Archive for May, 2003

Giant Pandas

Monday, May 12th, 2003

[ from the are-going-to-take-over-the-world-soon dept. ]

Today I will be on campus first thing to finish some work, check out graduation tickets (I know “I should have done that already”), etc. Then I will be on a train to London to meet some friends, visit family in Reading. Tomorrow I am in Oxford at a Knuth Talk on Metapost. Back in Nottingham on Tuesday night to continue working and contemplating exams.

Jon.

Status Update

Sunday, May 11th, 2003

[ from the deciding-what-to-do-with-my-life-etc. dept. ]

I handed in a 16,000 word dissertation on my to date work on The Genesis Microkernel Project and will release some code in the summer, once I have resolved the problems. In any case I am now beginning to make some serious progress on the road towards a decent part time hacky project.

So with that over, and with final exams looming on the horizon, I am taking some time to reflect upon what I want to do next. It is looking likely that I will seek employment with one of the contacts I have been talking with though I also intend to at least take on a part time PhD.

I am “not quite finished yet” in terms of education, or at least that is how it feels. I very much like the idea of combining work with interesting research and I do know the committment involved in mixing both together. I will know how things will work out soon enough.

Jon.

IBM Create Isolinear Circuits

Monday, May 5th, 2003

[ from the Isograted-Circuits-Coming-Next dept. ]

IBM succeeded in creating the first Isolinear circuits. Star Trek technology comes to life.

Jon.

Contacting jcm

Monday, May 5th, 2003

[ from the email-backlog-building-up dept. ]

For those people (hi Chris) who have mailed me recently and not received a full reply then I apologise and will be in touch soon.

I have begun sending suggestions to the Computer Science department for alterations to the courses for future students. I feel I can make a large number of positive comments before I graduate so that these issues are discussed at the relevent committee meetings.

Jon.

Blunkett Blunders Yet Again

Monday, May 5th, 2003

[ from the biometric-invasion-of-privacy dept. ]

The Home Secretary is to propose that this country become more of a prison state by introducing biometric and other invasive privacy measures at UK entry points. While I generally question the usefulness of biometrics I certainly do not propose to like the idea of providing these details to the government. I suppose I am not supposed to object given that it is probably in the interest of protecting us from Witches…sorry Terrorists who are obviously everywhere. Blunkett annoys me greatly.

Captain Cyborg

Monday, May 5th, 2003

[ from the oh-no-not-again dept. ]

We are watching the Discovery Channel. Captain Cyborg is on spouting about how his pet chip impant did blah blah blah blah. Someone get this guy off the air talking about this yet again! If we have to see that video of him controlling a robotic arm over the internet one more time…

Jon.

Memory Management

Friday, May 2nd, 2003

[ from the arrgh-they-will-get-you-arrrrrrggghhhh! dept. ]

Hmmmm…copy configuration in to Upper and Lower BAT registers, play with SDR1, page tables, blah blah blah blah. What do you get? Well about 3K lines of code which doesn’t do what I want. I really really need a hardware debugging kit of some kind or a lot more time – that’s not because I started writing code later but because the task is complex. I will get enough resolved for the deadline though there is some serious summer work ahead.

The report should have 5-7K words sorted by the end of the weekend and enough for a draft to be ready. Then I have a week to get it wrapped up.

There so now you all know you can stop asking me how it is going. :-)

Jon.