Entries from June 2008 ↓

Today was good. Went to Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner at 11, Anon arrived late, predictably. We walked down Oxford Street for a while until we reached a Dianetics stand, where we protested and handed out fliers until we almost ran out. We then moved on to Picadilly Circus, the whole time handing out fliers and lulzing. Had communal KFC, it was good, but there was a whole bucket of leftover chicken which was wasted. We went on to TCR, protested a bit more, then went to Game where we tried to find Battletoads, but they were sadly sold out or didn’t stock it. So we went back to the park and lulz ensued. All in all, a great day, and finally meeting the people on IRC was very interesting.

The Oxford open day was today. Took the Oxford Tube in the morning, possibly one of the most enjoyable journeys I’ve ever been on. Comfortable reclining seats and wireless internet. The time flew so fast that on the return journey I didn’t even notice that we were at Shepherd’s Bush already and so missed my stop. Fortunately I then got off at the Notting Hill Gate stop which turns out to be better for me as I could just take a bus home instead of walking up Addison Road. The day was interesting, the starting talk being the best, about Oxford in general, admissions, and a little about the CS course at Oxford. Erroll was there, which was a surprise, as I was expecting to be the only Pauline there. We took a look at Haskell, a rarely used programming language that Oxford undergradates used. We did some fairly simple stuff with it, starting with the simple formula to work out any part of the Fibonacci sequence:

The initial formula seemed to work well, but as n got larger, the time taken to process the number increased (in a fibonacci sequence, in fact) a lot and it showed it really wasn’t an efficient formula. The speaker then did a lot of complicated stuff that I can’t really remember as I’m writing this, but it sped up the calculation significantly.

The Oxford CS course seems much more theoretical than the Cambridge and Imperial ones. Is this good?

When I got home I went back on IRC and people were discussing programming languages. Amazingly someone mentioned Haskell and so he and I got talking. Turns out he goes to Oxford and is doing M&CS. What are the odds of this happening just after I go to Oxford? Very low. It scares me when coincidences like that happen.

This is one of the most awesomest articles ever.

On my way home from school, on the number 9 bus, I found a copy of Felix, the Imperial College student newspaper. As I had just started writing my first draft for my personal statement, and had just done a bunch of research on computer science at Imperial, I started reading it, and what do I see on the first page? An article about a protest by the Citizen Commission on Human Rights (CCHR, a group formed by Co$ against psychiatry in 1969) outside the Royal College of Psychiatrists annual conference on July 1st. Of course, I was expecting the article to just be about Imperial and Scientology, but halfway through the article, it mentions Anonymous. Anonymous is everywhere now. So, I went on to the enturbulation forums and got info on the counter-protest, and I now intend to go to it on the 1st. Probably nobody else will be going, but it’ll give me a chance to look at Imperial, if nothing else.

Need to get contact lenses to enable the wearing of a V mask without my glasses getting in the way.

I talked to Freaky a bit today (not the hamster!), asked him for suggestions on things to read over the summer, and he suggested The Art Of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth, which I’ll have to get hold of and read over the summer. I believe it’s quite long, spanning over a number of volumes, so it should be some good summer reading. The conversation lead to discussion of Imperial’s computer science facilities. Apparently Imperial is starting up a compulsory IQ tests; I should be fine for that. Imperial is ranked as one of the top CompSci Universities in the UK, and has a more practical CS program, whereas Oxbridge has a more theoretical approach.

The last thing is that today was the day of Melissa’s visit to Imperial for the Physics taster course. That was three completely unrelated things happening today which were all somehow linked to Imperial. Coincidence? Probably. But it’s still cool. I managed to forget to ask Dr. Mayfield for permission to go to the CS taster at Imperial on Tuesday, I hope Monday won’t be too late to ask.

Saw Lord of the Rings on stage last night at the Theatre Royale Drury Lane with Melissa and Natasha. It was pretty good, although it didn’t really live up to my expectations. Still had fun though; navigating through the streets of central London trying to find the place, making it just on time. The epic feel of LoTR really didn’t come through in the musical, which is acceptable as it would be very difficult to do it on stage, but I still feel a little let down. When I compare it to things like The Lion King, it just didn’t measure up. Oh well. Lothlorien was just as amazing as I had imagined and the Nazgûl were amazingly done. Unfortunately there were some less-than-intelligent Americans behind (and in front of) us who kept on talking and making some of the stupidest comments I have ever heard.

On the Nazgûl:

“How did they get such a big horse on stage?”

On the disappearance of Bilbo:

“He was never really there, it was just a projection, obviously.”

When the orcs came around to *scare* people, they managed to make one of the Americans cry. That was possibly the best part of the whole trip.

Tonight, we dined in had dinner at Hell. It was the first time we had a large group of people (12 of us) who were James (Ko), James (Linehan), Laura (James Linehan’s girlfriend), Clood, Tilly, Fred, Peter, Adam, Haruka, Farhan, Elliot and me. It was pretty epic, although Laura and James didn’t really talk to anyone but each other. I feel a little sorry for James, having his first date in Hell with us. We are pretty terrible. I hope we didn’t scare Laura *too* much. Which reminds me:  ’tis a glorious day; James’ first date with a real girl(?)!

Farhan and Elliot were the first to leave, followed by James and Laura, then Clood and Tilly. Adam left a while after, but James (Ko, obviously), Fred, Peter, Haruka and I stayed until the end. Predictably, there were no Mordors. Sad. Oh well.

James, Fred and Haruka kept doing this strange “Jumbo Hotdog” dance which apparently comes from this video:

I just watched it. It’s pretty lulz, but still doesn’t beat the Japanese (Korean?) video on learning English

It’s also download day; the day of the release of Firefox 3. They’re trying to set a world record for number of downloads. So far a large number of the hosting mirrors have gone down, so I think they might make it. I just downloaded it and it doesn’t really feel any different except that it doesn’t crash when I open any Facebook application (hurrah!).

I uploaded a few photos to Facebook, but they’re terrible quality. Either I’m going to have to carry a camera with me everywhere, or I should make sure my next phone has an awesome camera. Hopefully as awesome as the new 8.1 megapixel Sony Ericsson

After numerous attempts at making a blog (with the first one being almost exactly one year ago), I’ve decided to retry it. My ability to handle CSS is pitiful, though I have made some progress, and I spent far too much time making the interrobang favicon. Screw you, Internet Explorer users, I don’t care that your browser can’t handle non .ico favicons!