Wednesday, September 22, 2010

A week at 25

Now im 25. Lets see what i did this last week:

Not that much.
Had a bit of a cold.
Had tonsilitis.
Had a birthday party where I took psuedophed and drank a bit so got really tired and went to bed early.
Played squash very aidsy
Played squash a different day, much better but still didnt win.
Sorta stopped going to the gym
Started writting up my game design idea.
Started trying to write a prototype for my game design idea.
Got someone else to join my game design team (yay)

The main idea for my game:

Space Sim is a space empire building game with indirect control. You will be in charge of a single ship or planet; you will spread your influence to other planets and ships through a multitude of ways: social influence, technological, military and economic. Other ships and planets will swear allegiance to you when you influence them enough, but will serve you in their own way, not taking direct orders. You will be able to influence them with rewards and requests, but they can choose to ignore you. You will be able to build your empire in your own way, for example, you may choose to destroy every planet you come to, use the resources to create an unstoppable armada (although any ships you produce will still decide their own behaviour), and sweep through the universe as an unstoppable plague.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

First Dates

Been reading a blog called a bad case of the dates, that i found through a friends blog, its very funny. People write in their bad first date experiances.

After reading a few i think i've come up with a list of don'ts for a first date (this is important because i can get a bit intense sometimes and im worried that i might sometimes come accross as a bad date.)

*Don't do suprises (bad examples include "romantic" gestures involving nudity and flower/candle trails, visit to the phsychologists)
*If you plan something far away, double check its open on that day.
*Dont keep pressuring them to do something if they dont want to (this is a hard one because sometimes people are just a little reluctant but enjoy it later, i think a rule of thumb might be if they are emphatic in saying no)
*Dont talk about sex, be pushy about sex
*Dont take people away from the public areas if they seem uncomfortable (just cos you know your not a murdering rapist doesnt mean they do)
*Dont loose your temper and say nasty things
*Be patient but dont do things your uncomfortable about
*Dont make excuses for your dates behavour cos it often leads to weirder
*Dont insult them/their ocupation, dont retaliate if they do it to you.

I think these are necissary but not sufficient rules for a good date. Because ive been on a few with different people in the last few months and alot of them didnt go badly (in particular there was one girl i saw 4 or 5 times) but they werent great dates (mayb a bit boring, although generally we hung out for a couple of hours chatting, and it didnt drag, it just wasnt exciting (at least i didnt think so)).

In an aside, i need to find out if im a good kisser or not, ive had 3 people tell me i was somewhere between great and amazing in the last few months(but i havent/dont/didnt catch up with them that many times and they seemed a bit biased) but the few others (close friends) who i have made out with before, whose opinions i value and trust, none of them can remember(they say (look i said i value and trust their opinion, i dont necissarily trust they will give it too me because as friends, they may not want to offend me so they say they cant remember)) cos we were so wasted (that was my three friends who i've hooked up with while plastered and i still chat to), although maybe thats not entirely accurate, i think one of them said i was ok, but not brilliant (although i think she was refering to sex, not kissing in particular).

So anyway i cant decide if strangers are more likely or less likely to tell me the truth about my kissing abilities. I personally dont see how i could be that good since i rarely practice :P. And maybe in the situation im in at the time, they are just complimenting me to move us along to some *other venue*. But i didnt fish for the compliment, they just brought it up while we were making out. See this is why i dont understand people:

Why would a stranger lie?
Maybe to make you feel good so you will go home with them.
Maybe to make you feel bad so you will seek validation by going home with them.
(Mayb the stranger hasnt had that much exposure either, so they arnt lying per se, but just making a subjective judgement without enough background information :P)

Why would a friend lie?
If they say your good, you may take it as they want more when actually they dont.
Because they dont want to hurt your feelings about not being anygood.

Sometimes its hard living in my mind.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Plans for the future

What is the future that i plan for? I think its made of several parts, and im working towards goals in most of them at a good rate imho.

Future is:
socail future - friendship circles and "special" friend ;P
financial future - academic studies and work and money.
health future - mental and physical.

My socail future has taken a step back with the person i spend most of my free time going to america for 7 months. She was really drunk at her going away party, and she begged me to go with her. It's nice to know I have such passionate and careing friends. :P

However my plans for my social future are shaped by my plans for my health future. I am still going to the gym, and i am still enjoying it alot. i am getting fitter and faster, I am also playing squash quite alot and am getting reasonable imo, although still not quite as good as some of my friends i can sometimes win games. I figure as i get more confident in my body, as well as getting more confident to increased exposure to endorphines, I will get less emo and moody, and make a better impression on people, which will let me be more outgoing and meet more people. also i have the chance to meet people through sports etc.

A friend of mine wrote a blog where they described how they ended up in a fwb relationship, the key i believe was this basic formula: massage => sex. Being close enough to someone (or being attractive and confident enough) that someone will let you give them a massage can lead to sex. My not particularly diverse range of experiance in this subject leads me to believe this is true, as most bowchikawowow starts with pawing/massage. especailly when your both drunk. so for a health/social point of view i think i will learn how to give awesome massage. Another point tho is that you have to be comfortable about giving massage, which for me means i cant be thinking about it "becoming sex if i play it right", need to be relaxed. Which means descosiating massage from sex, otherwise i wouldnt be calm giving massage. So i need to learn AND practice in a platonic environment. then ill have an awesome move to add to my arsenal. :P And that is my plan for moving into the future with "special" friends :P.

mental and physical health -> continue my reasonable progress at the gym. although i also am trying to go out more and socialise so i dont feel lonely and melencholic, and trying to focus on positives, as emotions are like muscles and get stronger by use. Be happy and you'll be happier more often.

work plans are shaping up ok too, 9 job applications in the past 2 weeks, (which is good for my record, since i tend to procrastinate) only 5 rejections so far, but applying to two more later today (since they were posted on seek on the same day). My plan is to apply to one every day (although im not too down on myself if i forget one or two days). I figure eventually someone is goin to say yes (think about worst case: ppl in employment are not all smart, if they make a mistake 1% of the time that means even if i dont fill the role perfectly someone eventually will hire me by mistake). As my completion date becomes more solid on my masters i think i will start getting more positive replys. But i am suprissingly optimistic about my job prospects.

As for finishing my masters, with the (near) completion of the hardware, i believe i will almost be finished except for the write up, and i dont think that will be too complicated. I believe i should finish within the next 5 months. I also think i may have a shot at publishing one or two more conference papers (this is just to make me feel good about my research and to add to my resume as most academics dont consider conferences very highly) which i may be able to convert into a journal paper for completion/publication as a part time thing after i finish my masters (this is also to make me feel good about my research, but also to keep in touch with my supervisors and to make them happier about my addition to their research group). Think of having high goals as running to the top of the stairs, even if you fail, your still on a higher step then before, not like reaching for the sky, because if you fail you fall from the sky, which is a bad analogy, because normally if you try hard for a hard goal, you acheive more than if you try for a easy goal and succeed.

anyways thats my plans for my immediate future (for reference for myself for the comming months)

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Integrating an I2C component

So the hardware i use is based around the Imote2 wireless tranciever/microprocessor board. It comes with a sensor board that has an easy to attach i2c connector set on it. So i attached an integrated MEMS gyro via the i2c channel.

I was really looking forward to being able to say i did this, and now i have integrated it. It only took 1/2 a day. (To write the software in C# and deploy it in the existing network) So now i have a working (uncalibrated) gyro. Yay!

There are a couple of nagging issues: its not physically mounted yet, so it judders which makes it noisy; the implimentation in the software was close to being cut and paste from the "off the shelf" example code for referencing internal i2c chips, so i dont really feel like i got a very indepth exposure to the task, also it was a very blind plug and pray approach i used to wireing it up, i bought it because it would require no new power regulation nor external components, but now i feel like i cheated a bit; final issue, i dont trust that there wont be problems in the future, since it worked much easier than all my other attempts at component addition, and that makes me suspicious.

I really was looking forward to doing it because i thought it would add to my pool of experiance "i have integrated off the shelf components to form a complete INS DAQ for system id, it was built from a combination of digital and analogue devices, which required analogue circuitry design for power regulation and signal conditioning, coding for digital component integration, and developement of a distributed embedded software for deployment on a wireless microprocessor network" - it was like i was going to be able to say i was aware of some very complex and technically challenging issues with system development. But the digital component integration was so simple, i think anyone who has done it before will also realise this and not be impressed.

On another note relating to this, i have applied for 9 jobs so far (in 2 weeks) and been rejected by 4 so far. I figure i will try to do 1-2 apps a day, eventually someone will give me a job. then i will have all the moneys, and can go rock climbing (been on my mind since i saw a guy this morning in my office whose hobby is rock climbing).