I've nearly finished the bee simulator which has been annoying me for the last few weeks. The annoyance is partly caused by the simulation itself, but it's also partly down to DirectX. I don't like it. It's ugly to write. OK, so it comes out with some pretties at the end, but...... Hmph.

Slightly worried about the prospect of tomorrow - we get the results of last semester's exams. Well, assuming the university's system doesn't fall over as it has done in the past. A number of times. <Sigh> Oh well, we'll see!

I seem to have neglected my blog again. Oops. Not too much has happened really.

We had quite an eventful Christmas morning. I won't go into details, apart from saying that children should not be allowed to ride quad bikes, certainly not in public places! The rest of the day went well though.

I spent New Year in London with my girlfriend, which was nice. Especially the expensive Chinese meal!  :-D

I'm back at uni now - have been for a few weeks now. The work is piled up already, and I am developing an extreme hatred for bees. I'm currently on the second of at least three courseworks involving the things. Oh, I am also developing a dislike of DirectX programming. OpenGL is such a "pretty" language in comparison - far less pointers and far shorter names for things. Oh well...

Actually, I suppose quite a bit has hapened!

I write this post from the comfort of hte sofa in my lounge. This can only mean one thing: I'm back home for Christmas! I left a cold, yet sunny Hull at lunch time. About half an hour into the drive home, we were met by somewhat inclemment weather. This weather i ofs a rather depressing thought, as I'm going out with some friends to a U2 tribute tonight. I'll be walking home in a raging blizzard (again) probably. Oh well, it gives me a chance to catch up with friends again!

Talking of friends from back home, I'm rather jealous of one of them. She's jetting off to Egypt tonight for a week's quadbiking in the desert. Grrr.

I'm sure I actually had something of use to say in this post. Oh well...

Well, I'm getting better still, though I'm still not completely there yet. I've also got a very short attention span at the moment (I blame the illness - my story and I'm sticking to it!), which is causing me slight problems in writing a report at the moment. I need to find another 2500 words from somewhere (of a 3000 word report!). Oh well, it will get done.

Also on the cards at the moment is revision for the Neural and Emergent Agent Technologies exam. I have a feeling that this exam is going to be about as nice as it sounds - at least to people who don't like neural networks that is!

The other problem is eBay again. I wish I could stop remembering random things from my childhood and thinking "Ooh, I used to like those. Wonder if there's any on eBay?"... Oops! :-D


<EDIT> I've somehow managed to get another ~1300 words to keyboard this morning! With one section left to write, things are looking up (until my supervisor tells me it's all wrong tomorrow that is...!

I have to say that I somewhat dislike being ill. Especially when it means I have to wait around in a doctor's surgery for very nearly two hours, to be told that I have a bacterial infection. My girlfriend has also been rather ill - with the same infection it would seem! Luckily for me, I managed to hand in my coursework just as the illness was starting - a day later and I might not have managed it! It has, however, meant that I have missed out on a number of days of work...

Nothing much else to report really, other than the fact that my halls of residence has actually managed two days of good food in a row! Wow!

Looks like I've let things slip again. It's been really quite a long time since I last posted here. Sadly, surprisingly little (that I can remember!) has happened in the meantime.

My role as an assistant warden at my halls of residence is continuing without much trouble. Which is a Good Thing.

I've just got a couple of new toys: a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 notebook styley soundcard, matched with a *rather* nice set of 7.1 THX speakers. I was quite amazed/shocked at the size of the subwoofer - picture a ~15" monitor, make it more like a cube, add a huge heatsink to the back, then you're just about there. Halflife 2 has never sounded so good! It's actually quite disconcerting to play, with sounds coming from all around you!

It was my birthday last month. We went bowling, where I (among others - and you know who you are!) made a fool of myself on a number of occasions... A good time was had by all though!

My Final Year Project is begining to take shape, though in pieces. I'm just hoping that they will all integrate properly! Parts of it are quite hard to program actually, as I am making use of the SPIClops API from elumens. My project will hopefully be displayed on the VisionStaion in HIVE ( http://www.hive.hull.ac.uk/ ), so I need to use this API to correctly distort the image for display purposes. Fun. I also managed to increase the frame rate of a particularly badly written piece of code I wrote from 0.25FPS to more like 30-60. GLlists are my friend! Saying that, I'm still looking for a simple way to use vertex shaders in OpenGL on a heightmapped terrain. I had a quick poke at NVIDIA's CG stuff, but managed to break it slightly (oops!). I may just stick with what I've got. We'll see!

That, however, is currently being put on the side so I can concentrate my attentions on the Neural, Emergent and Agent Technologies coursework at the moment. I can think of more fun things to do to pass my time really, including things to do with rusty spoons and my eyes...... Never mind, that module will all be over (hopefully!!!) soon.

Talking of which, I should probably go and do some more...!

Goodness me! I haven't posted for quite a long time. I really must appologise, but I do have an excuse! I have been very busy with one thing or another.

Since my last posting, I have been on holiday in both London and Cornwall. We had a very good time in both. A highlight of Cornwall was the brilliant sandcastle we built (I know, I know, but there's nothing like never leaving one's first childhood is there?!). It was HUGE and even had a sand village attached to it!

Now that I'm back in Hull, I have taken up my new role as Assistant Warden at Thwaite Hall. So far, nothing particularly bad has happened (touch wood!!). All is largely good really.

Anyway, that's me up to date again. Sorry for the delay...!

 

I've just been to see Madagascar at the cinema ( http://www.madagascar-themovie.com ). It's well worth seeing if you get the chance, for its comic referneces to other films if nothing else.

I'm still struggling on with the x64 platform. It seems to be becoming more stable now, with drivers and software actually, on the whole, working...! The 64bit version of Farcry is something to behold though! *Very* pretty, even on some of the lower quality settings. It would be far more impressive if it didn't insist on crashing every quarter of an hour though. Oh well, can't win them all!

By the way, thanks to all who have read this so often that I'm now over 1000 readings!

Well, I am now typing this post on my nice new shiny x64 platform! I discovered that the problem I was having last night was that the 64bit drivers formy Promise RAID controller don't actually work. I had to swap the array onto the VIA controller instead, at which point it worked.

I notice with some annoyance that Symantec haven't yet released any patches/products supporting 64bit platforms. I also note that they seem not to be planning to release any in the near future. A bad move on their part, in my humble opinion.

Oh well, on with the installations again!

My copy of XP64 finally arrived this afternoon. "Yay!" thought I to myself. I'm now on my fourth installation attempt... It seems to install (largely) OK, albeit with one of those "this software has not passed the Windows Logo testing thingy" messages (whether that refers to Windows or not I don't know?!?!). It then restarts. And again. And again. This isn't going very well so far...!

I think I'm getting slightly nearer to making the particle system work! Now, instead of the static pink square, I have a series of randomly velocity grey squares that fade out. I have a feeling that it still doesn't actually work as intended, but it's getting closer!

I did eat a lot of Chinese today, but I actually managed to stop before I ate too much!! Well, nearly...

I'm currently struggling with a piece of code I'm working on. I'm attempting to create a particle system for use in cloud effects for my final year project. I understand the concept of how it should work (I think, any way!), it's just making it work that's causing me some grief. I'm basing my idea for this on a good example from NeHe ( http://nehe.gamedev.net/ ) - a great site for people who want to learn how to make pretty graphics, in my humble opinion. It's not going so well so far, but at least I now have more than a blank screen that I've had for the last many hours work... I now have a pink square that sits in the middle of the blank screen for no apparent reason! Oh well, with a bit of luck I might be getting closer...!

On a totally different note, I'm going to York tomorrow. This can only mean one thing: I'm going to the all-you-can-eat Chinese there (among other things). As those of you who know me will know already, I take all-you-can-eat quite literally!!  ;-D

I went biking yesterday with a friend. "How interesting", I hear you say. Well, it was all going fine until I was riding down a hill and a wasp flew into my mouth and stung me. Ouch!!!! Luckily it stopped somewhere just inside my lips and stung there, as if it had flown right into my throat, the result my well have been *rather* more severe...!

It just goes to strengthen my idea that wasps don't like me. I used to have no issues with them, but that changed a couple of years ago when I was stung over 30 times by an angry swarm of them! That time I couldn't move my arm for a day (about 20 stings on one arm!!) ! Ah well...

I have a tank. A radio controlled one anyway...! It arrived yesterday, after a whole morning and half the afternoon waiting for it. It's fun!!

I haven't posted for a while, largely because I haven't done much worth talking about.

I've been out and picked strawberries the other day for jam purposes (mmm, strawberry jam.......).

I'm still waiting for Microsoft to finally get round to sending me my upgrade to XP Professional 64bit edition, if they ever bother to send it that is...

I'm waiting for my radio controlled tank to arrive (£29.99 from ebuyer.com!!). It should be turning up today. It had better do actually, or ebuyer is going to regret re-opening their customer support phone line...!