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2004-01-27 12:13:37

So my hard disk died. Luckily, I now backup the important stuff, like this blog, for instance! :) So it was easy enough to restore. But I’m short a few MP3 files. We have most of those backed up on CD, though. Hard disk prices are amazing these days. I bought a 120GB disk for $158. That’s $1.30 or so per gigabyte! A few years ago that would have been unthinkable.

I was in thesis writing mode today, so I wrote another three or so pages. It’s the first time I’ve touched my thesis in quite some time. The bridge thing is coming on well also. I checked the high-level design with Jaga and she was pleased. It looks as though I’ll have an honours student to implement the bridge for me and to investigate various specification languages for translation tasks. Hopefully that works out well. Last year’s honours student was excellent. He ended up winning the DSTC prize for his honours thesis, which was to do with bridging INS/Twine and Jini. We should be able to get a paper out of that, especially seeing as though he will return as a Ph.D student this year.

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Random observations

2004-01-14 01:05:47

Mum and Dad are moving back to Fairfield today. The Caloundra unit has been sold. No more free weekends at the beach. D’oh! Nigel and I have shifted some furniture into the garage to make way for the furniture from Caloundra, which is newer. I’ve rearranged my room a little bit to accomodate a sofa and another bookshelf. It looks a lot roomier now, even with a stack of boxes piled in the corner. It will still look roomier than it was when the furniture arrives. So I’m staying home today in order to direct the removalists where to put everything. They should be here shortly.

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Random observations

2004-01-08 05:15:00

Another year is over, and a new one is beginning. Frankly I’m glad to see the back of 2003. Christmas was quiet, as Mum was in Fiji attending a funeral. That meant that I had to cook the Christmas dinner. Thankfully it was one of my better efforts! Santa brought me a cover for my mobile phone, a shirt and a copy of Pride and Prejudice. New Year’s Eve passed very quietly, too. Mum was back, but we all just played Quizzit until midnight.

Well, I’ve just about finished coding and debugging my Ants protocol. It’s working nicely now under the J2ME Wireless Toolkit simulation environment. It should also work OK on my Siemens M55. Now I’m wondering what to do next in terms of my Ph.D. I think I’ll design the protocol bridge/gateway thingy. Had enough programming for a couple of weeks at least. Oh, and I’m resigned to the fact that there’s no way I’m going to complete within three years. Three and a quarter to three and a half is looking more realistic, but I’m still going to aim for an August completion.

To tutor or not to tutor, that is the question. I have to figure out whether I’m going to tutor distributed computing again this semester. RW sounds keen on doing it, but Jaga asked me to do it. We’ll all have to sit down and work out what’s happening.

In addition to receiving a copy of Pride and Prejudice, I’ve also been lent Jude the Obscure and Two on a Tower. I’m still reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which is enormous. Then there’s also Don Quixote and Far From the Madding Crowd sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. Good lord!