the science of sleep

Howdy fans - countrymen & women - admirer's - et al . . . Well it's another week - I am older and deeper in debt as the song goes but as with everything when you look back and contemplate it I think in the grand scale of things its been a good week . . . a long one or so it seems . . . . All photos from film of same title as blog title this week - some problems originally (thanks Margaret for pointing it out . . .) & - now some of you may see 2 pictures - although this might only be on the machine on which I created the blog?? not sure - alternatively you will see an elongated white line - this is the place-holder and this is where they display on machine blog was created on - anyway I have loaded alternative photos - [OK finally removed the original links to photo's - so that should be it all sorted out now . . . interesting almost as if the original site blocked me from using the photo's from their web site - which considering I am only really advertising the film I find strange . . . last one ad for band I mention . .

Well stayed over for the weekend in Edinburgh with Judi was a strange weekend at times all sorts of things on the go but bottom-line I think we are really getting to know each other better - its making that transition - an important one - from the constant highs to a longer term more realistic and normal relationship - we are still living separately although we would like to address this we both agree not something we want to rush into and also do not need any knee-jerk responses . . . all in good time - methinkest.

Went to Scotland Wales match on Saturday - Graeme came through and joined us and we watched the match - I have to say I have never been so cold in all my life - a little Arctic gale came through straight from the North Pole and froze us half to death - we had some chips straight after the game - to get some sustenance back into the body - we made straight for the Famous Grouse tent - where they were giving away free drinks - guess what - as we got to the bar they ran out of drinks . . . Murphy's law???

Went from Judi's straight into Artificial Intelligence on Monday - a new lecturer - a Doctoral thesis student I think looking at Satisfiability - which constraint satisfaction problems by another name - well not really but it seemed so - fairly abstract and theoretical - a very off the wall type lecturer as he seems to hop skip and jump all over the place - at one stage he was even sitting cross-legged on the table and then he'd be off again scribbling something on the whiteboard and then jumping in front of the projection screen to point to a character at the very top screen . . . I wouldn't have been surprised if a grizzly bear had just walked across the stage and exited by one of the side doors - it seemed that bizarre at times. He is a very clever person and used what I thought to be some very innovative ways in which to illustrate very abstract ideas and concepts - full marks to him for that - I just hope he puts his slide up on the web as I would like to go over what he had said. I even managed to ask an intelligent and relevant questions for both Monday and Wednesday lectures . . . although he couldn't get out of the class quick enough on Wednesday . . . could be because Maria had already left . . . Managed to attend the practical on Tuesday - we have some software we use to do what we have had to do manually up until now - managed on Tuesday to complete last week's lab which I somehow missed (actually didn't know we had one). Then on Friday by accident ended up in another practical lab and managed to catch up with this weeks work - well almost . . . so happy with AI at the moment.

Monday night - Braidfield computer drop in as usual . . . the usual suspects present - M who prints off her Superman pictures adnausem - in fact when I put paper int he printer the next week it usually fires up and prints some more Superman pictures again - mind you I did see some cute photo's of Supergirl in amongst them . . . R, J & M - also looked at stats from Scot Exec for P. F still frustrates me as after all this time still has a problem typing in her user name & password - not sure how many times now I have caught her actually typing in 'user name btsxxxx' and then I point out that no, I don't think that you are supposed to type the whole thing - rather just the btxx part . . . - she'll get past that part and then within minutes I'll find her staring at the screen and she'll have lost Internet Explorer from the screen and her Internet connection . . .although these days she is on YouTube regularly - although why she somehow ends up connecting to a heavy metal band video - at full blast I have no idea . . . anyway all fun and games and not really work - for which I am paid . . .

Tuesday - I had arranged for a local charity to come and pick up my old cane living room suite (not that I have a new one) - my living room was just too cluttered . . .so I had made all these arrangements before I realised that I have a 12h00 practical with AI (as mentioned) but I told charity they could come anytime before 12h30 as I was under impression that my 1st class was Designing Usable Systems @ 14h00 . . .so I was faced with a dilemma do I go back to charity arrange another time / day etc., - so I thought what they hell . . .I thought I'll just go with it and see what happens - they came at about 10h45 and I even managed to get into practical - albeit 10 minutes late . . . stayed after 1 hour and well as you have read managed to crack last weeks Golum ruler problem . .

Designing U Systems - was @ 14h00 - our marks went down to 5.5 out of 10 - but we somehow were given an extra point so ended up with 6.5 . . . seems we had not quite hit the mark for the previous week . . . as I explained last week we were all rushing around doing things that we weren't supposed to . . .so Murv had to put it all together at the last minute so not too bad after all . . . How is our MCSS -
Mobile Commuter Support System coming on - not too badly but part of it seems to be a tick-box exercise - 25% of our class mark will come from this. A lot of what we are proposing is based on Transport Direct's website - which a brilliant journey planner which I can recommend for anyone (provided you are here in the UK) - see some of the figures - we now also have a research paper and presentation to give and an exam sometime in April / May - now part of the exam will be open book - which scares me as they are usually the most difficult i.e. you always tend to say 'well don't need to learn that as I can just look it up' problem being you don't learn much in the end and spend at least 1/2 your time paging through knowing its in there somewhere . . .

Wednesday was Valentine's day and Judi & I had decided that it wasn't really practical to see each other - she works late on a Wednesday and we have the distance thing etc., - it is just a commercial construct anyway . . . we had exchanged cards on Saturday evening and decided that we would celebrate on this weekend - which we did and saved ourselves a lot of money . . . I did take my Mum shopping and we popped over the road at her local Chinese restaurant who guess what? had suspended there usual menu and had a set Valentines menu . .

Went home and spent some time chatting with Jude's . . . it seemed like a very long, varied and interesting day . . . as days should be . . . only thing missing for me was Judi . . .

The rest of the week was Software Construction - Lord Linlithgow - done really well . . . covered some interesting material - Practical on Friday saw me sitting up till all hours - turned out Colin had sent out the solution by mistake - and I couldn't resist - as I had been struggling a wee bit - so instead of writing my own code ended up borrowing - I now want to go back and try by myself - turns out we are going to be assessed on the code - so I had better do so . . .

Thursday morning saw Katrina from Career services coming to give us a talk - I was running late and was 5 minutes late - turns out I was the only person who bothered to turn up - we had a good blether and I am going to work with her - jack up my CV and target a number of companies - attended the Royal Bank of Scotland presentation that evening - they were telling us what the position entailed - it sounds very interesting and I am seriously thinking of applying.

I went to see a very interesting and thoroughly entertaining film this weekend - the title of this week's blog - all the photo's are from here -
"The Science of Sleep" - go on its an off the wall comedy - an alternative art film as it does not follow a script . . .

The grapevine has it that the next big thing in music is Mr Hudson & the library - mark my words . . .

That was the week that was . . . . adios muchachos!