Optical Switching Tute

Just got an email from one of the CUDOS committee letting me know that I'm one of the 30 students from 3rd and 4th year engineering, physics and science being flown to Sydney for a workshop on optical switching. Yay! It's in September so it's yonks away but it's definitely something I'll be looking forward to next semester.

I really have no idea what it's going to be about, but I guess that's the point. I'm sure it'll be all about how what we've learned in uni is going to be redundant quite soon - but I'm pretty used to getting told that given that I'm doing computer science aswell :| But I'm really interested to find out what it's all about because I've just done a unit called Circuits and Electronic Systems 3 (my exam for that is this Friday... AHH!). I've just spent the whole semester learning about MOSFET's (and to a lesser extent bipolar) transistors, so I'm full bottle on the current uses, speed limitations, etc. This workshop is about the research being done into optical switching which is faster than current technology. How exciting! (look - it's exciting for me, OK?)

As an added bonus the retreat is in Coogee beach in Sydney, which is the next beach up from Bondi, so I can't wait for that :)

Anyway back to exam study :)

I'll Never Get Used To Exams

It's just reaching the end of study week, and exams are fast approaching. I've actually been working really hard all week, but I'm not at all confident this year. I guess it's because this semester it's been 3x Engineering + 1x Computer Science, and the computer science unit (AI and Logic Programming) has been EXTREMELY hard. It's been completely unlike any other computer science unit - mostly theory, completely abstract, and the only programming has been in Prolog which isn't quite programming at all. Also I usually have one maths unit to balance out the engineering units, but this semester it's been full on with the hard core eng. I guess I'll just have to take it as it comes and do my best, and hope it'll aaaalll work out (eeek!).

To keep up my spirits I've been coming up with some Fun Things(TM) to look forward to during and after exams. Helps keep my eyes on the horizon and makes the impending exam doom seem less doomy. I'm looking forward to:

1. Seeing Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End - just watched the first two on Matt's new LCD tv... so nice!
2. Getting my hair cut - for some reason during semester I never get my hair cut and it ends up being all gross by the end of semester
3. Teaching Penny some new tricks - she's already learned how to walk vertically down a ladder (!) but that's about it so far
4. Putting up my Space Doggy print - I've had it for about a month now and I still haven't got around to putting up a hook
5. Starting Polemoves Intermediate - I've been slacking off with the exercise so it'll be great to start classes again
6. Washing my car - YESSS my car is finally back with a brand-new second-hand (haha) gear box, but it's all dirty and I really need to clean it up (the car, not the gear box)
7. Working on my game - I've come up with a really cute idea for a little game that I have no idea how to make, so I'm gonna make an effort to try and learn how to do it!
8. Organizing my 21st - it's not that far off (August 6th) so I should start thinking about what I'm gonna do
9. Playing Psychonauts - yep I completely stopped that when my units got scary
10. Looking for vacation work - I really need to find some engineering work experience so I should get my resume together
11. Catching up with friends - I've been completely antisocial this whole semester so I've got a lot of catching up to do
    

So that's a nice little list of things to look forward to, but still there's SOO much study and stressing before it's all over. It's always the same thing every year since high school but yet I'll never get used to the whole ordeal. Oh well, come June 18th at 5.15pm, I'll be a free girl! (at least until next semester...)

Meet Penny

I only had Morris for a little while, but I really liked him! I'd actually wanted a mouse for a while when Elissa caught Morris, so when he died I thought I'd go get a pet mouse like I'd planned.

The pet shop had a variety of mice, but none of them white! I really wanted a little white mouse, but the brown ones were so cute that I sort of didn't mind that much any more. Then the pet shop lady decided to lift up the little house all the mice were hiding in, and there she was - a little beige mouse that I fell in love with straight away! She had dark burgundy eyes and a little white tip on the end of her tail. I named her Penny the mouse and bought her straight away, taking her to her new home :)

She's a sweet little thing, but very slow and lazy! She sleeps a lot, and when she runs on the wheel it's like slow motion compared to Morris. I've been handling her a lot so she doesn't mind people at all. All in all it's been a great distraction from all my exam study, so I'm really glad I got her now.

So welcome to the Manea family Penny the Mouse!

RIP Morris the Mouse, I'll Miss you

He was only with us for a little while, but he was a happy little mouse. I think he died of old age, since he always had food, water and warmth, so at least he died in comfort. I'll never forget how he ran on his wheel, and how he cleaned his whiskers and ears with his little hands. I'll miss you Morris!

3 Reasons Why I Forgot the Keys in the Ignition

I was ready to leave the house today, when I realised I couldn't find the keys to my dad's car. Why am I driving my dad's car? More on that later... I checked all the usual places; my bag, my room, the kitchen, the garage, pretty much all the surfaces in my house, but the keys were nowhere to be found. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm ridiculously organised to the point where even my shoe boxes are coordinated in terms of colour, frequency of use, and current season, so it's very unlike me to misplace my car keys.

After a while of searching, my dad came back into the house to tell me I'd forgotten the keys in the ignition of the car. I'd just come back from Matt's house and was ready to leave again, so they'd only been in the ignition for about 20 minutes, but still, I felt a bit funny to have done something so absent minded. At first I thought it was just a lack of sleep due to coming back late from a birthday last night, but I realised there's a few more things going on that prove I'm not going crazy, I just maybe need to relax a little.

1. Uni
It's just that time of year where I've fallen completely behind in my lectures, and everything is due at once. I've currently got an "Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming" assignment in the works which is driving me crazy, and "Circuits and Electronic Systems" assignment due in 3 weeks that I haven't even thought about starting. I've fallen behind in the "Embedded Systems" labs, so I need to go into an extra session to finish that off, and a "Communication Systems" lab tomorrow that involved a pre-pre-lab, a pre-lab, and eventually a lab report that is going to take about a week to figure out. I have circuits test coming up that I really need to do well in, and weekly AI tutorials that are getting increasingly insane. Needless to say, I pretty much have no life right now, and a combination of bad weather and no time means I'm not getting much exercise which is throwing of all my energy.

2. My Car is Broken Again
A couple of days ago I was leaving Matt's house, just about to get out of the residential area onto a main road when all of a sudden my forward gears stopped engaging. I'd managed to leave the spot before this happened, so I was sitting in the middle of a main road, with on coming traffic, and no way to move! I turned my hazard lights on but this didn't stop a few drivers from beeping at me (yeah THANKS A LOT I wasn't AWARE that stopping in the middle of the road is not such a good idea). I finally realised that my reverse gear was still working, so I decided to reverse my way back to Matt's house (which took a fair bit of talent I might say) and call my dad.

It turns out that the gear box needs to be replaced which will cost 2 grand. Keeping in mind my car cost a total of 3 grand, this is... not good. So we're currently trying to get a hold of the only Mercedes specialist in Perth who has a 1 month waiting list at the moment. I've been going into uni with Matt in the mornings, so I've been getting up a bit earlier than my usual 7.30am starts, and this together with 9-5 uni is starting to get crazy.

3. House Hunting
Matt has been house hunting for about 2 months now, and our heads are pretty much all over the place with what/where/how much/when to buy. We've just seen a house that we're really interested in and so now we're deciding whether to go ahead, or wait a bit more. It's all a bit scary really, and it's a bit daunting to think that moving out of home is just on the horizon. Being an only child it's hard to think I'll have to leave my parents, and my nice safe cosy room at my parents house... so nice and safe and warm.

So I guess a combination of stress, lack of sleep, and more stress is why I've been forgetting a lot of stuff lately. Plus Matt's grandma has just sold her holiday house in Yanchep, which has pretty much been our get away for the past 4 years, so there's no escaping to paradise any more! Sigh. So that's my little rant. I'm sure my tune will change after exams, but in the mean time, I guess I'll invest in a new set of stress balls!

Space Doggies!

Yesterday Matt gave me a surprise present! It's a David Lanham print of Space Doggy, which is my favourite digital creation of his. It was a really really sweet thoughtful surprise that I didn't expect! It's been my background ever since I got my Mac, and I'd been going on about how much I loved it and how I'd never get sick of it :)

I'm going to get it block mounted and hang it up above my desk in the study. I guess now maybe I'll change my background to either Shaky Love or In a Pickle. So cute! There's just something about all of them that is so eerie and cute and shiny.

The thing about Space Doggy is that he'll never get the bone! It made my dad REALLY sad - it was so funny he was like "But he can't get the... AWWW poor thing! Look how he's looking at the bone!" I like to think that off to the left of the scene there's a big rocket where he can get out of his space suit and eat all the bones he likes :) Also take a look at the animations they're really good.

This is unfortunately a pretty bad picture, in real life the print looks really vibrant and super high resolution, but you can't really tell. So thanks for that Matt! What a nice pressie!

Things that Look Like Other Things

I personally wouldn't have chosen this to be the logo for my company... and I ESPECIALLY would not have chosen to put it on a whipped cream container. Oh Mr Tatua, you got it so, so wrong.

Photo Booth!

I've really started getting used to my Mac, and I'm starting to be really productive on it. I just set it up to get wireless internet around uni so that's been fun! I'd always been jealous of the people with laptops at uni :)

I've also just been playing with Photo Booth which is really fun. There's some pretty effects like sepia, black and white, comic book, and some fun effects like (my favourite) the mirror, squeeze, and bulge. Some of the effects are REALLY creepy and I mostly stay away from them since after the funny wears off it gets a bit sickening. Take a look at some of the fanciness and silliness on my Flickr!

My Poor MacBook

I've just finished installing Windows on my MacBook and I sort of feel like I've betrayed her :( It's really not fun going back to Windows after you've used a Mac. All of a sudden my computer was telling me what to do, making stupid noises every 5 seconds, and constantly winging about security. Oh well I really do need it, so what can you do?

Putting it on was fairly easy using Boot Camp, except for a bit of drama with a system file that went missing. I ended up allocating 20GB for the Windows partition (it's a 120GB hard drive), so hopefully that'll be enough for Matlab, PSpice, Retro and all those other little programs I'm gonna need.

More importantly, it looks like Psychonauts is going to run pretty well! I've got the demo running so that's gonna be fun!

How to Make a Nurse Outfit in 4 Easy Steps

I bet it's something you've all been wondering, so this post will help put your mind at ease.

Ingredients:
* A plain white dress
* A waisted red belt
* Some white fish net stockings
* Big red buttons
* White electrical tape
* A headband
* Some white heels


Step 1. The Hat
All you need is a piece of paper and a headband. You just need to fold the paper up in the hat shape, and draw on the red border and the cross/love heart. You then make two loops (out of paper) for the head band to slide through, and sticky tape them on the back of the hat.

Step 2. The Buttons
Picked these up from a craft shop for 50cents each, and used some white electrical tape to make the little white crosses on each one.

Step 3. The Stockings
It actually took me a while to track down white fish net stockings, and I managed to find some at this little sock stall in a shopping center for $5. Sew a button on each stocking. Some suspenders might also look cute!

Step 4. The Dress
This was an old under dress I haven't used for years, so I didn't mind destroying it. It was originally flat at the top, but I gathered it up with a button to make it look a bit cuter. Sew the buttons down the front, but leave some space for a waisted red belt which helps brighten up the white.

The Final Outfit


In case you're wondering, this whole thing was for Vanessa's 21st. It was a uniform themed dress up, and she got the Party Bus which took us through Northbridge. Me and Matt ended up going as Doctor and Nurse, which surprisingly, nobody else chose.

I was expecting to not be let out of the house by my parents, but they thought the outfits were fantastic! Even my grandma complimented my handiwork with making the outfit, which was a nice surprise.

I was pretty embarrassed about going through Subiacco, but Vanessa was keen to try. We tried the Sapphire Bar and the Red Sea, but neither would let us in due to dress codes (no surprises there). So we ended up just visiting the Queens, the Hippee Club, and ended up at the Dean, where we fit in with all the other wierdos.

It turned out being extremely fun and not embarrassing at all, since everyone thought it was pretty funny and made a point of chatting to us to find out what the hell we were doing! Just a warning to anyone planning to go as a nurse; expect to hear the line "Hey baby, will you take my temperature" a couple of hundred times during the night. I find that the response "I'm not qualified, but Dr. Matt here will do it" usually does the trick.