The last of them

Exams are quite wierd, especially ones with a lot of people in. 500 people sitting in silence at desks, not moving. I may actually miss them. University exams are easier than school ones because, generally, you know what is going to come up, so they can be fun when you can do all the questions in 45 minutes, then walk past all the arts students writing 20 page essays. Ha. 2 hours a week? Who's got the better deal now? I'm not bitter.

My last exams are as follows. Please stop reading if you don't care, I'm putting them here because I know I'll lose the bit of paper I've got them on, and then I won't know where they are, or what they are. If you're still interested, please carry on reading

Quality and Reliability Engineering - 16th May - 13:00 - City Hall

Process Engineering - 23rd May - 09:00 - City Hall

Applied Numerical Methods in Engineering - 25th May - 13:00 - Students Union

Fluid Power Systems - 1st June - 13:00 - Sports Hall, Llys Talybont

And then I'm done!

If any of the module titles sound remotely interesting, please let me know.

How high do you want the mug?

Everything is exciting in coffe high. Typing much toof ast, so that all the words are jumbled up and confusing. THere is toom uch space between most of the keys and the spaecbar anyway. No time to correct any grammar. Sorted my notes earlier, that was fun, and did the washing up, and some washing. Now I'm getting excited about sorting out the rest of my notes, and going to aldis to buy some bread. Whatevere happens, I have to do it quickly, and propbably interspersed with some shouting, hitting of the table or loud singing in a gravelly voice. Plus beatboxing. There are four radios on in the house, so I can be hear one wherever I am, and I mean wherever. I'm not listening to them. My leg is vibrating the floorboards. Hey! excitement, the washing machine has stopped! I can hangout the washing. Feel a bit clammy now, kind of like I've got a bit of afever. Nothing a LITTLE RUN IN THE PARK WON'T SOLVE. Craop, capslock. Of course spurs shouldn't egt to replay the match, are you mad? And you are also an idiot for having that opinion to. Sorry gfor shouting at you. I can hear the debated ont he radio now. Digital radios are half a second behind normal radios. It's like listening to a pirate station with loads of delay. Or reggae. BO..bo. BAFTA...bafta. TRAFFIC...traffic.
Tired now. Blurred vision. It was fun while it lasted.

Here at the end of all things

Goodness me, this fells a little wierd. I have finished all the coursework for university, that means for the forseeable future. I almost feel sad. No, hang on......I don't.
My final act of assessed bliss was a presentation, in the middle of which Alan decided to ring me. Why then? No-one ever rings me, never ever. My embarrassment was compounded by having Jenny singing her very own version of "Come and join the Celebration" (a Kendrick classic) as the ring tone. The titters turned to laughter as I dived to my bag, where I completely forgot which pocket the phone was in. Not wanting to distribute the many used plastic bags that had been my lunch vessels around the room, I grabbed the bag, started hitting it in the vain hope that I would make contact with the piece of singing plastic. Alas, to no avail, I had to retreat to the safety of the corridor before I the dulcet tones ceased of their own accord.
So thank you very much Jenny and Alan, for combining to make this last academic exercise a very memorable one. The best thing is, you don't even know that you did, yet. I'll thank you both personally.
Next up: Revision.
I'm looking forward to that. No, really I actually am.

Danger love

Whilst clearing out my memory stick, I found this - a poem which was left on the photocopier at work a while back. I couldn't resist taking a scan of it and saving it for posterity.

Don't know who Katy is though....

The land of.....

Conversations sometimes go a little wierd. Take the chicken-frog. A conversation that started quite normally soon descended to thinking up what the eggs of said creature would be (conclusion, chicken-frog spawn, you could cook them like eggs) and the noise the young males would make in the morning (frog-a-doodle-doo). Here it is, the British Lowland Chicken-Frog, Gallus Ranunculus.
Thanks Holly.

Hand in

After an 11 hour day on Monday and 3 hours this morning, almost £50 worth of printing, and more than one swear word, one project has been handed in. This is the culmination of 6 people and 9 months of effort, we are designing a racing car, you see. Personally, I wouldn't have put myself on the design for the brake system, but as a team, I think we may have pulled it off. We'll have the marks by the time they find it doesn't work anyway. I'll be long gone when the car is taken to Germany, only to find the brake pedal is so small no-one can press it down without simultaneously flooring the throttle, or that the wheels fall off due to the ludicrosly underspecified bolts holding them on. Details, thats what they are, mere details. At least when we handed the report in the lecturer in charge complimented us on the folding of the drawings. "Ooh, thats very neat". Technical. I pointed out to the rest of the team that I was the one who folded them, and that they should take it into account when rating my performance for the peer assesment. They just laughed at me. I was actually being serious too. 4 years of education, and at the end of it I can confidently fold a drawing. Don't say that isn't worth it.

Still, in an age where education is increasingly driven by "Is this marked?" it's good to know I have some practical skills. Practical skills that may come in useful when we come to build the car in the coming weeks. It's going to be hard work, but it'll be worth it. To see at the end, the finished article shining, shimmering, splendid. Racing round a track at high speed, feeling a welling up of pride and thinking - "I built that"


Sod that, I've just heard the practical bit doesn't count towards the mark.