British Student .ca

It’s been a tough week. My computer decided to become unusable, my bicycle got a puncture (I now have that fixed), and my websites went down for a bit. Although extremely unhelpful, it’s probably a good detox not having a computer, and I always think it’s important to spend time away from it. I’ve been extremely bored in the evenings, so I created a list of things to do without a computer.

• Watch TV
• Go cycling and map surveying
• Go to Brooks Bar, and chat to someone I know
• Cook biscuits, cakes, or marmite cheese pastries
• Sleep
• Tidy my room
• Make a den in the lounge
• Go chat to a housemate and distract them from work
• Bully Dave, or start a Nerf gun war with his guns and the other housemates
• Listen to music

Watching TV is just another computer screen and so still bad for me, plus it’s only 60% commercials here. It’s either too dark or too wet to go cycling most of the time that I have free. Brooks Bar is one of the cafe/bars of my college in Durham, where I’m sure to always see someone I know. There are only two bars here, they aren’t really day-time places and I won’t see anyone I know. I don’t really have access to an oven, just a microwave and sink.

I’ve been sleeping far too much recently, it saves waking up and remembering all the things I don’t like right now. I went to bed at 10pm one night, crazy. My room is spotless tidy, cleaned, and dusted. It’s pretty much ready for me to leave and go home, not that I’m counting the weeks or anything. It’s a little more strange making a den in the lounge when you share it with 30 people than with 6, and it’s dirty. I did make a castle wall out of some phone books that were delivered to every single room (what a waste!).

I sometimes wonder round the floor for someone to talk to but they all seem to hide or are actually working. I feel bad about distracting people who have something worth working for. Dave was one of my housemates that lived next door, I miss him being in the room next to me.

The only music source I have is my computer. Until last night when I was driven to get out my PDA, which is old enough that it’s only useful as an mp3 player, and charge the battery again. I have a few CDs on there, and it was nice to finally have vibrations from electricity flowing into my head.

This is my one class this year outside of the Computer Science department. I was egar to take it as I’m already a ‘neogeographer’ meaning I go out surveying roads adding them to a copyright-free map database, OpenStreetMap.org, as a hobby using volunteer created programs and systems. Now I’ve joined a class to learn how the professional geographers do it.

Immeditetly I noticed a difference in the people in the room and being a Computer Science student I only have the ability to interact with other Computer Scientists. The first lecturer the instructor, Jose Aparicio, asked a number of hand-up questions which included “Who’s used GIS before?”. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who raised my hand. In the first lab a shocking number of students struggled with following the instructions to zoom in and out of the map in ArcGIS (click the plus magnafying glass icon, click the map with it). Points to me for being ahead of the class already.

I finished the first assignment in that 2 hour lab, although we had been given next week’s lab and our own time until the 3rd lab to complete it. Since then I’ve always tried to complete the assignments in the lab time. The 3rd assignment I needed an extra half hour. Currently I’m on the 4th assignment and I didn’t finish the last page, but then I did turn up about 25 minutes late because I was decorating a dinning hall. Perhaps I should be using some of the time to make friends in my lab class, as apparently there will be a group project.

Two weeks ago I went to a Geography Students Association(GSA) social with Sam the 5th floor RA and final year geography student. I had a good evening out of Totem Park for a change, sang a little bit of karaoke, and my team did terrible in the quiz. This night also came with the discovery that geography students are known for being the ones that know how to party/drink! I may or may not have been drinking beer in a lecture hall.

The lectures are interesting, especially as I relate most topics to discussions (and arguments) I’ve had amongst OpenStreetMappers. As I don’t need to fully concentrate on the lectures, I now make use of the time by editing OpenStreetMap and uploading the data I collected at the weekend. Switching between my neogeographer’s GIS program (called JOSM) and note typing. I’ll have to be ready to pay more attention at the end of term when there will be a lecture(s?) on data sources and I can make sure OpenStreetMap is accurately represented.

Yesterday I sat down close to someone I briefly met at the GSA social, and she remembered me enough to say hi. Yay I have a friend, I think she’s even in my lab class, which could prove nice come project time!

I was feeling a bit low after my classes today. Group Software Engineering work is not going to well as I my minimalist timetable of 14.5 hours seems to conflict with all my other group members, and the Eclipse/Jazz/Java project was throwing up trouble after trouble for me. I went for a 30min cycle across campus and back to cool down and was feeling a bit better.

Sending postcards got a bit boring after the first 3 as I don’t like to send out the same design too many times and I don’t like most of the selection in the student shop. So I ordered some postcards of my own photos and I’m waiting for those before continuing writing to friends back home. Meanwhile nobody has sent me a postcard or letter back. My parents sent me a postcard from their holiday on the coast in Cornwall, where I would like to be.

So after my cool down cycle I went to check my mailbox. The delivery of postcards wasn’t there, but I spotted a single postcard through the peep hole. Maybe it’s from my friend Beckie, who I think mentioned she was in the progress of writing/sending me a letter. No, it’s from my housemates last year (plus 1, minus 2, to fill a different house this year). I’m so happy to have received this I was talking about it to everyone and about Durham University. Amy, Dave (the great pretender), Jon, and James definetly deserve a blog post about how amazing they are, this is that post.

I should probably write to my other two ex-housemates (who are now living with two of my housemates from the year before), but I don’t think they read this blog so I should be safe until I get the postcard delivery and some more stamps.