Well, today was busy… I’m sure that will come as a complete surprise to oh… no one. Anyway, got up, had a shower, all that morning stuff. I then went in to UW and went to my database class, which was on triggers and their (lack of) scalability under current technologies. Pretty interesting stuff, although I don’t know that given the ability to have a plethora of triggers (including many user-defined ones) whether or not it would be commercially useful. It might have some performance benefits for major eCommerce sites that process hundreds of thousands (or more) of transactions… I guess it’s pretty hard to say.

Next up was Ubiquitous computing, which was really interesting. This class is student-led – students from the class put together a presentation each week on the required reading, and then after giving a brief overview lead a general discussion on the material. Today’s discussion was on the Enhanced Telephone, which is a SoftPhone (a phone on your PC) developed my Microsoft. We also discussed web browsing in a mobile environment as well, although that wasn’t really the focus. Pretty interesting stuff, but the general trend of the discussion lent more towards people saying that they would prefer to have a smarter phone that have the phone on the PC. I think that we’re heading more and more towards integration (of sorts) of the two – mobile phones are more and more mini-personal computers which just happen to have telephony capability. There are already many semi-PDA mobile phones that sync up with PCs and I strongly suspect it’ll become more and more prevalent in the mobile market. At the moment there isn’t any common-ground interface for mobile-to-PC syncing without buying into some seriously expensive phones with the mobile version of Microsoft Windows. There aren’t really a lot of players in the mobile-desktop market, and certainly none that have been able to reduce the cost-learning trade-off enough to find a mass-consumer foothold. Thus companies will continue to tie people into using phones with voice, text messaging and maybe photo messaging for quite a while yet. Anyway, it was a pretty interesting discussion.

Next up I finally get the little bit of paper I need – my CSE login details. I went into the CSE reception and picked it up (as per emailed instructions from my adviser). This means I finally have access to all the right materials, I’ve got wireless access in the CSE building, I can log into the labs, etc. etc. Oh, and before I forget again (actually I may have already mentioned this) – the café in the CSE building Atrium is called ‘Reboot’, which is exactly the same as the one in the CSSE atrium back at good old Canterbury. Actually, the architecture, while having its own distinct signature, has a lot of things in common with the MSCS building back at Canty as well… makes it feel kind of homey actually, even if there are enough differences to remind me I’m not in… er… New Zealand any more. ^_~

Anyway, I did some emails and had some lunch in at the HUB again. I really like it there, it’s comfortable, the food’s good, it’s got fast wireless internet… what more could I want? All in all I think I’ll be spending a fair bit of time there.

Next up was the CSE Colloquium, and this time the visiting lecturer was a leader in the field of computational biology. This was a pretty interesting talk, trying to come up with algorithms for sampling and generation of accurate protein representations in 3D-space. Very cool stuff. Mostly the problems that they’re having at the moment are to do with sampling algorithms. The lecturer (whose name I’ve forgotten already… figures) likened their method at the moment to having a hundred people land on Jupiter, then gradually increasing the rate of sampling until they had some semblance of ‘accuracy’ for the ‘valleys’ (the points of lowest energy composition, which the molecules will naturally tend to)… the problem is that you can’t find valleys that are very deep but only have a narrow aperture. Interesting problem and certainly some cool applications (synthesizing cures for diseases, including HIV), but I don’t know if I’d want to get into the field. You never know, I might pick up some biochemistry and renounce Computer Science!

Then again, I might not.

After that I went to explore the HUB a bit more, which was certainly interesting. I picked up the leaflet from the experimental college, which runs all kinds of extra-curricular classes – dancing, drawing, all kinds of stuff I really haven’t looked into properly just yet. At the moment their leaflet-thing (which looks more like a little newspaper) is sitting on my desk and I’m hoping I’ll get around to reading through it some time in the next week or so.

I also explored the games area downstairs. Yes, that’s right, the games area. It’s a business, of course, but they’ve got pool tables, coin-operated video games, a bowling alley (yes, a bowling alley), foos-ball, table tennis… it’s a pretty cool wee establishment, and it certainly appears cheaper than what I’ve seen in New Zealand, which is a bit odd. On that note, things here are disparately expensive. Food in particular seems rather costly here, but at the same time there are other things that are pretty cheap. Computer components are cheaper from what I can see (gee, I wonder why that is…) and books appear to mostly be a bit cheaper as well. I think that covers most of the major expenses in my life. ^^;

Anyway, after that I did a few more emails, then bought some Pocky and some other candy and headed back to my apartment to do some study. I checked in with KyungNam about whether or not he wanted to share dinner, to which he said later. No problem, I wasn’t super-hungry right then anyway. Back to my room for some more study, then after a bit KyungNam and I went up ‘the Ave’ (University Way) to a Thai restaurant owned by a nice Korean lady that he goes to fairly often. I didn’t really know what to get, so I got some pork-fried-rice doctored up a bit. Pretty good, actually and reasonably priced – I’ll be going back there. We had some good discussion over dinner, then headed back.

Once we got back we continued some discussion about downloading television shows and music and so on, and he gave me all the login details to the UW DC++ hub for speedy downloading of what material is available. For those of you with friends who have access to the University of Canterbury DC++ hub, you’ll know what an advantage this can be in terms of watching things and listening to music. ^^ Anyway… just generally chatted and so on.

After that I (set some things to download and) did some study and emails, then had a good conversation with Anastasia. Then, wonder of wonders, I met my other flatmate. His name is Andrew, and I can see why he has an ‘anti-social’ label. I mean, I’ve got plenty of ‘anti-social’ friends, but I can at least talk to them and once I’ve got common ground it’s all gravy… talking to this guy was like talking to a hedgehog. Short snuffles and shuffling of feet, nothing further volunteered. Yeesh. Well, I’ll work on it and see if I can’t find something we have in common so we can at least be sociable and so on.

After that I did some more emails and study, then watched some television off of the UW DC++ hub that I downloaded in the interim time since KyungNam gave me the details for it. While this was fairly relaxing, I still ended up with more insomnia… this is getting a bit ridiculous actually. I hope this is just a shifting around thing, and now I’m ‘settled’, my sleep will take on some kind of normality. Whatever that means for me, anyway.