The William Shatner Show
a.k.a. Boston Legal. Thanks for getting me hooked Paul – what a legindary show. In fact, the only TV on free-to-air that I look forward to and watch on a regular basis. On at 10:30 which suites me nicely (a chance to have dinner first ;-)).
I’d download it, but then Tuesdays would just be dull.
Will.
A student again!
I have decided to go back to University and do a Masters degree. Doing a masters was always something on my mind, especially since I passed on doing an honours year, and now it’s a reality.
I was tossing up between Monash and RMIT Universities, which both offer a Masters in IT, with a Minor Thesis final semester option (which was attractive to me). In the end I picked RMIT which seems more inline with my area of interest (interactive entertainment and games). They offer a minor Project as well as a minor Thesis which is more hands on (i.e. more coding) which interests me. They even have a Game Programming course for undergrads, run by an Italian who is passionate about games (and who I hope to make my supervisor for my Minor Project). Other course include things like Mobile Application Development, which I plan on doing as well.
My study load is full time, though in my experience this still leaves room to pursue other interests like my IT and photography businesses, and game development (though hopefully the latter I can get credit for ;-) ).
I’m taking the “Software Engineering cluster” which provides in depth focus on SE stuff, and this semester are enrolled in:
* Usability Engineering
* Software Testing
* Requirements Engineering
* Agent Orientated Programming and Design (not SE, but an AI course).
Requirements and Testing I did a bit of at UQ, and it was rather boring. This time round for the testing we are using an actual commercial test suite by IBM which is good, and requirements it’s taken by an “Industry lecturer” who does that sort of thing and isn’t very keen on Zed.
The bad news is that also taking one lecture is HIM’s non-identical twin sister, HER. HER is so annoying I sit there actually wishing I was in a lecture with HIM instead. What’s worse is that these lectures are recorded (well that’s actually awesome… but) so HER “jokes” are recorded for eternity.
Will.
Only free beer will convince me
Since Virgin acquired most of Ansett’s at Melbourne airport, it is a very pleasant flying experience. Compare that to the crazy time my brother and I had getting him checked in on Qantas this month.
Arriving an hour early, we were surprised at how large the queue was, but confident we’d have plenty of time to chat at the gate lounge before bording. A while later, when we made it to the front, were we were politely informed that we had lined up in the Business class and frequent flyer queue (and a badly signposted one at that) and in-fact “our” queue was fifty metres to the right, and at least three times bigger than the one we had just made our way though. *sheesh* Perhaps if I flew Qantas more I would have realised that the “regular” queue could never be that short and that I must be in the wrong spot.
Going though the motions, we lined up confident in the knowledge we wouldn’t make it to the front. Sure enough, we ended up having to jump the queue, and Pete only just made the gate lounge before the final boarding call.
Something is seriously wrong when it takes longer to line up in Qantas’ exclusive queue than it does the regular blokes Virgin queue (which consisted of I think three travellers when I recently flew to Brisbane). Thanks but the unless Qantas is serving a three course beef roast with ice-cream truffles, free beer and is cheaper, I know who I will fly with.
Will.
Snow!
Spent the weekend at the snow fields of Victoria. No skiing unfortunately (the XC [cross country] trails are closed and downhill is a bit pricy), but many a snowball was launched, and loads of fun was had.
We constructed a pyramid of snow (snowmen are so 19th century), Pete nearly got mauled by a carnivorous snow brumby, and we visited Bonnie Doon to gaze at the famous power lines. The night was spent in Alexandra waching the Lions on a TV set older than I am, and today we explored the picturesque Murrindindi forest.
Photos are in the usual place (and in record time!).
Will.
