Category: Uncategorized

The weeks are flying by, blurring together. Work is steadily piling on. I’ve worked a lot on one project the past few days, but I have many more waiting to be truly started.

A list of all my projects:

• An Instant Messenger program (as a group), for which I am mostly designing and implementing the interface (this one lasts all year, the others are done by December)
• An email notification system (as a group), which is mostly to practice the process of planning projects and writing reports rather than learning to code
• A program that takes a mailing list, reads

Classes have been going for a month now. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. Maybe more like two weeks. I’m definitely getting more work to do, but I’m not feeling extreme pressure (yet). Perhaps in the next couple weeks, when I get a few more projects from my teachers…

I’ve learned a few things (that don’t have to do with computer science). The term “candy” is very rarely used here. Instead, “chocolate” or “sweets” is typical. Something I’ve already mentioned: “chips” means “fries” and “crisps” means “chips.” Yeah, confusing. When talking about paper money, a “fiver” (or “tenner”) …

Work’s starting to hit me, so it’s been less convenient to blog. Or maybe that’s just an excuse.

I’ve begun to jog in the morning, and today was the first day. I finally have proper shoes for it. Last week I went to the park across the street from my flat and checked it out for running, and took some amazing pictures. I went early, so the sun had just come up. You can see all of Glasgow from a viewpoint at the park. With a place like that so close to my flat, I don’t have a good reason …

I finally got the rest of my textbooks in the mail from Amazon, so I can do all the (boring) recommended reading. I may have said something like this in my last post, but the first few chapters of any textbook seem rather unnecessary. If it’s not things that are almost common knowledge, the ideas are simple enough that I can fully understand it from the lectures, and I don’t need to read the chapters. Hopefully things will get more interesting over time.

Classes are progressing slowly; I don’t have any real challenging work to do yet. My second real …

Classes have begun, but the work really hasn’t.

It’s one of those strange situations where you know you’re going to have a lot of work to do, but it’s not time to do it yet. I’m just reading the extremely boring and somehow essential first chapters of my textbooks. Tomorrow I have my first lab, where I will write my first programs in a language called Haskell. I’ll feel like I’m finally doing something productive.

Judging from the first couple lectures of each of my classes, I think I’m going to enjoy the more technical ones better, the ones about …

Tomorrow, classes actually start.

I feel like I’ve been saying that in every post. I don’t know what my books are yet or what exactly I’ll be doing all year, except for my group project. All I’ve been doing this week is learning Unix/Linux, a lot of which I know already. Sadly, that means this coming week will likely be boring introductory lectures. If I was a student in anything other than computer science, that boring first week would be over already.

My group project will be creating an instant messaging program, like a very simplified MSN or AIM or …

It feels like I haven’t written anything new, fiction-wise, in a long time. It’s understandable, considering I was working editing on a full-length novel for so long. Counting the short story on my other blog, it’s really just been a month. I finally got my journal out though, and have been writing in that a little. Definitely not the three-pages-a-day I did over the summer, but enough that I get my thoughts sorted out. I hope all the future programming homework I’ll have won’t damper my will to write. Maybe I’ll find the time for another short story. I just …

Let me just say I was surprised today. Though I probably shouldn’t have been.

Freshers’ week is intense. I don’t know how people go out every single night and drink and stay up till 3 or 4am just to do it again the next night. There are two student unions, and both have events going every night. Apparently the unions spend most of their money this week and then hope that students come back during the year to pay it all back.

Myself, I’ve only gone out about three nights in the past six, and as many of you know, I’m not much of a drinker. So I’m not as tired and bruised as …

Today was more shopping. I bought two new plaid shirts, and afterward we went out for very good (and inexpensive) Chinese food. Tomorrow will probably be the same, though I have to set up a bank account in the morning.

Tonight, like last night, I’m staying in. I’m really not much of a partier. When Fresher’s Week is over, I’ll actually be happy, since I won’t have to decide whether I’m going out or not. The two student unions on campus have events every night this week, and many of my flatmates are going to most of them. I’d honestly …