Engagement party: and LOTS of pressies!

The party was a blast! And we got so many presents that I was almost embarrassed. :P But there are some very cool stuff there. And now, the awards for the presents:

The most personalised award goes to the Baradene girls for their towels with "Lisa" and "Pete" embroidered on it. :) They're VERY cool, and I can be sure Pete doesn't use my towel... teheheh.

The they must be in it together award goes to Richard and Ursh and her boyfriend for the identical sushi set. They're sushi set for two, just when I thoguth how I'd love to have another set so I can have guests over with match sets, I opened the other set. That was cool :D

The sweetest present award goes to Kathy for the big box of Devonport Chocolate. :D

The they know Pete too well award goes to Pete's silbings and his Aunty Annie for the sets of knives. Pete is still drooling over it.

The they know me too well award goes to Toby and Katie for the giant candle that I won't have an excuse not to burn. :P

There are so many other pressie that I want to list here but it'll go on for way too long. I'm just SO glad everyone can make it and made it into the memorable night that it turned out to be. :)

Party all ready to go. :)

I'm at Pete's place at the moment. Spent the night setting up lights for the engagement party tomorrow. It's actually looking pretty good. :) I'm quite happy with it. Probably hard to capture it on photos but we'll try our best. :)

Anyway, work wise: I'm slowly getting all the things back by actually codinh them again. I got one file back, still need to debug it later, and supervisor wants me to try one or two other things anyway. So my next week is going to be... well busy.

Okay... a bit more rest and then I'm back home. Should be uploading photos here when I get them. :)

Computer Rescue...

Baggy, here are the details for the laptop rescue.

The Beginning of the End
Friday night, I thought I'll turn on the laptop to watch a DVD. Windows refused to boot up. Restart in save mode: nothing. Restart in save mode with command promt: nothing. Try to reinstall windows: the windows install disc doesn't recognise any preexisting windows install.

Something is VERY wrong...

Day 1: Roller Coaster
It's great to have a friend who knows what he's doing and have rescued data from a dead harddisc before. So I took the laptop to his place. We tried using a Linux live CD... can't see the directory. We tried almost everything: can't see the directory. We got the harddisc out and plug it into a USB HDD case: Windows can't even see the disc.

We've decided to use a file recovery tool to get data out. The took got almost everything else... besides anything from my PhD folder.

*bang head of wall*

We then decided to recover any lost files (or lost segments of files). and estimated time was 600 minutes... We've decided to leave it for the night, and see what happen the next day.

Day 2: The situation sinks in
So all the files that it pulled out was the Matlab help file segments... NOT helpful. And after we gave up, we try to reformat the drive to reinstall Windows... That's when it happens: the disc won't even reformat.

Yup. That's when we realise the harddisc is deader than we thought.

So... we gave up. Completely.

The End of the Beginning
So, that's the beginning or a battle to try to get a decent laptop. I'll have to go into work today, tell them what happened (and report on what I've found as well), and talk to my supervisor to see about getting the laptop fixed (hopefully: a new harddisc. And fix up a whole lot of other problems with it)

If all goes well: I want a week of stress leave. *sigh*

Overwhelming sense of stress

It's happening again: I'm getting axiety attacks, again. Which means going back to rescue remedy and try to calm myself down. *sigh*. I think the past few weeks have really taken a toll on me, What will all thoe socialising and whatnots. I barely have a day to just sit and chill and do nothing. It's kinda bad, and somewhere along the line all the stuff that needs doing just builds up and I'm panicking again. *sigh*

Anyway, once my head stop telling me I'm dizzy, I'll probably just wrap up for the week and try to get some relaxing time... *sigh*.

Rescue remedy is a very very good thing.

Slow progress

I've done nothing today, again. :( I've looked at my graphs, and decided that that the algo is actualyl go enough as it is. But it's still hard to justify the lack of progress. *sigh*

Geoff told me that I should just accept that some days there WILL be no progress. 'Tis true I know, but it's just kinda... discouraging.

I might do something with the feature extraction tomorrow or so.

:| I'll get productive again sometimes.

Naaa na na na na na na Valentines no Damashii

Sorry, all through this morning it's basically Katamari time over here. My brother's absolutely hooked. :P

Anyway, I hate to admit it, but I think I've just realised the algorithm I've decided to base my work on isn't actualyl the one I shoudl've picked. Back to square one. Weeeeeeeeeeeeee *sigh*

And while I'm trying to start a new investigation, here, have a snow shaker:
http://www.pixelthis.co.nz/club/game.php?code=SHAKER

Knock yourself out. :) It's got a penguin in it!! Yay! :D

And here's the mushy part that you don't really need to read, unless you're (a) Peter or (b) likes to read sickeningly sweet things directed to someone else :P

Thank you my darling, for making me the happiest and luckiest girl in the world. A most happy Valentine's day to you, and I'll try to make everyday just as happy for you, for the rest of our lives. :)

And now for a bit of art appreciation

Came across these beauties: Polish poster for Hollywood films. They're so wonderfully wierd and beautiful at the same time.. I wish we had these posters here. :P

I was gonna upload some but brother's downloading... *Sigh*. Personal favourites are the Gandhi one, the Aeroplane one, and the muppets. :)

More polish poster goodness here. There's a link on that site for shopping too. :)

In other news: my work is still stuck... *sigh* :(

I lost a wee bit of weight though :) Yay! :)

Baggy's leaving :(

All of a sudden Baggy said he has to leave the country in as little as a day's time. :( I do hope it's nothing bad bro!

Today's been spent changing my paper to be more about biomedical signal. It's not going too bad so far.

Been walking a lot lately too. That's also good. I think if I keep walking and moving I should be able to loss some weight. Fingers crossed.

In the wake of all the destruction around us...

I was reading this piece written about the riot of the Islamic community in Demmark. What got me is that it was saying how Hindus don't cause a riot when we sell beef on a sale, and how other religions don't use violence to push their belief onto others, so muslim is the only religion that use violence on people who are different.

Wow wow wow hang on there! I thought Bush went into war to "free" other contries because they don't comform to the Christian way (or the American way, whichever way you see it).

I'm not really saying good for the muslim for rioting (I think there are more civil way to deal with this. From what Pete's dealing with looks like writing angry letters is the way to go.). But I'm sick and tired of people saying "They're rioting and destroying things because their muslims". For crying out loud we (the "Western" world) bombed their countries! You can't say "All Christians are pro war"!

There is a fine line between being humourous and being offensive. From the sound the things I think, as a newspaper, those cartoon has crossed the line. (Remember the emails that say there's a play that involve a "gay Jesus" and all the Christian email forwarding?) There is also a fine line of standing your ground and being unreasonably violent...

There is also a fine line between comdemning people because of their action, and condemning people because of their religion.

Okay, let's try this exercise: DON'T just automatically assume all muslims are violent and suicide bombers. Get to know someone with that belief. And learn the true meaning of "love thy neighbours".

In the words of the wise Franz Ferdinand: "I only have a problem when people insist on taking their hate and placing it on your name".

French Women Don't Get Fat

I've finally bought the book and read it last night. It's actually really good. I've started doing part of it (the early part)... will let you guys know if I lose any weight. :P

Lunch was good though. I was going to ask my friend Ursh to have lunch with me, but then she slept in and couldn't make it. I went by myself and just and a nice lunch trying to be french :P It's pretty cool. Quite relaxing too if I may add.

Oh, right, work. I'm going to read today. On Pattern recognition. :P It's not really what I SHOULD be doing. But it's related and it's the only thing I can be bothered with. So there. :P

Sick... :(

ARGH! I was just getting productive, now I'm sick again. :(

Today's blog update was brought to you by the HOPE of revisiting code and a lot of "relaxing" (Pete's order)...

Stomach still feels funny :(

Progress report 010206

Task: summarising books on pattern recognition and features extraction.

Progress: Not too bad. :) Could be better but not too bad either. :)

Considering it's still way too hot to be working, I think I'm doing pretty well that I'm working at all :P So I'll call this a productive morning.

I'll see whether I can stretch this to being a productive DAY. :D

Note to self: Need COLD drinks!!!