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...