rally 'em up

This week will hold plenty for geeky reminiscing sessions at borders. Good 'ol Chai (the dammed aussie) and Dennis (the pavlova russian) are over in Aotearoa. This of course means a gathering of most of the fellows from underGrad and lots of sitting around and talking about anything. Oh yes, our conversation topics indeed is a fine model of the behavior of nonlinear dynamical systems. Ah Dennis's fiance is visiting with him. Wonderful :)

So guys, meetups are at borders, 6ish (right after work) which will lead onto random activities, weekends are in planning.

postgrad zen

a bit of a take on jorge cham's ever popular comic strip, here's a bit of postGrad zen

What is the sound, of no hands typing?

ahhhhh deep.

whoosh

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas N Adams

I beleive some postGrads are having drinks at the Old Government House on campus today. Do join if you know anyone submitting, or should have *grin*

[quote-o]

"There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works, and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is, one must be half a tradesman." -- Ludwig van Beethoven, January, 1801

meeting of the minds

Does sitting close to the screen change the perspective of research, making it appear bigger and less insignificant than it really is? Perhaps so as it seems to be the habitual posture of the postgrad creature. Significance. A meeting with the supervisor/advisor ...



... tends to be by de facto lingua franca most often elevating the postGrad's significance the same way puddles regard Maxwell’s equations. In my meeting today my mind was quite like a puddle; imagine a puddle waking up in the morning and thinking.

strike a chord

Students all over seem to undergo some sort of forlorn transformation when writing. Perhaps the idea of ending ones research strikes a spot tender in all researchers? Maybe it’s the daunting task of publishing ones work to be scrutinised by the rest of academia. My friend sarahH dropped me this email:

Hi Izzy,

When I was doing my honours dissertation, some of us wrote some poetry about it. I've got it up on my blog, and I thought maybe it would strike a chord with you in your masters procrastination efforts :-)

http://www.sarah.geek.nz/2005/03/26/dissertation-desperation/

Cheers

Sarah

I think sarahH captured the sentiment of all research students with these little verses:

I feel I have progress at last
14 thousand words have now passed
I’m sure feeling studious
but the quality’s dubious
I fear its a mere bunch of ass
– Sarah (20th Nov)

I’m on my own, all alone
others playing in the sun
wanna stop, but dare not
I just wanna get this done
– Sarah (24th Nov)

Maybe it is not the thought of parting with ones work that weighs heavy, possibly that majority of the work is conducted in the last few months of writing! Those after lunch siestas, those tangential experiments, those all night gaming sessions! Ah but if only for an extension of a few more weeks! Oh dear supervisor …

[quote-o]

On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli

cunning'linguist

As the time draws near, postGrads dwell further into procrastination. Some slither into reclusion whilst others find peculiar outlets of any sort. My mate sweetsweet scribes ...

izzy the warrior

He stood all alone in the rain
Battling the wind, trying to beat it
Deep down he knew he had already lost
But pride, his mistress, had her whip

It was easy to stand in the pouring rain
The rain did not judge like all others do
Just pelted him with drops that hid his tears
The rain as his comfort he cried freely

He was glad in life for his foes
Foes dont betray one like friends do
Yet knowing that to continue he must forgive
He cried, he knew he could never forget

Memories from yesterday haunted him today
Even in the present, he lived in the past
Each drop of rain a painful memory
Each tear drop, from the sorrow within

Like the rain and his loneliness was all he had left
Were they worth fighting on for ?
Deep down he knew, he had already lost
But pride, his mistress, had her whip.

"F@uk me, i need to be doin my PhD ..." -sweetsweet

rain of the past

The drops of water, a leaky shower faucet
the rain of the past, floods through the nite
each tear drop that silently creeps away
torrential wave of the ocean, at the doorstep

Good times i muse, star crossed lovers
an emotion that justifies feelings unknown
then reality creeps through the azure hue
the tear drops challenging the dam i hold

Was it pride, i wonder, my mistress evil
blind to the screams of a heart once broken
Or faith, promises divine made, unkempt
Justifying needs that never need be

the silence of the night, whispers you hear
the past that challenges the present you hold
A circle, the beginning lost in the past
No sign of a future yet to behold

"one last one for u izzy .."
"called storm" - sweetsweet

A harsh word, a cruel thought
That brought back those lost memories
of handsome princes and beautiful princesses
of dark castles and worlds of magic
how if he shut his eyes
drowned the voices in his head
he would escape to a realm unknown
strong in the belief that all would be right
But young, he was not anymore
everafter, a world not real anymore
How he pleaded with the past to let go
But the past just held on to his pain
It seemed to feed on his want to live
His needs unfulfilled, he wanted to satisfy
A savage beast, till he was left no more
He wished tears would drive them away
Wash the ground from underneath them
But they pushed on, solid and unrelentless
How he wished those memories away
A harsh word, a cruel thought

sweetsweet, that's touching! Now get back to your typing! Ah well how about two more poems along the themes of "forsaken souls" and "derisory bodies".

[quote-o]

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups - alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.
~ Alex Levine

Lift engulfment

"hey err i think im locked in the lifts"
"hahaha" my mate Alif responds with laughter
"ummm, no im pretty sure im trapped in the engineering tower lift"
"wohooo ho ho you are joking right!"
*bleep*
more laughter
"could you ring security and have them take me out?"
*bleep*bleep*
"no way you joking right" says my mate still chuckling
*bleep*bleep*
"nope im for real, im ..."
- silence -
My phone decides that it doesnt quite have enough battery charge to allow me to carry on this conversation. It was approximately 04:42 on a wednesday (18/05) morning.

Below is a picture of me walking out of the lift, taken by Alif for the amusement of everyone present.



Perhaps i should unreel my yarn from the start. The engineering staff common room at the top of the engineering school's tower setup a brilliant coffee machine. The staff common room is out of bounds to students save a selected few postgraduates.

Recently it was decided by the powers-that-be to remove after-hours student access to the tower lifts and staff office levels. This meant that altho us few providential enuf to have access to the staff common room (read as coffee machine) by day we could no longer indulge by night. This coffee machine was not your normal average coffee machine. No. This machine pours forth covetousness liquid - hot steamy smooth rich from freshly grounded beans.

The many years spent in the engineering building amongst acquiring certain other traits, hones ones survival and cunning. Most often not in any way beneficial way to the individual. The insane time spent on campus endowed me with an in-depth knowledge of the layout of the sprawling engineering campus. The CAD files we 'acquired' many years ago in order to create an Unreal map may have helped too.

Down into the belly of the building i ventured. Ah i found the door. Alas not the door that leads me out of the building, for which im still searching. I found something better. A door to the lift system without the security access restriction. I hit the button. The doors glided open and beckoned me in. The gears whirred taking me up the tower, promising pleasures of hot steamy satisfaction.
Then stopped ...

lyrical preeminent

"ISURU IF YOU COME BACK WITH A HAIKU OR A SIXTEEN PAGE SONNET I WILL KILL YOU."
~ mazza

Splashing Screen

Brilliant! Here's another showcase of my attention span. My Thesis has several applications which impliment, demonstrates and showcases theory. This splash screen was created for the application used to dynamically configure the design flow of embedded system tools.



Perhaps i should explain the irony of this image. The entire (software)application was developed using the microsoft .NET plaform. Not just the User Interface, everything from highlevel user interaction to really lowlevel libraries. The image shows the linux penguin Tux about to swat the micosoft msn butterfly :)

The splashscreen was created using GIMP. The image of "the-tough-Tux-about-to-sawt-the-msn-butterfuly" is licensed under GPL. I really should focus and finish my Thesis...

starwars fest

"Lord Vader?"
"Yes Master?"
"Rise." - Palpatine, sw ep3 (2005)

"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." - Obi'Wan Kenobi, sw ep4 (1977)

You have been enrolled in the following course: STARWARS for Dummies. I am validating that we have the required number of registrations to run this session. You will be notified via email prior to the session start date whether you have been confirmed as enrolled, or if the session has been cancelled.

---

SESSION INFORMATION:

Tuesday 10th May 2005 7.00pm: StarWars Episode IV "A NEW HOPE"

Wednesday 11th May 2005 7.00pm: StarWars Episode V "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK"

Sunday 15th May 2005 4.00pm: StarWars Episode VI "THE RETURN OF THE JEDI"

Tuesday 17th MAY 2005 7.00pm: StarWars Episode I "THE PHANTOM MENACE"

Wednesday 18th MAY 2005 7.00pm: StarWars Episode II "THE ATTACK OF THE CLONES"

Wednesday 18th May 2005 9.30pm : StarWars CloneWars

---

You may pass this on to interested parties; both of the rebels and of the alliance. Ships maybe docked on docking bay ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. All droids will have to be checked by the door. Lord Vader is due to attend the screening on the 19th.


may the force be with you
padawan izzy on behalf of
master AI (Starwars GURU)

[quote-o]

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. -- Charles McCabe

flick it

Brilliant :( getting zonked into this online exposure thing ... im now on flickr.com. Most photos will be published thru on this blog.

H2G2

Dear all,

How’s everyone doing? I was wondering if any of you would be interested in catching the:
6:30pm screening of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at villageskycity Queen st this Saturday 30th April?

hitch-a-ma-what?

Here's the movie site: http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/main.html

So? Well ... The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy originated as series in 1978 and was written by the late Douglas Adams. This series has a wide following around the world and has had a large influence on geek culture. Much of this has seeped into the conventional aspects of our technology driven culture. The story encompasses outlandish situations, characters and concepts, their anarchic, ironic humour, and their subtle social commentary. The books are described as "a trilogy in five parts" :) That's Douglas Adams right there!

Here’s some excerpts from the start of the book (which is also the inspiration to a "about" section in my thesis)

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape- descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

It’s great to see more and more literature which has been cult brought to the mainstream. Ive got all four books (thanks Talia you fellow hitchhiker you are such a doll). So those of you who havnt read it feel free to ask if you would like to have a read. Come along to the movie, perhaps it may be like "experiencing the aural equivalent of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of colored dots on a piece of paper which suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses."

But in the least you may learn about Life,Universe and Everything or was that the third book. Well hope to see ya’ll there, open invite; im sure to have missed some ppl on this email list, don’t be all Vogon about it; bring the usual suspects.

so long and thanks for all the fish.

- i -

[quote-o]

When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip. -- Ignatius Reilly

jessy bday

it's jessy's birthday today - happy birthday.

architect screening to own kfc

"I am the Architect. I've been waiting for you. You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also irrelevant." - matrix reloaded

Anu says:
i am an architect now
Anu says:
ergo, i have many many screens and i own kfc
izzy says:
u got a promotion?
izzy says:
nice
izzy says:
but isnt it frustrating ... drawing all those little doors and the like? hehe
Anu says:
no, tools engineer -> architect, is *not* a promotion
Anu says:
i used to do real work... i'm not cut out for this dilbert crap
Anu says:
i am very annoyed
izzy says:
hahahaha

silly anu :) well best of luck, architecting

Backronym Compiler

GNU's Not Unix Compiler Collection v4.0.0 was released on 20th April 2005. Cheers you guys.

Genesis 1:27-28,31

My good mate Kenneth announced his engagement to his girl, Charlotte yesterday :) I believe the deed took place one starry valentines night. ah Kenneth you little romancer you, who knew!

Well that's them there ... and here's their website http://www.charlotte-kenneth.com/ put up just for the wedding. Its got all sorts of info and more pics and video and all so exciting. But really Ken, does Charlotte know what she's getting herself into? Charlotte, you gotta watch out for this boy! Have you heard the "kenneth and his supervisors" story *grin* Wish you two the best in this genesis of your lives - lots to say but I wont say it here.

Just thinking and this makes 3 people who are engaged/married from our batch. I could be wrong. A few more are to come soon im sure *wink*

Not entirely unlike ...

I succumbed to my voyeuristic tendencies and signed up for a blogger account. Yuck i dont like using web solutions which are hosted generically. The pervious site I kept (using Drupal) has morphed into a ‘team fun site’ at work and my webspace on the ECEfaulty server was taken down by our very own BOFH citing large space consumption issues. awww Jamie, you know its all in jest. Time to bring out the chocolate box, I wonder what he’d like. Don’t worry I’ll have it up soon before I finish my thesis, as a testament of my journey and as a repository for all research work. Oh yeah real deep ;)
Well for the moment - sit back, enjoy, im sure to post some late nite blurbs.

First Post

"It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the product of a deranged imagination."
- Douglas N Adams

and thus it is with a sense of imagination one must read this 'blog' ... warning content has not been checked for sanity or factual accuracy.