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.
Showing posts with label hockey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hockey. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
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.
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.
Monday, 10 March 2014
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.
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.
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