Another One Bites The Dust

First exam done! Only 1 to go! After next Friday I will have completed all the university exams I will ever have to do in my life! Damn!

The last week has been great! Despite having to revise with the weather like it is can be a distraction, but going down to the lake for a spot of lunch every day is such bliss! It’s such a shame that just as the weather gets good everyone leaves university! Campus looks so beautiful this time of year!

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 0 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10 (still revision to go!)
• Last Meal. I haven’t had breakfast! That’s why I'm so hungry! Damnit!
• Song of the day. Michael Kiwanuka – I’m Getting Ready
• Thought for the day. "If you're going through hell. Keep going." - Winston Churchill
• What I’m Doing Now. Watching the Monaco Grand Prix! Our weather is as good as theirs! Haha!

New Kindlings

As I always seem to be saying on this blog, new and exciting things are afoot. Lots is happening at the moment, and I don’t just mean revision for my final exams… although I probably should.

No, there is lots to look forward to once this university madness is over. I’m currently in the process of looking for a new abode in Guildford for the coming year, since I seem to be sticking around thanks to my new found PhD position :D I’m hoping to live with Will, my current and ex-housemate, and Anna, my current housemates girlfriend. It’s complicated, ok, but it’s going to be awesome! 3-bedroom places are not all the rage, but there are some out there and we plan to find somewhere to call our own! But we haven’t found anywhere yet, there are a few viewings going on this week though so I’ll keep you informed if anything drastic happens. I promise this time.

What else? Well we’ve been testing the limits of our housemate Mike’s stupidity…

For those of you who don’t know, the Cinnamon challenge is where one attempts to swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon. It’s as simple as that…

If you like that there’s a few more here :D

I’ve also been keeping up my involvement in the student television station, recently put in charge of producing the fresher videos for the new students starting in September. Now isn’t that a shift? Just a few years ago I was the unknowing fresher…

I’d love to go into more detail about some of these things, but it will all be eeked out of me eventually.

Lots of plans, lots of ambition, lots of revision to do…

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10 (revision time!)
• Last Meal. Chilli without the chilli 
• Song of the day. Stevie Wonder – Superstition
• Thought for the day. House times are exciting!
• What I’m Doing Now. Putting off sleep…

Only

Only 4 weeks until Easter, when I’ll be writing my final project report and revising for my last exams.

Only 9 weeks until my final project is due, the most important document I will have ever written.

Only 14 weeks until the end of university, after which I’ll have finished the road of education and start my road to finding the meaning of life.

Only 19 weeks until America, another adventure of a lifetime :)

Only one chance to make the right choices in life. Be who you have always wanted to be. Inspire your dreams and make a difference.

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10 (come on motivation, i know there’s some of you left)
• Last Meal. Lots of chicken
• Song of the day. Earth, Wind and Fire – September
• Thought for the day. It’s no big deal. Just the future of humanity.
• What I’m Doing Now. Breathing.

Progress is progress…

So since my little excursion to Greenwich, life has been dribbling along very nicely indeed. I’ve got some plans for updating some websites which I currently run, namely moving the www.stmarybalham.org.uk site over to a php server running WordPress… I’m doing it to get more experience running my own server, and writing php; but also because I wrote the code for this website before I came to university and since then I’ve learnt some better techniques for dynamic website building than I used back then. It’ll be a challenge, but something I’m looking forward to digging my teeth into once this whole university thing is over.

My final project is coming along, it now shows a lot more information and I’m in the process of building a test rig that can assess the accuracy and performance of the system so far for benchmarking and to get some pretty graphs to go into my write up :)

And I got my results last week for my exams in January, I did really well! I got a first in all my modules and I’m averaging 82% for my degree :) Only 30% of my degree left! The end is in sight, finally!

And for those of you who are interested, the next video about my stupid housemates who are living off £1 for food for a month is up:

I didn’t think my voice could go that high for “Top tip of the week”… turns out I was wrong.

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 5 out of 10 (but it’s all interesting stuff…)
• Last Meal. Fish and chips
• Song of the day. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Scar Tissue
• Thought for the day. Don’t know whether giving my housemates a beta version of my app was a good idea… :p 
• What I’m Doing Now. About to do some more work… after lunch….

The final semester begins…

My last semester of lectures started last week and because of my cunning plan to front load my module choices for final year I only have two modules and my project work to do. While I regretted that decision in January, having to sit 4 exams, coursework and write a report for my project it all seems worth it now.

I’ve got a couple of marks back for coursework already, and they are both firsts, so with any luck I should still be on track. I’ll get my exam results before the end of the month and that will be a really good indicator of how I’m doing since I’ve now completed over 70% of my degree…

My new timetable is only 7 hours a week! 3 hours on Tuesday, 3 hours on Thursday and an hour on Friday. This gives me loads of time to work on my project witch is going really well (thanks for asking :P)

My project, ELROND, can now do lots of the things I explained in this diagram a while ago, and there’s still plenty of time for refinements and improvements which should give me lots to talk about in my final report. This makes me happy :)

At the moment my housemates Will and Mike are attempting to eat for a month on only £1 of food a day. I’m helping make a weekly video diary for MADTV:

That’s my voice in the intro :P

What else has been going on? Well I’m starting to think more seriously about life after uni, what to do, where to live, whether to go travelling for a while before starting work and so on… So far I’m planning a couple of weeks in California with Charlotte before starting work for the rest of my life. I’d also like to go on holiday with my housemates, but that’s just an idea at the moment.

It’s all exciting times, and Charlotte and I are off to London this weekend to see Mr Scruff play at Koko. I went last year with Julie and it was AMAZING! I’m really looking forward to round 2!

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 3 out of 10
• Last Meal. Kung Pao Chicken!
• Song of the day. Ed Sheeran’s Plus Album, it’s all good :)
• Thought for the day. I was there when this happened!
• What I’m Doing Now. Thinking about buying a Linode…

I’ve got 99 problems but exams ain’t one…

Hello! Exams are over until the summer, my 4th and last one was on Wednesday and now I have a week before my new set of lectures start. It’s been a bit non-stop since I last wrote in here at the start of December, the jokes of Christmas and New Year quickly a distant luxury as coursework deadlines and exams loomed. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t treat you to some of the photographs from the New Year celebrations…

The annual gathering of mine and Jake’s friends is fast becoming some sort of tradition, and good thing too because this year did not disappoint! All it takes is two dozen friends, some karaoke, alcohol and Who’s in the Bag to get things going! The cream carpet is still cream, and only one sprained wrist caused by a particularly flowery dance-off containing the “epileptic worm”…

There was also a bit of typical London touristy things going on during the days before new year with Jake, Sarah and Charlotte about…

The Science Museum, because there’s nothing wrong with being a geek, Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, and a secret cocktail bar in Liverpool Street :) good times.

The rest of the time was less interesting, but certainly more productive! With two big essays to write, and four exams to revise for it’s been a busy 3 weeks; but I feel it has paid off as my exams seemed to go well. I should get my results in a few weeks, so only time will tell… But with those done that marks the point of 70%. A whole 70% of my degree is now complete! And only a few months left until that figure goes the full nine yards… scary and exciting times!

I’m genuinely looking forward to my last semester at university. I’m ready to study my final tow modules, and progress further with my final project work.

Job prospects are still up in the air to some degree, but hopefully I won’t have any issues in that department…

So much to look forward too, and so much going on! I’ll aim to keep you guys in the loop with everything from my project, modules, MADTV, holiday plans, work prospects… and I guess I should start thinking about what to do when all this university malarkey is all said and done. Knowing how quickly the last few years have gone it’ll be over before I know it

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 5 out of 10
• Last Meal. Nibbles. 
• Song of the day. Paolo Nutini -  Last Request Piano Instrumental
• Thought for the day. 70% of degree done. Damn.
• What I’m Doing Now. Visiting my sister and then travelling to Weymouth tomorrow… Seems like I spend my life travelling sometimes :)

BBRRAAAGHHHHHHHHHHMMMM!!

We left off with an imminent trip to Weymouth. It was such a relaxing weekend, especially going to Chesil beach a watching the waves come crashing in. From the photos you’ll also notice which one is the dancer…

    

It was quite surreal how high the waves were, and the perfect sound of them breaking onto the seemingly infinite shoreline. It kind of reminded me of the beach in Inception; powerful, but beautiful.

The last few weeks have also seen the start of a new tradition: “Friday Pints”. After a long week working, a few of us down tools for a couple hours and go to to pub for a few bevvies. Get’s the weekend veins working and has already, on a couple occasions, resulted in carnage. Not that long left of university now, but that’s no excuse not to still be students!

Last Friday for example when we went to Rubix and must’ve had one of the best nights I’ve ever had in there. The downstairs bar (called HRB to those of us who started uni before it was renamed to The Living Room) was playing MUCH better music than the main dance floor, Pendulum and Queen among others…

This week I’ve made some good progress with my project work and started on a couple of essays that have to be in around exam season… which is only a month away now!! I can see lots of coursework and revision in the crystal ball over Christmas…

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10
• Last Meal. Cereal. In-joke? 
• Song of the day. Athlete – Beautiful
• Thought for the day. “Chance favours the prepared mind” 
• What I’m Doing Now. Procrastinating.

ELROND #2: The Pipeline…

The second post about my final year Electronic Engineering project to identify landmarks using photographs taken from a mobile phone in seconds.

Imagine you are walking around London and you come across a building that you want to know more about. You whip out your mobile phone and open up the ELROND app. By taking a picture of the building you want to know more about, ELROND returns relevant information in just a few seconds. The name and purpose of the facility, weather it is open to the public, the opening times, the phone number of reception, a history, appropriate web links… wouldn’t that be useful? Well that’s just one potential application of my project.

It could equally be used to display information about portraits in a gallery just by holding your smartphone in front of a painting, with relevant information overlayed on the screen in real-time…

Or just as an alternative to GPS to locate you when GPS is not available… such as indoors…

My project, titled Elrond, aims to provide the backbone or infrastructure to enable such apps to be written much quicker. But how does it work? how does that picture of a building turn into information?

The diagram below gives an overview of the process.

1. Once the Android application has extracted the features from the image of the building using a feature detection algorithm (more on that in a later post) the extracted information is packaged into an XML format and transmitted over a data network (3G or Wi-Fi) to a Linux web server.
2. The web server then parses the XML file into a format it can understand.
3. Each extracted feature is then compared to all known features by Elrond, hence gathering a shortlist of which buildings this is most likely to be a picture of. Because the number of known features is likely to be in the order of millions, a neat way of searching the set needs to be used, called a KD-Tree.
4. The searching returns a shortlist of images that most probably match the query image. The items at the top of the shortlist are the most likely, so the top 100 results are looked into in more detail. Elrond will look at all the features in both images, find ones that match, and store their locations. Then a homograph is calculated to see if there is a way to map the features from the query image to the stored image. A homograph is a matrix that describes the best way to map two sets of points to each other. If the homograph can map lots of points between the images, then that image is given a high match score.
5. After all the homographs have been calculated, the best matching image can be determined; or no match is found, in which case Elrond cannot return any information. Assuming a reasonable match was found, Elrond now knows what the building is! Relevant information about that building is maintained on a database, and so it can be fetched.
6. The database information is packaged into another XML file and sent to the mobile device.
7. The mobile device interprets the XML and graphically displays the information on the screen. Voilà!

I know that some people are reading this gormless, but for those that are interested to know more I want to write more posts about how specific parts of the application work and perform. So if you have any thoughts and suggestions let me know.

The next post will be about less techy things…

ELROND #1: Feature Detection in Computer Vision

The first post about my final year Electronic Engineering project. I introduce you to the topic of feature detection and what my project is about.
Feature detection is an important problem in computer vision. Computer Vision is the study of extracting information from the real world and somehow use it as an input to computer programs. A simple example of Computer Vision would be how Gollum was created for the Lord of the Rings films…

The creation of Gollum used motion capture from real world camera shots to digitally create the character.

Feature detection is the process of computer algorithms detecting interesting, or “perceptually interesting” locations of an image. Early feature detection worked by detecting edges within an image, but there were several problems with this approach.

^ from Wikipedia
One of the biggest uses of feature detection is a process known as Image Registration, where a computer can find similar images and determine that they are actually of the same building/object/face/landscape/tree/etc. And this is the basis for my project.

^ originally from http://ils.intel-research.net/ (now removed)
The premise of my project, titled Scalable Landmark Recognition on Mobile Devices, is to allow anyone with a mobile phone to take a photograph of a landmark and be told what it is, where it is and some interesting facts about it. For example, you could take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and phone app would recognise the landmark and return information about when it was built, how tall it is, how much ticket prices are today, opening times etc.

^ from http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2011/10/10/app-review-google-goggles/
This will be a downloadable mobile app for Android phones, and it will use feature detection to find similar images in it’s database and return information about the closest match. The app will require internet access to communicate with a server that will run the query and holds the database.
The project was dubbed “ELROND” by Anne, who I lived with in second year, because it’s close to SLROMD (which is what the actual abbreviation would be) and it also has Lord of the Rings references, which I’m all for!
So far I’ve got most of the feature detection working, and it should be quick enough to identify a match from 1000’s of images in under a second… but only time will tell. I’ll explain more about how my current solution works in a later post, but for now here’s a screenshot of it working on my computer…

• On the top-right you can see the query image, this would be the image taken on the phone.
• Below it is the image matched to it from the database.
• The white lines are lines between features matched between the query and database image (using a process called FLANN matching).
• The green box shows where the query image would fit onto the database image if you were to stitch them together in a panorama (called a homography).
• The top-middle window (with the red circles) shows the features found in the query image. The features are found using the SURF algorithm.
• The left of the image shows the code output, showing the progress of the database search and how the query image matched to the other images in the database.

What’s 2011 All About?

This post was written on Tuesday 4th January

2010 was a fantastic year. And as always I’m going to maintain that live is not about where you go, or things you see, but the people and the experiences you have along the way. Every single one of my top 40 moments of last year was great because of people, and that’s what will make 2011 too. But you can’t just sit inside and wait for people to turn up! Here’s the vague plan in my head of how 2011 is shaping up:

• January. More working in Switzerland
• February. Going to KoKo club in London to see Mr Scruff, and Becky comes to London
• March. Giving up chocolate for lent (well, trying). Grand Prix season starts :)
• April. Seeing The King Blues at KoKo. Another boat trip?
• May. Nothing yet
• June. End of tenancy at my current abode
• July. Contracted to finish at Sony
• August. Start of Inter-rail trip
• September. End of inter-rail trip
• October. Back at university
• November. Nothing yet
• December. Christmas (because some things don’t change)

I’ll talk about the inter-rail trip in another post, but that’s the chorus in a nutshell. I’ve never meant what I’m about to say with such passion: “BRING IT ON!”

• Happiness. 9 out of 10
• Tiredness. 0 out of 5
• Free Time. 3 out of 5
• Last Meal. Chicken Tikka Masala from the pub
• Song of the day. Ellie Goulding - Your Song 
• Thought for the day. 2010 was good, but 2011 will be better
• What I’m Doing Now. Looking at the amazing curtains now in my room to block out the noise from the living room next door. Thank you dad!

100% Of The Time, I Get 75.2% All The Time

I haven’t really figured out what I’m doing with this blog while I’m on placement. It’s not like I have anything less to say, I just have less time to word it. If you have any ideas for what I can do while I’m on placement, then I’m all ears.

First thing to talk about is those results. I got them a couple weeks ago now, and my estimate of 76% wasn’t far off. I got 75.2% :)

That’s another first. My highest mark was 87% for programming. That’s not really a surprise when you factor in the 98% for the coursework. My lowest mark was Electronics 6, only 59%. I said on here that would be the hardest exam, and it definitely was. I’m really happy with my 77% in Computer Vision, that’s the one where I played with teapots. A little confused about how I only got 69% in labs, because the media project went really well…

Ah well, a first is a first. Although I do have to say I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get over 80%, but if you look at the year as a whole, with MAD TV and Sony, I think I can live with my decisions.

There’s so much more to talk about, we’re a good 2 weeks behind. On Friday 19th Frankie and I went to Grad Ball with the MAD TV camera to film the occasion. It was a brilliant night and makes me look forward to graduating! Not long now :S

Frankie and I having a great evening gate crashing grad ball and eating lots of strawberries and chocolate :P

You may have noticed that I’ve changed my hair slightly, it more… ‘up’ now. I was getting bored of having short hair and I thought placement was a good opportunity to try something new. So far I’m loving it, can’t believe I never tried this before!

We’ll leave it there for today, but we’ve still got lots to include such as the bank I love to hate, The King Blues live (again) and then everything I did last week!

Phew! I would just do a bullet point list, but some recent events we’re too good for that.

Try and see you tomorrow!

• Happiness. 10 out of 10
• Tiredness. 3 out of 5
• Free Time. 1 out of 5
• Last Meal. Bacon sandwiches (roast tomorrow!)
• Song of the day. John Mayer – Gravity
• Thought for the day. At the end of the day, all you have is tomorrow morning
• What I’m Doing Now. Being very happy :o)

PS pictures from this weekend :)

PPS I also have some very exciting news about work coming up…

No Curtains

The last week has flown by. Revision from dawn to dusk and beyond. And so far it looks like it’s paid off…

The last three exams have gone really well. I’ve left each one with the feeling that I’d revised the right thing and I did as well as I could.

Especially the Maths exam today since I was so worried last night that it was going to be a disaster. As it turned out it was probably the best exam yet! All the right questions came up, even some questions I’d looked at last night.

So only one exam left. On Friday. That gives me 3 days solid revision to prepare. I’m not very confident about this exam at the moment, but I’m hoping a lot can change in 72 hours.

Then, after Fridays exam I have a lot of partying to catch up on. The university has an annual lake party at the end of the year, that literally thousands of people go to, last year was a blast and this year promises to be even better. We’ve decided to go together as a whole house since we barely spend time together outside these 4 walls together.

As the end of this year gets ever nearer, as a house we realised we didn’t have a group picture. On Saturday we spent an hour in the garden rectifying this fact. I’ve got lots of brilliant photos, but at the moment this is our favourite:

 

I also really like this one:

• Happiness. 7.5 out of 10
• Tiredness. 3 out of 5 (thanks to Viv, I don’t have any curtains)
• Workload. 8 out of 10
• Last Meal. Anne made a cheesecake. You should’ve had some.
• Song of the day. Free Peace – Shook Up
• Thought for the day. “The tinsel's on the table...”
• What I’m Doing Now. Hoping for a good nights sleep since this happened:

Press The Issue!

My first exam on Monday went OK. The most important thing is that it’s over. I think it was definitely the hardest of the three electronics exams I have to sit this week. The second is this afternoon. I’m far more confident about this one, but there are a few questions that would cripple me, so here’s hoping they don’t show up :S

Revision has been going really well and the next two days of exams are going to be intense, but at least I feel as prepared as I could have been.

As a form of procrastination of the weekend, I created a new wallpaper for my computer. It’s a mosaic of over 500 of my pictures from my time since I’ve been at university. It’s amazing how many good times there are! A picture that I took a couple of days ago is definitely going to hold a lot of memories of this year:

Tickling, Uno, Anne’s cakes, Anne’s frame of shame (more on that another time), Knocking on the wall for Josh, Anne and her OCD… and so many more :) It’s not even sunk in that we’ll be leaving this place in just 16 days…

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 2 out of 5
• Workload. 8 out of 10
• Last Meal. Anne cooked Josh and I bolognaise :)
• Song of the day. FM Static - Tonight
• Thought for the day. “Lets press the issue!”
• What I’m Doing Now. Revision, then an exam, then revision, then sleep, then an exam, then revision…

The next 2 weeks

Hi all! I’m a big fan of not looking back. The past is full of memories and lessons written in stone, but the future has all those moments begging to be memories and the mistakes waiting to be lessons.

As such I’m taking a look forward at the next two weeks. Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate many memories being made, but you never know…

• Monday. 1st exam. Semiconductors, EM Theory, Analogue Electronics and Machines & Power. One I am not looking forward too.
• Wednesday. 2nd exam. Programming, CMOS and MIPS. Could be worse.
• Thursday. 3rd exam. Communications, Circuit Theory, Electronics and Control System. I’m getting there with this stuff…
• Monday. 4th exam. Maths!
• Friday. Final exam! Computer vision and graphics… wish me luck for this one :S

At 11:30am on Friday I become a free man! Then I have two whole weeks before I start my placement! I’m going to see my sister for a few days, and I’m staying in Guildford for party times too :D

Interesting things are afoot for summer… Life: The fun never stops, but it can pause.

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 4 out of 5
• Workload. 8.9 out of 10
• Last Meal. Pie and chips
• Song of the day. The King Blues – Headbutt (again)
• Thought for the day. “What other names are there for cows other than Daisy and Buttercup?” (Josh’s forever insightful revision ponderings…)
• What I’m Doing Now. Prepping for revision weekend bonanza!

That’s What Friends Are For

Revision, revision, revision. A bit of MAD TV, and more revision.

My first exam is on Monday and I’m really starting to feel the pressure. I have 3 full days of revising to do, and I’m hoping that will be enough.

I’d like to take today as a good example of what friends are for.

Firstly, I revised with a few people on my course this afternoon in the library which turned out to be really useful.

Then, just after I left, I had a great phone conversation with one of my friends who is really ill at the moment. I’ve been worried about them for some time, so it was great to find out how she was doing.

I hadn’t been off the phone for more than 10 minutes before my sister rang for an impromptu chat while the pasta boiled. Always welcome. And it’s only 3 and a half weeks until I visit :D

After talking to Becky, Heather rang to invite me to drinks in Roots in an hour or so!

After a long day of revision, and a very successful day, I really appreciated spending time with Lauren and Heather. They’re always hilarious and we had a great laugh. Got my mind a bit free of the stress, but still ready for the revision train stopping at all stations tomorrow…

The lesson from this is never to under-estimate the power of friendship, they’re are always people out there who value who you are.

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 3 out of 5
• Workload. 9 out of 10
• Last Meal. Pie and chips
• Song of the day. Alicia Keys - No One
• Thought for the day. The time you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time......
• What I’m Doing Now. Still getting over my 85% mark for the computer vision coursework :)

May: The Best Moment

May, a month of two halves. It all started with Jake coming to visit….

It was such a great few days. We went to Rubix, had a BBQ and went to town… and there was non-stop banter all weekend.

After Jake left there was the small matter of coursework to attend to. I spent the next two weeks working very hard on two bits of coursework and finishing off a third. Come the 24th of May I was a free man… well, expect for those exams looming, but we prefer not to mention those…

Only a couple moment’s really stand out for me from May since Jake left, but that’s not because life has been boring, it’s just because it’s at such a high all the time the great moments blend in and it’s only the extraordinary that makes a lasing impact.

So what made the lasting impact this month? The runner-up is the Student Awards. MAD TV won best Special Interest Society of the Year, Mike Frazer won Best Student Media and MadSoc won Best Society. Everyone had such a brilliant evening and no-one was as impressed as I was with the ‘MAD umbrella’ walking away with so many awards!

I guess the reason this night doesn’t make number one is because I didn’t win Student Trainer of the Year award. That would’ve been the icing on the cake, but alas, the best man won, and congratulations to Matt Clifford.

So the best moment of the month was in fact Frankie and Mike’s joint birthday BBQ. Last Saturday was such a lovely day for a BBQ and it was brilliant to spend it with loads of friends in the garden soaking up the sunshine.

As a consequence of conversations that happened that evening, my plans for the summer could be changing quite drastically. Once the tenancy finishes on my current house at the end of June, I planned to live at home for 6 weeks before moving into the new house in mid-august. But, Frankie and Claire, the left two girls in the above picture, may have a spare room for me at their house. That’ll make it a lot easier to commute to Basingstoke and I won’t have to worry about moving all my stuff back home and back again. I’ll hopefully find out in the next few days what is happening, but I’m really excited about the possibility :D

It is customary for me to ‘pre-hash’ the coming month at this point in these posts, but since June is exam month, I’d rather not. Instead, here’s a picture I took on Saturday of a regular sight in our house… tickle time.

Speak to you soon :) x

The Future’s Bright…

The last few days have been productive from many a standpoint. And nothing shows up more in this view than revision. Finally. Exams are almost here and my brain needs filling… and so it begins.

I also handed in my last coursework on Tuesday after demoing on Monday. Look at my last post to see how you can download my coursework and play with it yourself… honestly, it’s not as boring as it may sound!

What else? I’m going to see my sister! I booked tickets today to see my sister for a few days at the end of June. After my exams I have two weeks before my placement starts. The first week I’m spending in Guildford in the house chilling and celebrating both Anne and Josh’s birthdays! (I bought their presents today :D) In the second week I’m now going to see Becky! I can’t wait!

I’ve also found out more information about my placement from the employment agency that I’m being contracted under, so I should be signing a contract very soon… good times!

Keep enjoying your lives and I’ll catch up with you all very soon… sweet dreams.

• Happiness. 8.5 out of 10
• Tiredness. 4 out of 5
• Workload. 9 out of 10
• Last Meal. Chicken nuggets and chips.
• Song of the day. Train – Hey, Soul Sister (good video too)
• Thought for the day. You don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.
• What I’m Doing Now. Sleep, before day three of revision.

Special Post #33: OpenGL Model Viewer

My last coursework from second year was to design a 3D model viewer using OpenGL and GLUT. I know that probably doesn’t make sense to any of you, but maybe if you tried it out you’d get the idea.

The final program lets you place objects in 3D space and can be downloaded for your enjoyment by clicking on the button below.

A few things you should try:

1. Right click to get the menu where you can select shapes, colours, etc
2. Press and hold your scroll wheel (middle click) to rotate the world, or do this while placing an object to rotate the object
3. Use x, y, z, X, Y and Z to do rotate
4. use ‘r’ and ‘f’ to size objects and pseudo-zoom
5. use ‘=’ to scroll through objects when in selection mode
6. use ‘0’ to delete the selected object
7. use w, a, s, d to move up, left, down and right
8. use ‘1’ at any point to change your view back to the origin and reset the lighting model
9. try loading the bunny.tri file, it takes about 17 seconds to load on my machine, so be patient!
10. Move the light source around from the menu
11. Select objects in ‘selection mode’ and scroll through them to get the right one
12. Change the render mode to points, lines or phong shading

Good luck! And have fun! Let me know if you have any problems, I quite like the idea of tweaking this over time, although it’s got a long way to go in reality…

A Fine Frenzy

The weekend was a time to make lots of progress on my programming project and get it finished. Instead it turned out to be a lot of catching up on sleep, the grand prix, walks and my brother.

On Friday evening I did a quick edit for MAD TV’s latest report on the line up for the End Of Year Show.

James, my brother, came over on Saturday and we had a great walk around town. I felt like it was a great time to see James again since we haven’t really sat down and caught up in what seems like years. And with the promise of another outing in my direction this Saturday, I couldn’t be happier.

I also went for a walk with Anne on Saturday evening just to get outside of the four walls that have been home to so much programming the last week.

I went for another walk on Sunday down by the River. Such a beautiful stroll to do and I know I’ll be doing it again sooner rather than later. It was a far more relaxing way to de-stress than spending a few hours on Facebook or going to a party. And the weather was just right to not intrude on my musings.

What was I musing? Who knows what the mind thinks of when it’s unleashed. But I enjoyed the journey it took me on and I feel much better for getting some space to myself.

I know a lot of my friends are busy revising for exams at the moment, so if you’re feeling stressed out, just go for a little walk. You’ll be surprised. And don’t take your iPod or whatever with you either :)

• Happiness. 9 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 9.7 out of 10
• Last Meal. Probably strudel...
• Song of the day. A Fine Frenzy – Ashes and Wine
• Thought for the day. The best feelings are those that have no words to describe them
• What I’m Doing Now. Lab marking tomorrow where Josh and I give a presentation on our Media Project…

Wake Up & Smell The Programming

I’ve been coding my heart out this week for my Computer Vision & Graphics module, which is the only module in my second year that is solely for Digital Media students. I’m having to code a 3D Model Viewer in C programming language using OpenGL and GLUT. It’s coming along OK, with a few hiccups, and I’m actually enjoying coding again. Reminds me of when I spend a summer coding the St Mary Balham church website in ASP.NET and got really into it.

Thing is, I also have tons of revision to do. But I’m taking the stance that I really want to get this coursework out of the way first and then I can concentrate fully on revision.

Other than spending literally every spare hour of my time coding since Monday, I’ve also been more sensible about my sleeping pattern. I haven’t felt this awake in lectures since before I came to university and it really helps to just be more aware of things. I think I can put a lot of my sleeping fail to Stage Crew last year, and partying this year. But I’ve stopped crewing now (mostly) and I’m not partying much these days in favour of getting my work done.

I’m feeling alright about exams at the moment, I know where my strengths and weaknesses are and I have the time to address them. It’s just a matter of focus, and that’s where I have to make sure I make the most of my time. How many times have I written that on these pages recently? haha.

I haven’t talked about MAD TV for a while. We’re still very busy with wrapping up a lot of outstanding reports and getting ready for some really exciting things coming up over the summer and next year! Last week was MAD TV’s AGM, and a whole new committee was elected. I’m sad that I’m no longer on the committee, but I’m so happy with who’s in charge next year and really, really can’t wait to see how MAD TV develops and grows next year! Seriously, MAD TV is one to watch if you have any interest in Guildford, Surrey, the university or student media, it’s gonna be BIG!

Also had a few developments on my house for next year, and I’m saving it all for another accommodation post coming soon :)

Stay safe and I’ll write another jot of conjecture in here soon…

• Happiness. 9 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 9.7 out of 10
• Last Meal. Davy’s amazing Oreo cheesecake!!!
• Song of the day. The King Blues – Chimp In A 3 Piece Suit
• Thought for the day. "Happiness is a way of travel, not a destination" - Roy Goodman
• What I’m Doing Now. Programming and working on a few small things I’ve been meaning to do for ages