My sleep was really broken and I kept waking up to odd sounds and the like. Eventually I got up, feeling groggy as all hell and like I hadn’t really slept all that much at all. I went in to Graphics, great lecture on textures, geometric extrusion and bump-mapping… a lot of this stuff is stuff that was covered in my graphics course in 2004, but it’s presented in a more concrete manner and with the constant assignments and so on, it’s certainly a more hands on approach and not one in which I’m falling asleep in lectures or having a hard time maintaining concentration. Anyway, good stuff. After that I had a bit of a chat with Mario about what I’d done yesterday and where to go next. If I’m not careful, I may end up doing all of the work, which is a bit frustrating.

After that I went to a reasonably interesting Colloquium lecture on the changing culture of Computer Science, with a particular focus on women in Computer Science and how to get more of them. The cultural shifts were particularly interesting, especially the common misconception that Computer Science is just programming, rather than programming being one of the tools at our disposal for logical challenges and problem solving. As was pointed out in this lecture, this is not particularly helped by “Computer Science” courses at the high school level, nor by most of the first-year Computer Science papers at universities, which usually just cater to learning the syntax of the fashionable programming language of the day. The lecturer, Lenore Blum, was a senior Computer Science faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, which has a very highly respected Computer Science department. I had a little moment of pride, as she mentioned a publication that came out of New Zealand as a step in the right direction. Not only that but one of the three authors was Dr. Tim Bell, who is one of my favourite (associate) professors back at Canterbury. Anyway, very nice to have Lenore give New Zealand a nod as leading the world in improving the accuracy of the perception of what Computer Science is about, as well as how to encourage young people (hah! I’m so old!) to get into Computer Science. This encouragement to approach Computer Science has led to an adoption of different admission policies, taking in well rounded individuals into the department rather than taking in those with the “hacker personality”, which has tended to dominate the Computer Science field the world over. Good stuff.

After that I went over to the HUB for some food and emails. I also had a bit of a chat to the guy sitting next to me, Erik, an aspiring Business School student. Nice guy, actually. Funnily enough I was replying to my mother letting her know that my package from New Zealand had not arrived yet… so naturally on my way back to the apartment there’s a note saying I have a package in my post box. Figures. Off I trot to get it, and then unpack my Kiwiana stash from my family. I got a beach towel that is a New Zealand flag, some magnetic poetry with a distinctly Kiwi flavouring, the Nature’s Best double CD set and a t-shirt. The t-shirt is, in fact, another “I look better online” t-shirt like the one that Robbie got me for my 21st, only in patented Like-A-Dress-But-Isn’t ™ size, as are most of my t-shirts for some reason… and people wonder why I have long hair. Big thanks to everyone back home for the package.

Did I mention I love the Wikipedia?

After I sat down at my computer, time flew as I listened to my Kiwi music, talked to Anastasia before she went to bed, did some more integration of code from Mario on our assignment (he seems more and more like a muppet the more I look at it, sadly), did some email, that kind of thing. I started writing my blog, looked at a few things online.

My kiwi flag towel hangs behind me on my wall, cunningly shoved into the top of my noticeboard (somewhat useless without pins, I might add), watching over me as I do the readings for my Ubiquitous Computing class tomorrow (none for my Database class as there weren’t any this week), breaking only to get a midnight snack. These papers weer on uses of mobile technology in aiding everyday life, which was pretty interesting stuff for me, given how many bloody lists I make! Anyone that knows me has probably at some point seen me referring to a to-do list, either on paper, in my diary or on my computer, so seeing some of the technological options and what people are doing to try and facilitate that is certainly interesting for me!

After that I posted my blog entries for the last couple of days (which had just been sitting in a Word file waiting for me to do it), looked over my to-do lists (that’s right, plural), did a bunch of business-type stuff that needing doing, sent out some emails, then watched some anime to calm down so I could get to sleep. Turns out it took quite a while to get to sleep anyway… I think my broken sleep last night just messed things up for this mini-cycle.

I did get some sleep, I think. I remember going in to university to meet up with Mario as a progress meeting on our assignment, realising that things were all going weird because he did something differently and we needed to adjust. After that I went back to my apartment and it goes a little hazy. All I can really remember is doing some work on my graphics assignment, having burritos for dinner and watching some anime. Very hot in my room for some reason, which probably is contributing to my lack of memory of the day, as I am writing this the day after.

Should I even bother writing these kinds of entries? I mean, it does occur to me every now and again that I am, in fact, writing complete shit and that no one wants to know what kind of burritos I eat and what I did during my day. Should I just write things in here when I have something to say? Something meaningful? Something thought-provoking? Or just when I feel like posting a bullshit opinion about some goings-on, or some movie I just watched? Man, I’ve got no idea. I think I’ll just keep writing whatever total bollocks I’m writing now, and somewhere interspersed will be my own little gems of perspective on life, the university and everything.