31 July, 2010 in Development, Update, Website by Aonghas

The Official Re-opening of AONGHAS.COM

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to my renovated and restored website. It has been exactly two years since my last major update; many of you will remember the midnight launch on 31st July 2008. Over the last four months I have been working hard to revamp and upgrade many features on my website and I apologise for website being down during this time. Much of the code has been re-worked from scratch, including some of the layout methods and graphics. Some of the major changes in this launch include:

• A new wider design layout, increased from 800px to 1024px
• Re-designed headers and page titles
• Dynamically updated home page
• New Contact page using AJAX
• Links page with automatically updating RSS feeds
• Remodelled full-featured multimedia Gallery including photos and videos
• Custom image animations with FancyBox
• The official launch of the AONGHAS.COM Store
• Detailed About Me page (still growing)
• Related posts fetches other similar posts when viewing a single blog entry
• New footer area with useful links and calendar with upcoming events
• Dynamic sidebar with page-sensitive content

There are still minor changes I need to work on, but I hope you enjoy having a look around the site. Let me know if you find any bugs or errors so I can try to fix them up. And before you go, make sure to leave a comment on my guestbook!

25 July, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Busting Potential Theives!

I started work at my usual time of 1:30 this afternoon. Sigourney was working the morning shift and finished at 3:30 after I got back from my break. Anyway, everything seemed like a usual Sunday afternoon at work – pretty quiet probably since it was after the first week back at school for most people. However, just after 4pm I got a visit from a few suspicious-looking youngsters who showed up in a mob of around five or six. From the moment they walked in, there was something amiss about the way they looked. A few of them were wearing backpacks that were obviously empty – a telling sign that they might be up to no good. It was time for friendly Aonghas to put his detective hat on.

Since there were no other customers at the time, I was entirely focused on the teens sifting their way through the store. A few minutes later one of the young lads (who we’ll call Joseph from now on for convenience sake) comes up to me and asks if he can try on the black skinny jeans he’s holding. I say sure and open one of the changing rooms for him. Seconds later, his mate (who we’ll call Frank) asks me the same question, holding the same style of black skinny jeans. “Fair enough,” I thought to myself and let him into the adjacent changing room. So that was okay. While Joseph and Frank were trying on the skinny jeans, the other groupies were lingering around by the changing rooms and I was standing a few metres away, spying on their every move.

Hoping that maybe other customers would draw my attention away, the group continued to gaze around the store absent-minded until one of the mates (who we’ll call Charlie) walked over to the skinny jeans and took another pair off the rack. On closer inspection, I could see that there were in fact two pairs of jeans he was carting back to the changing room, though he was trying his best to make it look like it was just the single pair. Charlie put the jeans over Joseph’s door and I made a mental note that Joseph now had three pairs of jeans in his changing room. Charlie headed back to the jeans rack and took yet ANOTHER pair of jeans off the same rack and this time put them over Frank’s changing room door. At first I gave them the benefit of the doubt – perhaps Joseph just really couldn’t decide what size he was in girls’ skinnys. But what Charlie did next pushed it too far, and I knew then it was time to step in…

Alongside our changing rooms we have a column of hooks that have numbered tags 1 through to 6. When someone wants to try on some clothes, we are supposed to take note of how many items of clothing they have and hang the tag with that number outside their door. Now Charlie must have seen the tags hanging nextdoor and he thought he’d be crafty by taking a ’1′ tag and hanging it on Frank’s door. I knew that Frank had two pairs of jeans so I stepped in and said, “eh, doesn’t that guy have two pairs of jeans in there?” Charlie stared at me, obviously trying to think of an excuse on the spot and said, “uhh, ohh umm…” and I said “yeah, that guy has two pairs and your other mate in the other changing room has three!” He knew I was on to them by now, so when Joseph came out holding his three pairs of jeans I asked him how they fitted and he told me that they were all too tight. He passed the jeans to Charlie and then Charlie said,

“oh farr oi, I got you 2 pairs of the same size ow!”

I find it ironic that that two pairs were the same size yet Joseph didn’t seem to realise because they were all too tight. Hmmm. The mob started to move out of the store, and I made sure they put the jeans back. But Frank, the guy with the two pairs, was still in the changing room, perhaps trying to conjure up a scheme to get the jeans past me. When he finally opened the door, I was standing there looking straight at him. He knew there was nothing else he could do so he walked past me and put the two pairs back on the rack and scurried out to join his mates who had left the store by this time. After he left I went to the rack of jeans and noticed the two pairs he put back were ALSO the same size… Grrr.

Part of me feels satisfied that I managed to prevent a theft from happening, but at the same time I’m a little annoyed that I couldn’t do anything else about it. I just hope that they don’t recognise me in future when I’m walking home from work at night, or else I’ll have to pull out my kung-fu if they try anything funky on me.

24 July, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Inaugural CSE Forum

This morning I had to get up early to go to Uni to play squash with Rose and Angie. I caught the 9am bus into town with Rose and we met Angie when we got there. Angie had booked the court for an hour so we thought we’d just play until someone else kicked us out. It was my first time playing squash for a while  so I was a little worried that my game wouldn’t be quite up to par. We took turns playing each other and it was a pretty good workout. I even wore proper sports shoes this time as well, since last time I wore my Cotton On shoes and they weren’t the best to run around in.

After the next people to book the court arrived, Angie left us to go to her class while Rose and I had lunch together. An old friend Si-yu joined us coincidentally as well. He was the guy who played squash with us that one time a while ago. I didn’t have any lunch prepared today so I thought I’d splash out and buy some food from the quad, though everything there is too expensive!

After lunch I realised that all three lectures I had today were in the same lecture theatre and they were all scheduled one after the other. The first lecture we had was ELECTENG 209, the design paper. We had a special guest lecturer from the library who taught us about the library searching system and how to look for resources properly. It was pretty similar to the introductory lecture we had last year when we were introduced to the library catalogue for the first time. Our second lecture was Electromagnetics with Dr Smaill, and we continued the work we were doing with charges and electric fields. One of the formulae we derived was the electric potential for a point charge, and when we came to the final result Dr Smaill referred to the formula as being “beautiful”. Then he told us that we were going to prove the formula was right and said,

Being correct is important too, perhaps almost as important as being beautiful. -Dr Chris Smaill

I thought that was pretty funny when he said that. It reminded me of a few things that I probably shouldn’t mention here. After my last lecture I caught the bus home with Rose and prepared to get ready to go back into Uni because tonight we hosted the first Computer Systems Forum for students of our department.

I arrived back at Uni in the car just before 6 and headed to the AUSA Functions Room where the forum was being held. I didn’t really know how many students to expect; I emailed all the second year students last night to remind them about it but I’m not sure how many of them actually remembered about it. At first there weren’t too many students and most of them were Part 3 and 4 students, but slowly more people started to arrive before we were split into table groups around the room.

The first CSE forum of its kind!

The purpose of the evening was pretty much to discuss some key issues about the Computer Systems specialisation and talk about ways in which we can make our degree program engaging and appealing to prospective students and future employers. We wanted to come up with ways to make our degree more visible to others in an attempt to combat the dipping student enrolment numbers. At our table there were mostly second year students but we also had a fourth year student to sort of facilitate the discussion at our table. We each had to fill in a short questionnaire answering questions about why we like Computer Systems and what we’d like to get out of the degree.

After all the semi-formal things were out of the way, we were treated to some pizza and drinks. Actually there were heaps of pizzas! I think they were expecting a bigger turn out. But I didn’t mind, at least that meant more pizza for me . I had a chat with a few new people who I had seen around the place before but never actually talked to so that was nice. Overall I think it wasn’t too bad an event. I was speaking with a couple of second year students and they agreed with the idea of organising a get-together for just the second year Computer Systems students so that we get to know one another. It’s sometimes hard to pick out the CSE students from the group because we’re always mixed in with all the Electrical students!

Pizza, pizza and more pizza

22 July, 2010 in Friends, Social by Aonghas

Drinks at Shadows

Today was the first time I had been to Shadows

Since I’ve been at the University of Auckland for over a year and a half now, you would have thought I had been to the student bar Shadows at least once. But before today, that wasn’t the case. I remember someone, maybe my brother, telling me about the $1 bottomless glasses of coke they used to serve at Shadows, and I was meaning to go up there one day to check it out but I never got round to doing it. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t be bothered climbing three flights of stairs, or maybe I just had nobody to go with and there was never a good opportunity. But anyway, today I was sitting outside in the quad with Nancy and Jesse, eating my sandwiches prepared for me by my mum.

After Nancy left, Jesse and I were talking about engineering when Carey and Stephanie arrived. It took me a few moments to realise it was the first time I had seen Carey since his American escapades to the States earlier this month. Carey and Stephanie were on their way up to Shadows and asked if we’d like to join them. I was excited to go up there for the first time, and after being ID checked at the door, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the bar actually looked quite tidy and clean. I always had a mental image of the bar being smoggy and dark for some reason; maybe I got the impression that a student bar would be filled with rowdy drunkards vomiting all over the place. Then again, it was 1:20pm in the afternoon so perhaps it was a bit early in the day for the hardcore drinkers to be out.

Carey and Jesse ordered a whole jug of some kind of beer while I opted for a non-alcoholic option. I didn’t know what was on the menu apart from the regular soft drinks, so the bartender offered to make me a “mocktail”. I’m guessing that means a mock version of a cocktail? Anyway, he mixed all these different things together and shook it up in a silver shaker and the final drink turned out to pinky-purple. I asked him what it was called but I don’t think he knew himself – just a mixture of everything perhaps. It did taste pretty good I must say, but I expected it to taste how it did – that kind of taste you get when you mix soft drinks and juices.

Carey told us a little bit about his trip to USA and he shared a few party stories along with Stephanie. When 2pm came knocking it was time for me to go. Overall I am impressed with my first Shadows experience, and I wouldn’t mind going back there sometime. So if anyone needs a non-alcoholic drinking buddy, you know who to call

22 July, 2010 in Home by Aonghas

Rainy Days

Usually our smaller cat Mao Mao sleeps in the lounge overnight until the early hours of the morning when she walks down the hallway and wakes my dad up to let her out. Tonight she went for an early sleep and just woke up about 15 minutes ago to have something to eat before, presumably, wanting to go to the “bathroom” outside. She was meowing at me and circling around my legs until I went to the back door to let her out, but she just sat there looking out at the cold rainy night.

Mao Mao didn't want to go out into the rain but she needed to go to the toilet!

It was raining on and off earlier today but tonight it’s just gotten worse. We used to have a litterbox inside when Mao Mao was younger, but after she trained herself to wake our dad up in the morning to let her out, we figured she grew out of it. After sitting at the door staring blankly at me for over 10 minutes, I guess the urge to relieve herself finally got to her and she darted out the back door into the rain. I hope she doesn’t get too wet. Maybe we should bring back the litterbox for winter nights like tonight.

20 July, 2010 in University by Aonghas

Naked Fountain Man

This afternoon before my last lecture, I randomly bumped into Ethan in IC, talking to Trinity and Ying. After the two girls left, Ethan and I had a bit of a walk together and later met Craig as well. Ethan showed me his new HTC HD2 hone; it looked pretty impressive with its BIG juicy screen. The three of us thought it might be nice to walk to Albert Park across the road and find somewhere to sit. However when we got there, we were met with quite an unusual scene. There he was, in/on/next to the fountain, moving around in a drunk-like acrobatic way. But that wasn’t the unusual part. He was half naked, with his bottoms coming off next. We didn’t know whether to approach him with excitement or move away with fear, so we lingered around for a little longer. Oh by the way, did I mention he only had one arm? Yeah… you better believe it. And just in case you don’t, here he is now:

We didn't know whether he was taking a bath or simply trying to impress the ladies

Thanks to Craig for the photo; I was too scared to get any closer.

20 July, 2010 in University by Aonghas

Farewell Chris

At noon today I caught the bus into Uni with Rose. She was pleasantly surprised to see me because she thought I started earlier today. We had a pretty nice catch up on the way into town, since I didn’t get a chance to meet up with her in the holidays. When we got to Uni, we also bumped into Rachel Chambers, another friend I hadn’t seen for way too long. It was good she still remembered me .

Chris was my action group leader at Student Life

After a couple of my lectures, I had a quick walk through the quad to check out some of the stalls that were set up for Orientation Week. A guy approached me and asked if I had time to fill in a questionnaire for Student Life, but I told him that I was already involved with Student Life and was in Chris’s action group. I was shocked to learn that it was Chris’s last day at Uni today because he is off to Canada for at least a couple of years! Luckily Chris was also at the stall so I managed to say goodbye and thanks before he left. I’ve only known Chris since the beginning of this year, but in that time I’ve gotten to know him quite well. I’m sure he’ll do well in the future and hopefully we’ll meet up one day too!

19 July, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Full Steam Ahead

After finding out that I managed to pass all my papers last semester (what a relief!), it was back to business at Uni today. I was getting worried for a while after my exams because the thought of failing any of my exams meant that I would not be allowed to enrol in one of my second semester courses. I really didn’t want to become a split-year student because that could just get messy so I was considering taking a break from Uni if I did fail any papers and finding an Engineering job for the rest of the year instead. As luck would have it though, I can put that past me – for now.

My first class today wasn’t until 1pm so I had a bit of free time in the morning… well, to sleep in! On the way to Uni Jesse and Luke Dickinson caught the same bus, though we only started talking after we had got off the bus behind the Aotea Centre. My 1pm lecture was Object Oriented Design (COMPSYS 202), which is pretty much a programming paper. We were introduced to the Linux operating system and were told that we would be learning how to program in the C++ language this semester. Straight after our first lecture, the second class was in the same lecture theatre so I didn’t have to move. Dr. Chris Smaill, who taught us for ELECTENG 101 last year, returned to introduce himself again for this semester’s Engineering Electromagnetics (ELECTENG 204). The introduction and course overview was pretty brief and we were already into the course material in the second half of the lecture!

Finally today, I had my first tutorial for my Technical Communication for Engineers paper (ENGGEN 204). We were welcomed by our teaching assistant Vicky, who gave an overview of the course and outlined the different modules we will be covering in the next 12 weeks. The first module is working in Microsoft Excel and Word, learning how to use the different functions and tools that are available. Although there were a couple of things that were slightly new to me, some parts of the tutorial seemed rather trivial, especially such things as “navigating around a spreadsheet using the scroll bars”. I would have thought that was implicit. Then again, if I can gain marks for simple things like that then I’m not complaining!

The first day back at Uni wasn’t too bad all in all. I’d give it about a 7/10 in terms of excitement. And for once I’m on top of all my course work now, I just need to keep this up for the next 12 weeks and I should be fine!