I’ll post again next week. I’m off on my climbing trip for the weekend. Bye!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Quickie
This is going to be a short post as I am very busy this week. So far everything is going great, got an assignment on Monday which is due in next Monday which has been messing up my plans a little, but nothing I’m not on top of. Its not difficult either so its just finding the time to do it.
Other than that, I did the usual climbing yesterday, really great fun. Still need to work on my endurance though as after climbing for 2 hours my hands want to fall off. Looking forward to the big trip this weekend!
Becky came over today, cannot say how great it was to catch up, shame she couldn’t stay longer!
Anyway, got to get some sleep before the haunt of Labs tomorrow!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Thorpe Park and Sleep
That pretty much sums up my weekend. Thorpe Park on Saturday was great fun. I love Fright Nights at the best of times, but Saturday just seemed really good. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, suppose we managed to go on all the rides we wanted to, the queues weren’t as bad as I thought they would be, and we got to see two Stealth rollbacks! (I know I’ve lost all of you on that last point, but it had to be said!)
As for Sunday, I got some work done and managed to catch up on some sleep.
This week is set to be a busy one. I have the usual climbing session in the gym on Tuesday. My sister is coming to see me on Wednesday (YAY!). Trip to a local climbing shop on Thursday with the climbing club to buy harnesses, shoes and other climbing gear. Then at the weekend I’m off to Hope in the Peak District with the climbing club (I know, a lot of climbing!) for a weekend on the rocks!
Looking forward to all of that, but it does mean I have little time to do work. Luckily I’m fairly on top of it all at the moment, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
Friday, October 24, 2008
NOT AND OR
Logic gates were the subject of choice for this week’s labs. Luckily, not only do I completely understand logic gates, but I quite enjoy using them and solving the circuits. So this weeks labs were fun and the 6 hours flew by.
As for the other lectures, its Analogue Electronics that’s letting the team down, other than that, all is well. I got 27.5/30 in my Maths test, just a few trigonometry bits that I usually rely on a calculator for that were the problem.
Nothing much else this week, I’ve really been trying to get a lot of work done in the evenings, but still it keeps coming in. Got another assignment this week, so now I’m down to 3 assignments and 5 worksheets to do. Lots to do.
Thorpe Park on Saturday will be great fun, can’t wait!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
FIRE!
Last night I helped turn Rubix into a Laser Quest venue. We had smoke machines, strobes, lost of lights and obstacles such as barrels and a golf buggy.
It was absolutely fantastic fun watching people playing while I was operating the lights. In between games we would check the smoke machines were working and make any tweaks to the layout.
The last game was the Stage Crew game. Obviously we thought it would great if we put all the smoke machines on full. A long story short, we set the fire alarm off! But, that’s ok because by that time we’d already set the fire alarm off over 30 times that night.
Once we got back in and turned on the house lights, I took some photos.
This is the dance floor.
This is the balcony. Bear in mind this is with the strobes now off and the house lights on. During the game, I couldn’t see more than 3 feet in front of me.
Each time the fire alarm goes off, it prints the alarm information onto a piece of paper. This is said piece of paper, and yes, all that on the counter as well. By this time, the alarm was still being set off.
Good times.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Back to Work
So after a weekend of Stage Crew and the Grand Prix, it was back to work today. Nothing says welcome back like 5 hours of lectures. They were actually all fairly straight-forward and nothing much to worry about in terms of adding to the workload either.
I hear that there are plans for a so called “Parish Outing” in the near future where you can come down for the Cathedral Service and have a look around my new home too. The latest I’ve heard is the 16th November, but talk to Mum for the details.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Sleep? Pah!
You don’t wanna know, but basically I had a great last night. We stayed in with a few of my room-mates and few others. Then today I’ve helped with stage crew for the afternoon, helping to set up for a big gig on Sunday night.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Bad Day, or was it?
0000 – Decide to get some sleep as it has been a long day and want to be awake and ready for my 6 hours of lectures on Friday.
0030 – My wonderful room-mate Mariana decides to have a loud conversation on the phone in Portuguese, whatever she was saying, her laughter made it hard to get any sleep.
0740 – A full 20 minutes before I wanted to get up, but here I am. I suppose I must’ve got to sleep after all. But why am I awake. Oh, its just that constant piercing sound of the fire alarm. OK then, dressing gown on, shoes on, don’t forget your keys. Plod, plod, plod. “What room are you in?”, so I say my address. Plod, plod, plod, Sit. AAAH. The assembly point for this drill was the court common room. If I wasn’t so tired then I probably would’ve thought that it was a nice room and the seats very very cozy, as I’d never been in there before. As it was I quickly realized that I'd said the wrong address. Feeling more the fool, I went and corrected my error.
0750 – Back to sleep.
0800 – Rise and shine.
0900 – First lecture, signals and communications. I have no idea what this guy is saying or if I should even be worried that I don’t know what he’s saying. Luckily I have a copy of the notes, so I can hope he’s referring to them as they are pretty easy to understand.
1000 – Still half asleep into the second lecture: Analogue Electronics.
1100 – Now pretty much dead from the overload of information, Again, those notes will come in handy.
1130 – Time for a snack before my next lecture.
1200 – Engineering Mechanics. Either I’m not getting something or this lecture is so easy, a 2-year-old could do it. I don’t know what I prefer: Understanding nothing and worrying you’re an idiot, or understanding everything and worrying your you’re an idiot.
1300 – Finally, lunch time. Bramble Jelly on toast, my favorite! Only 3 hours of labs to go. Unfortunately given yesterdays series of events, the next three hours are not going to be over fast enough.
(Aside: Labs are basically a torture device comprised of 30 students locked in a room with electrical equipment, components and vague instructions. They then have to follow the instructions to completion and without fault, making notes and drawing diagrams and graphs, before the end of the session.)
1400 – WOO! HOO! LAB time! I start by redoing all of the work I did yesterday.
1430 – WOW! That really didn’t take as long as I thought it would. OK, now to check if it works. AHH. Better, but still not right. Whatever could be the problem………………………. Nope its none of those 17 million things I’ve just tried.
1630 – Maybe… Ahh, yes! Eureka! Right, now for the other 2/3 of the experiment.
1635 - “It looks like you’ve finally got that bit working, if you can get all the rest assembled and working by 5pm, I’ll be able to give you a good mark”
1700 - “Time to go”. Not now! I’m on a roll! Solder, component, solder, component… Why do metal detectors need so many parts!
1725 – Beep, Beep, BEEEEEP! YES!!! It works!!! That’ll be an A+ please. Thank you very much. *Skips Home*
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Ice Ice Baby
Yesterday I went Ice Skating with Josh, how else would I have got this photo:
Everything is fine at the moment, lectures yesterday went well and I hope that the Maths test went well this morning. Struggled a little, but shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Labs this afternoon were terrible. I assembled a circuit only to find it not working. Now tomorrow I’ll have to rebuild the whole thing from scratch. I’m enjoying it but it’s very annoying when even the demonstrator can’t get your circuit to work. Its not my fault, honest!
Having another quiet night in tonight and tomorrow in time for the busy weekend. More about that another time.
PS: If you’re reading this, don’t forget you can add comments at the end of any post just by clicking the word ‘comments’ and leaving your feedback. It would be great to hear from more people!
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Proof Is In The Pudding
Ah, Ha! The last thing I ate was the other half of a potato bake that I made yesterday, so there! I don’t just eat cereal.
You can see my fabulous ice-cream making skills are improving nicely, vital stuff for any student to know about.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Dorm Sweet Dorm
Back to university life. It was a cool weekend, really enjoyed seeing everyone again. It was quite weird, because it felt like I hadn’t left, but at the same time I knew I had left. That probably doesn’t make any sense, but I understand. Shame about the Grand Prix, but apart from that the parties were fun.
I’m in the Launderette at the moment, waiting for the wash to finish.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Home Sweet Home
This weekend i'm back in London. Why? Diggnation of course. Now that probably doesn't make any sense to any of you so let me explain. As part of my daily life I watch several technology shows online: CNET, Tekzilla, Click, WinSuperSite, All About Microsoft and ... Diggnation. Diggnation is a weekly technologty show where two guys, Kevin and Alex, talk about news stories from the past week. The show is filmed in America, and they occasionaly do live shows where they film the show infrom of an audience. Last night, the show was filmed in London! So I was there.
I know that's a really bad picture, but that's all I got.I had a really great time and and enjoyerd it loads.
Since I was 'in town' I thought "why not go and visit all those people I used to know, like my parents. So here I am. For 1 night only.
Tonight I'm going to the Servers Party in church (hope to see a few of you there!) and then tomorrow I'm off, but this time to Birmingham for my Auntie's Birthday Party. So three parties in three days, who can complain.
- Happiness: 7/10
- Workload: 5/10
- Last meal: Cereal (honestly I do eat other things as well!)
- Thought for the day: DIGGNATION!!
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Thursday Ramblings
So the sink was finally fixed Tuesday afternoon. Finally, I can live without being surrounded by dirty pots.
The way my timetable works is that I basically have a few lectures on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then pay for it on Thursday and Friday. Here’s the breakdown:
- Monday: 5 hours
- Tuesday: 3 hours
- Wednesday: 3 hours
- Thursday: 5 hours
- Friday: 7 hours
The worst part is this wonderful thing called LABS. They’re a total of 6 hours a week, 3 on Thursday and 3 on Friday. LABS ARE THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE! They are frustrating and long and boring.
But, I can’t really complain because everything else is going really well (mostly).
As for Stage Crew, I helped out with Comedy Night (once again, very hilarious, and this time I got in FREE!) and a gig at Rubix last night called Score.
Score is essentially a themed DJ night for sports teams to celebrate their results from the last week of games. I use the word ‘theme’ in the lightest sense. It has a banner and an inflatable. However, the night was very enjoyable, I ended up on the disco lights again, when will they ever get boring to use?
Score did, however, mean a late night last night, getting sleep between 3:30am and 11am. I had to get up at 11am for a lecture at 12pm, so it only figures that the lecturer would turn up 30 minutes late.
I also went climbing yesterday, its still as fun as ever and this time I’m not aching for days afterwards.
Anyway, can’t sit here all the ruddy day, got some food to eat!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The Sink Saga
When you put hot fat down a sink pipe, the chances are that the sink pipe will not be too happy about it. Unfortunately, Sophie, one of my housemates, was unaware of this phenomenon. Since Friday evening we have been without the necessary functions of a sink. Washing has been piling up and up, until yesterday when I had to resort to using the sink upstairs to wash enough pots to make a curry.
- Happiness: 7/10
- Workload: 5/10
- Last meal: Cereal for breakfast
- Thought for the day: FIX MY SINK… please ;-)
Charles
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The day of rest
AAAHHHHHH…
A good night’s sleep and a relaxing day is exactly what I needed. I’ve done my shopping and had a brief look over the last weeks notes and now I’m ready to face Monday!
Saturday, October 4, 2008
And Breath Out...
Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday, but it has been a very, vey busy few days.
I started a key part of my course on Thursday afternoon. They are called LABS and I ahve them for 3 hours on a thursday and another 3 on a friday. Each week we are given an experiment to try and we have to do prep, keep logs, perform the experiment, write up, conclude and comment for each experiment. The first two (ie this week and next week) are just an introduction to using the equipment and the process of labs. So far labs is by far the most difficult thing I've had to do, so I need to make sure I do plenty of prep for each week's labs to avoid being left behind.
The other big thing to happen over the last two days has been stage crew. I said that I had joined up and I helped out with my first gig on friday. I helped set up the venue: lighting, sound desk and inflatable decorations as well as learning some of the technical jargon and where things are kept. When the gig started I ran the lights on the disco floor for the whole night. Basically, Rubix (the venue) has 20 or so sets of lights for the dance floor to create a clud/disco atmosphere. I ran the lights, meaning I flicked them on and off, changed colours, movements, ect. using a big deck. It was the most fun i've had in a long time. Being able to choose the right lights and effects for a particular track or chorus was great. It was also great fun when I got oppurtunities to use the strobe lighting to fit in with the music. When I used the strobes, I blacked-out the rest of the lights to give a much cooler effect.
I spent from 10pm to 3am on the lighting desk. Time went so fast because it was just so much fun. At 3am the venue closed and I helped pack down, which involves putting everything away.
Then today Stage Crew had a training day. We had lots of Health & Safety talks and introductions to the equipment. The way Stage Crew works is we meet up every monday for everyone to put their names down for gigs happening that week and also to dicuss any thing that everyone needs to know. Stage Crew don't get paid, but they do get free entry into Rubix (the union nightclub) for any gig, not just ones your helping out with. Obviously you have to remain an active member or you will be taken off the team. I won't get my permanent Stage Crew card until christmas, to ensure that I stick around that long, but I won't be going anywhere anytime soon, there's just so much to learn and do. Until christmas I've got a temporary card.
So, to summize: Lectures getting a bit harder (well LABS are). Stage Crew is fantastic. Felling good. Busy. Tired.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Clubs (and not the kind you use on baby seals)
Over the past three days I have gone along to several clubs and societies to get involved and find out if they were for me.
GU2 Radio: I first looked at joining the campus radio on the technical side of operations. I went to a meeting last week and it looked interesting. I'm still considering it, but I'm not sure how I'm going to juggle everything yet.
Stage Crew: The Stage Crew meeting on Monday was very good and I am definitely going to join them. I will get to help out on the technical side of union events and can do anything from 1 to 10 events in a week depending on how I can cope. I am helping out this Friday with a setup for Rubix in the evening. There is a full training day on Saturday, so I will find out a lot more then (and get a free lunch!)
Climbing: Surrey has a very exciting climbing wall and other climbing facilities in (and around) the gym. I went along to the open session on Tuesday and absolutely loved it! It was great fun, but very tiring. This is the other club I am definitely joining.
Badminton: Just after climbing I went to Badminton. It was busy, but as expected. I don't think I will be joining though because I will be able to book courts and then play in my own time, which will be much more convenient.
Canoeing: This was a bit of a wild card. I only chose it because I'd never been canoeing before and I wanted to give it a go. We went for a little trip down the canal and back again. I really enjoyed it, but the problem is that it takes up a lot of time to get there and then it is a 4-5 hour commitment, which is a bit much to ask every week. (I know I will probably do that much with stage crew, but that can be scheduled for any day, whereas canoeing cannot.
So I'll probably end up doing Climbing and Stage Crew, very different but definitely the most enjoyable two of the lot.
As for lectures, they're going fine and are so far very straight-forward. Got a 10am start tomorrow, so can afford a bit of a lie-in. Catch up with you all soon.
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