13 courses of happiness, and more pizzas than you can shake a stick at.

It's been a good few free food days. As most of you know free food is the fuel for all postgraduate students, so when I get two free meals in 3 days, it must be a good start of the week.

One of them, of course, is much more meaningful and grand than the other. One of our mates from high school got hitched after going out with her boy for 9 years. As if that's not happy enough they decided to have a Chinese style reception! Yippee! 13 courses my friends! Of course you don't eat much in each course but boy was that satisfying. They also gave in and put shark fin soup on the menu. It's one of those things that I just equate with bliss and happiness. I also introduced Pete to the wonderful world of shark fin soup too. Mind you I wouldn't be surprised at all if the fin isn't actually real, but that just made for guilt free eating.

Today: TA debriefing and lunch. MORE free food. Usually when it's catering in engineering pizza is there aplenty. The pizza to postgrad ratio was almost 1:1, which is pretty ideal really. There was, of course, plenty of amusement provided by the blue cheese pizza. Especially when one of us decided to "rescue" a guy reaching out to it only to find that he actually likes blue cheese... who would've thunk it?

I'll start my diet after Christmas.

The End the Nigh!

Yes! I managed to make my supervisor goes "Wow... that's VERY good. This is what we want to see!" So who knows, maybe after this week I might be able to just start my thesis. Yay!!

It's a bit scary, thinking about finishing the thesis. It's been a part of my life. It's almost my default excuse of not doing much. I think I'll miss my flexible hours, and fact that I can get up at 10am and then work in the weekend instead. Doing my PhD also kept me in this student frame of mind for longer than I really should. While everyone's talking about changing job and OE and whatnot, I'm still trying to impress my supervisor. *sigh*

And after this, I don't even know what I will do. Research job would be nice. At this stage I won't even rule out lecturing. Although, I would really want to get out, get some research experience for a few years, before I go back and teach. I think part of me actually do enjoy teaching, although I think I enjoy teaching small groups a lot more than a big group though.

Ah well, this week I shall stare at my data more. Will be going into work tomorrow to show the company what I've been doing too. Still thinks it's looking good. I'm still excited. :D

Wishlist...

I'm going to submit my final report for my funding soon, which means I get 3 years worth of my holiday pay soon. (Yay!) Pete agreed I can buy ONE Wii game (I know. ONE?!) So below is my wish list... I just need to make my decision sometimes...

Guitar Hero III: Legend of Rock (link)

Pros: THE music game on Wii at the moment. Cool guitar controller. And I get to pretend to play the guitar properly.

Cons: Can you say "expensive"? Songs selection isn't exactly fantastic either.

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (link)

Pros: BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (Oh, and it's a great party game)

Cons: Maybe too similar to the first game?

Elebits (link)

Pros: The "Katamari" of Wii games. Prices might have came down a bit by now too, one would hope.

Cons: This

Tomb Raider: Anniversary (link)

Pros: Improved game play, cool fighting control. And it's Lara Croft.

Cons: I might get motion sickness. :(

And there you have it, my wish list. As an aside, Okami is coming out of the Wii. Very exciting indeed. Hopefully by the time we get it in NZ I have a proper income again.

P.S.: Rabbids 2 is winning at the moment, but I'm still tempted by the other three options really...

sudo finish thesis

I got my inspiration from this:


xkcd is FAAAAN-tastic.

Anyway, after much pissing off and whatnot, I've figured out the main problem of my thesis, being that I'm trying to solve the clinical AND engineering problem at the same time. Solution would be to be slightly so selfish and so something on the engineering side to solve something that the clinician already knows, and build a classifier from there. I don't know if it'd work, but we shall see eh? Been trying to get various thing to work on my desktop (which runs Ubuntu and Octave, not Matlab), and surprisingly I found out I missed fiddling with code and stuff. I guess I really have been working on Matlab for too long.

In other news, Jon Stewart is away AGAIN this week. I hate September. I don't get Jon. :(

Right, back to hacking Octave. :)

Time Loop

I was reading my old blog (believe me it's actually the best time waster) and reading this entry... in particular about how I'll stop dwelling in the past and come back to "2004" and listen to Dark of Matinee again... and I was reading that while Dark of Matinee was playing. It's surreal.

I've been really frustrated with my research lately. Gosh the stupid f*cking theory won't work and that means I pretty much have to go back to square one. I thought I'll read the beginning on my blog to remind myself how far I've came along. And then, I realise I'm still listening to the same f*cking song as I was 3 years ago.

More ironic than having 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife. Heh.

Anyway.

You would've thought being depressed about your PhD will end around 3rd year seeing that I should be used to being stuck in the middle of nowhere. Nope. Far from it.

I swear after my PhD I shall take at least a month off. They better still have that completion award when I'm done so I CAN afford that month. I just need to actually finish the f*cking thesis.


P.S.: Excuse the language. In case you haven't notice I'm frustrated and pissed off at myself.

Flat White War

Gosh, would you believe it almost everyone in the cafe ordered flat whites. Being the cheap uni cafe it is they just call out what the drink is and you go up and claim it. So there I was, reading old magazines (I was bored. It was there) when they called out large flat white. I looked, and another girl was reaching for it already. Fine, back to reading. Then it's large flat white again... no one moved, I went in. Sweet! Got my caffeine. Then it's ANOTHER large flat white and to my horror I realise I got someone else's flat white (I don't recall anyone else ordered flat white after me...) who happened to be head of research in the department. D'oh. Mind you he's a nice chap. I still kick myself sometimes about not taking up his offer to be my supervisor when I was doing my master. (I'd have to go to the dark side and do my master in software though. Eww! Java! Not that I can talk now that I'm working entirely in Matlab. Java would be nice.) Gosh I hope he didn't recognise me. It's a Monday. Dark circles under my eyes looks bad enough that I might be mistaken as a goth. Yeah. Let's hope he didn't recognise me. (not bloody likely...)

I hate Mondays... but at least I have SOME idea what to do for my project now... *yawn* need more caffeine.

Idle Day Dream...

It's a Monday and my brain still hasn't started. I found myself day dreaming all sort of random stuff that I can't quite get rid of. So I'll just jot all this down and get back to work.

• By end of this month, I really should be finishing my research.
• Need to take a week off for painting and stuff. Possibly do a few big ones for the fair again. Who knows, maybe I can sell something.
• Oh yeah, planning the wedding.
• Guitar Hero 3 is coming out on the Wii soon! Can't wait can't wait.
• Okay just because the wedding is coming up, we'll only get one controller *grumble*
• I shall make it my goal to make to PAX in the next 10 years.
  
• Probably when we can take a month off to tour around the States.
• We probably will be eating take away tonight huh.
• I wonder what I'm about to do for my research is considered "hacking"
• Gosh I'm so full... that steak and cheese pie was gooooood
• I'll start my diet tomorrow.

On that uber positive note, I shall get back to work...

Err.. right.. this blog thing...

Yeah I know. I've kinda neglecting this blog thing.

Nothing much happened at all. Research is crawling slowly, and I haven't done much at all besides research these days. Tired? Why yes. I have a million ideas brewing at the back of my head and I can't do jack all about it until I can hand in my thesis. Although I'm thinking that I might take a week off in October, just to chill and paint and whatnot.

In other news, I found a sport of sorts that I actually enjoy doing. I'm recently taken up rock climbing. I think it just appeal more to me because it's not really competitive, and there's a puzzle to be solved.

My addictive personality has surfaced again and currently I'm addicted to Facebook. That might also explain why I haven't updated my blog for a while. After a while I'll probably get bored of it in a few months' time.

Oh, and I finally found Twilight Watch in the edition that I want. I'm happy now. :) Just hope that they will actually release Final Watch too. The book cover keep referring to the series as a "trilogy". Bah. Whatever.

Nintendo annoucement at E3: as preceived by a "casual gamer"

Right, let's face it: I'm a casual gamer who happens to also be a Nintendo fangirl.

I mean, I ACTUALLY wanted Cooking Mama for my Wii. (Well, until I saw the review, which pretty much say if I have the DS version, I shouldn't bother.)

So, after seeing the guys at 1up.com bitching about Nintendo's annoucement at E3, I feel like I have a duty to speak out as a casual gamer.

Firstly, you guys get your Smash Brothers Brawl and Metroid Prime 3. Be glad, be happy! Just because you guys already knew about it doesn't mean you guys don't want it. Let's face it, once it's out, you'll be in line to get one.

Now: WiiFit, Check Mii Out channel, and the word/life coach on DS. Right. They're nothing new and frankly if Nintendo is really hoping to get into the casual gamer market, they need it. You guys were the ones who were all excited about the new wiimote, and how it's going to revolutionise gaming. And now that it has you're bitching about it. Seriously: Sony has their Eye Toy fitness training thing ages ago, as well as a martial art training one (which is really really cool... anyway, Nintendo). After WiiSport, the WiiFit is the natural next step.

From a marketing point of view, what Nintendo is doing is logical, admittedly slightly risky. Nintendo's strategy for this round of the console war has been going pretty well. Let PS3 and 360 battle out with the traditional gamers, while Nintendo will go explore the untapped market of the traditionally non-gamer demographics: like the teenage girls and the baby boomers, and all the while hook the kids on Nintendo while they're young. And it's not like they've abandoned all your "hard core" gamers: there are still Zelda, Mario, Metroid Prime, etc etc. Just because gaming stopped being an exclusive club doesn't mean it's a BAD thing.

Come on: my mum wants a Wii. It's gotta be doing SOMETHING right. I for one am happy Nintendo won this round.

I'm trying to save for Elebits and WiiFit now...

P.S.: For those who cares: the lack of updates usually means I'm stuck in my research. I WILL get over it and I WILL solve a big chunk of the problem before end of this month. Watch me. Sick of my project tormenting me like that now.

Jitterbug

Nick has ever so kindly offered us free Ceroc lessons (I'm too cheap to pay, and Pete doesn't really want to commit to a weekly thign, even though you can pick which night to go... ANYWAY) To be honest after the wedding and when I actually have this thing called income I really won't mind picking that up as a hobby.

Okay so I did hurt my shoulder (I injure myself A LOT, in case you haven't notice), but it's still fun.

In other news, research is going alright for once. 3 months is all I'm giving myself to finish the research side of things... so I probably will be AWOL from the blog for a while again to try to push myself (I figure I have about the same amount of time I did when I was in St Louis.)

That is all. Nothing to see here. Move along now.

One of those days...

I was going to work on merging the company's classfier with my own to see what would happen or if anything interesting will turn up... and I left my keys, which has my USB pen drive attached, at home. What's on my USB drive you might ask? Why it's the said classifer from the company. D'oh.

Not to mention that means the key for my laptop lock is also at home. Unfortunately I found that out AFTER I locked my laptop in... *sigh*

So err... interesting work today, reading about clustering and trying to hack the toolkit to show what I want it to show. Not a bad day after all though.

If it's not for my hayfever making it a pain just to breath.

I'll get over it. *sigh*

Now that I think about it...

These few weeks had been kinda weird. Had a really bad bug and then I had to force myself into thinking positively just to make sure I can actually pull myself out of it. Now that I have... my progress is slowed again. How typical is that?

Anyway, today I'll post a few things that I thought about in my (very VERY little) spare time and got confused about in the past week:

TMNT: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

Seriously: WTF? I know that as a kid I thought they were cool too but can you imagine what the creative process must be like?

"Hmm. Turtles! Except it's humanoid turtles... who are ninjas! Yes! Ninjas! Everyone love ninjas. And mutants too. Like the X-Men. And we need a giant rat. Oh oh and pizza. Hmm... pizza...."

I can even understand why they came up with Aquaman. TMNT is just... WTF?

Having said that, they're still cool. Unlike...

Paris Hilton: The Vicious Cycle

Why on WHY are people paying so much attention to her? And THEN I realise it's vicious cycle: people talk about her, then people talking about why we're still talking about her, then people talk about how complaining that we're talking about her is STILL talking about her... and there, I just contributed to the whole vicious cycle.

Sometimes I still don't know why we pay so much attention to celebrities.

Dogs... err... "toys"

Come across this goodie the other day. I don't even what to ask about its creative process...

McDonalds Subliminal Ad



What I don't get is that why McDonalds even need subliminal advertising: Look, it's the biggest fast food chain on the planet. I can't even drive anywhere in Auckland without seeing at least 5 of their logos somewhere. If THAT doesn't get registered somewhere in people's subconscious I don't know what would. Why even risk looking bad and put that one frame there? Really: why?

This ends this week of rant. I'm also freezing cold at the moment. Hopefully next week I can also report on how far I've gone with my result. I won't hold my breath if I were you.

The responsibility of having a Nintendog(TM)

Since I don't think I'm ready to have a real pet... not to mention the fact that I just really want another DS game, I finally gave in to Nintendog. It's actually surprisingly good. And I've been training my little Hagau (It's Chinese for "shrimp dumpling". Don't ask) doing tricks and all... It's actually strangely entertaining. Although I do have to remember to check on her every now and then to feed her... reminds me of the tamagochi days of my youth.

In other news: My supervisor confirmed what I've suspected all along: I've done all the "intelligent" part of my research and now it's just trying thigns until something works. It's actually kinda... scary. Kinda like digging for gold. Kinda of mining. Maybe that's why they call it "Data Mining". (Ha. Ha. Seriously I can't believe I wasted electrons to build up that joke)

Righty-O. Back to digging. (Hi-ho. Hi-ho. It's off to work I go... Oh dear.)

Towel Day, and I'm Home with a cold...

It's towel day today, and instead of carrying a towel everywhere to celebrate and remember the life of the ever so amazing Douglas Adams, I'm not going anywhere because I'm home, sick. I have a weekend to get better, and during that time hopefully to get some work done too. BUT: I'm doing my bit. I'm wearing my dressing gown all day long, just like Arthur. (Fine. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm sick as well.. and it's the most comfortable thing I can wear around to keep me warm.) I shall also try to squeeze is as many Marvin quote as I can in the day, which probably isn't that much different from how I usually talk. ("I thought I'll just let you know... I'm very depressed today"...)

Anyway.

My cold has gave me new insight to my bone structure: you never really think about them until they all hurt at once. It's getting better though, last night I could hardly sleep. I was just lying in bed thinking "Ouch ouch ouch pain! Pain!" You know how sometimes you get the strangest dreams when you're sick and in and out of a fever? No? (Actually, maybe they're not any stranger than my usual dream...) I was dreaming that I was watching (or writing, I couldn't tell) an episode of House M.D., and House was in a coma. He woke up and lost all his memories as to who he was, but he faintly remembers that he was a doctor and wanted to go back to med school to be a doctor again. Later he found out that he's not really House M.D., but Hugh Laurie himself. He was the one in a coma and only rememebr the part of himself that was House.

You know, that would make for some rather interesting existential story. My subconcious might be trying to tell me something. I'm just too sick to think about it right now...

Behold! More time wasting from Yours Truly

(Go on, click it)

Go visit my brand spanking new comic blog.

Media reporting shiat...

I've already had my shock last night when I heard Campbell Live will be talking to a "no-nonsense influential Art critic" about modern (read "post-modern") art. I mean, seriously. The art critics themselves can't tell apart "art" by postmodern artist and those by 4-year olds. If you need a narrative or years of training to understand and appreciate the artwork, there's something fundamentally wrong. Art is the way to talk to the soul, as opposed to talking to your intelligence. Writing an essay to deciper the art in order for it to be understood (especially when the art work is something like the pile of boxes and empty bottles that showed in the show's preview) is called creative writing: while the writing themselve may indeed show creativity and can be considered as art, the object itself... wtf?

Anyway, today I came across this gem from BBC about how wifi can be harmful to children: they can't find any evidence though, but it's possible. (Oh oh, my favourite weasle line from the article: "There have been no studies on the health effects of Wi-Fi equipment, but thousands on mobile phones and masts." See what they did? How they just weasle out like that and make you think the studies must be bad for the mobile phone and masts as well? Ingenious.) I'm not a biologist and I can't say for sure whether wifi harm people, but for goodness sake stop generating mass hysteria and report things with absolutely no evidence and aired purely to generate fear and feeding people psuedo-science, all in the anme of ratings. People in research have enough problem trying to reach out already, to get their points across. Let's face it: a lot of their findings won't make sense unless you have a real background knowledge, not what they spoon feed you in the second paragraph or an article. Generateing fear in public for the sake of rating is irresponsible, and is a crime against science.

Right, now I have to try to produce science of my own. *sigh*

EDIT: I went back to read the slashdot forum on the BBC article. Someone wrote: "In the meantime, their children are outside getting burnt without sunscreen." I actually laughed out loud.

Beryl in all its glory...

3D cube workspace

Look at that pretty, pretty cube! To go from one workspace to another (All you Windows infidel: Workspace is a wonderful idea where you have put different windows in different workspace, and have them "separated" so you don't have about a million windows opened at the same time. Think about one space for your email, one for your spreadsheet and whatnot, and one where your IM is running. You just click to that workspace when you want to.), you do get this pretty cube effect.... so pretty.... anyway, that's not even half of it...

Windows Animations

I wasn't too happy with the animation until I played around and foudn them all... heh. I've decided that whenever I close a window I want to see it burn. The screen shot doesn't do it justice. It's really really REALLY pretty. Everytime I close a window I still sigh in contentment when I see the buggers burn.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

Ah... raindrops. So soothing. It's not like I switch it on 24/7. It's not THAT annoying. Animated raindrops!

In conclusions...

Admit defeat, Vista! You can have a pretty and secured OS without costing am arm and a leg.

Although I do admit that there are bugs that really need ironing out. Especially when the graphic card isn't actually all that nice and fast. (Pete tried that on his family's computer... took a while to go around all the bugs.)

But seriously, if you have a new machine, there's no reason why you would want to slow it down again by loading Vista. Ubuntu's new release doesn't eat up half as much resources (i.e. doesn't slow your machine to a crawl), doesn't require high end graphics (well, unless you install Beryl to make it look pretty.. even Beryl doesn't need top of the line graphics though, unlike Vista), you don't have to worry about virus or spyware, you don't have to buy software (there's a big list of free software where you can just search and click "install".), and it's free! It's meant to be free!

Ask your local geek for more information. :)

Quick! I need "approx. US$1564.37"

Sweet Mother of God! Optimus Maxiums - the Ultimate keyboard (Even cooler than Das Keyboard, which I didn't have the guts to try) is finally accepting pre-order! For those who hasn't heard about it: Optimus Maximus is a keyboard where every freaking key is a tiny LCD display! Here, straight from their website:

Ok Probably doesn't do it justice since I have to make the picture smaller to fit my blog, but click the link to view all its glory! All the buttons are programmable. No longer do you have to memorise all those shortcut is all those different games, or any program you happen to use. Programmable lauch buttons on the left, one button to whatever program that takes your fancy!

And the actual keyboard's design: it's so pretty! It's so.. slim and slick and everything I want in a pretty package! (excuse me while I wipe that drool off.)

Down side to that is that I need about US$1600 to buy it. *sigh*. Look if I won't even spend that much money on a computer, I don't think I'll ever bring myself to buy that. Unless of cause if I win Lotto. And My chace of winning Lotto is pretty darn slim considering I never buy a ticket... *sigh*. Why must cool thing cost so much?

\in other news: I really shouldn't blog about geek news THIS often...

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2! :D

Yay!!! More bunnies coming our way!

For the uninitiated, there's a video for the launch of the first game:



Aww... bunnies!!

Very excited about the sequeal. Apparently it's going to be released on the DS too. Hopefully it's not going to be a platform like the first DS game is.

Speaking of Wii games, Cooking Mama Cook Off is coming out soon too :D



Can't wait til I saved up enough money again to buy new games...

New computer, and Beryl in all its glory!

Yup, I got my new computer finally! AMD64, PCI-e graphics card, and 320Gb of HDD goodness. :) Only problem is I didn't quite realise how annoying it is to get stuff working on 64bit Ubuntu. It's not too bad though: the boys were here last night to watch a DVD and Toby decided to help me get flash running... by running Firefox on 32 bit again. *sigh* Next up I'll probably need FS drive installed to try to read the EXT3 partition on my HDD.

Installed Riven on my computer, like, finally. Had to jump through hoops of course because the game was SO old that it has problem running on XP. I kid you not. But it's all going now, and now I can remember why I thought Myst was a brilliant idea and cool game but I'll never do well on it: I'm so bloody lost in the game that even a map doesn't help much. At least the worlds on Myst weren't quite that big... The first world in Riven is bloody huge... I'm so lost. :( (or is it the only world? I'm not too sure...)

Alright, need some sleep now... gonna meet with my supervisor tomorrow and for once I'm not really worried about him thinking I'm slacking off: I actually have a good plan that I would like to try... just have to worry about how long it'll take to try it all. I just need to found a friggin printer tomorrow to print my report out, and I'll be one happy camper. :)

P.S.: Next time I'll try to do some screen shot of my pretty new Beryl working on my Ubuntu. :)

P.P.S.: For those who really wants to know: I named my new computer Normad, after this little dude. :)

Pink Room No More! And the return of the PhD Blues...

Pink Room No More!

We no longer have a pink study! It's now nice and white, and ready for the top coat anytime now. I'm thinking maybe a nice latte... just so it's a bit less clinical. There are still hints of pink where and there which we'll hopefully get rid of with the second coat of ceiling paint... fingers crossed.

The return of the PhD Blues...

Yup. Deepest pit of Hell again. I'm having fun.

iGoogle, micro-blogging and a new comptuer!

I should be working, I know. But it's been a particularly bad week: nasty bugs and silly mistake cost A LOT of time. :(

Anyway, to distract myself...

Did anyone else noticed the Google personalised homepage is now called iGoogle? and now you can make your own gadget? Including this one called Daily Me, which allows you to put in what you're listening and eating and what not... it's like micro blogging really.

And do I really want my friends to know what I'm doing every friggin minute? It's probably the whole celebrity wannabe syndrome.

My micro-blog would probably consist on "Current status: pissed off at myself" most of the time..

Anyway, apart from the weird microblogging though, iGoogle is still looking good... I just don't understand WHY it has to be "iGoogle"... sounds too maccish.

In other news: I've ordered my new computer!! :D I'll update more when I get the machine :D

Dell not so evil?

Score one for Ubuntu! After Dell decided to go back to XP after Vista proved to be less than perfect (or at least offer that option), they now offer desktop and laptop with Ubuntu pre-loaded. Hooray! Seriously given the choice of going to Vista vs moving to Feisty Fawn, I think majority of people would probably prefer Ubuntu... what's not to like. It's free, you have a whole community of people online to help out, you get more free software option than you can shake a stick at, right in the program menu too. If I can convince my mum to use Ubuntu, it can't be that hard. I think the time needed to get used to Ubuntu is probably about the same you'll need to get used to Vista.

In other news, I'm still battling with my PhD project. Found one ugly massive bug and I have to re-run my program again. *sigh*. I'm thinking I'll use this time to start writing. At least have something done. Actually, might actually use today to fix my Miktex... yeah. I need to do that at some stage anyway.

That's it from me for now. Being stressed and depressed makes me either lose my appetite or hungry. They sorta alternate... yesterday I keep wanting to eat stuff and today, I don't feel like eating. Great. Ah well. Hopefully the rest of the week will give me more comfort. Worse comes to worst I just have to work nights again.

"David and Goliath" is the new evil...

And that's pretty sad news considering I have a David and Goliath PJ that I LOVE (mainly because it's got a penguin on in.)

Then Penny Arcade brought the subject into attention that a lot of his artwork is way too similar to other work to be a coincident... more proof here.

I was going to say that the "Goodbye Kitty" T-shirt with the Frogger (about 3/4 down the second link) is probably just done in the name of parody, but then again, the whole goodbye kitty thing just seem a bit too much like Bunny Suicide...

Well, I've already bought the penguin PJ, I'll stick with it. But no more David and Goliath for me from now on. >:|

(Go support Threadless people :) I might try my hand to design something there later. But until I have time to actually do stuff other than my PhD... I'll just shop. :))

War Against Procrastination... that fails rather tragically

This morning when I finally dragged myself out of bed (I was coding/making sure the code's working until 12... more on that later.), I've decided that enough is enough: if I could do that much work in St Louis, I should be able to do more back here. So I've decided to set my alarm on my phone to 12:30, and before then there will be no slashdot, no fark, no bash.org, and no Cyanide and Happiness either. In fact: I'll be doing nothing but work until the phone tells me to stop, and then I'll have my lunch (without watching Dr Phil...), hang the washing out, hopefully bring the washing in, maybe slashdot a little, until 1:30, when work shall start again, and will be work until 3:30 for another break... and then work until Petey's home.

Sounded like a brilliant idea, and my laptop was quiet this morning so that must mean it's processed the data I put through last night, right?

Well was I horribly wrong: the data that I suspect would take a good 10 hour to process stopped after the first friggin file (out of about 20 files) because the very last line on my code that actually saves the results into a file has a bug in it. I DID actually fix it, but at 12 at night I accidentally deleted it because that seems to be the things to do.

Never, NEVER, code while tired...

I shall spend today weeping and writing labs for young'ns instead...

Wii party, Carcassonne, and poppy seed scones..

The Wii party I had with the girls went very well, and even those who claimed to be completely un-co managed to played tennis. :) That just goes to prove how intuitive the wiimote is. Although it took a while for one to figure out she has to point at the screen, everyone still had fun. :)

Bought Carcassonne because we needed a board game. It's actually very cool, and I seem to be kicking Pete's ass. Heh. :) But it's nice to have a game that doesn't take forever to set up, and is actually brain taxing...

In other news: the poppy seed buns didn't turn out well. :( Will be blogging about something else in my cooking blog instead. Oops...

PS: PhD is going so painfully slowly... and I read the most recent PhD (the comic) and weeped...

Michael Dell using Ubuntu :D

Read in /. that Michael Dell actually uses Ubuntu on his laptop at home. And why the hell not? To be honest from what I've heard about Vista I'd be sooner upgraded to the new Ubuntu release than coughing up that much money to get Vista. It's hell of a lot more secured, and a lot less annoying.

I'm a bit slow on what stuff I can get on my Ubuntu, mostly because the Linux Matlab has a bug in it which makes it hard for me to run my custom GUI, which means when I'm coding I'm forced to use Windows... But then again I think I should probably at least switch to OpenOffice.org in my Windows too. Anyway, my point is that I just found out about Beryl. The screen shots just look SO pretty. Will be posted screenshot of my own once I installed Feisty Fawn. :)

Oh, and Petey was impressed that I saved up pretty much our wedding budget already, so maybe I CAN get my desktop upgraded earlier than I thought. :) I think it'll be dual booting XP and Ubuntu, and steering clear of Vista for now.

In other news, my cooking log is taking a break not because I haven't been cooking, but because I've been way too lazy. Tomorrow I'll try to take on the task of making poppy seed buns. Hopefully will update that soon. :)

Viva la Wii-volution!

Seriously, looking at the sales data of the Wii in NZ sickens me somewhat. Sure us geeks in the land of the long white clouds have long joked about how backward we are... but when I heard that PS3 is out selling the Wii here in NZ, you got to ask "What the hell is wrong with us?"

I went to a party this saturday where this girl told me she wants a pink PS2. I just casually said that the real thing actually looks really tacky (it does), and she'd be better off with a Wii. I got greeted by a blank stare in return. Sadly, it's not the first time this happened, and I was fully prepared to do my Wii sales pitch.

The problem with Wii in NZ is the fact that we as a nation isn't usually quick to pick on global trends at all, and Nintendo has never really had a good grip on the gaming market here in NZ, thanks to Sony.

Not only because I'm a Nintendo fan girl (which I am), but as a consumer, if people in NZ actually start playing with Wii and DS, we might actually have a chance to get more games here. It's not like we don't have the problem already.

Here's what I propose (and what I'm trying to do): promote the Wii if you have one. Go invite your parents to play on it. Go have a gathering of friends. Nintendowii.net.nz is organising WiiNesDay where they hire our a bar and two big projection screen to play the Wii on. Try get people to go! I'm going to check it out once Elebits (or as they're known here: Eledees... why? I don't know) is out, so I can play the game before hand. :) We need to take the Wii-volution in our own hands. (why oh WHY didn't they just stick with the name Revolution?)

I just need to convince the girls to come play on the Wii at some stage now...

New layout

A new layout, and added a music player.

Been busy with work, Wii, house work, and the DS version of AoK. :)

Will update when I can be bothered...

I'm an old bitter postgrad

It's a week before the O-week (Orientation week) here in my university, and all sort of introductory courses started. So the university is filled with 1st year students again. Argh!

Just a look at all those young enthusiastic faces, all so excited about starting university, and here I am, in my... (hang on.. counting...) 8th year in uni, and I get to sit around in my office while they go around, excited to see old friends in uni and taking up seats in the Starbucks. (Seriously, we never had problems trying to find seats in Starbucks! But then maybe I'm thinking of the good old times when the undergrads were away...)

I don't know why most postgrad despise younguns. But I found myself doing a bit of that too. I don't know whether it's because they made it impossible for me to just go to the cafe to buy my sushis without lining up for a good half hour, the fact that they made the university TOO lively again (some of us are stuck in the office all day you know...), or just that fact that it reminded us how we were once just like them, and how, 8 years later, we're still here. *sigh*

In a happier note: we finally moved into our new house last week! :) Still no internet yet, and still have boxes everywhere waiting to be unpacked and put away. But it's so good at have our personal space. :) (I think both of us found it a bit stressful to live at home right now too.) Now we just need to finish unpacking and actually learn to cook. :P

Hopefully I'll stop being bitter at some stage. :) I think after I have my lunch and maybe a coffee or two I'll be happy again. Well, and getting some work done. *sigh*

Birdathy report :D

Just a quick update on what I did and what I got for my birthday :)

Went to the beach for a picnic and kayaking. Except I didn't realise I could actually get seasick on a kayak. That wasn't so good. But other than that we had a great day. :)

Now, pressie: Mum managed to find a very nice cake plate with Happy Birthday written on it.. which means I can use it about once a year, twice if Pete's using it too. That's my mum for you. :) Not that I'm not happy with it, I just find it highly amusing. Pete's mother got me A LOT of stuff, I feel kinda bad. But there's this absolutely beautiful clock that she found. Yay! Clock for new house! :)

Petey got me the Myst collection! All 5 games in one box! I'm as happy as can be! I only played Myst before... Couldn't find Riven you see. Now that I have all 5 games I'm going to play them in series. :) Before that though I'd need to upgrade my computer first I guess...

Anyway, good start of the year for me I guess. :) I ever finish making my research plan for this year on the second day of me being 26 :P Heh.

Another Friggin' Year Older

On this last day of me being 25 my supervisor has to send me an email saying he wants a meeting first thing monday morning where I can summarise what I've done in 2006 and what I'm going to do in 2007. Heck as Einstein said, "If we know what we're doing, they wouldn't call it research would they?". So there. I don't know.

Remember when you were young and you just can't wait til your birthday? I still get that sort of feeling for things like Christmas, or moving out to the new place. Just not really for my birthday anymore. I think it's more so much that I mind my age, but more to do with the fact that I just got used to being 25. Look I barely just got used to the idea that I'm an adult and not a kid anymore, and now you want to tell me I've already spent half of my "20s" years? Not going to happen. It's a bit like Catcher in the Rye I guess. You just grow up without realising it and once it happens it's too late.

You would've think that there's some sort of hint that reminds me that I'm growing up, but somehow I managed to miss every single one of them I guess. It doesn't help of course that I chose to stay in university to do research, which means I'm STILL a student... yikes.

Ah well, hopefully I won't be a student anymore by the end of the year. Hopefully to whole owning my own home thing is going to help me to settle in the whole "grown up" thing too. I won't count on it though.

New Year Resolution, and Jon Stewart :)

Yes, I've finally got enough time to finish my Jon Stewart Sketch. I'm staying at Pete's place this week though (which is the only reason why I finished that sketch. I don't really have a flat drawing surface in my room... hehe) so I won't be scanning that one in until... err... next few days.

Been trying to finish my report this Christmas for my research. Bloody hard to do so when it's so nice and sunny outside. But I've determined to finish it before uni starts and start actually working on my research again. Wish me luck.

Lots of new ideas for painting, especially now that I know I'll be getting an art room in our new house. :) We also bought a vacuum cleaner the other day, not to mention a bed. :) Mum decided to get us a bed for our engagement/house warming. We got this really nice colonial style bed with matching bedside cabinet. It's going to be so cool. :)

Anyway, my New Year resolutions, in no particular order:

- Finish my thesis ASAP
- Repaint the "pink room" in our new house
- Save up money for various things like a new 'puter, a new mobile (my one is slowly dying), a Wii, and "that wedding thing"
- Speaking of which, need to pick a date for the wedding too...
- Don't worry I'll try my best to make sure I still have time for my sketch/painting. :)