Miriam Parkinson

At the moment I’m waiting for my lazy arse lab partner for Digital Electronics Design to turn up so that we can work on our VHDL (Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language) assignment which is due tomorrow. At the moment we haven’t even tested the program on the FPGA (field programmable gate array) board so we’re not exactly in the best position and I’ve been waiting for over an hour now.
Unfortunately I cant get on without him because he has the FPGA.
Fortunately the damned thing is only worth 10 marks however if we get zero for it I will have to get 96% in the exam to still get an HD.

I am currently using my spare time to work out what I will have to get in the exam for each subject in order to get an HD.

Technical Software Development: 85%
Digital Electronics Design: don’t get know, somewhere between 81% and 96% depending on the assignment.
Engineering Mathematics: 88%
Structural Mechanics: don’t know yet

Distinctions seem more likely than high distinctions for most of my subjects but TSD shouldn’t be too hard to get an HD in.

Somebody on TPN – Probably Richard, maybe Cameron (not about to go trawling though old episodes of G’day World and the Gadget Show to find out) once said that just about every website worth going to has an RSS feed.
I was reminded of this the other day when I got my first RSS doodad and started looking around for feeds. I went to Camerons blog, clicked on feed search and… nothing. Given the aforementioned remark this made me laugh. Fortunately I didn’t mention this before as I had a check today and he seems to have RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom so I was totally wrong. The only question is, where the hell were they when I first checked???

As you might be able to tell I’m rather exited about this! Colin gave it to me the other day and given they’ve been discontinued and sold out across the country he must have gone to a lot of effort to get his hands on one.
Apparently he even got up at 5am to bid on one which closed at 5.20am but some other git beat him to it (Isn’t he the worlds best boyfriend???)
Its an ex-demo model which is fine by me as its in very good condition and I don’t have to settle for a TX (yuk!)

I’ve already found a whole lot of handy-dandy little applications to make my life run smoother. These include

• Splash shopper – good for shopping lists, and calorie counters and wishlists etc
• Splash money – so I can keep track of my spending, it shows several accounts and allows you to track deposits, withdrawals, transfers, budgets and a basic what I’m spending on what, where.
• Several games
• eReader
• PalmPDF

and various other goodies.

Unfortunately as I haven’t get gotten around to buying a case for it, it currently lives in a sock so it doesn’t get scratched (I do have the flipcover on but that only protects the face)

As Colin pointed out a moment ago I do actually have something to talk about: the saga of the plug. Or as he so eloquently put it:

Tell em about how you lost the plug for the kitchen sink and spent half an hour looking for it and you couldn’t find it and you got all frustrated and weirded out and the kettle growled at you and then the plug was stuck to the bottom of a plate which you found when you were washing it!

Basically I went to wash the dishes and I couldn’t find the plug. Except I hate not being able to find something. It freaks me out so I was going a little bit mad.
Eventually I went downstairs and grabbed the plug out of the laundry because I knew that if I kept looking for it I’d probably go crazy. Then whilst I was washing the dishes I was sure the kettle laughed at me in an evil manner which weirded me out even more and I had crazy thoughts about the kitchen appliances conspiring against me and stealing the plug.
Eventually whilst I was washing the plates I found the plug suction-capped to the bottom of a plate.

Well so says my stat counter anyways.

I havent had much to say for myself this weekend as I’ve been rather busy and strangely tired. I fell asleep in front of the tv at 8pm last night which took away from my learning about stuff and blogging time quite a bit.

Anyways I’ll make an attempt at thinking of something interesting to say tomorrow but at the moment my brain is on holidays somewhere and it didnt invite me so I’m in a bad mood at it.

After some (time wasting) research I’ve identified some things which may help my concentration

1. Fish Oil – Apparently omega-3 can help with ADD
2. Ginko – This is notorious for its concentration-boosting properties
3. Caffeine – Now this is the slightly worrying bit… I just drank instant coffee so concentrated that it could rouse a tranquilised elephant.
4. Berroca – I remember someone saying that Vit B was good too… or more, lack of vit B was bad.

Apparently 100mg of caffeine is equivalent to 5mg ritalin which; coincidence of all coincidences; is the dosage of ritalin I normally take.
Instant coffee is reported to have 60-100mg of caffeine so I have somewhere between 120 and 200 mg in my system…

Lets hope this works…

Now before you start thinking I’m some typical drug addled youth I do legitimately have ADD and I have been prescribed Ritalin. I went off it 6 months ago for the simple reason that I ran out and its a really big pain in the butt to get some more.

The reason that I ran out is that whilst I was preserved an amount of ritalin that would keep me going every week-day of the year this was exactly the problem. The ‘two month supply’ that was the first two boxes of Ritalin I brought home from the chemist actually lasted me 6 months and by the time I got around to getting a new box the repeat prescription had expired (for controlled substances they chuck them out after 6months)

But 6 months into my ‘lets see if I actually need the stuff’ experiment I have realised that I kinda do. And lets face it – ritalin is way cheaper than caffeine now that its been put on the PBS scheme and its way more effective.

So now I’m sitting trying to study, caffeine racing through my system trying to speed up those little frontal lobe signals so that I regain some executive control (don’t laugh that’s the neurobiology/psychological term) and its not fucking working properly. Any stimulant strictly speaking can help someone with ADD the only problem is caffeine has very uneven results sometimes resulting in a racing pulse, the shakes and a mind that gets stuck in infinite loops.

I have four little Ritalin tablets sitting downstairs and four exams – so these are already assigned. Now all I can do is try my best to concentrate and get onto getting me some more of those little tablets of concentration for next semester.

Last night my computer turned itself on – twice! I was totally tripping out because I’m scared of the dark as it is and something in the dark was making my computer turn itself on. I had to turn on every light in the house before I went over and unplugged it.

The first time it turned itself on was 2-3 min after I turned it off but the second time was a good 15min later.

So weird.

Anyone have any rational explanations before I decide that my computer is possessed.

I’ve always had something against anything related to ipods. Whilst I stand by my opinion of ipods I was totally wrong about itunes. My sister loaded it onto my computer a while ago and it took me ages to get rid of it (which I did without even looking at its features) but today I had to download it in order to get a piece of music which I just had to have and I must say I’m very impressed.

I love the ’smart’ playlists, as they save me a lot of time. I also like the fact that the songs don’t actually have to be in the itunes folder but can be scattered around my computer (which is their current state)

I’m also rather pleased with the itunes music store in terms of convenience (I just popped across the road to a shell station and got a music card) and ease of use.
On the negative side the music is rather a lot more than I think it should be so I’ll stick to using it only when I cannot find the music elsewhere.

On the 22nd of April I hurt my thumb. Colin was chasing me up the stairs trying to whoop me on the butt as you do and I went to defend myself and he accidentally bent back my thumb at a funny angle. My best bet at the time was that I had sprained it.
On the 23rd of April it was sore enough that he had to dress me… well you try doing up your fly without two opposable thumbs.
By the 24th of April I could dress myself but my thumb still hurt.
By the 30th it was sore at the extremes of mobility but not too much of a bother.

Unfortunately its stayed at that phase.

So now nearly a month after the injury I still haven’t regained full mobility… Is this a bad sign??

I’m young I’m supposed to heal faster than this!

Anyways its not an awful bother so I’ll put up with it but I’m going to be really cranky if it doesn’t get better soon. How am I supposed to play my Nintendo DS now!