Validation - Saturday - 12th of November

I got up fairly early today, intime to be on the net for 0800. The WoA results were being done by only two pople today and we wanted to get them done (plus it meant he wasn't staying up too late). The results took a while but everything pretty much worked out well, I also took the time to upload a massive update to the WoA website, it's now browsable on a 56k modem. Though, this is no problem for me any more as I simply browse offline. I had sandwiches for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch AND.... sandwiches for dinner. Around 1400 I cycled into Tesos to get a pack of sugard and some milk. I also went to Wilksons and got a free pen (I had a voucher) and a mutli-plug thingy for when more than one person want's to use a laptop (it was 1.39). I got a discount becuase the person at the till managed to type in the wrong number for the pen voucher, wooo hoo, I'm ahead 20p. The evening was spent bringing the WoA website up to spec with the HTML standard, BBEdit not only has multiple file search and replace, it also has helper methods for everything, HTML, XML, XHTML, CSS and probably more validation features, it's really really good. Lesson of the Day - Stabilo pens are really neat, all the better if they're free

I love BBEdit - Friday - 11th of November

I got up nice an late, recently I haven't been getting as much sleep so I figured that now was a good time to snooze. I got in for Tawfik's lecture and learnt absolutely nothing new, next lecture will be similar to this one and I know all of that. My friends and I (that know it all) are considering taking notes in crayons for a joke (there is nothing saying that we CAN'T). After Tawfik's lecture my friends and I crammed some maths for an hour and then turned up to the test room. The test was very hard, I think I did worse than last time (60% last time), though I don't think I failed. After getting back I had dinner with Jack and Briley. After that I spent the rest of the evening finnishing a new look for the WoA website. I also had the presence of mind to check the pages in IE. The following was my response to what happened in IE and IE alone. !!! GAAAAAAAAAAH !!! It was atrocious (a bit like my spelling), I spent the rest of the evening finding a PHP script that worked (dry drunning is so useful) and made stuff show/not show if IE was the browser. The site wont look as nice in IE, then when you factor in that it has an edited CSS it gets worse. I was up until about 2350 trying to get everything working. WoA will now have a news page etc etc. Lesson of the Day - Dry run everything you can, wait until something is ready before showing it off

Real Lab number 1 - Thursday - 10th of November

I got up earlyish, depsite the headwind and low tempreature I managed to get to the 0900 lab on time, which was important because we get marked for attendance. My lab partner Howard wanted to be a partner to someone else, which, seeing as he knew them, is fair enough. However, this left me on my own with no clue. A guy called David sitting next to me also had no partner so I sat next to him. Like Howard he's pretty good at electronics and so we got on well, we spent two hours working out how the Seven Segment Display works. After the lab I cycled back, grabbed some tuna fish sandwhiches and cycled back in. I sat down, took some pictures of my class mates and then attended the lecture. Sadly, most of the pictures I took last night are blurred so there's only two, on of Brliey and Sarah, and another with Sam and Helen, though Jack's just about in it too. Hassan was very amusing today. When a girl walked in 15minutes late (she was also in the wrong room and Hassan knew it) she said 'Am I meant to be here?', to which Hassan replied 'Yes, I'm the good looking teacher you are after'. The whole class laughed and she left. I answered several questions inteligently, and with the rest of my row told Tom to shut up whenever he asked a stupid one, it worked quite well. Hassan had two weeks ago told us a story about why he always cleaned boards, seeing him leave the board uncleaned, I shouted after him that he forgot to clean it, his exact words were. 'You clean it, I remmeber your face'. Gareth laughed at me, unfortunatly for him he was facing forwards, I was comming from the back of the class so gave him a slap across the back of his head, it made a great noise (without causing pain). That evening I sat down to dinner with Jack and Briley (after getting my coat off Lorna). On display were packs of sandwhiches almost past their sell-by date. I now have three of them, thank you very much Briley and Jack. After that I went back, got my laptop and sat down in the refectory. Gareth sat down next to me, we chatted and watched some parody movies ("Star Wars 3 a Lost Hope" and "A Glitch in the Matrix"), we're now thinking of making something like that ourselves (with the rest of our class). I have a math test tomorrow and need to do some revision, so, no web-design today ^^ Lesson of the Day - Sometimes drivers have no respect for cyclists, they deserve to go slower, remember that next time they cut you up (I overtook him seconds later).

A little nippy - Wednesday - 9th of October

I got up nice an early and cycled in. It was freezing cold, so naturally my body was fine, minus my fingers. They hurt for a good quarter of an hour after getting to the Uni. My first lecture was on computing, it was okay, I asked soem inteligent questions while Tom asked some stupid ones. After that lecture I had one on the Technology Context by Chi. Chi is a very funny professor who appears to know almost everything. He primaraly teaches the programming side and is the one who helped me get C working on my computer. I wish I'd taped the lecture as it was really very interesting, if I've ever got a laptop in a lecture and I know somebody on Skype then I'll be happy to let them listen in. After the lecture I cycled back, cooked some sausages (this time they took only 40 minutes, strange...) and started revamping the World of Arl website, it needed a slight difference, but the load times on my modem were getting annoying. I sat down and had dinner with Jack. Marisa very very kindly gave me her pudding (a cream horn), Jack was aghast, I wasn't. After eating Jack and myself walked back, we met Briley and Lorna, Jack carried on to his room while I sat down with the ladies and enjoyed the free hot drinks. The CU hall group was good, I got lots of pictures and will be posting them up soon but managed to leave my coat (and more importantly, gloves) in Lorna's room (it's a big room), looks like I'll be chilly for my 0900 start tomorrow. After the hall group Sam and myself fixed Jack's printer (I'd already had a go at it but couldn't manage) Lesson of the Day - Don't leave your shower on a little, if you do water will drip and bounce off the control-dial, all over the floor of your bathroom, it'll take all day for the water to evaporate, it may also damage a book on talking to people.

Uneventful, Boo Hiss - Tuesday - 8th of November

I got up in time for my 0900 start. The lecture on Internet Apps was the best yet, we discussed the corusework and asked lots of questions. After that I had some Maths, our exam will include Logarithms, Trigonometric Identities (urrrgh) and something else that's not 'too' bad. I cycled back after the lecture and had a lovely Gammon sandwich. I then cycled back in for the lecture from Cripps. He's very amusing and despite being two hours, is quite bearable. After the lecture I went on what seemed like a wild goose chase to see what I had to do to become a Course Representative. I found that Cripps was the person to talk to, then, that actually he wasn't, but we still chatted for a while. When I finnaly found the right guy (Branislav Vuksanovic, I think I spelt it right) and was told to email him.... I got back, did some basic web stuff and went to dinner with Jack. After dinner I went back to the refectory to have free broadband, email Branislav and free Hot Chocolate. After using the facilities (And chatting to the staff a little, Tom says he's going to try to make some Toffee Squares some time :D ) I sprinted back to my room (it was raining), showered, did some web design and some basic graphical work to some of the downloaded webcomics. I've also got a Christmas List - feel free to get me stuff on it.... Lesson of the Day - Never put off today what you can put off forever

Achtung, Puncture! - Monday - 7th of Novemember

The day started early, a nice 0900 lecture, this time the person turned up. Apparently I've got to do a 5 minute talk, along with 3 minutes of questions presentation on a subject. I think I'll be choosing WoA, I think I'm qualified to talk about it... After my second lecture I sat, chatted to some people and showed someone to their next lecture (they had no idea where it was and I managed to attend it by mistake on the first week). I decided to go home, of the horror, I had a puncture, I spent a while fixing it, here's the run down of how long everything took (approximatly) Walking Home - 1 hour Taking both wheels off bike and getting everything ready - 10 minutes Taking out rear inner-tube and leaving both wheels in the shower - 10 minutes Patching inner-tube - 15 minutes (I had to apply two patches, it was a couple of holes) Using a wire brush and hot water to scrape the muck off my wheels - 1 hour Break and more shower time - 30 minutes Oiling of the rest of the bike - 10 minutes Placing inner-tube back into wheel and waiting to double check it was fixed - 30 minutes Putting bike back together - 10 minutes Total - 3 Hours and 55 Minutes (approximatly) On the flip side my brakes are a little better and my bike wheels are now silver, not a grimy, oily black. The CU meeting at St Lukes was okay, I arrived early to help with the sound stuff. Afterwards we went to the Pub, I sat down and chatted for a while, the real enjoyment however came later. I walked back to Sarah's car with Sarah, Briley and Lorna. Yes, I've just realised that I spelt her name wrong all this time, I'm very sorry (I don't think she actually reads this so I'm okay....). Anyhoo, the fun part. After getting back to Sarah's car I proposed a race back to Langstone, I told them it'd be fair as there was no traffic to slow them down. My advantage was that they were in a car park, I managed to find a shortcut out. They overtook me at the last leg of the journey, BUT, they were breaking the speedlimit, my guess is that I was going a 20-25mph and to overtake in the space of two secodns required a speed of 40mph minimum. The limit there is 30 and it's not a wide road..... However, I count myself as winning because they couldn't find a parking space and they should have thought of that before taknig the car (okay, it's more of a moral victory). Next time, next time ladies.... Lesson of the Day - It's worth spending time to fix stuff like Punctures

Weekend in Wales - 5th and 6th of November

I got up I have no idea when on Saturday. The first thing I did was have breakfast, promise Arakasi that I'd be on MSN for a while then go shopping (within 5 minutes of saying I'd be online a while). I came back, did the WoA results and played some DOTA. After DOTA and soem delicious Curry for dinner I went down the pub with Lewis and played pool for a few hours, it was good fun. On the way home we watched cars race through a massive puddle (well out of the way of course), the highlight was a bus go through at the same time as a car (opposite directions), the car was completely covered in water. Sunday was quite good, I got up and played some DOTA, I managed to lose both games, clearly I should have tried harder. After that I sorted out some money stuff with my Mum (Student Loan going into my other account...), I then spent some time packing stuff up for the trip back to Uni. The Car journey back was fine, though a little long. Overall the weekend was great, I really enjoyed seeing my family again, especially my cat, he's so soft, stupid and downright cuddly :) Lesson of the Weekend - Just because you leave the motorway on the wrong junction and return after turning round, doesn't mean you'll be behind where you were 30 seconds ago...