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Year View| Summary| Highlights| May 2003 (Month View)

Jan ‘03 | Feb ‘03 | Mar ‘03 | Apr ‘03 | May ‘03 Jun ‘03 | Jul ‘03 | Aug ‘03 | Sep ‘03 |

01.05.2003 – Thursday 1 May

• I had a quiet day at uni, with nothing out of the ordinary happening. I met Silas in the evening and spent an hour in the labs with him working on his VB assignment. I then walked back to Silas’s place and had a cup of tea, before catching the train home. I had to detrain at Woodridge and walk to the video store to take back my DVD’s, and I saw that Pizza Hut (which is right beside the video store) had $3.95 large pizzas again, so I got one. I also did a little bit of shopping, but as it was getting late and dark, I hurried home.

02.05.2003 – Friday 2 May

• I went and did the normal uni thing, except that I slept in and missed the train and thus my first lecture. I then had a terrible day and ended up chronically depressed and not wanting to go home, so Silas and I went in to town and saw X-MEN-2. The cinema was absolutely packed; I’d say they were turning people away. The movie, as expected, is remarkably stupid – but I’m almost immune to stupidity now and enjoyed parts of it anyway. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend it, but I won’t declare it absolutely terrible like Silas did. It was going on midnight by the time I got home.

03.05.2003 – Saturday 3 May

• I slept in, and spent a quiet day online. Joe and I drove down the road and got some chips for dinner.

04.05.2003 – Sunday 4 May

Morning

• The morning was quiet. I don’t remember what I did; I think I did some study.

Afternoon

• I caught a train into the city in the afternoon and watched “Daredevil” at the Myer Centre Cinemas. I then walked to Silas’s and found Buddha’s Birthday celebrations at Southbank, so stayed there a while taking photos. I had a Hare Krishna meal from the Hare Krishna’s tent. It was very yummy and reminded me of the food I ate in India. I dropped into Silas’s but he wasn’t there and a quick phone call found him still at uni, so I wandered around the city taking some photos until late and then headed home. I found out the next day that Silas had missed the last CityCat and gotten stuck at uni and had to walk two hours home.

05.05.2003 – Monday 5 May – Labour Day

• I had a quiet and very uneventful day.

06.05.2003 – Tuesday 6 May

• I had another normal uni day. When I got home, around six o’clock, Tonya and her boyfriend were here, and Michelle and her boyfriend turned up shortly thereafter and cleaned out the room opposite mine. That took an hour or more during which time they giggled, laughed, and made silly jokes almost constantly, so I didn’t get the most intensive study done.

Web Hosting

• I also bought another SolidInternet web hosting account, as they’re having their second birthday and offering the first twenty people who sign up double the disk storage space and ten add-on domains. It’s the add-on domains that I’m interested in, as under the normal plan I can’t get any add-on domains but I need at least one.

07.05.2003 – Wednesday 7 May

• I was really sleepy this morning. I only just managed to drag myself out of bed and down to the train; although I woke up okay once I was on the train. Uni was the same old; I spent some time down in one of the computer labs and dropped in at Silas’s on the way home. I detrained at Woodridge, walked back past the shops, got a few groceries, and looked around for something for Mother’s day. I got the idea of a photo frame and a photo, so I went home and made up an “I ♥ U” photo of me, which I hope looks somewhat cute and not plain stupid. I’ll see if I can get it printed out tomorrow.

08.05.2003 – Thursday 8 May

• I spent the morning sleeping, and then the evening at uni. I met Silas down at the computer labs and went to the library with him to get a book, then dropped my Mother’s Day photo off at the uni chemist to be developed, or printed. I’ll pick it up again tomorrow. I then came home around 3 o’clock, right when the school kids are crowding the trains. I spent the evening attempting to do my math assignment for tomorrow, and I’m still doing it now. I’ve shaved, showered, dined, fed the cat and dog, put the rubbish in the bin ready for collection tomorrow and now I’m having a bit of a break online chatting, writing this and reading. I have to go and try to finish off another question (or ideally more) before I go to bed. The stress is awful.

About time

• I phoned the DiscShop about my hard drive, which has been away under warranty since 11th December last year. I phoned them on 5th February and they told me it would be a week or two, and then I emailed them on the 15th April, but got no reply. After a bit of haggling, the guy on the phone told me he’d found an IBM hard drive out the back somewhere and he’d post it tomorrow or Monday.

09.05.2003 – Friday 9 May

• I went to uni, did the normal stuff, handed in a math assignment, picked up Mum’s Mother’s Day photo, stopped off at Silas’s on the way home, stopped off at Woodridge shops and bought a photo frame, did the home stuff, fed the animals, etc. etc., and then watched “Face/Off”. I didn’t like it. Then I went to bed.

10.05.2003 – Saturday 10 May

• I read math, more maths, and more maths. I don’t like math. I didn’t think “maths” was a word, but it seems it is now. I don’t think I did anything else worth mentioning.

11.05.2003 – Sunday 11 May – Mother’s Day

• I slept in. I phoned Mum around lunchtime and talked for quite a while. I did some washing. Actually, Joe did it. I paid the rent and my part of the phone bill; at only $10, it is much cheaper than last time. I drove Joe to the bowls club. I started to watch “Sensitive New Age Killer” but didn’t like it and didn’t finish it. I’ll watch the rest some other time I guess. I printed out a letter for Mum, packaged up her photo ready to send off tomorrow, and packed my uni stuff so I don’t miss the 6:27 AM train tomorrow. I wonder if it’s a security risk mentioning train times in a publicly available journal.

12.05.2003 – Monday 12 May

• Nothing exciting, just university.

13.05.2003 – Tuesday 13 May

• I stayed up quite late working on a website for my Internet Interface Design class. By the time I got to bed, it was less than three hours until I had to get up again. Hardly surprisingly, I nearly didn’t wake up in the morning, but that’s a story for tomorrow.

14.05.2003 – Wednesday 14 May

Uni

• I very nearly missed the train. I woke up a short while after the alarm went off and just had time to run for the train. It was eight minutes late, so I didn’t need to run that fast anyway. I spent the normal time at uni, and worked out how to get onto AustNet from within the computer labs, so I did that. I also went to an “Industry Conference”. Speaker John Moore from TechnologyOne spoke about "The Top 7 Things done by Top Software Developers". Not really the most thrilling subject I guess, but the first conference I’ve been too.

Home

• I stopped off at Woodridge and walked past the shops. I bought two vegetarian supreme pizzas for $3.95 each and a few sundries at the supermarket, and then walked home. I spent most of the evening completing two java lab assessment tasks, and then the rest of the night working on my website assignment.

15.05.2003 – Thursday 15 May

Uni

• I guess university must have been the epitome of noncommittal today, as I can’t remember anything about any of my lectures. That just goes to show how good my memory is. What I can remember though, is that I asked someone on the BITS channel on the UQ IRC network if it was possible to access outside IRC networks from inside uni, and it turns out that it is possible – and easy. Ironically, I’d tried several possible ways to do this, using SSH and various things I thought might work – but I never tried the most obvious and simple. Telnet to the student server, and that’s it. The student server has outside access, and has the ircII IRC client installed. This is excellent news, now I can waste more time at uni easier and more efficiently than ever before – which I promptly proceeded to do. I spent a few hours chatting and enjoyably procrastinating, because today I have an excuse – I’m waiting to meet Silas and go see a movie.

Evening

• After spending a while down in the computer labs, I left and walked up to Silas’s and spent an hour or a little less there, before we both headed back to uni again to watch “Talk to Her” at the Schonell Theatre. It’s a Spanish movie, subtitled; however, I tend not to notice subtitles, subconsciously converting them into speech. It was quite good, almost in the style of a Shakespearean tragedy. I was impressed by the theatre too. I’m not sure what expectations I had, but they weren’t right. The theatre we saw the movie in is brick, with spider-web like things stuck to the walls with lights behind them, creating the effect of being deep underground in some sort of cave, and it was quite large too – much larger than I had expected, easily full cinema size.

Night

• After the movie, I walked back to Silas’s and caught the next train home. I then stayed up until just after 3:30 AM finishing off my website for submission. In the end, I gave up and submitted it anyway, with a few blatant errors still there.

16.05.2003 – Friday 16 May

Morning

• I slept in, missed my train and subsequently my first math lecture, but managed to make it in time for my second lecture. I learnt how to use an event listener to capture input from a keyboard in java, and how to evaluate effectively various software interfaces. I obviously didn’t learn any math, as I was snoozing on the train at the time.

Afternoon

• Now that I’ve discovered how to IRC from the computer labs, I can easily kill a bit of time by chatting to my online friends and reading a few forums and various things that I do online. Considering I can do this without having to clog up the home phone line, I spent a while in the evening down in the computer labs chatting and surfing before heading for the train station and home.

Evening

• Joe wasn’t home when I arrived back here, and the car was here, the dog tied up, the house locked, and his iron still turned on sitting on the ironing board. This had me almost worried, but I did the usual thing, came up, vegetated in my room, and forgot about the outside world. Joe and his sister Elizabeth turned up some time later with “Chinese”, so I spent an hour or so eating and talking downstairs, and then came back up and wrote this. I seem to have gotten over my extreme tiredness I had at uni and on the way home now, but I don’t think I should stay up too late.

17.05.2003 – Saturday 17 May

Morning

• I slept in with great enjoyment. Lucky there’s weekends.

Evening

• I caught a train in to Silas’s, waited around an hour or so, and then caught another two trains to the Eldorado cinemas at Indooroopilly to see the “Matrix Reloaded”. It has had such a large amount of hype; we were both interested to see what it would be like, and both expecting it to be a bit of a let down. I don’t think either of us was expecting it to be pathetic though, which it unfortunately is. The fight scenes, which make up the majority of the movie, were some of the worst I’ve seen in a long time – which was a surprise coming from this movie. Not only were they meaningless (and should have been left out), but no one appeared to get hurt. They reminded me of a scene at close of trading in a stock exchange – not really what you’re supposed to think when watching a fight scene from the Matrix. There were a few short moments where they used their fancy fast-frame multiple camera swinging shots to good effect, but these were out shadowed by the numerous times they paused ridiculous shots of people doing back flips in mid air. I think they should leave the martial arts to people who know how, and think up something a bit more futuristic. You have agents who are all but invincible and a guy who is bordering on superman and the best you can come up with is ineffective karate-style fighting where no one even gets hurt? Pathetic, really pathetic. The few parts of the movie that weren’t dismal and pointless fight scenes were mostly taken up with overly long dialog, which also seemed to be rather meaningless. This movie has totally lost any of the “cultiness” the original had, and is bound to be a great disappointment to nearly everyone. Even the soundtrack was awful, just lacking the punch when it was needed, and with some unusual selections in strange places. Definitely a big disappointment. As Silas said in the first ten minutes and halfway through one of the copious fight scenes with businessmen ineffectively flailing around, if it gets anymore boring, he’s going to sleep. Oh, and if that wasn’t bad enough – there wasn’t any coherent plot and we’ve got to wait for the next movie to find out if it even makes any sense.

Midnight

• I arrived home well after midnight, and spent precisely four hours online (as that’s how long my ISP gives me before disconnecting me). This gave me a very late night, or perhaps early morning.

18.05.2003 – Sunday 18 May – I am depressed

Morning

• Life is a bitch, the lucky die.

Night

• Night is darkness. Darkness hides the pain. My life is darkness. Even when I smile, inside I am hurting. When I was young, I cried openly. Now I have learnt not to cry. Now I cry inside.

Alone

• I feel so alone. I cannot stop crying. I am listening to Mark Knopfler’s Prairie Wedding from his Sailing to Philadelphia album.

Confused

• I don’t know what to do. I don’t have anyone to turn to anymore. I hate life. I hate it. Life is pain. To love is to hurt. To love is to open your heart, to open it wide for people to drive in their stakes.

Blow

• I have just watched “Blow”. It is a good movie. I cried. I guess I should phone my mother. I don’t want to worry her. I wish I had some money. I need to get out of Australia. I need to get away from uni, away from everything. I have been thinking, but it is hopeless. I don’t have anything that I can sell, I don’t have any skills, there is nothing I can do. Nothing at all. I have no friends, no one to turn to, no one that will help me.

Trust

• I have learnt to trust no one. Giving someone trust is only a way of betraying yourself. I will never trust anyone again. I will never love anyone again. I have learnt. Pain is pain. Pain can be handled. It is emotional pain that cannot be got rid of. Trust, love – it is these that curse a man until he is broken. If I trust no one, love no one, then I am able to survive.

Computer

• My computer is all I have now. I am alone with only a computer. Western society is the worst in the world. People living alone in concrete jungles, the hunter and the hunted. Everyone going about their little lives, alone. In little boxes alone. Parents have children. Children grow and leave home. They have children. They grow and leave home and have children. Life continues but there is no continuity. Humans are not capable of living alone. It is obvious, it is everywhere, the pain, the anguish. People are crying out. Society is crying itself to sleep. People ask why youth suicide is skyrocketing in the countries with the highest standards of living, yet it is not a problem in third world countries. Are they stupid? Yes, probably. The most obvious facts of life, the simplest little things, these escape so many people.

Crowds

• A crowd is bad. A crowd is stupid. A crowd is not the same as its individual parts. A crowd is not human. We are a crowd. We are no longer human. Single people, small family groups – that is the most human we are now. Anything larger is a crowd and is not human. Once upon a time we could go and cheer our local football team. We could go to dances on weekends, and know everyone there. Now we watch football on television. Do the people exist, or is it a computer simulation? We all know they exist, but does that matter? It may as well be simulated. We have lost the very thing that makes us human. As a society, we are no longer human, and we are paying for this in lives, misery and anguish.

City

• They say a city is the loneliest place on earth. I can walk down the road, past so many houses, past so many families, but I do not know any and they do not know me. No one will look me in the eye. Everyone is too scared in case they are seen to be an individual, in case they separate from the crowd and become their own. People are no longer able to do anything, because they don’t have any roots. If you’re very lucky, you have parents you can visit occasionally, and a few good friends that you see every so often. For the rest there’s not even that.

Wrong

• I used to think I was right. Now everyone tells me I have been wrong all along. Everything I do, everything I have done, it has all been wrong. I have learnt it makes no difference. Nothing makes any difference. If I do something, or if I don’t, it makes no difference. If you had a house, and you were blind, would you mind what colour it was painted? The world is blind. People see only their selves, if they chance to see someone else, they will interpret it in their own light, as an extension of themselves.

Ego

• Everything is ego. There is God, and then there is ego. Ego is the only reason anyone does anything, ever. People are happy when their ego is happy. But this world is a temporal world of causality. Nothing is ever fixed; nothing is ever permanent in this world. It is simple logic, if you are happy now, you will be unhappy later. If you are unhappy now, you will be happy later. The best you can hope is to be happy more often, and unhappy less often. The logic is infallible. There is only one loophole; perhaps other worlds are not so temporal. But who knows, who can say? Religion says one thing, science says another, and both are interpreted only through an ego, which pollutes all with its identify as self.

Now

• Now what am I to do? It is one of the curses of humanity that one cannot do nothing. At the very least there are always thoughts. What would make a person happy? To have their ego pandered, that is the normal route to happiness. It is a temporary and unsatisfactory happiness that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when it is gone. Beautiful women grow old and fade away. Strong men grow feeble. All life fades, anything good will be gone with time. To serve others perhaps? Religion teaches that the truest form of happiness is to serve others. To try and make others happy, and then one becomes happy themselves. But to make others happy one must pander to their egos? It is a vicious cycle? I see no solution. Life is inherently flawed. It only takes one of the myriad elements to ruin the entire scheme.

Happy

• We are not here to be happy. That should be obvious to anyone. It makes no difference how hard you seek happiness, it is not here. You may find some temporary relief from your suffering, but you may be certain that it will be temporary. Afterwards you are back where you started, a little older, a little wiser, but no happier. I challenge anyone to deny this.

Why?

• Then why. If we can never be happy here, then why are we here? Are we really here to be unhappy? Are we just here to propagate a species? Are we perhaps merely chemicals, evolved by a random impossibility? Of course not. That is one thing that brings a smile to my lips, thinking of people – eminently intelligent people no less, who spends their entire lives trying to work out how we evolved from something that had no life, into something that does. Of course, they will never figure it out, and they will be unhappy while they try. At the same time we have religious leaders who have no answers either.

Seeking

• People have given up seeking answers. People have turned to science, because with science they can get answers to some simple problems, with the promise of more answers to come. Deep down everyone seeks the same thing. Everyone seeks to be happy. But no one is happy. Because this is a temporal world, any happiness is fleeting at best. There is no true happiness in this world, no permanence at all. Seeking happiness here is a waste of time, doomed to failure, doomed to unhappiness. Happiness and unhappiness – they are like light and dark. One is not equal to the other. When there is light, the darkness retreats, but it is still there, and as soon as the light goes, the darkness is back. Everything is darkness, with small points of light interspersed throughout. Remove a light, and there is darkness. Happiness is the same. Everything is unhappy. Happiness can banish unhappiness to the realm of the forgotten, but not forever. Unhappiness lurks, lurks in the dark, the same as the dark, ready to return as soon as the happiness is extinguished. Light triumphs over darkness. Darkness flees at the sight of light, but darkness is never conquered, never gone forever. Remove the light and darkness is returned as fast as the light retreats. Happiness and unhappiness – they are the same. When there is happiness, unhappiness is banished, gone, seemingly never to return. But as soon as happiness takes flight, unhappiness is here, the same as before. There is no way to be happy in this world, barring for a short time. Unhappiness is always lurking with the darkness, ready to strike the instant happiness and light falter.

God

• They say God is light. They say God is love. God says – I am who I am. In their incessant search for happiness, people always end in the same place. Eventually, they find it is impossible, in this world there is no permanence, and no permanent happiness. Just as one can never banish darkness forever, so one can never banish forever unhappiness. They are left with only two solutions. Either there is no happiness, or there is happiness elsewhere – because there certainly isn’t any here. I don’t know what happens to those who decide there is no happiness. Perhaps humans are incapable of making that decision. However, I do know what happens to those that decide there is happiness elsewhere. They seek it. They seek, through religion, through drugs, through death – they seek happiness anyway they can. Anything that can take one from here to somewhere else is a possible candidate for happiness. Different people try different things, most with no success. Has anyone ever found true happiness? That would depend on who you believe. People say they have. People tell others how to follow.

Faith

• It becomes a matter of faith. To seek something that does not exist here, to believe that it exists elsewhere when we have never been elsewhere, to believe something that we can never prove, that is faith. The search for happiness is what drives people. Faith is what keeps them going. I believe without faith we would not exist.

Truth

• I have faith that there is truth. That something is always true. To use a cliché, true love. There is no true love here on earth, just as there is no true happiness. But perhaps God is true love, perhaps God is truth. As Jesus once said, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me. So many people use this single statement as the be all and end all argument to Christianity as the only way, yet are so blind that they fail to see the obvious, that Jesus is not talking about himself.

Logic

• Most people say religion is not logical. Religion and logic cannot coexist. I say they must. Truth is logical. For religion to be true, it must be logical. Faith must be logical, by its very essence, or it would not exist. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. A common saying, which people have no trouble in understanding, but they use that saying all over the world and not only when they’re in Rome. These same people can’t understand how Jesus can say he is the truth, the way and the life. What can’t they understand?

Hindu

• I can tell Christians I’m Hindu. They will tell me no man cometh to the Father but by Jesus. Therefore if I’m not Christian, I’m headed for hell, or at least not going towards the Father. They say God is love.

Christian

• I can tell Hindus I’m Christian. They don’t mind, they think Jesus is a holy man. But they think Christians have lost the plot and aren’t going anywhere fast. I agree with them, but I don’t think their elephant headed gods are going anywhere fast either. If you were a god, would you have an elephant head?

Atheist

• And atheists will tell me I’m wasting my time. They will say I’ve come from a random chemical structure, developing and evolving over untold eons. Somehow they think that ridiculous scenario excludes the existence of God.

Confused

• Everyone is confused. No one knows anything beyond what little they know. Science can only probe the known. There is no one that can know the unknown.

Comment by unknown – Wednesday 3 December 2003, 1:46 PM

  You should watch your language because kids ACTUALLY do go to this site in case you didn't know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comment by Ned – Wednesday 3 December 2003, 2:58 PM

  ... What?

19.05.2003 – Monday 19 May

6:27am

• Sigh. It’s before six thirty and I’m on the train. I’ve already woken up, run around in circles getting ready, and rushed downstairs, put on my shoes, petted the dog, rushed out the door and locked it, and jogged down to the station. I can get ready in about five minutes, most of which is brushing my hair, and then it takes about five minutes to the station if I run all the way – that is not a recommended way to wake any morning.

7:02am

• I’ve arrived at Dutton Park station. I walk up the stairs and onto the road, following it along until there’s a break in the traffic and I can cross over to Dutton Park, where I can walk down a bicycle path to the river. The ferry is in, and just about to go so I pay my $1.20 and board. The second ferry is just undocking from the other side – they run two ferries during peak times. A minute or two and we’re across the river and debarking on the other side. I walk through the rainforest section, past a few ponds with their geese, ducks and assorted long-legged birds looking for early worms, and up to the main refectory – which isn’t yet open.

7:20am

• I’m in the foyer of the UQ Union building, signing into MSN and checking my email. Unfortunately, I can only check my uni email from here as they’ve blocked external websites.

7:30am

• The main refectory has just opened, so I can go buy chocolate milk and some hot chips if they’ve cooked any yet. It looks like they’ve just made some chips, but the potato wedges are looking particularly good this morning, so I buy a cup of them instead, which I smother in tomato and barbecue sauces. Picking up a few napkins, I head out and into a sunny spot on a wall where I sit and eat my wedges and wait for my lecture.

8:00am

• I’ve walked around to the Pizza Hut where my Mathematical Foundations lecture is, and got a seat in the third row. It was already quite full when I came in, it’s hard to tell but I’d guess there’s probably somewhere around 300 people in here, but I could be quite wrong. We’re learning more methods of integration today, which I can actually understand. Regrettably, I didn’t manage to grasp most of the things we’re supposed to have learnt before now, so when our lecturer says we’ll differentiate this over the complex plain using the trigonometric identities I am left behind. I can do it all on my calculator, but I’m unable to do it in my head as I’m probably supposed to.

8:55am

• Well, I’m glad that’s over. Now I have to head down to the UQ Centre for my Discrete Mathematics lecture. The UQ Centre had one of the largest lecture theatres at uni. I get a seat in my normal position, a few rows from the front and near the centre. I really have no idea how many people are in here, I guess there’s a few though because it’s big. I really couldn’t even estimate. Looking around, it looks like it’s probably an eight full or less, there probably isn’t anymore than 10 people in each row, and perhaps 25 or so rows. That’s 250 people – I really don’t know, I’m just guessing. I think this lecture theatre holds around 500.

9:55am

• I am walking out of my lecture with many formulas going around in my head. As I go out the door, the sun hits me – he was still shaving and waking up when I went in, now it’s very bright. I squint my way up to the main refectory again, and past down to General Purpose South. It takes me five minutes or so to walk down there, walking fairly fast. This is where ITEE, Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, and subsequently me, lives. I head past the display of random dot stereograms and downstairs, along a hallway, and into first year lab 122. I guess there are 40 or perhaps a few more computers in here, and it’s rather full as usual. I walk down to the second last row and log onto a computer, where I can check my email, log onto UQ’s IRC network and now that I’ve worked out how – Austnet’s IRC network as well. I read all my emails and reply to the ones that require a reply – mostly IRC crap from Becky. I check the uni newsgroups – I can only access the ITEE ones from home, at least easily. I find the “wanted” and “selling” newsgroups and spend a bit of time reading them. There’s quite a few bargains, none of which I need. Halfway through the network loses all connectivity with the outside world. I found out later that what used to be the Australian university network – I forget the name, was down entirely. It took a while to come back up too, so I spent a bit of time checking the newsgroup while I was waiting.

1:35pm

• I’ve wasted enough time down in the labs, and it’s time to head home. I walk back towards the main refectory, but head down a side path through the parks near the colleges towards the river, and past the ducks in their ponds, and down to the ferry, which is just on its way to the other side. I sit on a bench and wait a few minutes until it gets back here and picks me up. Another $1.20 gets me across the river where I can walk back to the train station. Ten minutes or thereabouts later and I have walked up the bicycle path through Dutton Park, a minute or 2 to get across the busy road up the top and a short walk down to the bridge that crosses the railway tracks, and down the ramp to the station. I check on the timetable on the wall of the little building they have on the station and see I have a 19 minute wait for the train.

2:17pm

• The train arrives on time. I get in the second carriage, and as usually happens, get quite sleepy as soon as I find a seat. I doze and rest until it’s time to get off.

2:51pm

• I’ve arrived on time, and walk briskly home.

3:01pm

• I’m home! The cat is outside waiting for me to let him in through the garage roller door. There’s a little bit of junk mail that I collect. The poor dog is on the chain, but Joe wouldn’t have been gone long so she shouldn’t be so wriggly to see me. I let her off, give her a quick pat, unlock the front door, take off my shoes, head up to my room, throw my bag on the floor and plug my computer in. I go and wash my hands and get a drink while my computer is starting up.

3:06pm

• I’m sitting at my computer. The modem has just connected and I’ve just joined IRC, opened Outlook and begun to download my emails, and I’m just starting Syndirella to check the latest news.

3:40pm

• I’ve collected up my dirty washing and am taking it downstairs to the machine to wash.

7:04pm

• I go down to check my washing, but it’s still wet. I play with the dog for a bit, feed her and the cat, and have a shower.

8:42pm

• I come back to my computer and connect to the Internet again. I spend the rest of the night messing about online.

10:26pm

• I decide my clothes are as dry as they’re going to get tonight, so I go down and bring them up. They’re still slightly damp, so I get some coat hangers out of the room across the hall and hang them all up in my closet.

12:41pm

• I am tired and Joe has just arrived home, so I’m going to bed.

20.05.2003 – Tuesday 20 May

Morning

• I woke up just after midday. I couldn’t believe I’d slept in so long. Not only did I not have a late night, but I didn’t even have to get up early. 10:45 would have been quite adequate. I think it was just too depressing to wake up, perhaps subconsciously. After waking that late there wasn’t much point heading to uni as I only had one lecture and that began roughly 10 minutes before I woke up.

Afternoon

• And so it was, I stayed home. I spent some time redesigning the backend to my new website, which was a dismal failure from the functional side – I ended up undoing everything and putting it back how it originally was. The theoretical side, however, gave me the insight I’ll need next time I try – I hope.

Night

• I went down to the shops just after dark, picked up “Accidental Spy” and “Blue Crush” from the video store, a Veggie Supreme from Pizza Hut and some groceries from Woolworths. I began work on assignment 3 for Introduction to Programming. Unfortunately, I don’t have it finished, so that’ll no doubt be a late night later. I watched “Accidental Spy”, quite amusing in a Jackie Chan sort of way – I enjoyed it.

21.05.2003 – Wednesday 21 May

Morning

• In stark contrast to yesterday, I woke up as soon as my alarm went off and didn’t have any problems getting out of bed. I got to the train without having to run, and had a very normal journey into uni. I took the camera with me so I took a few pictures of the road and the ferry and the walk up to uni, the refectory and such. I was even brave enough to take a picture inside the lecture theatres with all the people in them! After my lectures, I went down to the computer labs and spent some time there.

Evening

• I walked around uni taking photos. I found a demonstration outside the new CSIRO building and a sports carnival in the great court. I haven’t looked at the pictures yet so I don’t know what they’ll turn out like. I took around 200 photos, so at least a few should turn out ok. I stopped in at Silas’s on the way home, quite hot after walking around with a full backpack taking pictures. When I plugged the camera into his computer, his computer would crash – so that wasn’t very handy. I stayed a while and then got a train back to Woodridge, walked to the video store and dropped the two DVD’s back, went to Woollies and didn’t buy any cream (because they only had thickened cream), and then walked home.

Night

• I spent all night doing nothing good whatsoever, and still didn’t manage to complete my java assignment, which is now in time-critical phase.

Comment by brad – Thursday 19 August 2004, 3:10 PM

  how did you get into the maintainance tunnel

Comment by Ned – Thursday 19 August 2004, 5:42 PM

  I walked into it. A semi-hidden door leads to the maintenance tunnel. It’s not the sort of door anyone would normally notice.

Comment by Sam – Friday 17 May 2013, 1:36 AM

  Where is the semi-hidden door!?

Comment by Ned – Saturday 18 May 2013, 8:12 PM

  There are actually a few access doors around the great court, but they are all locked.

22.05.2003 – Thursday 22 May – Sarah’s Birthday

3:33am

• Here I am, fast awake. I’ve just submitted my assignment. I’ve spent hours and hours doing it. I was so frustrated with it at one stage – but now it is done! The problem I have now is that if I go to bed, I’m only going to get a few hours sleep at most, and I probably won’t wake up, but if I stay up all night I might fall asleep on the train and miss uni altogether.

Morning

• Which is now yesterday morning, or to put that another way, it is now tomorrow. I went to uni, did uni stuff, dropped in at Silas’s on the way home, came home, did home stuff... oh wait, that’s evening.

Evening

• There we go. I came home and did home stuff. That’s about it really. Then I started on my assignment, and that takes me back to the first entry.

Birthday

• I phoned Sarah and said happy birthday. Dad and Mum were also there, as she’s going away for the weekend and they’re going to look after the place, so I got to talk to them too. Apparently Dad is going to be looking after Monty’s place for a few months while he goes overseas.

4:18am

• It’s 11.2° C outside, and inside, and slowly creeping into my bones. I’m all ready for bed now, but I’m not sure if it’s any use going to sleep. I’m fairly sure I won’t wake up in time if I do, and I’ve got a download which still has ¾ of an hour or so to go.

5:23am

• Bedtime. Alarm set for 7 AM. Not good.

23.05.2003 – Friday 23 May

7:00am

• I’m awake. It is 9°C – easily the coldest yet. I’m freezing. I get ready and walk swiftly down to the train station, freezing all the way. The sun is just starting to come out, and it’s just on the bearable level. If it were windy, it would be awful. Thankfully, the train is heated, nice, and warm. I manage to stay awake in all my lectures, and get home around 3:30. I spend the evening quietly doing nothing much, and have a few hours sleep.

24.05.2003 – Saturday 24 May

7:00am

• In what’s becoming a nasty habit, I’m awake early again. This time it’s because I’m driving Joe down to the bowls club as he’s meeting a group of mates and a bus there, and going away for the weekend.

Later

• I spent the day procrastinating and messing around on the Internet. I got virtually no study done, which is bad.

IRC

• public class Ned extends Person implements Geek { I feel important. I met the only female geek in Brisbane and she wrote about me: “I just want to get down to it and actually do some work so I can get all these nasty assignments finished and get on with the important things in life. Like meeting geeks on IRC who actually have an opinion on the age old XML vs relational database debate. :D Though I was much too polite to really argue about it with someone I had just met. Or just too surprised to put together a coherant argument!”}

Night

• I caught a train in to Silas’s and we caught another two trains to Indooroopilly and went to the Eldorado Cinemas and saw “Bowling for Columbine”. I found it to be highly biased, which makes it ineffective and discredits the (often conflicting) messages they’re trying to portray – which is unfortunate as it could have been interesting. I liked a contrast made between Canada and the United States, but the rest was either too biased to credit or irrelevant.

3:00am

• Well, it’s three o’clock. I don’t know what’s going to become of me. I guess I’ll sleep in tomorrow.

4:00am

• 9.6°C

4:40am

• Sleep. Beautiful sleep.

25.05.2003 – Sunday 25 May

• Today was quiet. I slept in, after staying up until 4:40 last night, and enjoyed having the house to myself. Joe is away at some bowls club do.

Night

• I stayed up all night doing my Discrete Mathematics assignment. I’d rather not think about it right now.

26.05.2003 – Monday 26 May

6:22am

• I woke about five minutes before the train was due to leave. 32 seconds to put pizza in my bag, 85 seconds to brush hair, 60 seconds to go downstairs and put my shoes on, 25 seconds to get out, lock the house and the garage and put the key in my bag, 3 minutes to run the 10 minutes to the station. The train door actually hit my shoulder as it closed and I jumped onto the train. And I only had 2 hours sleep.

Uni

• Mathematical Foundations and Discrete Math were on the menu today. I’d rather not remember either, so I shan’t write about them here. I dropped my assessable assignment in to my Discrete Math tute, hopefully I got most of it right, and then headed down to the labs as usual. I stayed down there for a while and just as I was leaving I bumped into Silas, so we went back to his place where I waited for the train.

Home

• I tried to do my Mathematical Foundations assignment, but gave up. I’ve written all the answers, but haven’t justified them in any way whatsoever. It asks to “justify briefly” so I’m not expecting remarkable marks from this. I hope that I have the answers right and might get a few marks that way.

Centrelink

• I had to phone Centrelink as I’ve been cut off my payment, their reason being that I didn’t respond to a previous letter. Fortunately for me, I’ve taken to emailing myself the receipt number, name, time and anything that was said between Centrelink and myself, and then I keep replying to that email until the matter is resolved. That way I have an up-to-date record of what’s going on which allows me to quote to them just when I did contact them about this letter, and who spoke to me. In fact, I even contacted them twice, but despite having been told the matter was resolved (twice by two different people a week apart), the best they’ll do is give me a fortnight’s remission until I can get supporting documentation to prove what they’ve already told me was no longer an issue, and which I already provided.

Night

• I worked on my webpage, having now figured out how to parse both XHTML and PHP files into my template. The backend is a lot cleaner now, and should pave the way for me to conglomerate a few of the sub-domains I now have into one coherent site. As usual, when I fix something, something else breaks, so I spent a while fixing little bugs and weird things. I’ve been inspired by Helen’s web log to do something I’ve been meaning to get around to for ages – implement a web-form so I can update my journal from anywhere. I’ll probably use it from here too, because it’s a bit silly uploading the entire year each time I add another day. I know how to read, parse, manipulate and otherwise contort data from an XML file, but I’ve no idea how to write data to it, at least, not to the right place in the file, but I’m sure Google will come to help me. I guess I need to treat my XML files as a database, and if I can get that going well, I might even consider allowing others to add comments. I don’t think anyone really reads my online journal, but it would be cool to have the ability there. Alas, I don’t have the time right now.

2:12am

• As usual, time has slipped away and it’s got late. I’ve got an archive RAR’ing, and it reckons its got 46 minutes to go. I don’t want to cancel it, and I don’t want to stay up for another ¾ hour and I don’t want to leave the computer on all night... I guess I’ll go brush my teeth and think about it.

3:00am

• The RAR’ing is finished, and so am I.

27.05.2003 – Tuesday 27 May

Midday

• Today I had the pleasure of a 12 o’clock lecture, rather than 8 o’clock. I also got until Friday to hand in my math assignment. I really find the mathematical foundations tutorials rather useless. Each time I’ve gone, I’ve found them no help at all, compared to my discrete mathematics tutorials, which are very helpful.

Evening

• I went grocery shopping on the way home, and had a nice falafel roll.

28.05.2003 – Wednesday 28 May

• Sigh. Another early start. After the beautiful weather yesterday, today is cloudy, overcast and raining. Nothing interesting happened. I went to my lectures, met Silas down the labs, and caught the train home.

Centrelink

• I phoned Mum, and she said she’s faxing a letter to Centrelink and posting me the original copy. I hope that will satisfy them.

29.05.2003 – Thursday 29 May

• Here I am at home, having first missed the train and then decided not to bother going in to uni. I have three java lab assessments due today, which I should be able to demonstrate to a tutor in the lab tomorrow if I can get them done today, so I’ll stay home and do that. I also need to do some washing, which is down in the machine making washing noises right now, and go down to the shops later.

Online Journal

• I’m not sure how to go about this. I’ve spent a while looking through Google, and have now posted questions to a newsgroup and mailing list. I want to be able to take two XML files as input, and transform them into one XML (actually XHTML) output file. I’m using XSLT (specifically Sablotron under PHP/Apache/Linux) and not sure if this is possible. Secondly, I wish to be able to grab a specific section of an XML file, load it into a web-form, allow it to be edited, and then save it back to the original XML file in the same location. It has to be UTF-8 throughout. This is what I’m trying to do: I have an online journal that I currently update manually. I want to make a page that will allow me to update it from anywhere. I want this update page to be able to add a new “day” to the XML file, which will contain “sections”, and to be able to load existing “days” and edit them or add new “sections” to them.

Well, duh!

• The US-led campaign against terrorism has made the world a more dangerous place, Amnesty International says.

3:15am

• I’ve just finished converting and uploading a whole pile of pictures I took of St Lucia/University Queensland to my website. I have been preparing my last three weeks of java lab assessments so I can get them assessed tomorrow. That will be the last of the java stuff until the practical exam next week. Joe ordered “Chinese” so I have some fried rice and vegetables to take in for lunch tomorrow. I just hope I can wake up in time and not miss the train. I don’t want to miss any more lectures, and the first one tomorrow is at 9 o’clock.

30.05.2003 – Friday 30 May

• I slept in and missed my first two lectures. Who cares what I did for the rest of the day.

Internet

• I’m disturbed by the news that Internet Explorer 6 is the last stand-alone release, all new releases will be an integrated part of the operating system and thus aren’t available without upgrading your entire operating system – rather expensive. I fear this will mean that people will remain using IE6 for a lot longer than they otherwise may have, which will in turn drastically slow down the uptake of new technologies, or rather, the uptake of existing technologies. There is very little point in building websites that can’t be viewed by the majority, and the majority are now stuck with IE6. Mozilla and Netscape are still not, in my opinion, good enough for general use – and neither is Opera. One possible consequence I can imagine is that people might be able concentrate on building pages that will work in IE6, which apart from its box modelling is quite good, rather than the never-ending race to implement the latest cutting-edge feature. I find that I can work around IE’s positioning and box modelling quirks, and a simple fix for their incorrect font-size representation, but I can’t work around the problems my site has in Mozilla. Why? Because the problems are caused by bugs in Mozilla, whereas IE incorrectly (according to the standards) interprets CSS, but at least it’s rather bug-free. To the best of my knowledge, my site currently works in IE5 with a few cosmetic issues degrading nicely, and works almost perfectly in IE6. Switch to Mozilla and the bugs become apparent, which really annoys me as there’s no way to work around a bug, and they’re the same bugs present in Netscape 6, I’d have thought someone would have got around to fixing them by now. Mozilla (and Netscape) doesn’t even work properly on my secondary monitor – and I’ve tried it in three different operating systems and two sets of video cards so don’t try to tell me it’s a driver issue. Opera, well... I have Opera open right now, marvelling at the numerous relatively simple things that it doesn’t get right with my fully-standards compliant code. I have links, which are justified and have a border around them, sounds simple – Opera can’t handle that. Anyway, that all got rather long winded and wasn’t what I meant to say at all. I was supposed to be coming to the point, which I’ll try to do now. The way I see it, IE has very good real-world support. I can make a site and it works in IE without any bugs and in a consistent manner. My code is fully compliant with the W3C’s recommendations – I don’t even allow a CSS warning. Admittedly, I have to be a bit sneaky to fix IE’s font sizing, but if you want to be pedantic, you could say that IE’s font sizing works just fine – it’s just different to the current standard, although it wasn’t when they first implemented it. The rest works as it should. That’s what I’m trying to get at – it works as it should. Perhaps not as the standards say it should, but it’s easy to code something that will look exactly like I want in IE. Doing that in Mozilla however, is anything but easy – and impossible with Opera. They simply have too many inconsistencies. I currently have issues where Mozilla can’t handle element resizing, changing elements from display none to display block causes grief to the surrounding elements, switching from display inline to display block works, but switching from display block back to display inline doesn’t. It’s just not consistent.

Afternoon

• I dropped in at the shops on the way home from uni and did some shopping and got XMEN out on DVD, which I later watched.

31.05.2003 – Saturday 31 May

Morning

• I didn’t do much.

Evening

• I trained in to Indooroopilly and saw XMEN-2 with Helen. It made a lot more sense after seeing XMEN last night. We spent a while after the moving discussing geeky things. It was enjoyable, and I nearly missed the last train home.

Jan ‘03 | Feb ‘03 | Mar ‘03 | Apr ‘03 | May ‘03 Jun ‘03 | Jul ‘03 | Aug ‘03 | Sep ‘03 |

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