NaNoWriMo Day 3: Small Feet

As part of NaNoWriMo this year I am writing a series of short pieces. I then rashly agreed to share the shorts if I used someone's prompt.
Please note that NaNo does not leave time for editing, so this has had nothing more stringent than Libre Office's spell checker applied.

Small Feet

I start awake. A glance at the clock to my right shows it is two AM. I listen, trying to figure out what it was that startled me out of my sleep. My heart is racing as if someone has just injected me with a shot of adrenaline. All the noises seem natural, so it is not as if my pager has gone off, and I don' recall that I was dreaming about it going off before I woke. I fall back on an old habit, categorising everything that I am aware of. What can I hear from the safety of my bed. Inside everything sounds normal. I can hear a blind rattling down the passageway, but that wouldn't wake me. That blind has rattled for as long as I have lived in this house.
It is raining outside, but that shouldn't wake me. Even the howling wind sounds normal. Then I hear it. It is disguised by the sounds of the wind and the rain, and by the sound of that rattling blind. There are footsteps in the rain. And there are sharp cracking noises that are separate from the rattle made by the blinds. And that swooshing noise is not all wind. There is something riding the wind, which changes the tone just slightly. The noises are oddly familiar, as well as strangely muted. I keep thinking it is something happening far away, and then I register the clarity of the noise and I know that it must be right outside my window.
I still haven't stirred from the position I was in when I woke. I had been listening in the way one listens when one is trying to determine if someone has broken into the house. Or trying to determine if that spook from the scary movie you watched last week has somehow appeared in your closet. Having now identified what woke me (although I'm still not sure why) I roll over and open my eyes. There is nothing strange to see in my room. The street light from the corner is shining through the crack in my curtains, allowing just enough light that I can see my room is exactly as I left it last night. I am very neat in my habits. It comes of having spent a couple of my more formative years in the navy. Every item that I own has a specific place where it belongs, and I can tell immediately if there is anything out of place. I have friends who find this habit a little daunting, and others who will attempt to prank me by moving things around while I am out of the room. I don't really mind. It keeps me on my toes, and forces me to remain observant at all times.
Having determined that my room is all in order, I sit up and turn to the window. Twitching aside the curtain, I pear out into the rain. It is gloomy out there. My window looks out into a paved courtyard, so everything is grey. In this stormy weather the only source of light is the orange of the sodium lamp that is still used in the street light on the corner. This is reflecting strangely off the water drops on my window, making it difficult to get a clear view of the courtyard below. The footsteps have become clearer though. They are sounding more and more familiar, but I still can't place it. Then I realise that one of the cracking noises I have been hearing is very regular, and that the footsteps are keeping perfect time. These are not just footsteps. This is marching. I heard the sound of troops being drilled in a very similar way whilst in training. I was just on the inside of the group, and so I heard the sound from all directions, and not just from one. It was also much louder then.
I continue to watch the rain for a while, slowly allowing my brain to filter out the different sounds I am hearing. I can tell the footsteps apart from the rain now, and the drumming from the rattling blind. I still can't tell what is riding the wind. I start to scan the skies hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it is, but I realise in this darkness that will be futile. I would not be able to spot an air force glider in this, and I am intimately familiar with what those look like in all different terrains. I don't stand a chance of spotting a glider that is as muted as the sound of the footsteps.
Wait. I catch my breath. There. I can see movement. The rain drops are falling wrong. On the right side of the courtyard. It is a different shade of grey to the rest. I press my face up against the glass of the window. Trying to pierce the misty gloom that is the atmosphere. The movement is not obvious, but as I focus on the same patch of ground I start to make out some details. That corner is not as empty as I had thought. There is something there, and it is the source of the noises I can hear. A flash catches my eye, and I glance up. I could swear that was the wing of a glider, but something is still off. I'm still not sure what. But I can't sit and watch out my window any longer. It is time to go and make a closer investigation.
As silently as I can I get out of bed, and open the closet to get my rain coat. I need to find out what it is that is in the corner of my courtyard. Whatever it is, it must be big enough to keep off the neighbourhood cats, and that means it must be very well camouflaged. Even more curious at this thought I find my slippers and head to the back door to go out and investigate. As I reach the door I realise that everyone will tell me this whole thing was a dream if I don't make some kind of a record of it, so I slip back to my room to grab my cellphone. If I can't get a good picture of whatever this thing is, I should at least be able to get a decent sound bite. And then I can analyse it. Maybe even get some help running it through real analysis software. Shaking my head at my own overeagerness I head out the back once again.
I have to fight to close the door quietly. The wind is blowing harder than I had thought. The rain is really pouring down too. I suspect that I will soon be soaked through, despite the rain coat. My slippers are already pretty useless. Oh well, now I'm wet, I might as well find out what woke me up. I cock my head, listening to check that my leaving the house has not silence the whatever it is. I can still hear the patterns of the rain, and the patterns of the drumming. The sound of footsteps has quieted. I move slowly towards the corner where I saw the movement. As I get near I start to hear the sounds more clearly. This is definitely a troop of soldiers being drilled in how to handle themselves in this kind of weather, but I still can't see them, and the sounds are still too quiet for their clarity.
Suddenly I hear a different noise, and I feel a sting to my right hand. Like I have been bitten by a particularly nasty fly. I look at it, and to my surprise I see that my hand is bleeding slightly. And there appears to be something in the wound. It was definitely not a bee sting, and the noise had come from the direction of the moving shadows. I drop to my knees in order to better see what is happening, and I finally realise what I had been missing all along. The reason everything sounds too quiet to me, is that the makers of the noise are incredibly small.
I'm not sure whether I should be freaked out by the sight of what looks like living toy soldiers, or to be super excited. Freezing where I am, I take out my phone to try and get a photo. As I do so I hear a shout, and then the report of a dozen tiny rifles, and feel the front of my raincoat take the hit of a dozen tiny bullets. I know why the cats don't bother these guys now. I am definitely weary of them. I can't make out the words that they are saying, so I do not think they will understand me. I also think that the volume difference is going to work both ways. They sound too quiet to me, I am going to sound far too loud to them. And I have already startled them enough. I sit back, trying to show that I am not a threat, while still trying to get my phone into a position to take a photo.
As I sit back, a couple of shapes break off from the group. As they get closer I identify them as officers. These guys are sharp. They are dressed smartly and and neatly, and even though they are in danger of being knocked over by a large rain drop, they move forward steadily. I am impressed. I finally manage to get the use of my cellphone as the arrive. I reach out an arm, hoping to try and take a selfie with them (no one would believe me otherwise). As I do so, they run up and start scaling my clothing. I feel very much like I am reliving Gulliver's travels.
I am starting to get freaked out. They have reached most of the way up my torso now. I decide I need to get out of here, and leave them to their training. As they reach my shoulders I take my selfie and shake, hoping to dislodge them. As they fall I reach out a hand to catch them, lay them gently on the ground, and then moving as quickly as I can I get to my feet and dash back to the door. Having made it back inside I relax a bit, and take stock of my situation. I am absolutely soaked, and my heart is racing wildly. I need to relax. I start peeling off my rain coat, and I realise that one of the soldiers must have been frightened literally out of his boots when he fell, because there they are, caught in my jacket.
Placing them carefully on the counter I smile as I say out loud. “Sometimes it is the smallest feet that make the most impact.” Before heading for the shower and back to bed.

I found a rose...

I found a rose today. It was wrapped in toilet paper, and placed in the gap where a book usually sits on my bookshelf. It was completely flat and dried out. It was also so dark that it looked a purplish black.

That rose has been there for about six months. I put it there after I went on the Cape Of Good Hope Chrysalis flight, because I never wanted the memories to fade. But, over time, I forgot that it was even there. It took a chance event, my mother borrowing that precise book, to bring the flower to light. I have read the books it was between enough that I had no plans to reread them soon, and so without that event, the rose would have remain undiscovered. Possibly becoming drier and flatter.

Sometimes that is what walking with God is like. We discover something important, and so we tuck it away in our memories, somewhere safe, where we can preserve it. Make sure that it will last forever. But then, we have put it away so safely that we do not think of it again, until a chance event brings it to our attention. This rose was not completely forgotten, and I have other reminders of Chrysalis, but the state in which I found it, and the way in which I found it, are meaningful.

The black rose has many strong and dark connotations. But this rose was a beautiful red specimen when I received it. Now, I could call it black and brittle, and say it is dying, or I could say it is dark purple, and well preserved. It will not rot, instead I will be able to keep it forever, although I should probably label it if I want to remember where it came from. The chance of finding it, depended on someone else wanting to read a particular book on my shelf. One that most of the time doesn't even feature on my "recommend to people" list. Yet it was borrowed, and the rose was brought to light.

My thoughts on this? God works in weird and wonderful ways, and nothing is ever a coincidence. Instead it is a God-incidence.

Working for God

Oh, look, its been about a month since my last post. You know what else? I have just had blog-worthy stuff happening in my life. It's kinda weird how that can happen. Maybe I'm subconsciously saving everything up for a monthly release into the world. It could happen, right? But never mind that, I don't want to right a post about what's happening in my head, instead I want to share what's been happening in my life.

I think I mentioned in my last post that I was going to be embarking on an internship, well I did. I spent two weeks working in a finance area. There were five of us in the internship, two with computer science backgrounds, and three who are studying finance. We arrived nervous and unsure of what to expect. By lunch on Day one, we knew what we had to do, and we knew that it would be a lot of hard work. Essentially, for those who know about pension funds, we had to hedge two different types of annuities in two weeks. We were given tons of assumptions we could make, and told of some simplifications which actually caused issues later on, but we all learned loads. I picked up a feel foe financial stuff that I never expected to have, which I'm sure will serve me very well in the future, and I learned quite a bit about working with a brand new team of people.

Overall the internship was good. But there were some troubling things. One, the pressure we were under. It was unreal. It was also mostly self imposed, or rather group imposed. I didn't like it, but we worked insane hours (in my opinion) and had limited rewards for that. I didn't even work the worst hours of the lot. Another, and it's a rather funny small thing, but I got sick. Probably because of working really hard and not being able to send a sick team mate home because of time restrictions.

After the internship though, is when things get really interesting. I had the opportunity to attend a Chrysalis flight. A weekend of such love, and intensity as I have never felt. They say it is a once in a lifetime experience, and I can understand why. If it wasn't, I think young people would be flooding the flights, and the experience would end up watered down. So, briefly, what is a Chrysalis flight?

A Chrysalis flight is kind of a "young people's version" of the Walk to Emmaus. Based on the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly, by spending time in a cocoon or chrysalis. This is a three day camp where young people are immersed in God's love, having to rely on others for everything, and so learning to let go of there lives. It is a time to truly experience that God is love, and a time to grow closer to God through study. Surrounded by an international community of prayer, the caterpillars are so soaked in prayer that it is surprising we do not end up saturated. That community offers support beyond the three day walk, allowing the butterflies who emerge to grow further in relationship with one another and Christ.

On this weekend I discovered that I am not as alone in my situation as I have often felt. I have met others who are in the same kind of place as me, and who are the same kind of age as me. It is this that truly made Chrysalis for me. That sense of never actually being alone has touched many lives over the years, and this weekend people shared with us what it meant to them, so inspiring us to share with others. I feel that I did indeed grow in my journey with Christ, and in the spirit of the title of this blog, I think I can share that I felt that two things I really needed to leave at the cross with Jesus were my pride and my fear of rejection. How well I will do at actually leaving them behind me I do not know, but with Jesus I believe I can overcome then, and live my life more fully in the hands and plans of God.

For all I speak of the joy that Chrysalis was (and I loved every moment, even when tired) there is a problem. After any type of high, be it chemical, spiritual, or emotional, there will always come a crash. For me that came when I returned home, and started having to deal with real life again. Being sick, and completely losing my voice make small things seem worse. Trying to respond to all my email, and make sure that I don't miss anything important. Catching up to varsity stuff once again, after ignoring it for a while. Having administrative errors on my side, coming from past mistakes, and things being in my calendar wrongly. All of these things were no easier to deal with for having been connected solely to God over the weekend. But I rest assured in his love for me. That no matter how bad things may seem, in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

I have been called. I'm not sure where yet, but God has a plan, and I want to follow that plan.

Life... it's about exams

It takes a lot more than good intentions to be able to blog regularly. It takes having something worth blogging about. I guess that's why some blogs get people following them, and why others don't. Be that as it may, I blog because it clears my head a bit, and helps me to look at things with a bit of perspective. Also, its a great way to feel productive while actually procrastinating. Well, it looks like I am doing a kind of monthly "tell the world what I am doing" thing.

So, what is happening around the turn of the month? First off, that nightmare of every student's life, exams. I'm lucky this term, just three subjects to write off. Graph theory, well, I think I should have passed it. Learning proofs is not my forte, so I struggled a bit with the studying for that one. The next two will be more interesting. Expert Systems are intriguing, and doing the assignment gave me a much deeper understanding of how the systems actually work. Which means it was a good assignment. I expect that exam to be a breeze. The most interesting one though, is certain to be category theory. I could almost do a set of posts on topics in category theory, and call them my study notes, but I'm not sure that I would get through everything then, and I would likely leave the project unfinished. Which would be fine if it wasn't visible to the world.

Why is category theory the interesting exam? Simply put, because it isn't an exam. It's an oral presentation of three topics which were covered over the semester. The lecturer doesn't believe in written exams as a fair test of knowledge. This suits me just fine, it means that understanding will be tested, rather than having to memorise a bunch of proofs. Yes there will be definitions to remember, but every mathematician has to know a bunch of definitions. So, what I'm supposed to be doing now is revising my category theory (I will get there).

After exams? HOLIDAYS! Well, technically. There is still the major project, and I have scored an internship. Interning should be pretty intriguing, actually. I'll be working in a huge company for two weeks, and getting paid. Life could be worse. I don't actually know what to expect, but I'm facing it as a learning experience, hoping that afterwards I will have a better idea of whether I could handle working as a software developer. I know it would pay well, and that there are plenty of opportunities available, so it might be worth it. I'm also pretty sure though, that if I do go into industry it will only be for a few years. And then I will probably end up teaching. I think that is where my passion lies, and where God is pointing me. But I also think it would be silly to let a really good opportunity pass me by. Especially when people personally ask me to attend interview type events...

That takes us to the end of June, so I guess I'll write another post after the internship, highlighting what happened, and looking forward into July. So, now that I have rambled on about the future, I guess it is time to actually do some work.

What May have been, and what May come.

I haven't been posting much, why? Simple actually, I've been both busy, and not so stressed that I need to blow off steam at anyone who might be listening. Possibly also, I forget... but I tend to try and avoid using that as a reason for anything. So, what have I been doing? Lots and lots of work,a short holiday, and then the work all picked up again. That makes for a boring summary, I know, but it feels pretty accurate.


I don't really need to give much of an overview of what I have done work wise, since my last post was just before exams started at the end of the last term. It is now a couple of weeks into the new term, and I am still trying to find a rhythm, which may take a while considering the CS timetabling technique (take a calendar, put lectures on days, change them a week later) and the fact that there are people in the department who seem to enjoy setting deadlines and schedules without consulting the published timetable, or their colleagues.But, that is not the point, what is done is done. I have a project (yay) which, if I can get through all the literature, should be pretty awesome.

Outside of University, I have not been completely nerdy. I have been playing second team hockey for my club, and trying to keep people coming to my fledgling youth group. The hockey has been awesome, and I enjoy the spirit which the club embraces. It means I have been getting plenty of regular exercise, and working hard on the field. This is definitely good for my health! The youth stuff, well that goes a bit oddly I think. We have been dwindling a little, but not too much, and hopefully things will start to look up a bit, with Youth Alpha starting this week. There might be some new faces, and if we get it right, they will hopefully stay fr the duration of the course.

So, what may come in May? Hopefully good things, although I am sure there will be plenty of stress and hard work. The youth looks like it will be good, the hockey would surprise me if it went bad, and the varsity work? Well it will be hard, and maths will scare me, but I think it will be worth the effort in the end. So all in all, a full looking month, but hopefully a good one.

Long weekends and term endings

This year, the April holidays are all weird. This is due to Easter being late, but it makes for some very interesting times ahead, in the next couple of weeks. This last weekend was a long one with Human Rights day on Friday. I could probably write a post about the meaning of Human Rights day in South Africa, but Friday was actually more a celebration of my mother's birthday for me. The whole long weekend also meant that my family took the time to get away from the business that clogs up our lives. My youngest brother spent the weekend on a Scout camp, building rafts and catapults. The rest of the family escaped to Simonstown, and the lovely sea views of the Simonsberg.

That was most certainly time well spent, no matter how unproductive sea views might sound. Whilst the amount of work I got done was minimal, the weekend away from the rat race was helpful in resetting my mind to a place where my university work is fun again. I no longer feel like I'm drowning, and I can appreciate the beauty and simplicity of Category Theory (whilst still feeling a little lost). I can also focus now on studying for exams. This might be another reason for my feelings of relief.

I have been working on one project per CS course for the last few weeks, and it felt like the work would just never end. Now, I have handed them all in, and I have some time to spend studying for exams rather than focussing on the implementation of the skills we were learning alongside the project. I can go back and do all the readings that I may have skipped while working on the projects. I can look through past papers and come to understand what I am supposed to know for each course. In this, I quite like the structure of my courses, taking only half a semester, and then writing an exam, and writing them off. It is a little scary to be writing exams on absolutely no feedback in terms of marks, but I suppose it just means I must make sure I know everything as well as I can before I go into the exam, not that I would do different in different circumstances.

What becomes fairly odd though, is that I write some exams next week, the week after that I have short vac, and then a week later it is Easter, and so there are holidays all scattered there. There is also Freedom day, and then Worker's day, and then voting day, all of which are holidays. So for the first three weeks of the new term, there is not a one which is a full week. It is a rather spectacular spray of holidays. Lots of time to either do intensive work on a single topic, or else time to relax, visit the beach, climb a mountain, read a book, something of that nature.

So having ramble on, mostly about one topic, I sign off, thinking about what remains of my evening, and realising that eight o'clock hockey practises are actually really late.

A bit of this, a bit of that

Really, my life is an interesting mix of different pieces. I have all the "I'm working harder than I have for years" stuff with my honours course work. I have the "yay, I get to play hockey with cool people" stuff. I also have the "I just got bored out of my socks while learning a lot at youth synod" stuff. So, a fairly even mix of everything, yeah? But t is a bit of this and a bit of that.

I spent Friday night and most of Saturday at the Cape of Good Hope district Youth Synod that was held in Hout bay this weekend. It was at the same time really interesting and really boring. The business stuff, where people were giving the same points over and over again, in different words and accents, was not so much fun. But there was also a lot of really useful information that I came out with. Stuff about the Laws and Disciplines of the MCSA that I didn't know. It was also a bit of a networking experience. I could see that in the district there are people who are trying to make things better for the youth of this area.

I was mostly frustrated by the lack of organisation for this weekend, and the inability of things to run on time, and of course, even when everything runs over, pretty much nothing can be cancelled, except for the parts where the person who has come to present leaves because the time is over and they haven't started. I do appreciate that these things are difficult to organise, and that the delegates were all woefully under-prepared, but I do think that it could be made to work. I also think, that if I'm not careful, I might find myself one of the people who has to try and organise such things in the future. Not for at least a year, but this time next year, I will have much more of a feel for what is happening in my circuit, and more of a presence in the district. It wouldn't be a bad thing, but I have to avoid it until I have the time.

That is one bit of this. Other things that happen, I finally handed in the NVP/PCU business plan that has been plaguing me for the last few weeks. I do not have to care about it any more, except perhaps to wonder what my mark will be like. It is over, there is no possible way for me to change it now. I am glad, it is a relief to have that off my shoulders. Not that it means my work load is any less. I have an evolutionary computing algorithm to code up to solve the travelling salesman problem (which is apparently not a terribly hard thing, it just needs to run a zillion times). Also, there is this weird information retrieval thing that I need to help with. When I say weird, I mean we aren't even that sure about what we have to get done, other than the fact that it might well require learning XSLT, to convert the format of about 10GB of XML into the right format.

Besides those two projects there is a write up for the visualisation that has been pretty much created, and we need to try and make it sit happily on a website, possibly through some clever javascript that other people have written. Beyond that there is always maths (which is still cool) and I have been learning tikz, because I have to type up my Graph Theory homework using LaTeX. That is kind of fun though. Writing out these nodes and an edge set and seeing it come out as a nice picture with very straight neat lines.

What else, oh yes, hockey, I have trials tomorrow night. That will be cool, if I don't get lost on the way to the astro, but I'm sure I will find my way. People did actually tell me where it is, and this seems to agree with Google Maps, so I stand a chance.

See, very much a bit of this and a bit of that.
But all very much worth doing. For all my exhaustion, I am having a really good time this year.

University and Reading

So, this is not necessarily a very meaningful post, but I am currently sitting in on a lecture on the fundamentals of mathematics, where the lecturer is going over the logic stuff that I did when I was in first year. The point of sitting in is of course for the times when my undergrad maths didn't quite cover everything it needed to. So, whilst half listening to a maths lecture, I am thinking about what I have blogged about in the past. One of the common topics, is books. Those amazing things where the author provides an escape into a whole new world.

What does that have to do with university and reading? Well, the answer is simple. When I am busy with lectures and projects all day every day, I have less time to read. Well, I don't mean that my daily intake of written words decreases, but rather that the style of writing I read most changes. In the holidays there is time for as many novels as I like, and I can spend the mental energy on trying to read some of those books that come up in lists of books everyone should read, like the Illiad or Paradise lost. During the term, however, I mostly find that I am reading papers and textbooks which expand on topics discussed in class. Interestingly, the types of blogs I find time to read don't change, simply the volume.

I do have some time for novels though, I suppose, judging by the fact of my library books, those suggest that I manage to read a book every two weeks or so. Possibly a little shorter than two weeks. So perhaps I am not all so busy as I want people to think, but then I look around, and realise that there are people in my classes who have time to read all the extra resources posted for each course, and who have made even more progress on their projects than I have. I then remember, also, that these people, are much wiser than me, and do not do extra maths courses simply because they are awesome. Admittedly they don't think maths is awesome.

Okay, now that I have gone so far off that I don't know where I am, and I need a map to return to the point of this post, let me try find a new one. So I do have time to read (and maybe sleep) but I have to choose my reading material carefully. Reading papers and textbooks is very good for my knowledge base, but is it helpful in other ways? Will it help me sleep? Will it help me to solve the problem which makes up the project I am currently working on? I don't know. Will a novel do that? It might help me sleep, but I'm pretty sure it won't fulfill the others, except in a secondary manner.

On that note, I will make a decision. I should continue in my efforts to read through the whole wheel of time series, but I should also try to make time to read important extra material. Also, readinag around the topics on my own is a good idea. Thus may I justify to myself the download of the Principia Mathimatica from Archive.org.

Hmm, distractions...

Right. This should really be a follow up post to "The Big Day", but it isn't. It is more abut what I end up doing when I'm sitting at my computer with a working internet connection, after a long day of working hard at varsity. I guess I can say that yes the presentation seemed okay. I was nervous, my knees shook, but we made it all the way through, and we were given some very helpful feedback to add to our actual written business plan. So, now that bit is said, what happens when a nerd sits at a computer and procrastinates?

Actually, it doesn't matter if you're a nerd or not, the same patterns are followed. I didn't even mean to procrastinate, it just kind of happened. When I want something procrastinaty (I did just make up that word) to do, I am at a loss. But this evening, I sat down, and looked at what tabs were open on my browser and saw, (a) my feed reader, and (b) blogger.

Let's have a brief look at (a) first. Open feed reader, see ooh, there's a new xkcd, goody. Read xkcd. Then see, hmm Shtetl-Optimized has a new post. This is where it gets nerdy, I then remember that I need to find out if I can do my major project with the local complexity theory guy, so go off and find his email address, then remember that I am special and the only one registered for my honours program, so email someone about if I can just email the person I want, and ask them to supervise me. Now, having sent off an important email, I can return to the point where I was going to read the blog post. After reading about a page's worth of the post, I'm starting to skip stuff, this usually means I'm too tired to fully absorb the post, so I go back and mark it as unread, to read sometime that I can actually understand it. That is about it for (a).

Move on to (b). Look at blogger dashboard. Think, I should write a post. Look at dates given for posts written, think, hmm that's odd, it always gets the dates wrong, because of time zone things. Google knows where I live though (yes they are that stalkerish) and they know my time zone, so why does Friday's post show the date as 27/02/2014? Friday was the 28th. So this leads me off to try and set my time zone somewhere, or something like that, so that my posts display the right date, otherwise I might post a Friday the thirteenth thing on Thursday the twelfth, which doesn't sound nearly as spooky. Right, so trying to work out settings in Google, and suddenly I'm on my Google+ profile page. And the last time I posted to that was the day I got it, my 18th birthday. Hmm, all my information is outdated. Fix this, fix that. Add stuff in, maybe I should link to linkedIn? nah, don't bother to find the URL. I did link to an awesome maths blog, Maths Intersection Programming, where I have been learning about algebra.

After that I returned to blogger, linked to Google+, allowing anyone to find out who is writing this weird blog (not that I never tweet that I posted or anything) and my dates are still all wrong. I have no idea how to fix them. If I post in the morning, and it is still the previous day in the states, my dates come out strangled. What a pain.

Interesting thought on this post though, it is a lot more link heavy than anything else I've posted. It is probably also a very different type of post. Oh well. This stuff is such a mish-mash, that I could add in here about my woes with university admin and lecturers who have limited timetabling/scheduling skills, and it would fit. I won't though, I will spare both you and me that rant.


</end procrastination> (Not that I opened that tag anywhere...)

EDIT: So immediately after posting I found the settings to change my blogger time zone... figures.

The big day

The big day isn't really anything very exciting. It is in fact the day of the final business plan presentations. The day where every group goes through the wringer. The day where we find out if our work over the last four weeks has been worth anything. It is a nerve wracking idea. Something which is scary for many people, and a fairly high pressure situation is never the most fun experience.

Today, we present to a very small group of people, something which we have been preparing for intermittently. If you walk into our LAN today, everyone will be clumped into their groups, making last minute changes to their presentations, and practising what they are going to say. Every shirt has a collar, and there are even some ties in sight. For a group of CS students, this is rather unusual, where the norm is T-Shirts, with predominantly shorts, some skirts, and some jeans. It is on presentation days that the whole group comes together to make sure everything is working, and groups will help each other out if need be.

Our group going first makes life rather interesting for us. The others will have the opportunity to see or ask what is expected of them, for us, we go in cold, hoping that we have no tech failures, and that we can remember our speeches. Something which is very important, if we stumble over our words, we will feel like we are letting down the team. We are ready though, or at least I believe we are, I can hope.

So, time to go practise. Perhaps, if I remeber, I will post about how it actually goes...

Maths, maths, maths

Ooh, I haven't written a post for a while, I'm getting slack. Or maybe I'm getting swamped. Lectures started this week. Officially anyway. Because of this some things have been put on hold. Possibly they shouldn't be, and it will bight us in a week when deadlines loom, but the workload is looking freaky. My work load includes picking up enough pure maths to fill in the gaps, so that I can successfully do a course on category theory (something which is awesome, but I don't fully understand yet) and producing an epic visualisation, which at least I'm not working alone for, and producing a business plan, and attending other lectures. PHEW! That looks like quite a big ask.

On the surface it is big, but I think over the next week or so the boiling pot will settle down, and life will feel like it is structured reasonably again. The business plan presentation is in a week and a half (uh oh) but after that the course can e written off, and there is no need to worry about any of that stuff until the marks are released, and even then the only reason to worry would be if I failed something, which I refuse to do. It may happen that my honours marks are lower than my undergrad, but that is kind of expected, what with working harder, moving to a higher class university, and no longer being the top of the class, as I was for the last year and a half (without bragging).

The maths is scary though. Hence the title. I have had two lectures on Category Theory, and now I know I have to work really hard to catch up. It is definitely possible, and I will sit in on another fundamental course to catch up on certain concepts, but I think most of my catching up will come from doing a bunch of extra reading. So looking through textbooks, and previous lecture notes, and that amazing resource which holds all knowledge, Wikipedia. With these tools, I can grasp enough group theory, ring theory and field theory to follow the examples of category theory. I have already got a reasonable knowledge of set theory (I think), so I should be okay on that score.

With all these things to consider though, is it surprising that I haven't even thought about NVP for days? I have much more exciting things to think about, maths and more maths, and possibly, if I'm bored of maths, I can have a look at my VIS project. When both of those get too much for me, then it is time to start writing out a business plan. Hmm, this strikes me as compromising my work ethic. Maybe I should find my NVP group and remind them of the deadline. I doubt they have forgotten though, they seem to be working just as hard as me, on the courses they are taking.

Oh well, I feel that maths is awesome enough to completely overrule any business strategy or business plan. Just put "we get to do awesome maths" and hope people will pay you for it. That would work wouldn't it? isn't that what academics do?

Oh well, I shall grind my way through the next few days, and hope that maths does not fry my brain, that would be unfortunate. If I survive to the weekend, then I have a whole day (Saturday) to devote to catching up on work that has been neglected due to a glitch in the weighting of the tasks in the priority queue that makes up my mental task manager. And yes, if you're reading this you should know, I am a nerd.

Ups and Downs

Valentines day. Bah, a commercial day, where many shops make money out of people, and prescribe what is romantic. A day where people value love more highly than on other days. I don't really approve. Not because I'm single and feeling lonely when everyone around me is being all Valentines dayish, but because I don't see the point. The commercialism thing, I hate strongly dislike it. Shops with these garish displays and stuff. They do it for Christmas and Easter, and it irritates me then too. The high emphasis placed on love, well isn't love important everyday? And doesn't Valentines cheapen love, and weaken people's originality when it comes to showing love?

Ah, well. That is just a random piece giving my feelings on the day because I don't think it is possible to blog on Valentines and not mention the day. What this day really comprised of was weirdness, with both good and bad bits in the mix. First off, yesterday I had a day off, so it felt a lot like a Monday today (what a way to start Friday). Then I got some admin sorted out with my varsity access card, great. I'm a registered student, and I now actually have access to computer labs and the library. This is a very good thing. The thing that followed was a bit of a downer though, a very cold NVP lecture. That is really one of the things that stands out. Yes the concepts of the lean start-up are pretty interesting, and I would have thought the most logical business model if you have enough money and enough guts. I don't. I do not have it in me to go up to someone randomly and say, 'hi, can I talk to you for a moment about the idea of product X. What do you think of this and that, what would you really want from such a thing.' I admit this is very necessary in a business that wishes to provide a product, but its not me.

It probably didn't help that we were trying to do market research about an app for junior school kids on a varsity campus. Where anyone with kids is probably actually a lecturer or member of staff, and those are much less common than the students. Also, none of my group had whatever it takes to find some of those people. Maybe we were cowards, but I found us one person to talk to, so at least we did get some feedback. I dunno. I'm all uninspired again, maybe this is to do with the remainder of the day.

Since I'm using logical order, we'll move on to lunch. This was provided by the Maths department, so they could meet the honours students. All six of us. This was awkward, but at least there was free food. That was good. And I did get to know a little bit more about the maths honours class, which is helpful. I then did random stuff most of the afternoon, some admin, and a visit to the library, where they didn't have the books I wanted. I then waited around with a few others for a meeting that had been moved without our knowledge. I'm a bit bummed about that  one actually. It would have been nice if we had been contacted more reliably than through a chat room. An email would have been really nice, but alas it was not to be, and so I waited at varsity, and made my brother wait too, for no reason.

The evening was at least pleasant. Sewing and listening to rock music seems to have helped me to calm down. Maybe I can face tomorrow with a little more positivity and energy. It would be nice if the weather would cool down as well, but that is unlikely.

So, my funky rant about the day is now over. I don't know if it is meaningful for anything except to get it off my chest and to put things into perspective for me. Overall, I don't think the negatives should out way the positives, but the positioning of them made them seem even worse. So on that note, I say to you, may God bless you, and may you have a pleasant weekend, whoever you may be.

Presentations and projects

Wow, sorting out a preliminary presentation for a business plan that wasn't even a real idea a week ago is impressive. That is what the intensive PCU and NVP courses are about. In two weeks we go from no idea of what is happening, to presenting a skeleton of a business plan to be critiqued on presentation style, and to some extent what content we need to add or subtract. I don't think most full start ups move quite that quickly, but then again, most start ups are staking their livelihoods on this kind of thing, not just needing to pass to get their degree.

It does take off some of the pressure when you remember that just because you haven't earned 100% it doesn't mean that you've failed. I know there are some things in life where that maxim may hold true (all or nothing kind of vibe) but this is just a course. It is quite possible to graduate at the end of the year with no more than 50% in the course. Obviously those people who like me want firsts for everything wouldn't be happy with that, but we are the "overachievers" of the class.

I have been very impressed at how hard everyone works for this kind of thing though. There are some groups who make me feel lazy because they have done so much, whereas we have done the basic requirements for some things, but done them as well as we could. A full on presentation (with slides) is not always necessary when critiquing a piece of written work in front of a class. It can be useful, especially if you have been tasked with re-writing the piece, but a straight critique can be done by simply making sure everyone can see what you're talking about.

The other thing that has been happening though is that a course that has been all but forgotten has shown its head again. VIS, a design course, is starting to show signs of being a monster waiting to hatch. We need to have a solid project idea and premise for that one, so that the preliminary presentations of it can begin next week. Which is also, incidentally, when normal lectures resume. So on top of those presentations, there is the horror of beginning even more new classes, whose timetables have not yet been set. Whoopee!

So, the next week and a half could be quite interesting. At least I don't have to worry about data scraping and so on any more, having worked out how to actually use the software that comes natively with a decent Linux distribution. I just need to worry about visual queries, colour, texture, shape and other interesting ideas. But I must not get them mixed up with my business plan. That could get really weird. Now that I have got to the point of being rambly, I think it is time to stop boring the few readers I have.

P.S. I just realised, I think I may have now put up more posts this month than in the whole last year. This review of life as a CS student in SA could be worthwhile for the stats that my blog needs.

Weekends and class work

There are times when it is obviously important to be doing work, but it is very difficult to know what exactly that work is. That is what has happened to me this weekend. I have wanted to try and get ahead on my project work for PCU/NVP and for VIS (a design type course) but I have had trouble crystallising my ideas of what work needs to be done. I am tempted to say that this is because I am waiting on details from other group members, but actually, I think it is because I don't have a very strong idea of what is happening in the project myself, and so I need to work out these details.

My role in the groups is also slightly unclear perhaps, which means that when I want to spend the weekend working on some specific thing, I struggle to define to myself what the thing is. I have a very straight forward approach to my courses, when I have work to do I like to get it done immediately, and when I spend a long period of time trying to define the homework that I need to do I kind of get dispirrited.

So. instead I think I should focus on how most people spend their weekends. Playing Squash matches with family, visiting the library, and otherwise relaxing. This might be a bit unusual, but I find it quite enjoyable, and it certainly stops me from doing any work.This was very pleasant, and ended with a family braai, but still left me feeling edgy for not having got anything done all weekend.

NVP Day 4

Nearly a week's worth of lectures. If I'm not mistaken the last of the lectures for this course happen tomorrow. This is very condensed, but it seems to be effective. Today's topic was finance, an interesting enough topic if you like money. Some of the systems are quite intriguing, but I feel a little bit like it was rushed. Probably because it was, due to needing to finish early for the majority of the class to attend a memorial service. This rush impacted a little on how much could be covered. Also, our lecture venue was locked (the purpose of which is unclear) and so we had to start a little late.

I did manage to improve my note taking techniques though, which was good, so I have a nice document with notes that will hopefully make sense to me if/when I need to look over them again for reference. That makes me feel a little more confident about the course. Also the brainstorming and planning session we held this morning before the lectures was very good, we decided the basic idea of what our App will do, clarifying quite a few of the necessary details. I feel a little bit useless in this section, but I will bring my skills in the admin stuff into play again, and I will do things around the edges, like writing an introduction and a conclusion, and consolidating the work. If it is me who does that, and we don't do it all together.

We have to get the skeleton of this done and dusted by Wednesday for our preliminary presentations for the communications course. This is actually quite a good thing, in that it forces the work to continue, although on that note I must remember that I have other work to do as well for another course. This other work comes from the interesting extra week that was tacked on to our year due to some administrative mix ups. The extra week has been taken to be quite a good thing by a large portion of the staff though, and may well be repeated. Odd how circumstance changes the way things are run.

Now that I am running off in a spiralling line outwards from my original topic, and reflect on the fact that blogging about a course for which I have not been particularly enthused (and am technically not required to take) has taught me more about myself. This is something that often happens when I blog though, that I get sucked into these introspective and soul searching posts. Not very typical, and possibly not very good for the readership, but hey, its not like the readership is very wide here anyway, and I might as well be honest, albeit a little monitored due to the public availability, and not wanting to condemn myself on the internet.

So, finance and risk stuff. It seems weird to do this all before the business starts, the idea of the cash flow thing, surely no-one would put a negative cash flow study in their business plan? You know if your cash flow thing is starting to look bad that you need to do something to make it look better before that. Perhaps put a few cash flow projections, with different initial investments to show how the investment amount can impact the success of the venture? It is something I would do, but then I am a scientist, and I believe in asking for money to do research (or to pay for research I've already done). I know that this is a little bit different.

Now I'm just going off on tangents, so it is probably time to stop writing about doing things, and actually do them.

NVP Day 3

Day 3. It feels more like Week 3. Although I don't think we actually have that many lectures on this course. We have been moving fast and intensively. And I am re-writing because I managed to post this early, and then delete it, and now I have to type it all out again, because I didn't just use the revert to draft feature. So, where was I last time. I think I was saying something about how this wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be.

Yes, I have seen the point of doing this course, it is for the point where you are out in real life and something puts you in the path of a business venture. Without this course, you are completely lost, and don't even know enough to stay afloat. With this course you know the basics of treading water when you land in the deep end, and from there you can learn to swim by listening (Googling) to instructions from the sidelines. The concepts are useful.

I am still not convinced that I am entirely suited to the business sector, but the groups we are in were chosen intelligently (and not by us, this is likely linked) so I am in a group with a Business Science student, so my weakness is made up for in his strength. I bring other things to the group, like the fact that I take notes of things. Not to say the others wouldn't, but I do do it. That is part of the value that I bring to the group.

On to today's lessons. We spent a VERY long time on case studies. This is because we didn't just look at each case, but rather after each group reported back, we had a (short) lecture on some of the topics raised by the study. This is quite a nice method of lecturing, but I need to get better at taking notes with it. I feel a bit silly taking notes when the lecturer is using a very casual style, but I need to take notes if I want to assimilate the information properly. This may simply be something to be aware of with regards to this course. I must make note of the fact that I am used to lecturers being fairly formal, and so when one breaks that mould so much it can be a bit unnerving.

Of course I am now having a discussion about this over email with my lecturer who is reading yesterday's post, so there you have it. Brains are weird. Or possibly it's people who are weird.

Now, back to the topic. Business. I think today's spider diagram deserves a spot in this post, it was pretty cool. And it has some very important headings that we discussed in the class, which have details I don't fully remember (o_O).

Of course you get a little bit of insight into my doodles as well, but that is a bonus. They do not actually have to do with how I feel about the course, but rather begin as what can I do with lines in this shape or that.

So I have come to see that I may not be a business person, ever, but I may well benefit in some way from these concepts.

NVP Day 2

Yes, another day of the new venture planning course. I am starting to revise my opinions a little, with the help of friends. I think the course is interesting, and the concepts could be very valuable, but I have trouble taking it seriously. It feels very cynical, and tongue in cheek. Like we keep getting told all these bad things about entrepreneurship.

Anyway, moving on to the basic concepts learned in the lecture, and some thoughts provoked (based on the notes I took and annotated). So, the creative process. A messy business, but no-one really cares about that. All the customer cares about is the result, not how you got there. We do need to care about the route though. We are expected to follow that route. As a fairly well ordered person though, I find that a messy process can be irritating, almost as bad as adapting to a slightly different key spacing and sensitivity on the keyboard of a computer. So, to follow the route, we need to accept that everything is essentially creative. This means that every process we follow, every item we develop or use, is a creative process or the result of a creative process. So why don't we pay more attention to this? The creative process is powerful, yes every person has their own unique process, but what are the common threads?

Sorry, that was a little bit side-tracked. That is how my mind processes things though, the search tree is not very efficient, but it is generally pretty thorough. Our lecture did go through some interesting routes though. For example we had a brief lesson on tax evasion in the import/export industry. Which then lead on to different areas where creativity evolves. That doesn't actually seem that related, but it comes from too much(?) story telling around the subject.

I am now starting to wander if I am doing this quite in the same spirit as expected, but I think I will decide not to care. This is a blog of thoughts and ideas and how they affect life. If I analyse things here, well that's cool isn't it?

Right, moving along. After deciding the difference between innovation and creativity (innovation is creativity with value) we move on to the ideas of the great Walt Disney. Be a dreamer, be a realist, and be a critic. Get all three of those right, and maybe you will be able to be as innovative as him? That would be cool.

Skipping ahead a bit, because I feel like I'm going on too long on a topic which I don't find as interesting as some others I could write about here, I will get to the final points. First off, when marketing, raise a purple cows. Yes that grammar is intentional, it bugs me too, which is why I quoted it. Then, make use of milkshake marketing. Then use the concept of the "golden circles" by selling a dream that happens o be functional and feasible.

That seems to sum up the day's lectures. What did I learn? My lecturer needs to sit in on our professional communications lectures. I think he might benefit from some of the presentation skills we are learning. Also, I am not very interested in marketing and business strategy. Oh well, I must do what I can to get through. At least the group has some kind of idea of a product which could possibly make money in the education sector.

NVP Day 1

An introduction before the ranting and other nonsense begins. This is, for the next few days, more than just my personally neglected blog. I have a university course called New Venture Planning, which I have to do, and for which the lecturer requires we keep a blog. I do think that it will be possible for me to get into the habit of regular blogging about the goings on of my university career through this, I just have to hope my lecturer wont judge me too harshly for some of the other weird stuff that winds up in my blog posts. So without further ado, here it is, the NVP log, of me.

We have been instructed to keep a blog for this course. Great, I agree, the most learning is done in the time spent contemplating the material. Unfortunately for the lecturer this is also a time when it becomes possible for me to air my feelings about the course. Under some circumstances a blog I kept of a course would be quite fun, in this case it may simply serve as a ranting spot while I analyse my own feelings about certain business concepts which are being taught. That is not to say that all my feelings about the course are negative, but rather that my instincts are not business oriented, and I struggle to put money before social betterment. Perhaps that makes me a socialist, but then that is who I am, and how I work.

The way in which our groups were assigned I found to be fairly interesting. It leaves us with quite a nice spread of interests and areas in which we are “experts”. I would say that there are some groups who will perform to a higher standard than others, but that is due to the socialisation of the group members, and how well they interact. I feel that in some ways I will pull my group back, because I struggle to see how it is possible to make a money focussed educational product. I suppose though that to think about it rather as an educational product than a thing to make education more accessible to people would aid in that process. There are a number of odd educational toys and things that are simply making money out of parents who wish to give their children a head start.

This is a much nicer way of thinking about it actually I think. To create a product which also happens to be educational which will make money is much easier than to create a product which will revolutionise the education system and make me money as well. I don't have any ideas yet, but I'm sure they will come to me over time thinking about this.

It is now time to think about what I learned today, if anything. Well, obviously I learned something. It is very rare that I sit through three or so hours of lectures or discussions without learning anything. One thing I learned is that I struggle to pay full attention to these lectures because they are outside my are of interest. I find it would be really easy to sit and draw pictures all through these lectures. Obviously if I actually want to do well I need to pay attention, but I struggle, I am a theorist. I do aspire to becoming an entrepreneur. I do not feel that it is meaningful for me to sit through a bunch of lectures telling me how hard entrepreneurship is, but I should do it anyway.

Okay, thing I learned today. 0.5% of business ventures presented to venture capitalists are funded. That is 2 in 2000. I am in a class of forty something all being told we could be entrepreneurs. I feel like we are all being set up for failure. Oh wait, of course we are, entrepreneurs love to fail! Failure means we are trying things. A good entrepreneur has lost millions in other people's money. It is these people who make me think I will never invest my money unless I know for sure that it is safe, i.e. I will quite happily make use of a good savings account, but don't ask me to be part of any of this stupid risky stuff. I want to be a teacher, not a risk taking venture capitalist.

Perhaps my rant is compounded by the other things which are being stupid at UCT, but I was hoping I wasn't going to find that this course was mandatory for me, so, you know, I'm a little disappointed right now.

Of course the reader of this blog now has no idea what to think of me, except that I waffle and I am either really brave, or really stupid, or both, because I have said that the course for which this blog is mandatory is boring and not what I actually want to be doing with my time.

Books, the past, the future

Well, its been a while since I last had enough on my mind that could actually be written out meaningfully. I suppose reading real books does this to me, it starts me thinking about the meanings and purpose behind the works. I have recently found two authors who's writing I have enjoyed more than I would have expected.

C. J. Sansom's historical works starring the lawyer Mathew Shardlake are interesting. They are well written, in the style of a fairly generic mystery story. What really makes them good is the historical content. Set in the 16th century, in the time of King Henry VIII, Sansom brings into discussion the politics of the time. Shardlake is shown to become disillusioned of the reform in the first novel "Dissolusion" but he has long disagreed with the papist faction. This leaves the reader with a hero who is open to both worlds in a sense, and so the story is not about religion, but simply politics.

The stories contain enough fiction to captivate a wider audience, but also enough fact that the captive audience cannot help but learn some of the less pleasant details about the history of England, and the time of Henry VIII in particular. The set of three books spans a period of four years, in which three wives are killed. For the first time ever, I know the names of the wives of Henry, assuming he only had six, which I think he did.

So thos books give you thoughts on the past. I have also been reading the novels of David Mitchell, who writes convoluted stories that intermingle, and there are characters who cross between books in a manner which either suggests the author struggles to create cameos, or is a clever way of saying, "all these novels are actually linked." I have read three of his novels, and all three have the same kind of convolution as the movie inception. Stories within stories, and no clear description of when waking or sleeping. But there are two things that strike me most strongly about these books. One Mitchell is a fan of the Japanese and Eastern culture. Two he makes some of the works of George Orwell look optomistic.

These novels are set well ahead of where we are today, but a large amount of what we see happening we know could very well come true. The wars that are suggested are not unrealistic, although they due portray a particularly cynical view of America and the American military forces. What Mitchell does which both darkens his works and gives hope to the reader is he gives his characters their humanity. They are realistic, and it is possible to imagine meeting one of them in life. Even those characters who play cameo roles have enough depth that one can relate to them ad to their feelings.

This look into the future is bleek, but the people inside it are shown to be just like us, even if they are more likely to be caught up by the crime bosses, or develop amazing scientific technologies. The fact that every hero is humane, and even the villians are possible to relate to leaves the reader feeling positive, where it would be easy to leave them feeling negative about what the future promises.

So there are my Ramblings on the books I've been reading. I hope you haven't been too bored.

Life, the universe, and everything

So, I hand in my big project, hoping that now I will be able to relax a little. But instead I find that tonight I am restless, and unable to convince my brain to stop wizzing for long enough for me to work out what is making it wizz. So I am looking at what is happening in my life that might be worth wizzing about.

Only, things actually look pretty good from an objective point of view. I can go shopping for some sports equipment which I would like to buy, and I don't need to worry about either the money or the time. I have a hockey match which will be a lot of fun to play. And I am able to spend some time this week catching up on interesting physics things that have been neglected recently, due to project pressures. There is onehing which is a bit of a bummer, and that is the fact that my cell phone battery seems to have been overcharged, which shouldn't even be possible, but has made the battery physically swolen, and it loses its charge in about ten minutes when being used. But that shouldn't be causing my brains to wizz.

So it is time to think, what else is happening in my life. I have covered academics, that looks good. I have covered sport, that looks good too. Technology is being a pain, but hopefully I will be able to fix that soon, by buying a new battery. So perhaps it is my social life.

The question there could be actually, "do I even have a social life?" The answer to that would be yes. So is it worrying me? Perhaps a little. I have to tell a good friend that I will not be able to attend her 21st birthday do, because I will be away with family that weekend, but she will understand that, so tjat shouldn't be stressing me. I have some things I need to get done for my youth group, but objectively they are all fairly simple.

So I come to the conclusion, that there is no one thing that causes my brains to wizz like mad, but rather perhaps a collection of things. It would be awesome if things were all simple, and peoples reactions were as predictable as a physics edperiment, or a piece of complex code. But unfortunately there is no debugger in the IDE of life, so we just have to put up with the occasional bug, and possibly create a work around. That's why life hacks are so popular. So if that is the case, then I will steal shamelessly from Douglas Adams, and say the answer to why my thoughts and brain are wizzing endlessly must be very simply, 42.