Tim Keller

TIMoKELLER dot net has uncovered a rare species of Dinosaur known as Projectoris-Dataoris in Sci-lab Computer Room B on the Ground Floor of the Computer Science building at UCT.

It’s that time of year… The brightly coloured A3 posters have been pinned to every possible surface, the overly chipper candidates are striding around campus like the politicians they’re hoping to emulate. Yes, its UCT SRC Election time! Now, excuse me if I sound a bit pedantic but I cannot understand the point of it all.

80-90% of the Student Body have never, and probably will never, meet these bright-eyed candidates. How on earth can we as the “little fish” in this UCT-Shaped-Pond hope to elect the best people for the job?

The answer is we can’t, and as a result the University gets a group of people who are elected primarily based on how good their photograph is! These people go on to supposedly take the students’ concerns to the powers-that-be. How do they figure out what our concerns are?

The truth is that I don’t really care: I just go about my day to day life at UCT and generally forget that we even have an SRC. What I do care about are these stupid posters that are covering our normally beautiful campus. There is absolutely no way that their presence is going to make me vote (or not vote) for a particular candidate… especially because I’m faced with a wall of 2 of these photos!

Just in case you were mildly interested… This is the right half of the Senior Unix Lab at UCT. Its on the top floor of the PD Hahn building which means either a 2-year wait for the 40 year old elevator, or a insanely tiring hike up a few thousand stairs!

Note the geeks (yes I’m one of them) enjoying Tetri-net via xterm ssh sessions! Ooooh!

So I’m back at UCT for my 2nd year in Computer Science and Psychology (with a bit of Maths on the side). It seems I have a pretty awesome schedule this year… especially with only 2 lectures on Mondays meaning I’ll be home by 11am at the latest

The above is a photo from the bus stop this morning – the queue was MASSIVE and I arrived in Maths at 7:59am! Perhaps I need to rethink my parking spot.
Maths lecturer Kenny was as impressive as usual in his introduction to MAM1006H. Anyone who’s ever been lectured by him will remember his “DON’T BE PASSIVE” speeches Patrick Marais was even more impressive in his introduction to Computer Science 2 at 9am. What a pleasure to finally have a highly organised and confident Course Co-ordinator. I think this is going to be a good year.

I have my first two Psychology lectures at 12 and 1pm later today – should be interesting. I’m taking Research in Psyc and Psychopathology (beware)!

Cheers

So its back to UCT tomorrow for 2nd year registration. Hopefully it won’t take too long and I can go finish start Valentine’s Day shopping

My marks for UCT 2006.

Computer Science – Python Course: 83% (Distinction)

Computer Science – Java Course: 78% (Distinction)

Psychology 1: 69%

Mathematics 1: 61%

Applied Mathematics: 57%

Statistics: 50%

Phew what a day. Its midnight and I’ve just wrapped the SAPA DVD for Wednesday’s presentation in Bloemfontein (it has to be delivered first thing tomorrow morning).

The Statistics test turned out to be okay. Not too hard, but not completely simple. Sorta average where a test should be I guess. Sleepy now. Wow. Good night.

Ps. Amy has Sinusitis and is on tons of meds… feeling quite (very) sick still so do keep her in your prayers if you wouldn’t mind. Thanky.

Hi all,

So it looks like i’ve been missing in action for the past week or so. Tonight I figured it was time for a come-back. And what better way than with a shiny new theme. Its a little slower than the old one but graphically its stunning. Credits to the brilliant designer are at the bottom of the blog, I just edited it a little for personalisation and customisation.

So, this week has been really really busy for both Amy and I… and my next week is even more interesting. Amy’s been finishing up her Teaching Prac’s which she posted off today in one big parcel at a cost of R70. She had to include all the media she had made for the lessons, photographs of her board schemes, reports from the teacher marking her, and personal reflections on each item to name but a few. You can understand the stress and length of time in getting this together!

I wrote a CompSci test (got 74%), Maths Test, CompSci Practical Test, and Maths Mini-Test in the past three days. My next week is as follows:

Saturday: Finish CompSci Tutorial (due Mon), Do Psychology Essay (due Thursday). Edit SAPA DVD.

Sunday: Study Chapters 1 – 3 of Statistics for Test on Monday at 5pm. Submit CompSci Tutorial.

Monday: Hand in CompSci Tutorial, do Maths Workshop (2pm-4pm). Write Stats test (5pm – 6:30pm).

Tuesday: Work on Psychology Essay.

Wednesday: Finish Psychology Essay, Due Psychology Tutorial.

Interesting week hey? Quite sad when one starts using one’s blog to plan out your week! hehehe.

Well I’m back at University after long weekend bliss. I’ve been off since last Wednesday afternoon (well, i had to come in briefly on Friday) and I must say its difficult to return to work after so much relaxation.

The day got somewhat annoying when this morning Luc informed me that there was a ComSci minitest in 4th period today! I confirmed it with a few other guys before checking the course website (some odd Sakai.org derivative called Vula). Shoved in little corner of the site was a message from Alex, the TA, saying Friday’s cancelled mini-test had been moved to today… *mumble*

So here I am blogging when I should be revising… Hmmm… No. This is the problem with long weekends and the such – they totally stop you ‘aving that “gosh I must work” feeling. Can’t say i’m complaining… yet!

I’ll post more on this tomorrow because its already 1:50am and I must go sleep so I think straight tomorrow! But surfice it to say I’d be nowhere if it weren’t through the efforts of Max to rewrite the protocol spec for our ComSci projects. The “designer” as this anonymous person has been called basically just disappeared from the scene at the time we needed him/her most… sigh. Thanks Max!