Here I am its about 01h00 - Sunday morning - my Birthday, yesterday, St Patrick's day is now a thing of the past - however today is the first day of the rest of my life and / or 1st day in my personal New Year. What did I do / get up to I hear you
asking? Well very little actually . . . rushed out to the bank this morning and then Marks & Spencer's as well as ASDA - funnily enough bumped into Isabel with Laura & Brian bought in enough supplies for a week and just chilled the whole day - Judi spoilt and pampered me the whole day - I was watching the Six Nations rugby (Bizarrely France won - some brilliant tries though) - and she was milling around and wouldn't let me do anything - partially watched all 3 games - read the newspaper and just hung out - had some snacks and a very interesting bottle of wine - a South African wine from Wellington - just outside Cape Town - it was lovely a very unusual taste actually . . .Diemersfontein its actually a coffee / chocolate pinotage and something about it attracted me to it - so I was very pleased when it proved to be such an interesting flavour . . .unusual as well . . . .
Judi showered me with gifts - with the main one being a ring - Which has a celtic design - still getting used to it as I don't have any jewellery - I like it.
My Birthday had kicked off on Friday after uni - 12h00 we finished off with Lord Lithy - him wishing me and all after lecturing all about UML and telling us how important it was - so important that he never actually showed it to us but spoke about it . . . anyway myself, David, Andy, Rory, Philip, Catherine, Johnny, Shagaan, Russel, Idong, Mathias all met up at the Old Printworks and had a few drinks . . .turned into a pleasant afternoon - from th
ere we went to Campus bar (supposedly because they are cheaper . . . I wasn't convinced - I was finding it difficult to buy anyone anything as everyone insisted its my birthday they want to buy me something - unlike South Africa where everything works the other way round - i.e. your birthday you buy everyone a drink and treat them - it took me years to get my head around that but now back to normal . . .lol - I bought a couple of platters of food and I think most people enjoyed themselves - I don't think we've been doing enough of this . . . maybe something that becomes more regular in future . . . bearing in mind our semester is about to a) have an easter break end of March for 2 weeks & b) finishes end of April - two events that probably need celebrating . . . (I invited most of the faculty staff - secretaries right through to Maria head of Dept. - needless to say none came - but I invited them anyway . .SO how did the week go? Well Monday was AI and I had skipped Wednesday last week so had some catching up to do . . . basically worked on Designing User Systems as we had to make a final decision on
Research Papers which we have to present - our group choice turned out to be Handheld and Mobile Internet browsers . . . my part of this will be comparing which browsers there are and how effective they are for mobiles and handheld devices . . Anyway AI - never done any prep work and we are now into our last 4 lectures - enjoyed Monday and Wednesday was the best AI lecture I have attended - somehow things just made sense and I was able to make what I thought were very explanatory notes . . .the proof of this will be where I go back to the notes and use them in conjunction with the slides and see whether they still makes sense or whether they are disjointed - time will tell . . .practical was running various planning tools and seeing how long / how many steps were involved - not sure I completely understand the difference between them all - took printouts fr later reference . . .and skipped my second practical session which I usually fit in because of going for a pint on Friday.
E-commerce - we are up and running and looks very much like our e-commerce product is going to be software which you download (a theoretical business) which allows -video-on-demand; music; and then a selection of live sports programs as well . . a lot of potential and we are going to develop this idea over the next 5 weeks and then eventually present to independent venture capitalists . . .- should be interesting - Ratna approached me and requested that he be part of my team - then asked Pelugia, Murvin, - Nicole sat down at our table and then Pelugia invited Untzizu to join us but she has subsequently decided she is not taking that course . . . so were back to 5. Tuesday's is now quite a long day - start at 09h00 E-commerce; AI for me @ 12h00 then DUS @ 14h00 so were lucky to finish by 16h00 . . .
I spent most of Monday & Wednesday afternoon in the library - doing research seeing if I could find any articles on our topic on Internet browsers and then accessing some books as well . . . We got together as an E-commerce group on Thursday morning to discuss suggestions and that is basically where our software idea came from . . . met for about an hour prior to Software Construction - where Lord Lithy told us what he wanted to do but wasn't going to do it because he still had to write it but had received a phone call and hence was unable to do so - so today's lecture which was going to be tomorrows would be done now and then today's would become tomorrow's etc., . . . .
Thursday night was really busy first writing up what we had decided from our E-commerce meeting and then working on our DUS prototyping submission for Friday after which it was Java all the way - we are looking at Binary search engines - which are far more efficient for searching material - managed to source a very good book on this material - which explains it well and has some very good examples of how it works including some code - I was able to borrow some of it - which is applicable and in fact it goes way beyond what we need at the moment . Colin sat with me for a short while and we had a look at the code and said I was not to bother with anything other than the bear minimum for the time being . . . still a lot of work - this assignment will count 80% towards the final mark - I have to get my report right as I 
have fallen horribly short on this point - more focus needed . . .Earlier in the week I had decided to try to approach the Information Retrieval marks from another angle - I know Monica (our lecturer) now stays in Switzerland - but I thought I'd send her an email asking her how she was and if there was any chance of us getting our marks . . .now I was in the admin office on Friday (last week) kicking up an absolute storm about the fact that we had been promised our marks ages ago and still nothing had materialised . . . well Monica came straight back shocked as she said the marks should have been released a month ago - date on the letters we finally received on Thursday was dated about a month ago??? So who is fooling who here . . . I got 78% so I was quite chuffed.
Last Friday was at Old Printworks were quite a few of us went for a beer to celebrate Mathias' birthday . . . which was most enjoyable . . . David myself & Chris sat around for a while just having a good chat - don't get enough time when your attending classes as its a quick hello and a brief goodbye . . . . then off to Judi's for the weekend.
Monday night went to the King's theatre to see Joan Rivers - she was everything I expected - foul mouthed and insulted everyone / every age group / etc., - told women to get out there and grab everything they can get - applauded Heather McCartney etc., - as I said everything I expected - I enjoyed the evening .
This week's 'From what people know about South Africa' . . . .
Q: Can you tell me the regions in South Africa where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay nightclubs.
Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in South Africa? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.
Q. Are there killer bees in South Africa? (Germany)
A: Not yet, but for you, we'll import them.
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