I got hit by a bus today

My first (and thus far only) masters student defended her thesis today. She got a B, although the work was definitely A-worthy. Main reason being that the defence speech went over time by a wide margin. To everyone else considering that - don't.

I stuck around for all the other defences as well. Which means I really got no work done whatsoever. And missed the second of Frege lectures on Empirical Philosophy - and first one was quite promising.

Oh yes, and I got hit by a bus. I really should be a bit more careful.

(I am Ok and walked, or, well, biked off from the encounter, in case anyone wanted to ask)

It has been fun

The past week has been.. fun.

I have:
Gone swimming in Saadjärv (with a friend), which involved 46 km of biking. Sunset was quite nice though.

Attended St. Johns day celebration at Kärsa with Roju. There was sauna and a cold pond to wash off in afterwards. And we watched Brüno... and then stayed for most of the next day as well.

gone on a small hiking trip to Ilmatsalu with a very cute and interesting girl.

watched a few movies with a few different people, one of them being the aforementioned girl.

had a short jam session with Raul.

worked on my PhD thesis. Still only halfway through, though, but I am optimistic :)

More than words can say

I watched "The Metropolis" today. Its a 1927 movie. You know, from the time before color and even before sound. So it had people gesturing wildly and flash cards to explain what they told each other.

Plenty of moments for spoof dialogue..

The movie was much slower than those that they make today, which was actually kind of nice. The story was fairly naive and predictable, but that was also kind of nice, as it allowed one to concentrate on the visuals. The special effects were quite amazing by the way -- especially considering computers had not even been invented yet.

What also seemed odd to me was that they actually used the word Robot. Although the word has been invented in 1920 (by a polish SciFi writer), it was (to my knowledge) supposedly pretty obscure til it was popularized by Isaac Asimov in the 40-s. Guess I got that wrong, then.

I only wish I could have had someone to hug while watching this. Then again, it could have been worse - I did have two friends to watch it with, both of whom also quite enjoyed the experience :)

As for the thesis, it is slowly coming together. I have most of Chapter 1 written up and I soon get to the hard part where I need to start reading up on things I wrote 2 years ago.

Back to the thesis

I know my initial plan was to have a rough draft ready by the end of last week already but.. I was just too optimistic. My new deadline is the end of June, which is a bit more realistic. But that means I better start soon, or, rather, now.

Yesterday was one of the worst days I have had in a long while. Any attempt at trying to do something only made things worse. No energy and no motivation. Strangely, it did not seem do be depression induced, but rather vice versa.

Nevertheless, whatever it was, it seems to be over now. I just hope it does not happen again.

A kebab in my hand instead of going under

I had a work health check-up in the morning, at 8.20. So, yet again, a night with just 3 hours of sleep. Health still seems to be good, although, mysteriously, I have lost a lot of strenght in my left hand. Strange.

After that, I quickly returned to Cybernetica, corrected the english summary of the Masters thesis I was supervising, sent it to the printer and dashed to Liivi 2 to get to the last set of bachelors defences. This time, two A-s, a B and a D. Everyone more or less deserved the grade they got, but the D took some fighting.

After the grades had been announced, I had some more paperwork to do regarding the masters thesis. Afterwards I stopped by Annes office to see, what she had been up to.. and to talk about my life and problems too.. no names, of course.

I then went home, had a bath and then went to sleep for two hours. When I awoke, I made yet another batch of Alu Gobi. This being my third one, I can only say that it keeps getting better each time I make it. And I still have enough left over for tomorrow. Yuppee!

In the evening, Dan and Liina came over to play guitar hero. We finished with the Sum 41 song "In too deep" in case anyone was wondering about the title of this post.

Agenda for tonight:

Proofread and comment on my masters students thesis draft

Help Jan and Aivo to ready a questionnaire for 0ct0b4rf4st

Let Swen explain log log n comparison protocol to me

Explain Hash-based time-stamping to Madelaine

Possibly go for a swim.

And to think, I thought of actually hitchiking to Viljandi to see one of my students play. Or that I would have time for my PhD thesis.

Parallel lives

It is strange how some times you go through the same things as one of your friends does, possibly in a completely different context, but with just a slight time lag, so that one of you has more insight into the situation.

Yes. That is all I really had to say.

Illusions

I finally started my PhD thesis today. And not with just one or two lines, too - I got a LaTeX template, got it to work, edited the main page and even wrote up most of the introduction. Not all that bad for one days of work, also considering the morning was spent on other things.

Also
I went dancing tonight with my roommates. For two hours. In the "Illusion". It was fun. Have to do it again some time soon.

This promises to be a busy week. Diana is coming to Tartu tomorrow. There is a set of bachelors defences on Friday and the next one on Tuesday. On the weekend, I am away at (Crypto) Theory days, where I am also supposed to give a presentation. On Monday it is the deadline for my masters student to hand in her thesis. And I'm probably forgetting a few things.

Hiking trip with bikes or 24 hrs without computers

So, me and Riinu went to the woods, just like we had been planning for 3 or so weeks. We started at around 17.30 from my place and went to the store to get some snacks. Turned out that she had also gone to bed at around 3.30 (it was 3.45 for me) - so a two liter bottle of Coke seemed like a nice idea to the both of us. We also got bread, cheese, sausages and crab sticks - as I had not had anything decent to eat since breakfast and she claimed to be in somewhat of a similar state.

We then got to the train station and caught a train towards Orava. Of course, we managed to miss our stop, but as the train stopped every few kilometers, it was not too big of a tragedy. We got out on the next stop and started biking.

An hour later we arrived at the camp site. Actually, there were two and there were a few people by the second one, but as it seemed to be just one couple, we did not let ourselves get bothered, set up the tent and started a fire. We ate and then started playing Fluxx. The idea was to get to sleep fairly early, maybe around 11, as we both had quite a big sleep debt accumulated over the previous week.

However, our plans were foiled by the arrival of three more cars to the second camp site, one of which started blasting Trance music from the speakers. We packed and left towards the next camp site, hoping that would be a bit emptier.

We met a large village swing on the way, along with the embers of a huge fire. The swing was a bit broken but it did not stop us from using it. And it was fun - it is nice to do something with your body instead of the mind for a change. 25 km of biking on the first day would also count for that.



When we arrived at the new camping grounds, it was going dark. We started a fire again, and set up the tent, then played more Fluxx and got to bed at around 1.

We woke up at around 12. Started fire, only to make coffee. Then started cycling back. We had around 32 km to go.

The first 6 were smooth sailing. Then we got crosswind, which turned to headwind.. at whic point we got off the bikes and walked for 2 km, because it was just plain faster. Then it eased up a bit, but cycling was still a huge pain. So, at the halfway point (17 km from Tartu) we just decided to grab a beer and some ice cream, call it a day and catch a train home.

While waiting, Riinu told me he was going to a Science camp in russia, that is organized by Nashi activists... That girl is insane... I mean, more insane than I originally suspcected.

As we were waiting for the train, a gust of wind blew over Riinu's backback so it fell. She was not bothered. Then, the next gust of wind blew over her bicycle. Then she already was.

We got back at around 5 in the evening.

I wanna be sedated

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go - I wanna be sedated
Nothin' to do and no where to go-o-oh - I wanna be sedated
Just get me to the airport, put me on a plane
Hurry hurry hurry, before I go insane
I can't control my fingers, I can't control my brain
Oh no no no no no
- the Ramones

That pretty much sums it up. I have a few loose ends to take care of but otherwise, Im free. And having serious difficulty controlling my brain.. you'd think 23 years of practice would count for something but noo.

Googling the lyrics, auto-complete wanted to complete "I want to be " with "skinny".

It's strange but I somehow accidentally happen to read exactly the right books at exactly the right times sometimes. Im currently halfway through Xenocide and, I still have to admit that O. S. Card is a genius. Then again - psychology mixed with heavy doses of moral philosophy is just my thing, so results may vary for other people reading him.