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.

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.