Diary of a New Dad

the UK

Lets start on a light note. I have to say that the break to Disney Paris was loverly. We had lots of fun, and it was very hot. Probably a little too hot for walking around the parks in. I got to go on two of my favourite rides, Aerosmith and Space Mountain. If you have never been to Disney Paris, then GO! What are you waiting for? Those who have been will know what I am talking about. If you dont already know <brag> I won the trip to Disney after enterring a comp on the web </brag>, so I was really looking forward to go on the newly refurbished Space Mountain. It was the first ride we headed for, and I have to say, it was ok. They have not changed the track as I had been left to believe, all they had done was change the scenery, and made the queuing longer. This left me a little dissapointed, but the ride is still good. Aerosmith, WOW! Its a great ride. Unlike normal roller coasters, there is no uphill start. You get launched along a flat length of track, and then go straight into a 4G loop. Now thats fun. Again, Aerosmith is in the dark.

Well, this is where the entry goes down. We decided to come back early, arrived in the train station at Calais and told to go straight through, the train departed in 15 minutes. We got on, great, on our way home 3 hours early. Then we arrived in the UK. Upon leaving the UK station both Jess and I tried to check our phone balance, both at 0! (Mine still is as I refuse to top up when I had £10 on there before I went to france and I didnt use my phone out there!) This caused us to go to Deal, to check on Jess brother as we couldnt ring him to check he was ok. Thats when we hit the traffic jam.

Now please treat this as a public service announcement. If you are stuck in a jam, and your car overheats/breaks down in the outside lane, then dont leave it sitting in the middle of the lane, push it to the side to give people the slightest posibility of getting passed without having to pull in. Secondly, if you are a lorry driver, both British and foreign, and you happen to be on the inside lane along with every other lorry in the jam, then dont pull up along side the broken down car blocking the way for drivers in cars, not allowing them to pull past the broken car on the inside. Its not like I want to steal your lane, I want to stay in the outside lane, especially when is it clear ahead of the broken down car. This ammounted to a situation that lead to me getting very annoyed, I am sure that you can appreciate. Oh, and to top it off the police were 100m down the road from the broken down car and what were they doing, Nothing! Nice work lads!

To top it all off, it took jess 40 minutes to navigate Canterbury traffic this morning, my fault of course, I asked her to drop me off at uni for work. All I can say is that I am now entirely pissed off with the UK road system, especially after driving on the french roads that are so much better than ours. GRR

Theme!

Wooooo! I have managed to work out what was wrong with the damn theme, and now it works. For anyone who is mildly interested, the problem was that I defined a tag as an id, and not as a class as the css defines it. Well, problem solved, and dont it look pretty.

Still to do:

• Finish the theme for all other pages
• Tabs for the pages
• Style Switcher
• Refine the CSS for links, font size etc

Weekend

The weekend is here and I have reached the end of my frist week as a cs intern. Its been emotional.

Anyway, the reason that I am writing this is cause I have discovered James Blunt and all I can say is WOW! I would really recommend this to anyone. I havent stopped listening to it for a week.

Also, DISNEY on monday. I cant wait to try out the new Space Mountain ride. Although the drive is going to be a bit tiring as it is so early in the morning. Watch this space to be kept informed.

First Week

I know that I am only half way through my first week, but I thought that I would post a quick item here. Anyone who has visited this site will know that it has been in a state of dissarray recently as I try to make the blog fit more in with my main site design. Although I dont know why anyone is coming to this page as I havent really advertised the fact that I am doing this.

As for work, it’s tough. I have dived straight in at the deep end and I think that I am starting to get the hange of it. My main aim at the moment is to implement a scoring system for the GraphMotion project that I am working on as a summer intern for the Uni. I have a VERY basic system up and running, and I am pleased so far because it means that I must know more than I gove myself credit for. The project is a very complex system of abstract classes, threads all over the place, and lots of stuff being re-drawn all the time to provide the animation.

So, thats work, as for life in general I went to Bargain Tuesday at Cineworkd in Ashford to watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and I have to say that it was a very enjoyable film. If you want to go and watch people and things be blown up then I would recommend it to anyone (apart from youngsers).

Update

Well, I have been a busy bunny this week, I am working in the Kent IT Clinic getting a feel for it so I know what to expect next year. Kinda jumping in at the middle end, if there is such a thing. Only got the one week there though as I start my summer job on Monday.

I have somehow, don’t ask how, managed to get a job as a summer intern with the Computing Lab. I am helping develop their research into Graphs in Motion by writing java applets and a website for them. A little nervous about this as I havent really done anything like this before, but I am really looking forward to it.

I am sort of thinking that this blog will become a “My summer in Sun”, orat least my summer programming their language. You might get an insight into what I will be learning and doing. Alternatively, I may not do that.

Enough for today, more soon.