 days of March has been 38 degrees! No you didn't read that wrong, 38!!!! (must be average hottest temperature)
Well it's the third week of uni now and it's just beginning to dawn on me; uni has started. I've got to buy some books and get cracking!
Stephen and I went to see Monty Python's The Life of Brian at Sunset cinema (open air cinema in Kings Park). It was pretty funny but there were a lot of insects including an army of mosquitoes. Lucky Ruwani didn't come because the mozzies would have targeted her. Next time we'll be better prepared.
I caught a little cold last week on thu/fri. Surprisingly it pretty much cleared up by Sunday. The fastest I've every handled a cold!
Before I forget again, it's my birthday on the 9th .
I've been a little slow with diary updates since coming back to Perth but it's probably because I haven't been up to much except for working. Well Uni started back up on Monday and because Ruwani is working most evenings with the car I've started riding! It's actually quite good since it takes around 12 mins and that's quicker than walking to the bus stop! I think I'll ride most days now unless it's pouring or something.
None of my subjects seem that interesting this semester unfortunately. I still have to choose an elective and I'm trying to decide between Advanced Visualisation and Graphics or Software Security. Both interest me but since ADV will feature cool coding I'm leaning toward it. I'll be doing some OpenGL stuff too!
What have I been doing all week? Well, working for the most part and going for rides at the end of the day. Today I was meant to be going to a Quake 3 lan at the ClanCentre, but it turns out I'm also going to dinner for Anders birthday. Sorry to the fellas I'd promised to see at the lan. Next one!
Apparently it's meant to get really hot today so we have all the blinds
closed to stop the heat getting in. It actually works quite well until late in
the afternoon when my office starts to cook with the sun hitting my window
directly. Oh yeah, I have to vote today too! I think there is a voting place
just across the rode though, pretty lucky .
I bought a new cordless telephone because our old phone was just shocking. Every time the cord moved even slightly it'd cause the signal to cut out. Very frustrating.
On Thursday I rode in to Uni as a test to see how long it takes and to visit Stephen. I was happy it took only 12mins and that included riding on paths about half the distance. Unfortunately Perth seems to have the worst drivers I could ever imagine, hence the reason to go on paths. Despite there being *no* traffic I was almost hit 3 times (in 6 mins) by cars that couldn't be bothered changing into the other *free* lane. In fact one ute was so close I thought I was a gonner. The other problem is that it's illegal for me to ride on the paths unless I'm under 12 years or something stupid. How about the state teach it's drivers some manners then.
I got together with some of my Uni friends on Friday night and we headed off to Northbridge after a meal. Most of these places are new for me so I had a pretty good time. We went to the Bog, the Dean, and the Church. I think the Church was more my liking.
Otherwise, I've basically been catching up with some work for the NSW Minerals Council.
Ruwani won a small scooter, the ones that have been over-marketed in Sydney (every kid has one). Apparently she thought she was entering a competition to win dinner, but won a scooter instead!
It's been really hot in Perth the last couple days. I think today is meant to be a little cooler, but much more humid. Since I'll probably work most of the day this is going to be a pain cause my office gets pretty hot with my computer equipment. Oh, and the air conditioning doesn't seem to reach here either.
On reflection
the last month in Sydney went by very fast. I had a great time thanks to my
family and friends and will look forward to the next visit. I forgot to
mention that David got me a great new phone cover (see picture) for
Christmas.
David dropped in on Thursday and we decided to get gnokii working via the infrared port on my laptop with his new phone. gnokii is roughly equivalent to the Nokia data suite on Windows. It allows contact management, SMS send/receive, etc... Not using the infrared port on my laptop before I forgot that when active it replaces COM1 (ttyS0). Don't ask me how I activated it cause I don't have Winblows (used to be a utility there) and there are no options in the bios. Now I can't turn off the infrared port to use an external modem (also remember my internal modem is rather dodgy).
Luck has it that my internal pcmcia modem started working again as soon as the external serial port because unavailable. This stuff is just driving me crasy!
My flight from Sydney was uneventful. I spent most of the time reading the ASCII version of Underground by Suelette Dreyfus. Although you must pay to buy the paper version of this book, electronic versions are available from the web site for free. It has made interesting reading so far cause it's based on true events in the computing underground.
Ruwani and I made our own sushi on Australia day. You just can't get good sushi over here as easily as in Sydney.
Last night I had dinner with David, Antonia, Greg, Spew, Ken, Shane
and Chris at JuJu's, a Japanese restaurant in Kings Cross. The meal was great
but their air conditioner was on the blink. To make things worse we ordered a
dish that required a pot of water perched on top of a gas burner. Ken was
melting away from the heat! Antonia was faced with a little confusion when
people noticed she was using her chopsticks the wrong way round
.
Afterwards we were heading back to the car when Spew and Greg got an idea.
The police station we were walking past had some of those self contained
toilets that clean themselves. Well they decided to try getting me in one, but
I was a little against the idea. Anyway, because the room had just been
"flushed" the floor and everything else was quite wet. The wet floor didn't
agree with my shoes and so I slipped. That really sucked but everyone found it
quite funny . Don't worry cause I dried off my arm on Greg and
Spew. The clothes have now been burned!
Masami was in Sydney for a couple days so we met up with Gary and Minh (all ex-Zeta) for dinner on Monday night at the Hilton. It was good seeing everyone including Masami's daughter Jennifer. She's grown quite a bit over the last year. Unfortunately both Nick and Peter couldn't make it.
linux.conf.au is all over and
although I took a few notes, I'm not going to be putting up an event diary. A
few others have already done the work for me . Rodos, a member
of SLUG, has a great linux.conf.au diary including
pictures. It was a great event and I'll be going to future ones if I can make
it.
Another big thanks to John for letting me stay at his place during the conference.
Anyway, my Sydney visit is coming to an end, I'll be flying out on Thursday night (25th). Actually, since arriving I've been so busy with work that I have considered staying longer but I can always work remotely from Perth.
Yesterday was way too hot. It's good the late afternoon brought on a nice temperature change with lots of wind.
My modem is finally broken. Previously it would die when too hot, although
this seemed to be more frequent over the last couple months.
Then the
other night it kept dying every 5 mins or so (only tried 4 times). Now it
doesn't work what-so-ever. Oh, it still responds as if everything is ginger
peachy, just that the input (output even?) signal is screwed. Usually it's
just screwed enough to allow a call to be made but no negotiating (ie: wasted
call). Tonight I decided to see if I could fix it . That
involved: pulling it apart, using it without the covers (didn't work), having
it stuck in the laptop for ages, putting it back together. No luck - don't
really want to buy a new one though. I've got another modem back in Perth and
can borrow one here.
Linux.conf.au begins tomorrow and for the next couple nights I'll be staying at John's house. Thanks John Should be a good couple days, all I need is the conference schedule (damn stoopid broken modem).
Today ends a series of very tiring days. With only 5 hours of sleep going into Friday I knew what I was heading for when we decided to go to Home that night. So Spew, Roger, Jansen, a couple of their friends, and myself left for Home about 11pm. It was a good night and I finally got to bed about 6am but could only grab 4 hours more sleep because I had promised to help my parents move! After a quick shower and some food I spent the next 5 hours moving stuff both heavy and light. At 7pm Spew came to pick me up for Costa's brother's 21st down in Dee Why. After the 21st we went across to the Dee Why Hotel and from there back to David's place. I got to bed about 2am and finally had some decent sleep!
Bit of a delay between this and the last diary entries, but that's because I've been quite busy. This week I began working full-time at an office in Rosebery (past Redfern along Botany Rd). I'm not used to the long days, but I always enjoy learning and working for my business.
The cocktail party at David's on Saturday was just great! Good people, and
tons of different alcohols led to some nice cocktails. Mango Dacqueries seemed
to be the favourite though .
I've finished the fOd4 page. At the same time I also identified a potential problem. I add extra pages when creating diary entries however these are often difficult to find. So I have now added a Miscellaneous Index page (link at bottom of page).
iiNet notified me the Sydney POP problem for bad-boy pipe users should be fixed. Although I haven't tried it yet, I'm impressed it was handled fairly quickly.
It's a new year! NYE was a little low key, but we had a great time
anyway. We even had our own fireworks . On new years day, after
waking and having breakfast, we headed down to the beach for a swim. We also
went down to the beach today.
OMG, my mailbox user (for mindsocket.com.au mail) was closed on Jan 01 for some reason. Anyways I'll have some missing mail but it's back up and running now. I have also sorted out an account for use while in Sydney cause the iiNet Syd POP still isn't working (nor do I think it's a priority).
David is having a cocktail party on Saturday so that should be good. They are actually organising things well and getting people to bring the required alcohol and drinks.
[ see entries for: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, misc ]
