Still Getting Used to Writing 2008 on Stuff

Well it's 2 weeks into the new year, and it looks like I've kept up my last year's new years resolution (keeping this very blog) quite well! All in all the new year's break has been non eventful, with family stuff taking up most of our spare time.

Christmas, new years, and boxing day were spent with the family (as always), so we ate a month's worth of food in a week (as always).

In work news, I've moved on to my CEED project on site work, so I'm no longer getting paid as a vacation student. This is very depressing as I was just getting used to the steady income of money, which I found to be very pleasant. I'm currently researching the different types of solutions that I may use for my project, which has involved reading many books on adaptive filtering/blind source separation theory, which all tends to look like "Greek alphabet soup" after a while. But I am not discouraged! The sea trial where I'll be recording all my data is coming up, and I'm really looking forward to that.

I've just finished reading "Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions" (Edwin A. Abbott) which was a Christmas present from Matt, inspired by my interest in manifolds. It was a really great little book which involved no maths, and really gets you thinking. I had previously tried reading "The Shape of Space" (Jeffrey R. Weeks), but that really requires pen and paper to fully keep up with the content. But I strongly recommend Flatland as a short read for anyone who's interested in thinking about our perception of space.

I'm back at work tomorrow after a week of struggling with the dreaded holiday stomach bug. It looks like the year has already fallen back into the regular pace!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Just had a really nice, relaxing (by my family's standards anyway) Christmas day. Got some very cool gifts including:

• A watch (thanks Mum and Tati)
  
• A new desk for Matt (some contribution from my parents)
  
• A little outdoor setting for our little duck out (pressie for us from us)
• A blender and a baking dish (thanks ZiiZii)
• A cute bath mat and some Nandos sauces (thanks Elissa)
• Tea towels and salad tongs (thanks James and Chloe)
• Door bell and a vacuum cleaner (thanks Matt's parents

I bought Matt a big CD wallet, a desk protector mat thingo, a draw tidy, and Corpse Bride, Night Before Christmas, and a Labyrinth and Dark Crystal double DVD. Matt got me 3 full length mirrors (for when my pole finally gets here), Xenocide (an Ender's Game novel), and one more surprise coming in the mail!

We're having a boxing day family thing tomorrow, but it's going to have to be indoors since it's going to hit 41 degrees tomorrow eek! Get a chance to see how that water cooler air con works in high humidity...

In other news, work is going well! After the break I'll be entering my CEED student on site period during which I'll be gathering info for my final year project. It's starting to look very exciting (and scary!) but it's very promising and I can't wait to work on it. The project itself is to investigate a noise canceling system for the receiver end of an underwater acoustic communication system, but I'll save the details for a later time (and for those who care!).

Work went really well over the summer break. I finally got to solder something! Reaching the end of my engineering degree without having soldered anything was getting embarrassing so I'm glad I finally crossed that bridge. My test box works well and is currently being used a lot, so that's very fun to see. I quite enjoyed making the box from scratch (which involved wiring diagrams, drawings, ordering the parts, drilling the box, soldering stuff, crimping, heat shrinking, and many more very fun things), even though that sort of thing isn't really what the engineers do every day.

We had the office Christmas party at Social on Station St (which is where I had my 19th birthday) and I was disappointed to find out that the adjoining restaurant was not of the same high caliber as the cocktail bar. Also I was looking forward to trying my first cigar but they no longer sell them at the bar, probably due to the new indoor smoking rules. I ended up enjoying the night a little TOO much (engineering student + free wine = mayhem mayhem mayhem!), but on the upside I won a greatly needed cookbook in the raffle, which will hopefully help expand our diet of frittatas and toasted sandwiches.

Hope everyone has/had a great Christmas and an exciting new year!

Results are Out

Results came out a few days early this year - hope everyone went well and passed, and can put the 2007 uni year behind them!

Here's mine:

• 91 Robotics
  
• 84 Analog Electronics
• 95 Graphs and Geometry
• 100 Electromagnetic Theory

Electromag theory!! WHAT THE HELL? Those who know me (or read my blog for that matter) will have had to frequently put up with my complaints about how hard that unit was and how I didn't understand anything. That one was completely unexpected!

News Update

Well my week off between the end of exams and the start of work absolutely flew by, and was mainly chewed up by house stuff and organising my final year project. I'm just about to finish my first week at L3-Nautronix doing some engineering vacation work, and I've also mostly organised my CEED project.

I'm really enjoying my vacation work, and it's really fun to get an insight into what the other half of my degree is all about. I've done 2 lots of vacation work as a software engineer already, but I was feeling a bit uneasy about the fact that I really had no practical electronic engineering experience at all. It's a bit strange at work, and I'm feeling really self conscious about being a complete beginner to the point where I've only soldered something once in my life, and I barely know how to use a multimeter. Oh well I guess you have to start somewhere! It's just strange because if I was programming I'd know exactly what to do, but I need to take baby steps on the hardware side of things.

Although, my tasks have been really fun! I'm in the middle of building a test box and I got to do some catalog shopping for all the parts I needed. Who says engineering isn't girly! I threatened to make the box all pretty, but alas the world is seriously lacking in pink pcb connectors.

My uni friends and I celebrated the end of exams last weekend with a notes burning session mainly aimed at destroying our piles of dreaded electromagnetic theory work. I thought I'd be environmentally friendly and only choose the most scaring of all my work, which included a selection of the worst tutes and some past exam questions. All in all it was actually a very healing experience, probably because inhaling all that smoke burned out the bit of my brain who's purpose it was to remember that I took electromag theory in the first place.

Christmas is fast approaching, and Matt and I have already put the Christmas tree up. It's looking a bit lonely without any presents under it, but we just couldn't wait! Although I have a feeling it's going to be a boring Christmas this year, since we'll be getting a lot of "necessary" house items, which we are of course very grateful for, but it's no fun opening a washing machine on Christmas day. I guess having a house on our own is definitely a present in it's own right though.

My CEED project is looking very promising at the moment, and I'm really excited about getting all the details sorted. I'm having a meeting with my project mentor (from Nautronix) and supervisor (from UWA) on Monday, so I'll post what I can about it soon.

I already can't wait until the Big Day Out... Arcade Fire, Bjork, Spoon... YAY! I get a big smile every time I walk past my fridge. (Our tickets are on the fridge... not that I don't usually smile at fridges).

And It's Over :)

Just had my last exam today (Robotics), which went absolutely great since it was the EXACT exam set in 2005 hahah lazy lecturers (oh well suits me fine). I got out of the exam room and the sun shone a little brighter for me today! Also, congratulations to everyone else who also finishes exams today, which is all of UWA, and Edith Cowan too I think.

I'm pretty much just going to relax tonight by watching a movie with Matt and getting some well deserved sleep, then celebrate tomorrow at Yvonne's going away and a 21st at night. Ahhh it feels so good to relax and not feel guilty about not studying :)

One Down

Just came back from my Electromagnetic Theory exam, and I think it went well! Definite pass, but I'm sure it'll look nicer after scaling. It was all over very quickly which sort of makes all those hours of study seem pointless. No more vector calc, time varying fields, and no more magnetostatics yayyyyy (at least for 6months anyway).

Still to go:
Saturday 10th: 9am Graphs & Geometry, 2pm Analog Electronics
Friday 16th: 9am Robotics

Google Sydney 2007

I had a fantastic adventure at Google Sydney for the 2007 Anita Borg Scholarship this past week, but now unfortunately it's back to reality. I was a finalist again this year, and the winner, Tracy, is from Perth UWA, so it's great to have a Perth girl on the winner's list!

The actual retreat involved spending lots of time at the Google Sydney office, listening to talks, chatting with engineers, and generally meeting a lot of smart people. It was also really fun to meet up with people from last year's retreat! I especially enjoyed the talk given by Robin, which involved the story of how she got to where she was today, and was very inspirational. There were also some "break out sessions" where the finalists were split up into small groups to talk about issues concerning women in computer science, and it was interesting to hear about everyone's experiences of how they ended up in this discipline.

Google pretty much took care of everything, and spoiled us thoroughly with hotel rooms in the Hilton, snacks provided every hour, dinner on the warf, and a cruise of the harbour. Plus I've made some friends for life from all over Australia, which is priceless given that the engineering and technical community is so tight here.

We also had a lot of spare time, which I mostly spent with Tracy, Dana, and Liz wandering about Sydney, shopping and the like. We also did the touristy stuff like going up the Sydney Tower and taking lots of photos of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. On the last day of our trip, Tracy and I went to Taronga Zoo which was voted to be the best zoo in the world a few years ago, and it really was fantastic. The position makes it much more than a zoo, with breathtaking views of the harbour from the chairlift and lookouts throughout. The highlight for me was definitely the giraffes and the tigers, and I'd highly recommend that everyone who goes to Sydney should spend a day there.

So the moral of the story is - APPLY FOR THE SCHOLARSHIP! Going to the finalist retreat at the Google office is a really great experience, so give it a shot girls :)

IKEA Wonderland

Had a very productive day today - shopping wise, not uni wise of course. Matt and I decided to take a trip down to IKEA to see what they had to offer by way of coffee tables and TV stands. We found two perfect pieces among a mostly crappy assortment of furniture, but that's always the way with budget furniture stores.

1. LACK Coffee Table: $49

2. LACK Shelving Unit: $119

3. Enjoying our new dining room: priceless.

OK so it's not priceless - it actually cost $168, but it's great to finally have some non-hand-me-down furniture of our own!

We also took a trip next door to Freedom and Furniture Bazaar, which are both slightly more pricey (but higher quality) establishments than IKEA. We definitely saw a few things to aspire to, but since a simple coffee table can cost over $400 we may put it off for a few years yet!

Matt's New and Improved Site

Matt's new site design is all done and looking shiny! Check it out for some cool widgets and iPhone apps :)

Busy Time

Well it's coming up to the end of semester and boy is there a lot to do! I don't think I've ever had so much stuff due all at once, and considering that Electromag Theory is one of my units, even the simplest* things take me days to finish.

I'm also sorting out my final year project for next year, and it looks about 99% sure that I'll be doing a CEED project with Nautronix (the company I've been doing vacation work for). It turns out that the engineering manager at Nautronix actually did a research project with my supervisor from uni so it looks like the project will go smoothly in terms of everyone getting along!

This weekend I also need to pack for Sydney for the Google retreat next week. I can't wait, but I'll be missing an important lab and also skipping out on my group assignments, so I'm trying heaps done before I leave so I don't feel too guilty. More on that when I get back, yay!

Matt's house is going very well, and I think we've pretty much moved in. We have all the basics; bed, fridge, table, tv, but we're still missing a washing machine so we've been dropping off the washing at mum's (good ol' mum and grandma to the rescue). I'm getting a knack for this cooking business, but given mine and Matt's busy schedule, it's been a chore to keep the fridge filled up with stuff to cook with.

No other major news really, since I've officially had no life since mid semester break. I'm missing the royal show AGAIN this year which is really unfortunate since I've been looking forward to seeing the duck parade again since 2 years ago :( Oh well, next year!

Keep an eye out next week for news on the Google Retreat!

*simple meaning simple to a person with an astrophysics degree