Snail Spam

The office complains about the postgrads not collecting their mail. So today a bunch of us just went and sort out things. There are all sort of wonderfull goodness, like people's payslip, and magazine catalog, and most of us (namely those who bothered with writing a paper) got an invite to submit their details to the World Wide Who's Who.

Everyone: ooooowww...

Anyway, I got curious about all this, thinking: are they actually scamming people to submit their details and say "for just $14.95 you can be listed too", or, well, just exactly how are they getting money (if they get deperate enough to get MY details from a paper... heck they even got people's name from like their 4th year project and the paper that their supervisor submitted...). But no, there's no money required.

Maybe they sell the details out you know... much like spamming. That got me wondering whether they got my address because I got "sold out" by the conference I entered.

Honestly, why would people pay for that book? Chances are the really important people won't be bothered to read and submit their detials anyway... they won't even reply to emails asking about their research (very VERY annoyed...) Something's fishy about all this. But exactly HOW they get the money, I'm still not too sure.

Ah well, I think I'll just grab some lunch and go back to making silly little GUI to help me meditate on the data...

Broke...

I thought I should be okay with buying a camera if I don't put any money in my saving this fortnight. Far from it. I think my agressive saving plan doens't really work... :(

*sigh*... Thinking about money makes me really depressed you know... o_O

The Catch-22 of postgrad conference funding.

Given:

1) You may only apply for the university funding after your first year of PhD registration
2) You may only apply for departmental funding if you have applied to the university funding
3) External funding only pay out in the year after you applied for it
4) You normally only know about a conference about a few months beforehand (IN fact, a week before the extended submission deadline)
5) Oh, did I mention you're only on your 1st year of PhD registration?

How, oh HOW are you supposed to get funding? o_O The stupid departmental policy for only supporting student who's applied for the funding: you have any idea how hard it is to get funding like a few months before the conference? Especially when you're only on your 1st year?

Seriously I'm considering applying for another grant/scholarship just for the unexpected trips. I'm not going to sacrifice my saving to go overseas for conferences... o_O I want to move out dammit!

And now for something completely different, again.

Argh.

You know one of those meetings where you go in thinking you've done a lot and think you'd be sweet and then got told that they want this new direction, and it's just ARGH! o_O

And trying to convince my supervisor of ANYTHING is sometimes very very frustrating... you know what those academics are like, they think they know everything and you don't.

These are going to be a few LONG months til I have my 1st year report. *sniff*

Frustrating Time Ensures

ARGH!!!

This coding is driving me insane. o_O I know what the problem is (well, for some part of the BIG problem), but it's almost impossible to solve it...

Headache. o_O And why can't my supervisor be more like the guy at the Robotic team and treat us more like peer? *sigh*

This is going to be a LONG weekend... o_O

Self correcting code

I swear either the code rewrites itself, or someone just sneak up to my computer and rewrite my code. It's changed o_O And it's hard to see WHY it's doing that. I spent like a whole WEEK solving one particular problem and now I'm back to square one.

Annoyed. VERY annoyed.

*sigh*

Glory of the Olives

Honestly, why Ratzinger? Aside from being one of the most conservative and controversial cardinals, the progressive cardinals has a candidate called Martini! (see here) Now tell me who's the best candidate to fulfil the prophecy. (For this pope, St Malachy's prophecy said "Glory of the Olives"... Come on you can't tell me you didn't think of Martini!)

Okay, jokes aside, I'm still a bit upset, not to mention slightly lost. I kept being reminded that Ratzinger, I meant, Pope Benedict XVI, is getting quite old, and possibly won't stay in power for too long. But if you really try you can get a lot of damage... I meant, work done in, say, 5 years.

I can't help but to think that must be how the American felt when Bush was reelected. o_O

*sigh*

Hair cut. :)

Not anything dramatic, just cutting my split ends away and cut my front a little bit shorter. Was gonna get my fringe back but the hairdress said it'll probably still part. *sigh*

Anyway, my phone kinda died on me today. I hope it's just the battery though.

Work has been going slow as usual. I'll see whether I can get some work done this afternoon. I doubt it :P

New Definition of Busy

I know I've reached a new height of busy when I almost forgot to update my blog...

Anyway, the poster is printed. While the gradient background did not turn out as well as I would've hoped, it's still clean and pretty. In fact I'm kinda glad that I didn't really buy into the whole "Need more colour to grab attention" tactic that my supervisor was going for. The other guys in the team all complained about the amount of time wasted on the poster. IN a way, it is kinda annoying that they judge the award for "young scientist of the year" by how well you can design a poster. Honestly, I would like to see how good Einstein's graphical design skills are.

Ranting aside, it's a good day. Now I can get back to being stumped at my research. :P

Poster Take 5

Yeah as of now I'm staring at the file named "EEG Poster Take 5". I need to redesign the poster. It's not as bad as it sounds, the layout at least is still the same and words stay there, except I'd need a lot more pretty pictures. I've asked the company to send me some and they sent this gorgeous picture with this premature baby having his EEG taken. It's so cute. (Why yes, I'm cashing in the cute factor in my poster. Your point being?)

Anyway, had one of the most unhealthy lunch I've had for ages. How my tummy is feeling all funny. :( I knew I should've have asked for the cheese sauce on my wedges. But that's okay. I'll survive.

After lots of water I'll be fine.

Slacker

Yup, being a major slacker today. Slayed hoem and code instead so I can sleep in. Why? I think the question you should ask is "why not" :P

Low energy day again, but then it'd probably be more productive than staring at that icky maths text book. :P gonna do some lame petty coding and call it a productive day :P

And, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Yeah I'm a wee bit hyperactive today. Proabbly my coffee talking.

The day's going pretty slow. Possibly because I'm still reading that boring book. But hey, I have to get through that at some stage. I'll get over it and eventually I might even understand it! (Wow)

It's strange, I'm hyperactive and yet I don't have much to write on my blog today. Maybe it's because almost absolutely nothing is happening at the moment. Ah well.

Back to broing reading. :P

Assume a spherical cow...

I've been ordered to read this icky horrible looking book all about tracking frequency. Again it's not until I read it that I realise how little I remember, or how little I know in the first place. :P In theory I should be able to understand the maths, but for some reason, whether it's the fact that it's written in the least user-friendly way, or that it's simply just too early in the morning, it's gone way over my head. But am I going to give up? No. I'm going to ignore the minute details and keep reading on until I can find something I can understand. That's how I normally operate anyway. :P

After I dig through all this seemignly arbitary assumptions and derivations I shall actually get some "decent" work done later this week. I do think it might be worth while to spend a day or two to actually understand this thing though, considering that I actually am supposed to be researching in this field. Wish me luck.

Monday morning annoyance

Got up this morning without really waking up. Honestly I'm so tired this morning it's not funny. My eyes can barely stay open really. First cup of coffe downed, and nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm hoping I'll wake up a bit later during the day.

Anyway, research's same old, and I was hoping that I can get more done today. But now that I'm still half asleep I'm not too sure how much I can get done anymore...

Dizzy Miss Lizzy

The dizzy spell came back. It's not TOO bad, I can still walk and all, but it's more as if it's everything's swaying slowly. Eek. Yes I know, I need to drink more water. That's probably it.

Drinking too much caffeine probably didn't help either.

Anyway, Haven't really done all that much work today really. It's not so much that I don't feel like working, or that I don't know what to do next. I know what to do next, how to implement it. But it's still some form on intangible inertia. Maybe it's because I know very well that it'll only work on some scenario and not ALL cases. Maybe it's because I've done something I can call a milestone and I hate to break my code again. Whatever it is, I have to actually get over it and code something.

Wish me luck!

Mini breakthroughs all the way

Life of a researcher isn't really all that pretty. But it's getter there. After I've finished all the little "distractions" (which my supervisor argued should be part of my research and part of the learning process blah blah blah) I can finally get back to what I want to do for the project. It's not pretty, it's messy as hell, but it has to be done and it's kinda the important part of research. Which kinda leads me into thinking why I didn't decide to do GUI usability design or something... oh that's right I don't wanna be stuck in IT being a code monkey and I'm insane enough to like maths. Grr.

Anyway, Lots of fine tuning to do, but it's all going pretty well. I think so anyway. Aim is to get the easiest test coded by this week, and get some results to show supervisor next Monday for the meeting. It's actually entirely possible. That's the scary thing.

In a way, I'm scared about this PhD thing. Afterall it's actually means I have to come up with something that no one has came up with before, not to mention that by now I'm supposed to know how to think critically, and actually plan my own research direction. I'm still not too sure whether I can indeed come up with a new way of doing thing and a new direction. Ah well, it's only my first year, although my supervisor insisted that by one and a half year I should actually done all the work that I should base my thesis on. Eek.

Okie, less chatting more working. :|

Pretty posters

Yup I'm still making my poster. Thing is they actually expect us to be good at graphic design. Really. We're scientists and engineers you know. *sigh*

I'm just looking at my poster right now, and then realise it actually looks a bit like the design of my blog. tehehe. Well I think that looks pretty.

I'm not hoping for the grand prize. Too much hassel to go overseas for a presentation even if it's free. I'm a simple person. Cash prize for the runner-ups sound great. :P

Poster. Again.

So, after I've got SOMEWHERE with my coding, it seems like I'm back to doing "work that only remotely relates to my research". But then again I guess it's not too bad. This time I'm making pretty poster. Using again my minimalistic approach, I'm hoping to get some cash out of it. :P

In other news, I'm still really tired and caffeine isn't helping. :( Finished my morning coffee and downed a bottle of V at lunch time and I'm still sleepy. The atmosphere in the office doesn't help either. Maybe I should've brought in my loud music collection.

Okie, back to making pretty poster. :P

Trip update and whatnots

The trip wasn't too bad, but weather was a wee bit gloomy and we were kinda tired. I'm still glad I took the break though.

Although for some reason I'm still not really "refreshed" so to speak. I'm just not quite feeling myself these days. I thought the depression problem should be gone by now but it's still here. I don't know, maybe I'm just busy. I just don't really feel quite myself.

*sigh*