The Break

I’m back from Las Vegas. I guess you knew that as I’m sure you all use Facebook. The question to ask seems to be “how was it?” or “how much did you lose/win?”. At the start of the holiday I didn’t really know why I’d decided to tag along. I wasn’t really in the frame of mind to gamble any money, nor was I excited about being across the other side of the world. Las Vegas didn’t seem like the place to unwind and relax. I still don’t think it is.

I adjusted to the strange pace of life after a couple of days and I started to enjoy my time there. After a mini blip with the jet lag and air conditioning screwing up my body for a day, I played my first whirl of slots and the Mojito Magic started. I still had my moments, the hot weather, the ice cold mojitos and the pool-side tanning, washed away my stresses.

There aren’t really many highlights to talk about; I’m not saying the trip was rubbish, far from it. I’m saying, we did some walking, talking, swimming, drinking, eating and gambling. I guess the one thing worth mentioning is the Penn and Teller show at the Rio – thoroughly entertaining. Although some of the tricks were not that impressive, it still was a nice night out.

Although there were a few frustrating moments, some minor disagreements, some frayed tempers, those moments complement the many wonderful memories of my week in Las Vegas. I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever return to that strange city but I had a great time.

O, I only lost around 20 dollars

This week has been an intense week. So much has happened since my last entry.

The Presentation

First of all, I had my final presentation for my project on Tuesday. I had run through it a number of times before the real thing and I tried to psyche myself up for it. It didn’t start off great with me spending a few minutes attempting to set up the projector correctly. Stupid thing didn’t want to display my whole screen so I spent a few minutes fiddling about with that.

Once I got started, I think it went well. I’m not entirely sure how the assessors viewed my project but I think I answered the questions pretty well. The demo was not the most spectacular but I think it showed off enough of what I had achieved.

It did actually crash though Ah well…

Last night was billed by IC as the biggest Summer Ball in London. For me, the Summer Ball was probably the last night I’d see many of my friends. Since receiving the confirmation email for my flight to Japan I’ve felt somewhat unsettled. Unsettled, neither in a good or bad way. Just unsure as to how to feel about all of this. Even though I live for this life changing moments and cherish them deeply when they do happen, it’s never easy to actually go through one; not that I’ve lived a turbulent lifestyle.

On the contrary, I probably have had one of the least turbulent lifestyles imaginable. Looking back over the years, I suppose the major events of my life would include:

• going to Japan for a term and living in Hokkaido when I was 9 or 10
• starting DC life
• ending DC life
• the world tour
• starting uni
• the 6 month summer of last year

and now, ending uni. But, it’s not just ending university. It’s ending the educational part of my life. It’s leaving the London life behind. It’s starting from scratch. It’s scary.

Less than 2 months to go until I leave for Tokyo. Less than a month of experiencing London. Less than a week of the student life.

I submitted my final report today. My dissertation if you will. It was not as dramatic a moment as imagined but I did feel somewhat relieved that it was now done. I have however spent the entire day worried that I might have missed something, or that the report was not actually as well done as I imagined. I also can’t remember whether I proof read it other than at 9am in the morning when I hadn’t slept the previous night. Hmm… guess I may be slightly paranoid.

Anyway, E’s put some photos up on fb of the party the other night. I’m really gutted that more photos weren’t taken. I guess we’ll find out what’s on the single-use cameras. I also don’t recall a single pic of us two in a pic but I do hope there is one. *fingers crossed* Hopefully a load of other people took photos too. I should have had a group photo taken too, hmmm

I am absolutely exhausted today. After the initial elation had worn off and the adrenaline died down my body just turned itself off. I feel slightly bad for falling asleep next to the guys working on their reports but I really did need that power nap.

Hmmm, early night and late morning would be nice!

I asked my supervisor for his opinion and assurance that my final report, the final piece of written work of my university career, is up to scratch.
A few sentences which were open to interpretation:

1. the results section also describes what you did well

2. should be fine as it is

(1) does that mean I only described what went well and left out all the bad things?
does that mean there are things that I haven’t described but what I did describe was well written?
does that mean I described my results well?

(2) why did he not say “will be fine”. he’s the one marking it!!

Anyway. Today I finalised my report title; a massive moment. It can’t be changed now.

Tomorrow, I hand my report in. Wow!

Jab

As many of you know I’m heading off to Peru for a couple of weeks in the summer. I’ve been delaying it for weeks but I finally booked an appointment with the nurse to get some vaccinations.

I was looking forward to being vaccinated against a wide range of scary diseases such as yellow fever and the nurse was slightly confused by my descriptions of where I was going. Anyway, once the confusion had cleared, we figured out that I was not going to the “extreme risk” regions of Jungle Peru and I was only given a single jab. The single jab, I believe, was for typhoid and hepA but having no written record of what my left arm is battling at the moment I can’t be 100% sure.

I’m not complaining that I’ve only one dead arm to deal with and nothing more serious, but having been told by the same nurse minutes earlier that it was recommended that I took a whole list of other vaccinations a single jab seemed somewhat an anti-climax! I believe the other vaccinations included rabies, tetanus, tb and diphtheria. Thinking about it now, I’ve probably had all those vaccinations before.

Anyway, you know how nurses and doctors always start up a conversation to try and distract you before injecting you with poison. I found today that it was more a case of the conversation drawing attention to the fact that I was going to have a needle stuck in me in a few minutes. I was perfectly calm and ready for the vaccination before the nurse started yapping about languages and culture! Also, do they really have to hold the needle upright and flick the needle right in front of your face!

Anyway, despite all it’s shortcomings, the NHS is awesome! I can get my drug fix on demand!

The pharmacist at Boots however is another matter. I needed to buy anti-malarial tablets for my trip and requested a couple of different types. The pharmacist decided that because they appeared to have only the one on the shelf, that that would be enough and persuaded me that it was one of those “combination” things. A second opinion at Superdrug proved her wrong…. meaning I need to find a pharmacy where they stock the other malarial tablets I need. Grr…

Project

Bar the couple of months I had exams, I’ve been working on my project intensively for a number of months now. As many of you know I’m working on creating a real-time system to track eye movement. I have yet to find that inspirational technique to create a good solution with all that I’ve been doing lately mainly revolving around tidying bits up and nothing entirely solid. There are numerous approaches out there for tackling this specific problem, but most of these can be written off as they require specialised hardware and a specialised brain for getting your head around the complex algorithms involved. With time rapidly running out I doubt I can implement anything other than the approaches I’ve been working on already.

Anyway, I have regrets in the choices I made for this project but there’s not much I can do about it now. Today I’ve been working on my project. As usual, despite my best efforts, I do end up spending hours on end working around the periphery of the problem and not actually figuring out a solution to the core issue; the core issue being, how best to locate the pupils and the direction of focus. Stress levels continue to remain high these days.

So, maybe you’re wondering what the title is all about? Well, basically, I figured that I should probably test the efficiency of the code I have. The ideal set up should do all processing within 1/15 of a second. That’s roughly 67ms, or 0.067s; I have a 15 frames per second camera. At present, even with most of my complex calculations turned off, and remembering that the code does not produce any correct results, it runs at 1.6 seconds per frame – about 25 times too slowly….

I have a feeling I know where to start looking to fix the issue but it was pretty depressing to realise how bad my code really is. 1.6 seconds was the best result I got today as well. Sucks.

Having travelled through many levels, the Little Hero of this magnificently short story will come face-to-face with his final foe imminently. The Little Hero has faced many foes through his journeys, lost many lives, but fortunately the coins he has collected have kept his mushrooms in stock. His final foe is somewhat stubby and weak looking, but should the Little Hero be swayed by his appearance or be paranoid that this dwarfish advanced species facing him has in fact many hidden dimensions?

He ran so confidently on top of the floating clouds, but now, all the coins have been collected, and his confidence has leaked away. As he falls back down to the lands below, he is scared, paranoid and waves of panic wash over his body. He does not know what awaits him?

Will the final boss really be the final boss? How many lives will it take? Will the fight cost him his super flower power? What if the princess is in another castle? How far can I take this analogy?

Seriously, in the past hour I’ve started panicking like the final exam was actually Net Sec. The panic is not because I don’t understand the course. On the contrary, as far as I can tell, I understand it very clearly. I am just overcome with the pressures of wondering whether this is meant to be this straight forward and the knowledge that however well I know the ins and outs of each topic, everyone else will bound to know it better. The paranoid android within wonders whether he really does know the ins and outs, and whether the exam will throw breathe a few fireballs of its own.

I guess I need to pick up some spare lives and just go for it

Friday
I had one of those moments during the exam yesterday. I sat down and realised my bladder may not last the two hours – quenching thirst can be counter-productive on occasion. Fortunately my bladder did not explode. Unfortunately, worse was to come. As soon as the exam started and I read the first question, my mind went blank – a total pure white. The question was one of those compare and contrast two differing concepts but I could not remember a single thing about one of the concepts. Anyway, after muddling through the first question by continuing to refer to only one of the concepts, I was more successful for the remainder of the paper.

On completion of the third of the required questions, I remembered my initial blanking and thought I’d read through the question again – no luck, my mind still drew a blank. At that point, I considered whether this was due to the pressures of the exam or whether I had really failed to revise that topic.

Oh well… two left

After a long days work of revision, I thought I’d share my wonderful revision techniques with you:

1. Use colour for visual stimulation:

I suggest different colours to emphasise different points. Another technique is layering so once the initial notes have been made, add more scribbles to highlight key points. In my case, I just write the key points with a big red highlighter pen.

2. Cue cards/post-its also help:

I suppose it helps if the cue cards were for the relevant module.

3: Regular breaks prevent brain fatigue, so I take a look outside:

It’s amazing how interesting the London Eye is. I also saw 2 Chinooks, 3 RAF fighter jets, possibly Typhoons, a few regular helicopters, and private jets on their approach to City airport, a few birds and a man out that window today. The man was a surprise – not being on the ground floor it isn’t everyday that people walk by your window. There is a walled ledge though – design feature or maintenance practicality?

4. Drink plenty of fluids, preferably non-alcoholic.

5. Sleep, which is what I’ll be doing soon ^^