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Well, I've been back in Wellington for a few days, finally getting back into things.
First of all, the Graphite Conference down in Dunedin was pretty cool. Managed to attend quite a few sessions and there were some interesting papers. Definately makes you want to start your own research. But I think Weta Digital's workshop was the best. Tons of stuff showing how the digital effects are made, with lots of clips from LOTR and Kong. Geek heaven :D
The other interesting thing that happened down south (except for me running up world's steepest street, which was all fine until the last 20m. Nearly keeled over) was our rental car getting totalled. We had parked it outside a friends house when I all of a sudden noticed it was on the curb, and when we went outside we saw this red car rolling back into the street - its front smashed in, and our car looking a bit smaller than before. To make a long and funny story short, this woman in the car had taken a few pills (sleeping, against depression etc) and a few glasses of wine, and then decided it was nap time and promptly fell asleep in front of the wheel. I guess we should be happy it was our car she hit and not any people. We had full insurance anyway (she had none!), so we just ended up taking pictures and talking to the neighbours. We even got refunded 2 days from car company, as they had to bring a new one down from Christchurch!
Other good news is that I've got a job here in Wellington, so I will be staying in NZ for a wee while longer. That's the reason why I came back early - so I could finish my work visa application. Too much stuff to sort out, but I'm nearly at the end where I can send in application and sign contract.
Went to see Narnia last week at the midnight premiere session and I must say it was pretty good. A few minor things, but overall a good effort. And thanks to your Prime Minister (on the telly) parts of the movie was ruined beforehand, as she spoiled a key scene. Anyways, going tonight to see the King Kong midnight premiere. Hoping it will be a good one :)
Well, I am back in Wellington. Tons of stuff to write about the fun adventure down south and tons of stuff to organize here. So I'll try and update when I have a chance :P
Phew, sometimes I take too long before writing in the diary. Already a few weeks past. Well, not much as happened in the first few weeks. Just recuperated after university. Got my grades back for this semester as well and I must say I'm pleased with my grades. Nice to see some of the hard work has paid off.
Right now I'm in Oamaru, and I'm heading down to Dunedin tomorrow for the Graphite conference. Will be staying there until Friday, and then I'm not sure. The plan was to keep travelling and enjoy the vacation, but now I might have to cut it short. Applying for a work visa and that needs too many stupid things - a medical, blood works, x-ray etc. And with funds running short I definately need to get a job soon. So I might be back in Wellington in a week or two instead of a month. I'll keep everyone updated.
Another week of not doing anything particular. Feels strange not having work that *needs* to be done. But I've still kept myself busy. Been playing around with some cryptography (old ciphers like Mono and Polyalphabetic), and also trying to implement a version of the Enigma machine that the Germans used during the 30's and 40's. Otherwise I've been finishing my CV and a cover letter for a job here in Wellington. Don't know my chances, but I'll be sending in my application on Monday. Going to keep my eyes open for jobs in the US as well and I also put my CV on a few websites, although I know it's fat chance getting spotted there ( but everything helps).
Otherwise I'll be going to Masterton this weekend to say hi to a few friends. And after that I'll be spending next week packing as I need to be out by 19th November (travelling down to the South Island, stopping by the Graphite conference in Dunedin etc).
I guess I can yell finished again. I am now officially done with university, as I had my last exam last week, and I should have my MCompSci? degree soon, assuming I haven't failed anything :o . It is going to be interesting to see what the hell I'm going to do now. I like student life too much to get out in the big wide world, so I *have* been contemplating about doing another degree/more studying. But that won't happen before June/July? I guess.
First option is to go back home and start working there, but I like it enough here that I wouldn't mind staying on for another 6 months. So, I should start looking for some work soon, but I'll be travelling around NZ first. Going to check if there is any paid research work at uni for next semester, but otherwise, I'll have to look for something else. I've also got other options open for countries after NZ: England, USA, Ireland, Netherlands or back home :) Yes, too many options.
However, I've still got some work left to do with uni this year. Finishing up the rewrite of the AUIC paper, which is harder than I thought. Deleted quite a bit, but I still need to remove about one page so that I have room enough to add half a page about usability testing and still be within the 4 page limit.
Finished!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Handed in MCompSci? project yesterday around 4 o'clock, and I now only have 1 exam before I am edumacated (as Homer would have said: S-M-R-T, I am so smart). Had to go straight to the pub with a mate afterwards and have a pint of stout and a cigar to celebrate.
Now comes the question what the hell I am gonna do :) Well, I do have two conferences to go to. Seems my poster got accepted to the Graphite 2005 conference down in Dunedin - without any changes even. And I did get an conditional acceptance of a paper to the AUIC conference in Tasmania in January 2006. So I have to work on that after exams.
Otherwise I'll be travelling around a bit in NZ for the holidays, but it looks like I might stay on for another half year. All depends if I can find some work and get to flat with the people I know, but there's no rush yet - I've got a few months to look around.
Started doing my informal usability analysis with people from the hostel. Didn't get too many and I'm not gonna have too many either (just those who owe me favours :) ). Although I didn't have too many tests, I got alot of value from it. Found at least one glaring error and a few bugs, plus I could start to see a pattern of where the ASU tool is slow and cumbersome. Some of this can be fixed before due date, although a few things will go into the future work chapter.
Written some more on the paper, and also finished programming and testing out the Resource Registry for COMP417 which is due tomorrow.
Ups! Been a while since I last wrote here. Well, have no fear, I haven't been all guilty. Been writing lots on my project report in an effort to finish as much as possible before the term ends. It's been a slow process, but I got a first draft that I sent to Tim and recieved some comments on what to fix and add. It basically has everything needed, although I'm now adding a usability test. I will probably get the test running over the weekend. The document is about 46 pages so far, including everything (pictures, whitespace etc), so it means I have some content. With the appendixes of user manual and Java doc I guess it will be closer to about 60-70 pages in total.
Getting ready to finish the COMP417 project as well; having a test run today and then we'll see what needs to be fixed over the weekend before the big test day on Wednsday.
Been watching a few movies at the cinema lately. Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were rabbit was brilliant. I loved the previous short stories, and this full length movie keeps to the same standards. Can't imagine how long it must have taken them to make it. The other movie was the Wedding Crashers. I was pleasantly surprised about this comedy. It felt 'smarter' than the regular stuff I'm used to from Vince Vaughn, yet hadd enough goofball moments, and a good movie when you just want some mindless laughs.
Gone through all the Java files and added JavaDoc comments where it was lacking and adding parameter and return values plus extra comments to all others. This had to be done sooner or later, especially since it might be helpful for Sidhe to make heads and tails out of my source code ;). Wrote a bit more on the report, but not much. Tried to compile it to a PDF file just to see how many pages I'm up to using the report format. It said 29 pages, although with the empty pages between chapters etc I counted about 20 pages of text, which doesn't seem to bad. It didn't include any images, so I'll probably have about 7-8 pages of images as well. I guess my goal so far is to get about 10 more pages of (sensible) text, and then I'll see what it will look like with images and everything else added.
Well, not enough has been done since last week unfortunately. Not that I haven't tried, but there's been other issues that needed to be solved (immigration office for one) and I took the weekend completely off as I had other stuff happening. However, I've written a few pages for my project report and I've just taken most of the stuff I did from the AUIC paper and plugged that into different chapters as well. Spent today putting chapters into LaTeX and trying to find a structure to it. I haven't looked yet, but I believe with images (not too many as of yet) I should be just over 20 pages in total, which is good. Of course, I'm running out of ideas of what else to add, so the last 20 or so pages will be hard to write. But we'll see what happens as I've yet to expand enough on some of the sections.
Last week, we also did our tech fare where everyone presented their projects on a poster. Mine was a rushed job as I didn't think I had to do one, and basically started the day before. But I was happy with the result and I did get enough people asking and commenting on it. I can't say my project is very research based compared to the other projects, but at least mine was understandable ;) , and it's also something I find interesting.
The weekend was pretty eventful (in a non school related way) as the Unicomm hostel had an Amazing Race competition. 24 teams of 4 people running around Wellington city doing tasks. Weather was beautiful, so it was a great day and the tasks weren't too difficult, although one of my mates had to chug down relatively 'old' milk for one of them. Since we weren't top runners we didn't win anything, but we came in on a respectable 7th place. On Sunday several of us went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Reading Cinema. Paid for by the hostel, we went to the Cinelounge. I've been there before, but I still love those seats, not to mention the free popcorn and soda. The movie itself was brilliant; a typical wacky and zany Tim Burton movie, and Johnny Depp was hilarious as Willy Wonka. Even the musical acts were hilarious. A movie that I'd highly recommend to anyone.
I should feel a bit guilty since not much has happened since Friday. I attribute this to havin a cold and enough headaches to make prolonged working a pain in the...well, head. Even dropping the COMP417 class today as I don't think I can handle two hours of Health Informatics case study.
However, it hasn't been slacking all day. I programmed a bit more over the weekend, cleaning up things, adding toolbar graphics and refactoring some more. I sent a new copy of this to Tim, and I've asked for some feedback since I'm not putting progamming in the backseat for a bit. I'll add and change stuff as I'm told, but right now I'm going to focus on writing a bit on my report. The writing is going slowly, but I've got about 4 pages of notes on implementation details and a heuristics analysis, and I've still got more to churn out on the analysis :)
I've also been looking at the Graphite Conference that's being held in Dunedin in December, and I'm contemplating about going down there for it since I'll be travelling around New Zealand anyway. Just wondering if there are any other fellow Elvisers that are thinking about going down there?
Taking half the day off today I think. Such a nice day outside anyway. And right now I'm unsure on what else to program except for some of the stuff previously mentioned. Think I'll go back to writing a bit later today/this weekend on implementation detail and some heuristisc on the GUI. We'll see..
Did quite a bit yesterday. Added support for initial idle animation, conditions for root and fixed some general stuff. Also enhanced the help screen a bit.
Now what happened this morning with my pc back home put a scare in me. Got error/lockup at bootup which leads me to believe I might be experiencing the prequel to a HD failure (again! happened last year around this time). Didn't even get into my OS this morning, which was devastating since I had my latest copies of the project there plus lots of other important files. Thank god I managed to boot up later, although I had to go through my windows XP cd, which is why I believe I've yet to see the worst of it. At least I've uploaded my project files and I'm currently backing up most of my files to my other HD so that I have a copy. But fingers crossed for the HD not failing as I do not want to spend time and money getting a replacement and reinstalling everything.
Well, rebooted my machine and it still works. So I'm still hoping it will be fine tomorrow.
Did some extra work as well. Fixed the script so it reports corretly with idle animations and something else which now completely escaped my mind.
Refactored a bit more, although I'm weary about doing too much as I do not want to suddenly break everything. Even with backups, there's still the possibility of something creeping up on me that I won't notice before its too late. Also fixed some small things, partly to do with the script creation.
Got a few ideas of a few features that can be added without spending too much time. Basically a minor support for multiple animations per area. I've technically got it already, but I need to add an identifier, and then I could already have done some of the things I mentioned in the AUIC paper under Future Work. But I will not go forwards on this until I can be sure I have everything else working.
Otherwise I spent most of the day working on COMP417 project (and got pissed since the major issue I had was not my fault, but the AXIS server I was running. And I only got confirmation about that after a few hours had passed). Oh well...
Restructered a class so I could separate the operations from the storage. Still more that could be restructured, but I'm taking it one step at a time, and we'll see what happens. I think I fixed the bug that would create new Areas in the wrong places, thereby moving already created animations to the wrong places. Also added a condition area for animations, so that any extra conditions for transitions can be added.
Phew. Managed to finish and have Tim submit the paper yesterday. Overall I think its a decent paper, but there is always something extra I could have added or changed, but by midday Friday I had enough of it; especially since I spent most of that time trying to find out why latex was giving me problems. Also been restructuring parts of the the code for the tool - we found an irritating bug when creating new circles and lines, so I've deleted parts and redoing those parts that needs to be redone.
Speaking of which, I do believe that these past two weeks have taken its toll on me as I've become oblivous to my surroundings. Today I managed to walk straight into a car, as I wasn't paying attention to all the lights and just wandered straight into the road and smack into the side of a passing car. I don't know who was more surprised, the people in the car or me, but I just waved them off as I was still standing and breating :) Morale of the story is: If you're at an unknown road where you don't know the traffic light patterns, don't cross or run like mad.
Fellow Elvisers, I just recieved this coded transmission from James Noble
ÿþDate: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 19:55:09 +1200 ÿþM ÿþF ÿþT ÿþS ÿþ ÿþ ÿþW ÿþC ÿþC ÿþ ÿþP ÿþG ÿþ ÿþS ÿþh ÿþ ÿþC ÿþd ÿþs ÿþ ÿþD ÿþt ÿþe ÿþh ÿþw ÿþF ÿþ ÿþA ÿþp ÿþT
You all know what this means! Execute plan Alpha Gamma Tango
Speaking of codes and brain teasers. Here's one that I was given at the pub yesterday (I didn't get it, but another guy at the table did). I will show a few examples, and if you need more examples, let me know :) Oh, and don't spoil the fun for everyone else if you find the answer.
2 is 3. 3 is 5. 5 is 4. 4 is 4 is 4 is 4 (i.e. infinite)
9 is 4....
12 is 6. 6 is 3. 3 is 5. 5 is 4..
Managed to get stuff done over the wekeend, and still managed to take Saturday off (spent the day playing cricket and computer games. Played WWIIOnline and some old school Sierra games :). I fixed some more on the AUIC paper and sent it in earlier to Tim. His comeback was the office file with even more changes to incorporate. Yaay! No, seriously I'm grateful for the comments as I can see the paper taking on a better structure and more importantly, having content that doesn't seem like bollocks. What is scarier is that I'm actually starting to like writing this paper. Hopefully I'll feel the same when I have to compile my bloody project report.
I tweaked more on the ASU tool. After adding some revalidate() threads that run in the background, there aren't any update problems left; except for one which is gonnna need some clever hack to fix I believe. Also added code for a toolbar, but haven't added it to the software yet. My next tour of duty is to fix issues that Tim wanted to see fixed (half of them should be corrected already), and then adding a quick About and Help screen (only giving a few pointers on hot keys and how the program works. Nothing fancy).
Also got to talk to a fellow Elviser over the weekend, Craig, who I haven't seen before and we had a chat about the different projects we're doing. Like most others he thought I was from the UK somewhere ;) ( I should really start taking bets on who can guess my country of origin).
Ahoy, another week gone just like that. Like last week, I spent most of my time writing the paper for the AUIC conference. I sent in a draft to Tim, and he had many(!), but useful comments about the paper. I've added, removed and changed around paragraphs, and it seems alot better, and most of the paper actually makes sense now, even to me. I've also changed some minor parts to the software itself; I've gone through many of the text fields and buttons and made sure that they work, and that they can handle different manners of inputs. They seem to work, so now I just need to get a better layout.
Went to the farewell party that was held for Kirk, which was a nice break from studies, and it gave me a chance to talk to some of my peers and lecturers under a different setting - even though most talk was academia related ;). And who can say no to some free booze and food (at least I *hope* it was free, if not, feel free to scream at me at DiaryOfKyllingen/FanClub).
I've started playing around with Maya again, which I haven't touched for a long time. Been flipping through the Maya Character Animation book, and I'm trying to follow a few of the tutorials there about sub-divisions and NURBS. I have to admit, organic modelling is *hard*, but still fun. I'm also keen on programming more with OpenGL again as well as learning more of the Source and Unreal engines, but right now I can't find the time nor the stamina to do it. I guess once I have a good idea or two, I will try and implement it in whatever engine fits best. Any suggestions are more than welcome.
Spent most of this week writing on the AUIC paper. Although I knew it wasn't going to be easy, it's alot harder than I thought. Right now I have about 4-5 pages, but its all dribble at this stage. It's one thing writing a paragraph or two in each section, but actually fleshing out more is getting pretty hard at the moment. At least Tim has had a quick read through and given me some suggestions on what I could add and change. Only 1 more week to go.. As for the programming part, I fixed lots of minor issues again. Codewise, it's only been a few lines, but I've spent quite some time finding out what and where to fix, and it's showing (in my humble opinion).
For COMP417, we've had a standards meeting with the class to try and get a common interface for our project. It was alright, but in the end, it was all done in a hurry and now we're supposed to vote on the best standard. Oh well, as long as everyone is using the same interface I guess it doesn't matter how good/bad it is.
Went and saw Sin City at the premiere on Thursday. Full house, and they even had Mermaids employees there sponsoring stuff. So, if anyone needs free tickets to Mermaids or condoms, come see me ;) Any rate, the movie was brilliant. Lots of excessive and gory violence, scantily clad women, 2 dimensional characters. All a guy could wish for. Cool cinematography as well, with the whole black and white dark-noir feel to it. In the end I guess it's a movie you'll either love or hate.
Been an exciting one and half week. I'm not that guilty (no, really). I've fixed many of minor things that Tim and I discussed, and I've even started getting the layout done better. Still some issues, but now it seems that it updates GUI components better and more often than it did before. So what I for certain know is left is to fix the drawing of areas (almost have it, just keep forgetting about it), and add support for an initial idle animation. I was also asked by Tim to write a paper for the AUIC conference about this. At first I was a bit hesitant, since I felt I had enough on my plate already, but then Tim convinced me it was a good idea. Not only will I get more practice writing papers, but it's technically 4-8 pages of my project report, since I can use most of it for the report. So that is what I will be focusing on this week, to get an initial draft done for Tim to read. Obviously I'll try and get some more minor programming done as well.
Got handed out my COMP417 project 2 as well. This looks to be a fun and 'hard' project to do. We're in groups and we have to program a user and a resource manager that will schedule the use of phidgets on different computers. This means we have to not only make a fair and efficient resource manager, but also come up with a common interface so that everyone can use each other's software. This week will be spent on getting ideas for this interface so that programming can start over the holiday.
Speaking of programming, I also created a small space invaders clone. No big reasons why, just figured I wanted something else to do in between school work and getting some more programming practice in. After all, I've barely used Threads and never used any form of sound before, so I got to learn a bit about that. The game is really just shooting aliens zigzagging from above, but instead of alien pictures I've added pictures of me and my friends. Since I tried to find the worst pictures ever I doubt I'll be putting this game out on the net, as not everyone were that happy about seeing themselves ;) Also had the Unicomm (hostel) ball last weekend. Theme was James Bond and we were down at that new place near the harbour. Cool place, and we all had a good time. Too bad about they closed early, but at least I won for best themed costume. I decided to go as a bad guy since I knew everyone else would go in tuxedos and suits. So I went as an evil one eyed russian general. And I had a mate go as Jaws and another as Oddjob. We looked like prats, but damn were we some handsome menacing looking prats. Also went last week and saw the Machinist with Christian Bale. A good movie which I guess is a mix between Memento and Fight Club. Although it wasn't that hard to guess certain plot elements I still didn't see the end coming like that. And Christian Bale even lost 60 pounds or so for that role - he looks like a skeleton.
Sent a copy of my project to Tim earlier this week, and he had a few things I needed to fix. I've fixed most of them, but there are still unresolved issues with parts of the script. I'll talk to Tim about this on Monday as well as the project report which I'll start to write next week (just so I won't fall too far behind towards the end). Also sent in a revised HEC application - only need to print it out and get everyone to sign it.
Although I've been playing around with the GUI components in the project, I've spent most of the time this week to write the two reports that are due next week in COMP417. I'm basically done with them, I only need to go through grammar and change parts in a few paragraphs. I should hopefully do that over the weekend, if I have time as I've got movies and parties to go to! Woohoo.
More parts of the script creation system has been added. It's technically done based on what I should have ready to just create some sample scripts. Of course, there are still tons of variations that could be implemented, and there are different ways I can go from here. It all depends on functionality vs. options vs. time (or something like that). Bu I've fixed some minor errors and I guess I'll send a copy to Tim later tonight or tomorrow morning, so he can play around and scold me for all the mistakes I've done ;)
Also finished the peering game in COMP417. It was quite fun, especially towards the end since another group and (most) of our group tried to screw over another group. Didn't work fully as intended, but quite funny to watch people's reactions. And after chatting with other groups, others would have done the same if we didn't do it first. A classic example of ego's and politics taking the front seat with peering :D
Hmmm, been a while since I last wrote here. Although I wish it was just because I've been busy with work, it's also been quiet here since I've had family over and, well, I'm forgetful as well. Anyways, first up on the list: the project. I'm making gains I'm I want to say I'm pretty close to being done with something that works (yet still looks ugly). I've got most of the script creation done for both the animations and the edge transitions between animations. I also finished the section on saving scripts and saving and loading files (.asu file for Animation Scripting Utility ;) ). I keep finding small things I need to fix though. Most are minor, although I'm getting surprised I still have a small error in dividing the areas properly on the graphic plane. And I bet it's just a small thing that will fix it. So, what is holding me back? Well, the fact is now I've used the edge transitions based on animations that are neighbouring. Although simple and most likely what is wanted in most scripts, it still constrains the scripts, and I could see from one of my samples that this might not be true for all cases. The second tricky part is getting the 'condition' part in my edge transitions correct. It's essentially the same in each transition, but there are enough differences that I can't just make the condition a global value for everything. So I need to find a clever solution that will automate as much as possible, but still allow a person to specify different conditions in the eh..condition.
Last week I had my first tutorials as a tutor in COMP311. I'm not supposed to be doing them, but the other tutor couldn't do it, so I had to step in. I think I did alright, not too many difficult questions, and the students mostly kept to themselves (in their groups) and just played around with Eclipse. My duties are otherwise constrainted to keeping eye on the forum and answering questions, and later, marking assignments. Hopefully I can get to mark one of their projects after its handed in, so I don't have to have everything at the end of the year.
I also have bad news. Now that my parents are gone, I will not be able to get free food and drinks. Damn! And I was getting used to it. Looks like its back to spaghettirice dinners again. But they've left me with enough money that I'm contemplating about buying a bass guitar. Wanted one for ages, and there is a sale at Music Works for 420 dollars (bass and amp). I might go for it, but it depends on how my cash flow is.
The Film Festival has been running for a week now in Wellington. I haven't been able to go to too many, as I've had other things to do. But I did go see Monster Road a few days ago. It was a documentary about a hermit like claymation guy in the US. I got to see his work, what was driving him doing something that basically no one really cared about, and how his family has affected his life. Strange guy, even stranger animations (the 28 minute one shown after the movie made no sense to me), but a decent enough flick to watch. And today I went and saw The Ax. A french dark comedy about this family guy who has lost his job, and in an effort to get the job he really wants and needs, he sets out to eliminate his closest competition - using lethal force. Complications ensue and not everything goes as planned. A really cool movie, and well worth watching if you should find a copy somewhere.
Phew, it's been a while since I last wrote here, but then again, there hasn't been that much to write about. Last few weeks I've been away on holiday. Travelled down to the south island with my mum and brothers. We did a big loop going down the east coast through Kaikoura, Timaru, Oamaru, Dunedin, and then over Queenstown and Wanaka before going up west coast through Fox Glacier, Greymouth and Nelson. I didn't do much more than just drive, but I did get to see new places as well as familiar places. Best of all, I got to go on a heli ride over the Remarkables and Queenstown. Bliss!
But all good things must come to an end, and here I am, after the first week of Uni and the world is slowly catching up with me again. First week of uni has mostly been spent getting into the new course, and checking with COMP311 which is the course I'll be tutoring in this semester. I did finish the Progress Report (I'm behind, but not alarmingly so, thank god), and did some small tweaks and error fixing. Still minor issues all around, but that will have to be fixed as I go. The plan now is to make the script utility so that I can have a working prototype - starting that on Monday.
Went and saw Batman Begins on Thursday. A very good movie, and best of the Batman movies so far. Nice to see a change back to the dark and dreary instead of the comic shite that riddled the last two movies. In other words, well worth seeing and has a great cast.
It's been a good weekend. I managed to finish support for animation files and optional types that a programmer might need. It's just in a textual form (through the use of tables), but that is really all that is needed for building the script towards the end. It doesn't look pretty, since the components on the GUI are still off and won't resize the way I want it to, but at least it's testable. Code also looks horrible, so I know I'll sooner or later will have to spend time cleaning it up and/or documenting it well enough for Sidhe to understand. But in the end, I'm almost at the point where I can start coding the parser for creating the scripts.
As for the next two weeks I won't do much more than write down parts of the progress report as I'm off to the South Island. Mum and brothers are coming down to NZ, so I've decided to show them around a bit whilst I have some vacation time. This means I probably won't have access to a PC, so there isn't much I can do except write notes for the report. But I'll also be reading on some COMP311 notes since I'll probably be tutoring that course next semester. No rest for the wicked, as the saying goes.
Went to the cinema this weekend and saw Der Untergang (The Downfall). What a fantastic movie. It's a German movie and it depicts the last 12 days or so of Hitler's life in his bunker before he committed suicide. The screenplay is mostly based on Traudl's recollections (Hitler's secretary) and it gives an alternate glimpse of the fall of the 3rd Reich. Bruno Ganz portrayal of Hitler is brilliant, and I doubt anyone will surpass his acting for a long time. Not a movie for those looking for action and violence, though there are enough harsh scenes to make the movie hard to watch at times.
On the music front, I'd recommend the new Gorillaz CD. A pretty good experimental album that mixes several genres of music into a cacaphony of meaningful noise ;) , and it has several guest musicians and vocalists, like Ike Turner, Roots Manuva and Dennis Hopper (!).
I'll try and update small tidbits if I have the chance the next two weeks. Have a good holiday everyone.
Well, it's been a quiet few weeks, but don't worry (or celebrate too early), I'm not dead. I've been tucked away in my room for most of the day reading for exams, and then spent some of evenings procrastenating to clear my head. So in that respect much hasn't been achieved over the past 2 weeks or so. However, my exams are done (I'd say COMP423 went well, COMP422 went alright and COMP432 went down the drain), so it's time to get back to work.
Spent parts today redoing some things on my GUI interface so simplify code and the whole moving and selection process (again!). It didn't take too long thank god, and everything seems to be working alright, except for the transition between 0 and 359 degrees, which shouldn't be too hard to rectify - I've just forgotten what the fix was. Also found out why I had problems updating parts of the menu. It seems I was using both lightweight and heavyweight components in Java which causes trouble. I'm therefore using JPanel to draw on instead of Canvas. So plan for over the wekeend and next week is to get more of the GUI working (menus etc.) and adding animation files and hopefully variables to the different areas.
As for my procrastenating - managed to see quite a few movies lately. Went to the cinema and saw Hostage, which is an alright thriller with BruceWillis. Also seen quite a few JackieChan? movies at the hostel. I recommend Who Am I - silly plot and bad acting, but it has a heck of a fight scene in the end. Or if you're more into the old school of Jackie, then Project A is pretty good.
Also managed to set up a LAN in the hostel for computer games, so there's been a few die hard sessions of Unreal Tournament 2K, and I'm hoping we'll get a few Warcraft 3 games done soon as well. So much for school work ;)
20th May
Today I will be trying to get the Area segments done. I need to get creation, deletetion and selection methods working, hopfully without too much trouble. Always lots of small issues that can make you crash and burn, but at least I've got a plan on how to solve these problems, so hopefully I'll have the basics done today.
I went to Simon Singh's Big Bang talk on Wednsday, and I thought it was brilliant. Sure, he didn't go much into details and it was a pretty short talk, but he presented it wonderfully. Now I know the difference between the meaning of red and blue light and the doppler effect ;) . I was quite amazed how easy it is to fool the human brain by suggesting noise has meaning (i.e. Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven backwards). And I finally got to buy The Code Book (signed even) which I've wanted ever since I did a computer security course ages ago.
On a less academic note, I went to see Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith yesterday. Not sure what to say without spoiling anything. If you're like me and want more of the history of the Star Wars universe, then I think you'll like it, or at least find it watchable. It's not as bad as the first two, but I still think someone should drag Lucas out in the back alley and beat him with a wet noodle until he promises never to direct another Star Wars movie again. Oh and while you're at it, get Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) too! Geezus, that guy is supposed to have conflicting emotions and be tormented by the choices he has, yet his face has less life than a stoned junkie in the gutter. And there were a few bad cliches in there as well. Anyway, it's over now and I'm still glad I've seen all the movies. So to summarize: It's an alright movie, shame about the acting though.
Happy 17th of May! For you ignorant peons out there, it's the Norwegian Constitution Day celebration today. So I really should have been going in parades, eating and drinking instead of working. Then again..
Seems I've finally cracked the damn 'line moving around circle' problem. Had a solution earlier, but this used radians a bit wrong, which meant I'd have trouble comparing between lines later. However, now it seems to be doing it correctly. I'm storing values as radians, but now I can easily and quickly convert between degrees and radians. What I had to do was to store angle as = Math.toRadians(180 - Math.toDegrees(oldAngle)) <- change number based on which quadrant I'm in. After that I use that angle and cos and sin to get new X and Y values. Now that I look at it, it's pretty simple, but I blame Sun and the Internet for lack of math tutorials showing this :P
I was planning on taking the whole day off to recuperate, especially since tomorrow is 17th of May, the Norwegian Constitution Day and that means I need to go out :) However, I did decide to keep on working with my project and it seems I've almost got the bloody lines to move as they should. There is still a few places where it just hangs and doesn't move, but now it seems to be moving correctly WHEN it is moving. I probably just need to tweak a bit more to get it working.
I've survived the weekend, and I've got the scars to prove it! Had a big ugly COMP422 assignment that was due today, and it was a struggle completing it (or shall I say completing most of it). I was actually ahead on things until Saturday when a few hundred image files I had created were all noise and not what I wanted. So I had to redo lots of stuff and got behind on the last parts of the assignment. Joy!
But now it's done, and my coffee slash V slash sugar high has left me. Time to recuperate and actually get back on track with my project. I've still got some other things to do, but the project will recieve more attention in general now that all the 'big' assignments are done.
Now, trying to catch up with things. I did go last weekend to see Kingdom of Heaven. It's an alright epic movie, not as bad as I feared, but not as good as I had hoped. Orlando Bloom really can't hold up such a movie by himself, and all the good cast members were killed off early or weren't shown enough. However, it's well worth the time to watch it, even though some of the battle scenes feel reminiscient of Return of the King. (I was just waiting for Gimli to come jumping from the castle walls when the going got tough).
As for last week I went to a few talks. Most notably, Pippin's PHD proposal speech. I really liked it, since he managed to keep it both interesting and funny, whilst at the same time getting across the message about his framework for research. Good call on using a game as a running example, and seems to be a few interesting games used for case studies. Speaking of which, hey Pippin, if you for some reason should read this: What's a guy gotta do to become a test subect ;)
The second speech I went to was a presentation down at Design School for the upcoming major, Multimedia Design. I thought it would have been more to do with computer science, but it was still mostly fluff, and although I like fluffy stuff, I'd rather see more on 3d modelling and animation. Then again, I think that speech was more for the head of departments in an effort to try and get the computer science and design department to work together. Good initiatve, but it felt as though most weren't completely convinced on friday, or perhaps we just didn't understand all the buzzwords. At least we're getting 'Internet 2' it seems ;)
Oh well...back to work...
This week has been spent doing *trying* to do something on the project and some assignments. However, that mostly went down the drain and I'm getting frustrated. The project is delayed because I suck in trigonometry and that the coordinates in Java doesn't seem to be consistent (i.e. graphics use regular x-y coordinates, yet clicking on the plane uses screen coordinates which means y is opposite). So I've spent nearly two weeks just trying to find out how the hell the x and y coordinates changes as I move into different quadrants around centre. Secondly my COMP422 assignment is going to hell since I'm spending more time trying to get software to work than getting work done. The software won't compile at all or the Makefile is too messed up (both at home and at school). So I've wasted a few days there as well getting nothing done. I think it's time to get some expert help this coming week and then pound on.
On a non-school related note, me and a mate assembled a quiz time for the inter-hostel quiz night at Eastside last Thursday. We got off to a great start by showing too late (although I still call it fashionably late), and then proceeded to 'win' two extra prizes (toilet paper rolls) for having the lowest score at a given round and getting 0 points in a round. But the aim of the game is to have fun and drink lots of beer, right? At least we did that, and we still didn't come in last - we were about 4th last out of a total of 10-12 teams. Hopefully I'll get some work done today before I'm off to play squash and then watch Kingdom of Heaven.
Another week gone. Time flies by, which isn't fun when you feel you're staring at the same thing you did the past three weeks. But it's not all sad songs though. I've managed to get some more work done on my project and I'm currently trying to add support for holding several graphical objects at the same time as well as making sure that everything is properly updated when something is added or deleted. Hopefully I'll have this done through the weekend, but I need to also concentrate on another project for COMP422 (darn!). So I gotta split my time between those two, plus the usual free time antics I get up to :)
On another note, I've been watching tons of movies at my hostel past few weeks, and there are some good ones. First of all I went to the cinema yesterday for the premiere of HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy. I loved it and I felt it was a brilliant adaption of what is basically a very complicated but funny book. Sure, there are things that are left out and changed and it's fast paced, but they still managed to get through the basics of the story. And I did go with friends (guys and girls) that hadn't heard about it and/or didn't like sci fi and they liked it, so that's got to count for something. Go watch it now, or you may never find out the question to the answer of the Meaning of Life, Universe and Everything (which is 42!). Also, being a huge Jackie Chan fan (his early Hong Kong movies thank you very much, not the latest Hollywood dribble), I rented Drunken Master 2 (alt. title Legend of Drunken Master). That movie is awesome. I thought I had seen serious fight sequences before, but this is just incredible. The acrobatics and fight moves have to be seen to be believed. And there is a fight sequence that looks quite similar to the Burly Brawl of Matrix 2, but this is without any CG. Another must see movie if you're Jackie or kung fu fan.
Been a somewhat slow week. I haven't had much to do in my classes which meant I've been able to concentrate more on the project, which has been a good thing. I've mostly spent the time converting everything over to Java and tried to decide whether I should go with OpenGL or not. I've decided against using it so far - OpenGL support is still a bit sketchy and most packages I found where not that easy to understand. So I'm using Jave's Graphics package. The plan for today is to try and finish the selection and movement process of some of my objects and I will take things from there. The hard part is trying to not make the whole process overly complicated, but in the end I will just have to forget about it and do what works first, and then see if I might change something.
Of course it hasn't all been project work. I spent Monday doing Architecture! Yes! Me and a mate helped a friend building a model for an architect project. I love making models, so this was brilliant, and it was something different then sitting infront of a computer all day.
Yesterday Unicomm threw a Bad Taste party which me and a few friends went to. A pretty cool evening and lots of fun costumes. Me and a mate dressed up as redneck hillbillies and I think I can safely say we were the worst dressed in there :) . Hoping I'll be able to get some pictures out soon on my regular webpage.
Been some back and forth with my project (as always). It seems that Qt's licensing might crash with the agreement we have with Sidhe. Apparently, using Qt means the software has to be released under GPL, which would be alright I guess if Sidhe only was going to use the software inhouse. But if they should ever decide to sell it or market it to others, than it seems the Qt license would interfere with that. So, speaking with Tim I might switch around with not only the interface but perhaps even programming language - to Java. Thankfully I haven't programmed that much, which means there shouldn't be too much to convert. I know Java and it's Swing components. I *can* use 2d or Java3D for the drawing, but I have a feeling it would be better to stick with OpenGL. Not that it will be easier, but for learning purposes as well as better extensability (sp?) if Sidhe ever wants to go 3D, then OpenGL will be a good thing in my opinion. Of course, Java doesn't have good support for OpenGL so I've been looking at some extensions for it. It seems to fall between either LWJGL or JOGL. JOGL seems to be a hazzle to install and get running, but it seems to integrate better with Swing, but LWJGL doesn't look bad either. So currently I'm just converting some of my old code and then I think I'll try to see how much I can get working with LWJGL. If all else fails, switch to Java3D/2D and go with that.
Also wrote up a mock Usability agreement form and information sheet. Plan is to run some tests next semester, and hopefully get some feedback from Sidhe. Will run these forms by Tim first and then I'll send in an application form for ethics approval.
Thank god it's friday..
Didn't get as much done as I wanted to with my project, but did write up an application for Ethic Approval and read more in the Usability testing book by Nielsen. Also found out that we have to do presentations on our COMP423 assignment, which is gonna be fun since mine doesn't work. That's gonna happen tomorrow, which makes it really tempting to just skip, but I guess I gotta jump into it.
Finally getting back on track today. Went around to a few teachers and asked them about what I missed yesterday and got some course notes which I've been reading on a bit. Also continued on with my project. Right now I'm leaving OpenGL alone, and I'm rather focusing on Qt. Plan is to get a GUI up and running this week and then continue with getting the selection process in OpenGL correctly.
Besides that I'm heading for another Tramping Club meeting tonight. See all the cool trips I'll be missing.
Yes, it's been a long time since I last did an update. Easter holidays has come and gone and I'm now sitting here, Monday morning, as a sleep deprived wreck. Last two and half weeks haven't been fun as I've had to concentrate on COMP422 and COMP423 leaving me with little to no time with my project. To add insult to injury, my COMP423 project went down the drain only 2 days before hand in since a nasty error was discovered, one that seemed impossible to fix (one that looks easy but for some strange reason you can't find out HOW to fix it). So, with no time to really redo the whole thing I had to salvage what I could and hopefully I'll get a pass for at least trying :(
Anyways, today I'll probably take some time off to recuperate (cause it feels like a hangover) and the rest of this week will be prioritized for project work - working on the GUI. Of course, school work that needs to be done will have to be done.
Juggling between my COMP422, COMP423 and COMP588 projects as always. Hard having a fast pace, but I'll get there eventually, after all, what's Easter but a few days for work? Hoping to have a small OpenGL setup along with a Qt interface for my project by end of Easter, but it's still out in the woods.
On a less school related note, I went to see Life Acquatic at the cinema, last Tuesday. A pretty weird yet funny movie by Wes Anderson (I believe). Starring Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. I'd recommend it to anyone who's likes weird movies or if you feel your assignments don't make sense (cause they sure will after watching this movie ).
A bit of a problem getting my work done. I can't seem to get started on my coursework projects, and with my project I have to get used to programming in different environments (Windows at home, BSD here). Not that it will cause that much of a problem, especially since once I start using Qt, the GUI code should be the same. But right now when I'm just testing some general things, its a drag doing one thing at Uni, and another thing back home. Guess it's time to get a new linux distro on my home PC (got Fedora off school).
Well, I guess I should get the ball rolling with this diary, and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it. Today started off bad as I had an assignment due in COMP432 and there were too many questions I didn't get. However, after classes I gave the assignment a last go before handing it in, and my mind loosened up. Still can't be sure if its all correct, but its alot better now than it was yesterday.
I also got to see my new office in CO239. I'll be sharing it with AlexPotanin and JenniferFerreira. Alex seemed to be in a fine mood as well getting to play with a US Tax Return form. By the look of it, it made Nuclear Physics look like a breeze (and for those who already find that a breeze - bite yer tongue).
Anyways, right now it's going to be a few 'fun' filled weeks juggling two big assignments plus my project. :(
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