Thoughts of a Psych/Code Monkey/Guitarist

Hmm, winter is approcahing quickly. Is it just me, or has everyone seemed really tired recently? Maybe its the fact that the semester is coming to an end, maybe it's because the days are getting shorter and colder, i'm not sure, but I've certainly had little energy lately, and it seems i'm not the only one. Oh well, time to put on the beanie, sit next to the heater and enjoy some coffee - holidays will be here soon :). Thanks for all the people who've listened to the music! Final Goodbye is currently #829 (of 27,000) in the pop charts at sound-click, and Believe has been downloaded 3 times :D Which makes me want to finish them, which i'll do soon i hope. A good procrastination activity, seeing as swatvac is approaching. (update - Singer has been lengthened) In other matters, I've finally got an mp3 player (Creative Zen Micro, *not* iPod), and will try to fix the monkey pictures so that they actually work. Another case of a strange they-work-for-me-but-not-...

Just a quick message - i've found a place which'll host my music. For a sample of what's been put there (mainly work in progress) visit: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/padster_music.htm

Yes, i'm not normally angry, so this might be the only time this year that I let out steam, but here goes. This was all triggered on friday. No, not from losing to the DBTs in soccer, although their decision to try to injure me at every chance was rather annoying. No, it was from afterwards on the way driving home at night. For those who don't know, just after stirling and before aldgate (the small town/suburb that i live in) there is a progression of tight-ish corners that you generally have to slow down for, and you definitely have to now that they've put up cones everywhere while they fix the footpath. ANYWAY, i was approaching these, if anything a bit faster than I normally do, and suddenly the car behind me starts getting closer and closer. I was concentrating round the first two corners, and it wasn't until I changed down to third that i looked in the rear-view mirror to see why the lights from the car were bothering me so much. To my suprise, and slight horror, i...

Just a quick message this time; after browsing a few sites for the appropriate code monkey picture for this blog, it has come down to two plus one of my own invention. The three finalists are: #1: http://www23.brinkster.com/padster/pics/codemonkey1.jpg #2: http://www23.brinkster.com/padster/pics/codemonkey2.jpg #3: http://www23.brinkster.com/padster/pics/codemonkey3.jpg Vote for your favourite on the poll to the right ---> The winning pic will be announced in a little while, and used as a banner for this site :) More later -

As my name suggests, who owns a shoe? To the best of my knowledge, the set of people who own shoes certainly does *not* contain my Discrete Maths tutor. Of the six or so tutes he's run, he's had footwear to exactly zero of them. Quite and effort, considering how much chalk is on the floors of the maths building. He must leave little white chalky footprints wherever he walks now :p And don't think this is just a tutorial thing - I have seen him walking around uni, and even crossing North Tce. without his shoes, which only leads to the most logical conclusion that he has no footwear. Onto other matters - Voting engine is slowly improving. The username/password system is now enabled. This means that if you want to create a poll, ur gonna need me to add a username and password for you, so post a comment here, or even better send me an email. Details: http://padster.webpal.info Hopefully, eventually I'll be able to find somewhere to upload some of my music to, and the games ...

As the name suggests, the voting engine is up and running in full swing. Check the bottom of this page for an example. Alternatively, check out this voting system in action on the site of a fellow blogger - http://blowingupspace.blogspot.com/ Now, I've also created a simple builder to create polls, so if you want you can create your own. Just visit the creator. For now, until I create a login system, the password to user is 'password'. Fill in whatever username you want. Poll name is the internal storage name for the poll, and has to be unique for each user (e.g. 'colour'). Display name is the actual name to be shown on your poll, such as "Your favourite colour is:"). Then name each of your options - maximum of 9, if you want more you'll have to post a comment here to ask me to set it up. Keep in mind that I can view any polls you create, so be nice and don't abuse the system. :) I'm sure noone will. On other matters - stats homework is soooo ...

Another quick late-night update: I just found out I scored 80.6, by highest ever :) I still only came second, but this is great becase now I don't have to: Work for another week on fixing the flaws in my design the reviewers found. Answer questions on the design for another week from all the people trying to write the code for it. And most importantly: Know What I'm Doing!! seriously, I still don't properly know what a Struts Action class is, yet my design had one. However, I did learn what custom JSP tags were, and how to use them. Learning hard java in a week is one of the main reasons why I'm doing this, so at least I got that out of it. Oh, and the payment doesn't hurt. Finally, please tell me if you can get the voting thing down the bottom working...it seems to randomly pick when to work and when not to. The most annoying this is it always works fine for me...meh, it's not the code's fault, it must be the internet's. :p

Good news :) In the design competition that's just finished, where you get money for coming 1st or 2nd with a score over 70%, there are only two competitors. Now, I've just found out that I've scored 78% (at least, pending some appeals), that means that some $US are coming my way. Who says being an online programmer is a waste of time? In other matters, one I learnt some basic phrases and vocab in PHP, and opened a new website that supported it, the voting system was able to be created - although it's only in a primative state. I've only been able to speak PHP for about 5 hours now, so later in the week if I can integrate SQL with it, I'll be able to chuck everything into a database and host many polls at the same time, if anyone wants one :) - so that's on the TODO list. In other non-programming news....*blink*....not much. 6 unbeaten games of pool today, but apart from that I'm enjoying the monday off, followed by a lazy tuesday and an soon to be an ev...

Just a quick message to say: "Please excuse my while I play about with the html for this page." Hopefully soon the people hosting my website will allow be write-access for a few files, which will allow me to fix the voting system at the bottom, and write a proper one. Until then, bear with the error message. News update is that i came 99th, probably should've done better with Q2, but rating still went up! Oh well, probably should stop procrastinating and finish homework....

Well, here we go, post #1. This is actually the third blog I've ever done, but the first without a real purpose, and the first that i've done from within Australia.... anyway, it's 3:18am. What am i doing up at 3:18am? No, not partying...I've just been in a programming competition that's run in the US, so starts at the strangest time here. Me crazy? I guess so. Plus annoyed, as I just missed a question because i forgot that 200 * 100 != 2000. Oh well, all good practice for next time. On the other hand, the week-long competition side is going well - i'm in the top two, so if i score more than 70%, i get paid ($US) for my efforts... fingers crossed. Onto other matters - my minds a bit jumpy at 3:18 in the morning, as one would expect - is that it's a long weekend. Yay! Now, to find something to fill it with. Probably guitar. Or programming. Again. Oooo- and homework, as always. Time to whip up some optimisation-solving C++ code to do it for me. Anyway, i'l...