Matt Goldspink DJ Mixes

I start my next intensive tomorrow. It’s a course in Computational Biology, which I was kinda forced to take because I was too thick for another course. Anyway, since I was on another course last week, I wasn’t able to do the pre-course reading (and I didn’t/don’t have a username and password for the page where the reading list is still!!! After 3 weeks of emails to the guy!) So today, I have to know the following:

1. developed a basic understanding of DNA, RNA and protein. In
particular should be comfortable with the central dogma of biology – DNA
makes RNA makes protein.

2. understood the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic
organisms and have a basic knowledge of the components of a cell

3. a basic understanding of the transcription process - be comfortable
about what a gene is and have and understanding of how messenger RNA (mRNA)
is produced

4. Understand that a eukaryotic gene can have exons and introns

5. developed a basic understanding of microarray technology – what is
put down on the chip, what is being measured – and something about what the
measurements mean

I want to say huge THANK YOU to Kerrie for giving me a brief intro to the first couple last night over MSN! Unfortunately I still don’t fully understand a lot of it and I don’t have much time to try and learn it. Why did I choose to do a Masters!?! Am I that stupid?

So I’ve just finished another course yesterday. One in eCommerce. I have to say I really enjoyed it up except until Thursday. Throughout the week we were in groups creating a prototype of an eCommerce site. I was in really good group who were making lots of progress. Infact we were ahead of pretty much all the other groups and what was best was that 3 guys in the group had never done any PHP, HTML, MySQL or Javascript programming! I was quite fortunate in that had used all of these for my third year project and one other girl had also done a bit. Anyway, we were making headway, we’d managed to split the work so that the guy who’d done a little database stuff could do his work, the girl who’d not really done much used a Web Page designer for our main layout and me and another guy, Matt, worked on our “proof of concept” (I will show it, I’m just rejigging it though).

So, on Thursday night, having been working all day in Uni til 7pm and almost finishing our proof of concept (i.e. make a prototype to prove it will work) I get home to find an email from one of the girls in our group. In the email she basically slagged off everyone’s work, with no tact or regards for the fact that some of them had never done any of this stuff before and decided she would go on a huge mission to write a lot of the project that night!!! She basically wanted to use all possible standards and ensure the site works for blind people and for people who don’t have a javascript enabled browser (which is about 1% of the world population). Now, I don’t have any problem making it accessible to blind people, however when you’ve been slaving over it for a week and you’ve ALL agreed you are gonna just do (as our American lecturer calls it) “a killer app” using some new technology to have someone send a selfish email like that left extremely pissed off!!! She showed no regard for anyone’s feeling except her own. She even said in the email that she’d told use she was colour blind on the first day. To be honest I all ever heard from all week was “My husband” this “My husband” that, “I’m vegetarian, and I’m lactose intolerant, I can’t eat anything”. It annoyed me that by the end of the week I knew pretty much her whole life story and nothing about any of the other guys cos no-one else could get a word in.

Then, to top it off on Friday, the day of our demo. I tested our page on a friends computer, after having made a few minor changes and found one bit didn’t show right, even though I’d tested it earlier. So I said I’d quickly take a look at it before we did our presentation in about 10minutes time. After I walked out, she turned to the other guys and said “He’d better not f**k it up, he’s been doing it all week”. I had to laugh when they told me cos it was her that was messing stuff up for everyone, making wild changes without telling anyone. As you can tell I’m not bitter, but I’m so annoyed that someone can be so selfish and controlling and have little regard for other people.

I’m a little stressed. I’ll explain why by going through my schedule for the next month.

• This week I have :
  1. Post coursework for the Grid Computing course I did last week
  2. Precoursework (due on thursday) & reading for eCommerce course which starts next monday
  3. Pre-coursework & reading for Biology course which starts the week after next
• Next week I have the week long intensive eCommerce course which will be 9-5 lectures and labs everyday and then coursework to get done in the evening. (Whilst also completing the Grid computing post-coursework if not done & the pre-course reading for biology if not done as well as the pre-course work for it due on the friday)
• The following week (13 March) I have the lecture part of the Biology course from 9-5 everyday. I also have the eCommerce Post-coursework to do now (basically recreating something the size of my third year project in 2 weeks!!). My grid post-coursework has to be on the friday of this week.
• The Week after the lecture week (20th March), we have the Biology lab week
• That Saturday is my birthday party & the Sunday is my bday/mothers day
• The following week I have off (except for any remaining post-coursework) in which to revise for my final exams which begin…
• the week after my week off! What a joke!!

So as you can see I have no (social) life for the next month until the saturday of my birthday party which i have no time to organise. The only good thing is… no… wait… there is no good thing

It’s 9.30am. I’ve just finished an all nighter to get my animation course work done. Now I’ve just got to trek into Uni, hand it, trek back and then i can curl up into a small ball & die I wish I could skip all the rest and go straight to the “die” part. Here is (one of) the fruits of my late night labour Final Lamp Animation-Divx

One of my other animation exercises is to make a mannequin run realistically. Well, mine’s almost realistic and I’d like to share it with people. So please take a look at the running man(nequin). (actually it’s more like jogging).

People keep asking me what I’ve been upto recently and I usually reply, “Well at the moment, i’m trying to fire a bolt of lightning at a desk lamp to see if I can get it to turn on, then i’m gonna throw it off a table”. Infact, just a few minutes ago I said those exact words to Eleanor, Will’s girlfriend, and she didn’t believe me. As if I’d lie! Well for all those in disbelief still, I’ve decided to post the video footage of lamp destruction attempt for proof (200Kb, Requires DivX.)