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The New Year's celebration pictures, finally. These might be boring to people who don't know the people in question, but then Mynciboi broke 50 uniques a day for the first time yesterday, so what the hell do I know?

Here's my flatemate, [censored], who is running for [censored], working on the fabulous posters we are going to be putting up over campus first thing tomorrow morning.

My supervisor has threatened me with the possible publication of my not-yet-written project. This fills me with the same mixture of hesitant hope, nervous excitement and abject terror that has been so prevalent in me lately. It's a pity that the trip to Barcelona fell through, but there are so many other things I should be doing with my time I ain't exactly gonna be twiddling my thumbs.

The last hundred pages of the last book of "His Dark Materials" is utter drivel. It makes the ending of The Return of the King seem short and sweet. I got through the three books in the series in only a week and a half, so they must have been quite good, but god damn those last few pages were hard going! I kept wanting to stop and gouge my own eyes out. On top of that the most interesting facets of the book were poorly developed, and I got the feeling he didn't really know what he was talking about.

Freedom! I'm not on the Pride Executive Committee anymore! Unfortunately that doesn't quite mean I get to stop, it just means I have to teach my successor on top of doing the Giltterball posters. Which I will do sometime very soon, I promise!

I got zero time to write or post pics today, but I will anyway. Natch. Trying to think of a succinct way to put my life, the huge amount of stress in various directions, the icks and the acks and the erks with various people and places, the many things I have to do and the little time I have to do them…

And all I can come up with is that James Brown song: Feel Good. The brass section blares silently in my head as a smile threatens to flicker into life at one end of my mouth. There maybe a twinkle in my eye, I really couldn't say.

I stole this but I'll use it anyway: Lived and Living.

I was stared down today. In public. In a bar, no less. It was most disconcerting. Not quite sure what was going on; the cutest guy in the place decided to stare at me in a quasi-challenging stylee, and freaked me out a little. So after 5 seconds of "WTF?" I didn't so much as glance at him again. If that sort of thing happens again with anyone no doubt I'll remeber to raise an eyebrow at him, and if that doesn't work I'll raise my glass and grin aside. Live and learn?

Sugar was very good! They played Outkast - Hey ya and Basement Jaxx - Good Luck next to each other and I nearly died :-)

See her as she plays with lovely pink lego! Vote Pink Lady for Welfare & Equal Opportunities Officer in the upcoming Primaries!

One day people will understand that you can't shove Word files into HTML. One day. Apparently I'm looking very butch today. A jumper and a haircut = very butch. Hmm. And fuck me do I have some good MP3s?! I'm just rediscovering the collection… I really need to get the right cable to connect my computer to my hi-fi though, these tinny little speakers do them no justice.

I missed dead-cat day!!
(As we call the anniversary of the death of our cat Jelly two years ago.)
I'm not even sure when it is!!
Though I'm pretty sure it was around a couple of weeks ago!!
And this is the first time it's even crossed my mind, and that was only because I was thinking back to the time around when I first joined the exec…
Erk.

Apparantly I look like I've been up all night. Three guesses why that is! Yes, you in the braces?! CorREEEEECT! It's becuase I HAVE been up all night! Give yourself a round of applause. Quite a guy. Love the shirt.

It is weird to think that to some people I'm just a blog. Even some people I know read my blog a lot more often than they actually see me. Admittedly it's less hassle for me but is that not a bit weird? I wonder what misconceptions people make about me reading this…

People who shuffle their feet when they walk irritate the hell out of me. But not as much as people who can't open doors. And more so when they are guys, and have no excuse to be that pathetic. I was going in to Costcutters the other day and the guy in front me's bid to open the door consisted of falling limply into it. After waiting a few seconds behind him whilst he struggled in vain I slammed the door open over his head, and smiled at him neighborly when he looked around startled. I mean come on! Provided you are not an old lady or a cripple; IT'S NOT DIFFICULT!

Rant over. I've read two books this week! Here's a random picture of Marc.

After a week of much going out and re-establishing my social network (read: reminding people I'm alive) it's kinda predictable that I am now faced with a shiteload of work to do. Deadlines on Monday and Tuesday. Thankfully they both require very little writing but I will have to become fluent in two outdated un-user-friendly computer programs. ARRRGH!

Bows was good but a little bit odd last night, as I arrived much earlier than I usually do, with a posse of first years that I had only heard of. I knew everyone last year! Everyone! I felt very, very old when I arrived and the only people I knew were the bar man and the old fogey sleeping on the couch. Still, a couple of the youngsters proved to be very cool, and the rest of the usual posses turned up soon enough. It's fun to pick up my camera the morning after and remind myself What-The-Hell-Happened :-) I feel like a panda is sitting on my forehead, which is not an entirely pleasant sensation. Pictures here now. In chronological order as always. MUAHAHAHAHA!

In other news, I found out Monkey in welsh is Mwnci. Curses! Must stop having fights with walls >:-/

Just punched a wall and reinstated those macho credentials that people so obviously don't give a shit about when I later realised my knuckles were covered in blood. Woot!? Yawn!!

I don't really like telling people they've been a twat; as there's always going to be a reason for it. I don't really like hearing that I've been a twat either, but I don't mind that much, because there's always a reason for it.

On Tuesday I was pretty curt with friend on messenger. I had just found out my uncle was dieing a slow, painful, cancerous death. Cancer-2, Uncles-0. Should I have told him that? Seems a bit silly to bring it up, as there little one can say in response that doesn?t seem foolish.

There's always a reason.

[Click here for irrelevant-but-cool Artyness.]

home- 93 415 36 16, mobile- 660309135

My room is tidy, my dishes and clothes are clean, my spanish work is done a day early, I've completed Planescape and have read a few hundred pages of the book I'm reading. Was reading. It's finished now. So, procrastination much? This program I have to write is pissing me off too much to actually do.

I'm going to Barcelona in week 5! Probably. Fuck-ups notwithstanding.

TopB was another great one, the first one I've been to in months too. Though there should be rules against Milly attacking me viciously and Chris making me blush. Stop it, you're half-my-size and straight respectively! Bloody drunk people. Tsk.

When we went on the dancefloor near the end and we were dancing in a huge group I was loving it when Giles, Dave and Will arrived, fresh from seeing Justin Timberlake, and filed their way in to "get down"; it was like the climax of a cheesy musical jamboree where the characters you thought were dead come back to life for added feel-good factor.

I spent much of yesterday (and the day before) shouting at my computer and cursing the day NTL was spawned because of it's shockingly slow performance and the constant refreshes that were necessary, only to find out much later that evening that my damned flat mate had been using up ALL the bandwidth, in ABSENTIA, for randomers to UPLOAD random shit. To recap, he wasn't even at his computer, he wasn't even downloading anything, and there wasn't even space left for a txt file.

Click on the image for a larger version. It's another one of new year's morning. I like it lots.

MT is so rubbish. Putting pictures up is incredibly laborious in the first place, clearly it wasn?t meant to deal with many pics at once, but the fact that you can't get it to write the html for adding pics/thumbnails/popups or whatever without having just uploaded the image in question is stupid. Especially when a browser error means I lose all the script I have. So my choices I am left with are

1- Upload all the pictures again. Even though they are already there and I've spent an hour and a half putting them there.

2-Write the HTML again myself, which is very difficult if only because I don't know the dimensions of the pictures

3-Bugger all the fancy crap and plonk all the pics on the same page that will take ages to download. Grr. Went with 3. Clink on the link below to see the pictures from Last nights epic Boogie Nights/Reckless night out. Sorry about the download time.

Thursday was a Good Day brought to you by mint and chocolate Cornettos, Cappachino, doing Spanish prep on pointless stalls, Oriental Star and speaking to a stupidly large number of people, several of which I only met that day, which was interesting. The highlight of the star-studded day was standing outside CostCutters with Other Dan (see picture) for an hour, eating ice-cream in the freezing cold and not caring (too much) because I was too busy laughing my ass off, so much kudos goes to him. The fact that we subsequently went inside for hot coffee might have been a significant factor, but hey :)

The view from my parents house:

My tongue hurts. Damn Kaleidoscope coffee in damn polystyrene cups that stay scalding hot for half an hour. And don't you wish you had my name? :-) Hurhurhur?

I think I learned the nature of "just getting on with things" this weekend. Not in a martyr-like way, but in a self-guiding self-perpetuating enthusiasm type thing. Very odd. Think I might understand Martyn a lot better now, apropos of nothing.

Still soundly quashing the occasional urge to kill everyone I know and emigrate, which is good. Getting increasingly annoyed at every day that passes without getting enough "done", which is not helped by the fact that ?enough? keeps increasing :-)

I've just looked at the schedule for the student cinema this term, and there's a whole slew of films I really want to see, including the Matrix trilogy and Big Trouble In Little China =) Genius!!

Went to the Student Union EGM this evening, was a little dull, but a worthwhile issue (to do with relocating advice and welfare services) and I find it curious and interesting to see if I make sure to only go occasionally; debating is another one of the many things I used to be really into and then got bored of.

I should find out what set of beliefs I ascribe to. Because I certainly have them, and could explain them if I didn't think hearing other people discussing the working of the multiverse in vague terms was so mind-numbingly boring. Atheist, humanist, agnostic, nihilist, determinist… I need to go find out what these things really mean…

Found my phone by the way! I never lost it in fact, I just left it at home like a complete muppet.

A few London pictures. The newyear pics will be up soon, promise!

I hate the idea of being loved for somthing I've done in the past or for something i dont care about. Or maybe I just hate the idea of being loved? The very idea of that is so cliched and contemptable; this whole self loathing thing is getting ferkin old. I get the same sinking feeling in my soul when i realise the words coming out my mouth are horribly banal as i do when i consider my life and where it's going, or is not going. Only I can't solve the problem by cracking a joke or shutting up. I don't even really feel like i have a life, it's just a selection of snippets of other peples lives that I've pasted together. My response to just about everything lately has been to distance myself from those who claim, correctly or not, to know me well. Oh, yeah, and it seems I'm always happiest when I'm alone, but then my secret new-term's resolution for the past 4 terms has been to spend more time alone.

I've lost my phone somewhere, Portabello road is cool, the muppets are very, very trippy, Heaven sucks, coffee is almost too good, there are a lot of freaks in London and I've had a mid-month identity crisis for the third month in a row now. *Yawn.* Bored of crises now.

I've been up 21 hours. I need to sleep in tomorrow, but I can't.

The gutters are overflowing, there were two car crashes on the way into uni, I've lost a bunch of codes that I need that I only got from my supervisor the other day, it's only 9:45 and I've been up for two hours. Not an auspicious day so far. I have loads to do today for a deadline tomorrow, that I'd much rather complete tonight so I can go out.

Apropos of nothing, here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the beach at new year. Don't know why I didn't put them up before.

Well it's not particularly shameful really, it's just a bit of a shame that the most concrete and enduring achievement of the Govan family is to set up a load of door-to-door god botherers :-(

retort, clamps, obv

spinner, obv

biurettes, in cupbourd

speed counter (not needed?) in cb

power supply in cb

ink, below in cb

bulb/teat, from chem,

spirit level from eng,

wires from elec,

I'm in the sweltering bowels of Engineering at uni wondering why nothing is where it is supposed to be and getting increasingly frustrated with this.

X-Ray is a fantasticly cool magazine and their free 'best of the year' cd is one of the best cd's I have, and not only because I had never heard any of the songs on it before :-)

Just found a manual from '91 for QEMM 386. Dispair is setting in. But then in the drawer below I find the draft copy of the project of my predecessor. Random much? I already have the final copy in my bag, but this one has two sets of notes on it etc; very interesting. Perhaps too interesting? I'm on pretty dodgy ground… Anyway, I still haven't found those FUCKING PIPETTES!!.

Didn't go out last night or the night before, many other people partying, but not me. Scary thing is I wasn't really bothered about that; I must be getting old or something. I really need to stop with the coffee too; it's just not good for me, at the moment my short-term memory is next to useless.

Right, I've cannibalised and scavenged most of the apparatus I need, all that's left is a balloon teat… My kingdom for a balloon teat!

Planescape Torment is really good. Damnit! And my camera is giving me slight issues at the moment so here's a shamlessly arty link to keep people going. (In fact if you are at all interested in photography have a navigate around the site, it's really good.) Oh, and before I forget; 'The Last High' by The Dandy Warhols is a genius bit of music, so good it makes me suspect that they might actually be a genius band. I need their album.

You are now half way through the project and the progress report should contain a concise statement of your

achievements to date,

preliminary review of the background literature,

plus an updated programme for the work to be performed up to completion.

Review your original project title, objectives and timetable, identify any significant changes and discuss and justify these changes.

The report should be clear and concise, probably no more than 10 pages.

A structured and logical argument is expected.

Evidence to demonstrate an appreciation of the aims and objectives of the project.

Adequate reporting of background literature, preliminary results, and progress to date.

Evidence of planning capable of delivering a timely completion to the project.

Introduction:

Aims and project objectives

What are the hypotheses to be tested and the project objectives?

Now fully defined, may have changed from the original, discuss how they have changed and why, stressing how much work has been done

Background

Droplet => fingering => fourier

What questions you trying to answer? What trying to demonstrate? What key findings so far? How much left to do? Is the literature review done?

Identify the key points of key peices, can prob be done from the summery things

Image averaging: What is a 2-D fourier transform?, what is fingering/ a droplet splash, [Background/ literature review:

Droplet formation on flat surfaces, crowning etc

Droplet formation on sloped surfaces?

Averaging droplets or other shapes

If very many images are averaged then the result would be approximate to a black circle with a grey outer section, to get around this we introduce the idea of rotating the droplet patterns to give a ;?best fit? (explain what that is).

Examples of images and polygons and their transforms

Progress(?) achievements and problems

How are you going to analyse the data? risks? new software/ language,

Method?

What questions you trying to answer? What trying to demonstrate? What key findings so far? How much left to do? How is the data valid? -do program to automate the averaging of images-!

Averaging, examples of

thing in pascal!!

need simple program that automatically averages them

+ working out how to twist them

+ next stage = working out how to find how similar the images are

+ last stage combinging them all

Equipment Set-up- photos

Initial results, validity, probs with,

droplet patterns, -=:must find efficient way of doing the paper and the subsequent processing, scanning in in b+w .bmp

differing heights,

tilted plate,

spinning at various speeds,

tilted one way then the other whilst spinning,

check poss of sandpaper/glasspaper, quantify poss; colour, quantification, grades

check poss of photographing of droplet impact

One particularly frustrating problem with Scion Imaging is that it can only read memory-intensive .BMP (bit map) or uncompressed .TIFF (Tag Image File Format) files and cannot read the more efficient .jpg or .gif formats that many graphics programs produce by defauklt, demanding some conversion - whereas the majority of graphics programs save files as .jpegs or .gifs so these need to be converted-

Timetable

identify tasks that remain and resources required (time / equipment) sequence of tasks.

Risk

What could go wrong? Research / processing weak? how to cope with such. also planning for computer failure.

what could go wrong

-don't think it's going to work, why, relies on the mimited constants being enough to regulate the chotic thingsies… fonisntance the hiegth anf size of droplet can be regulated, but the rougness of paper… if the drops are not roated to fit then what will be seen is a dark circle and a lighter circle, which is exactly whjat is seen when the smoother photographic peper is used, so the fingering effect it intrinsically chaotic… *Back up with lit*

-multiple servers for notes to protect against computer crashes

The Boy meets boy webcomic ends in a week! Noooooooooooooooooo! *sob*

Weather in leamington really sucks.

A selection of nicer pics that I took over the new year get-away; click on them to get a larger view.

New Years fifteen-hour long party was alternately great, weird and fantastic, and I was the only one of the posse who remembers the entire night. Also great were the camera-clicking trips to the beach on the 1st day of the year. As I suspected, I now have far too many pictures to ever put on the site :-) I love my new camera!

This is sunrise, 2004, on the beach somewhere near North Berwick.

My new years resolutions are:

1: Work; treat uni like a 9-5.

2: Find some sort of direction, even if it is temporary.

3: Make a twat out of myself (comparatively and metaphorically speaking).