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!

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.

I have been absolutely exhausted the last week or so. I don’t really know whether it’s the tiredness from the exam period still seeping out or the stress from dealing with a project that I have lost all confidence with.

I read an article earlier this weak about Katakori and how it’s a typically Japanese phenomenon. Roughly translated as stiff shoulders, it is the knotting of the muscles along the back of the shoulders just between each shoulder blade. I get it all the time usually due to cold weather and it seems more frequently due to stress. I can usually avoid it by keeping my shoulders warm but once it sets in I haven’t found a suitable cure for it yet. I’ve had the worst spell of it this week. It’s very painful and probably not helping my exhaustion. Anyway, I’ve never heard any non-Japanese mention the condition so I’m quite inclined to believe that it may be have historial cultural roots. Either way, it’s driving me crazy!!