Not quite enough sleep, my alarm barely phased me and I went back to sleep. Then some kind of internal alarm goes off… seriously it felt like someone had strapped a buzzer to my chest. I sit up and realise that I’ve got 20 minutes before class starts. So I run around like a chicken with its head cut off getting ready and getting out the door.

I head off to Databases, which it turns out I was only late by about 20 seconds to, and hear about some research project opportunities (including an idea I gave her and was credited for in her slides!), and then a large discussion about sensor networks. A lot of it was similar to the material covered in the Colloquium the other day, with some other extensions. I didn’t really feel like I had a lot to contribute to the discussion today though, which was a little discouraging. However, I’m sure I’ll do better next time. ^^ I stayed after for a couple of minutes to talk to the lecturer about a few things we had gone over in terms of optimization of the dataflow in sensor networks, as well as comparing what would happen in the trade-off between a delta network and a tree network

After that I went to get some lunch, realising when I was almost at the HUB I’d left one of my bags in the classroom. Since I was heading back there after lunch anyway, I decided not to worry and just pick it up then. It didn’t have anything in there that I needed right away or anything. I started my blog entry after I had finished eating, then head back to the CSE building.

Next up was a talk by the guy who runs the Amazon website, who was apparently a graduate of UW. Very interesting stuff about how a lot of things don’t scale very well to millions of users every day and needing to be up 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. That had to be cut short as pretty much everyone needed to go to the other presentation on semantic web searching development (projects like KnowItAll, KnowItNow and TextRunner) here at UW and a bunch of projects they’ve been working on since 2003. Also fascinating stuff, I wouldn’t mind doing some research into that area, but to be honest I don’t know what I would be bringing to the table since it is not remotely something that I’ve worked on or learned about before. Ah well, I’ll have a look into it anyway.

Today I’ve been here for exactly a month. Weird. I’ve been so busy with everything going on (and I still haven’t done half the things I was hoping to) that in some ways it feels like I just arrived maybe 3 or 4 days ago. Very surreal kind of a feeling still, although I’m starting to get used to living in Steven’s Court. Somewhat. I can’t say it would be my first choice of how I would live in New Zealand if I was to go flatting, certainly.

Anyway, after the KnowItAll talk I just sat in the Atrium to do some email and continue my blog. I looked over the solution files in preparation for a help session on our next graphics project which was in an hour or so. Since Rob is giving a presentation in another one of his classes at the same time, I need to make sure I ask anything he needs to know as well.

The tutor was half an hour late, stuck in traffic somewhere. The session was mostly stuff that could have easily been gleaned from the information on the web, and really it was just the discussion with the other class members and actually talking to them that was valuable. Ended up walking most of the way back to my apartment with a guy called Chris, he seems pretty cool.

Back at the apartment I talked to Anastasia for a bit on the phone, then had some dinner and watched some anime to relax for a bit. After that I got stuck in to doing some more work, translating a search page from JSP to PHP. I had to consider various levels of security, lots of different cases on what to display and do a whole bunch of testing. Interesting stuff actually, especially as it involved some optimization of the other language.

After that it was pretty late, so I watched a little more anime and went to bed. Couldn’t get to sleep so I read for a little bit and tried again. Still no dice. More anime, tried again. Laid awake for ages, but couldn’t be bothered trying other things. Didn’t get a whole lot of sleep in the end.

Well, I got a call from a wrong number at 8am… not a great start to my day, I’ll admit. I ended up getting plenty of sleep though, and I woke up naturally about 20 minutes before my alarm went off, which is nice to know my body agreed with me. In any case I was happy with the work I got done last night, despite the hour.

Only official class today was Graphics. This time we had the tutor, who’s back from being sick and much better than the useless guy we had on Monday. Today we dove into some interesting theory stuff on approximating integrals, various probabilistic methods for ray casting and how useful all of it was in the context of computer graphics. Some interesting stuff, some of which will be directly applicable to the new assignment (that has already been… er… assigned), which is writing our own ray-tracer. Complex stuff, and this time it’s done in pairs. I’m going to be teaming up with Mario, a guy who actually works full time as a Software Development Tester for Microsoft, but has an incredible mathematical background and a strong interest in Computer Graphics academia. All in all he seems like he’s got a good head on his shoulders and will bring a lot to the table. I chatted with Rob after class as well, I’ll probably hook up with him at Zoka’s or something later on today.

Next up I went over to the HUB for a sub, which I really needed. Had to wait in line for a bit. As I was waiting in line, I was watching the Subway employees and seeing if I could formulate an opinion of some general classes of employee. Whether or not they wanted to be there, if they were having a good time, whether they thought they were paid enough… I’m not sure, really. I’m sure there’s probably been all kinds of studies done on this, but I’ll work on a Leith’s Ultimate Theory on Employees &tm; while I’m at it.

Anyway, I looked over some stuff for the next Graphics assignment and had my sub, then after a while I gave Rob a call to see where he was at, then we went to Zoka’s to sit down for coffee and work. He did some study and reading, I did some work-work. I also tried to get my OpenGL project from 2004 working, but to no avail – Visual Studio 2005 is giving me grief. After that he dropped me back at the apartment. I suspect this will be a fairly regular occurrence.

I did some emails then talked to Anastasia for while before she went to sleep. I did read most of the 47 page journal paper that was background material for tomorrow’s databases lecture, although a lot of it I skimmed over. Something to read when I have a lot of time – I might try and delve into it a bit more deeply on Friday.

After that I kick back and watch some anime to relax, then head to bed. Turns out I wasn’t as relaxed as I thought. I couldn’t get to sleep for a while, so I read a little then tried again… I did get to sleep.