Exhausted

Phew, I'm beat. I spent over 12 hours either at school or at home doing school work yesterday and same thing today. The physics lab course turned out to be a real annoyance. The reports require a huge amount of work and we have to produce one every week. Me and my lab partner finished the report of our first experiment today after a lot of sweat and tears. It was 13 pages of text, tables, equations and plots. And the beginning experiment was rather simple, although it composed of several different experiments. We're hoping that the report will be accepted and we won't have to refine it because we've already started the next experiment.

We spent two hours measuring how much different bars bend under different loads. The results will be used to determine coefficients of elasticity among other things. The report is due to next Wednesday. We started working on the last report practically on Monday and I think it was a bit too late so this time I've already done some preparations with the document so I'm hoping this one will go more smoothly.

I've been running pretty actively lately, it really helps me keep my head together with all the stress. I've been going at pretty late hours, around 21-22 o'clock when it's already dark. It's a pretty cool feeling to run in the darkness, listening to great tunes with iPod. And that's what I'm going to do right now ->

Weekend

What a week.. It's difficult to get the study routine back on after summer. It seems like I'm going to have to do a lot of work on weekends too, otherwise all the exercises will pile up and I'll have to do everything in Monday which doesn't work even though I only have four hours of classes. Anyway, it's Friday and I came home to visit the parents and abuse the refrigerator. I planned that I'd spend a good amount of time on the exercises tonight but it didn't work out that well. I managed to do most of the Theoretical Comp. Sci. exercises and did parts of the math homework. The math exercises are really laborious, they're starting to take several pages of calculations. I've recently found out about an open source math software (computer algebra system to be specific) called Maxima. It's really helpful for verifying your answers. Here I've entered a 3x3 matrix and checked out it's eigenvalues and eigenvectors. The [1,1,1] after the eigenvalues are their multiplicities. I really like the syntax and output of Maxima, way better than Mathematica for example. Okay, how geek is it to play around with a math software on Friday night?

School madness

I wonder if I'm taking too many courses at a time. I'm currently taking Mathematics 3, Applied probability & Statistics, Computer Architecture, Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science, Japan 1 and the Physics Lab course I mentioned earlier. Especially the undergraduate courses of basic mathematics are infamous for being really tough for people here. The third and last of them that I'm taking now concentrates on linear algebra, systems of differential equations, complex analysis and Fourier-analysis. Compared to Math 2 this one seems quite a lot tougher and is definitely causing most of the head scratching and frustration at the moment. Augh, I have to run. Going to check out Takashi Miike's Izo at the movies, I'll write more tomorrow (hopefully).

Back from the class

So I'm back from the lecture. Had lunch with some friends and now I have almost three hours until the next class (or tutorial in this case) starts. My course schedule for the fall is really crappy. The days end really late and there are lots of empty spaces between classes. And then there's the overlapping. My schedule looked pretty good in the beginning but at the last minute many of the tutorials for example turned out to be in foreign language or they decided to shift them two hours later. So now for example the Computer Architecture tutorial and Physics Lab Experiments overlap for an hour which really sucks. A nice concise schedule turned to this Swiss cheese.. Green ones are lectures, red ones are tutorials and blue is the lab course overlapping with the Computer Architecture.

Japanese

I took the first course in Japanese this Fall. I've always been somewhat interested in their culture and ways and I'd really like to visit the country one day. The class seems to consists mostly of martial arts and anime people. We've learned the basic greetings and most of the course will concentrate on teaching us the hiragana and katakana alphabets. I learned most of the hiragana already last summer so I have a small advantage there but there's a lot of new stuff to learn anyway. Argh, have to run to the class..

Apologies

I knew this would happen, when was the my last post? Too long ago. I'm supposed to study for a preliminary exam to a Physics Laboratory Experiments course. It shouldn't be a big deal, just a multiple choice test about measuring techniques, how to account for errors and produce technical reports. Of course the minute I should be studying I suddenly remember my blog.

A bit about the course. It comes in three flavors and I'm taking the middle one where we're supposed to complete eight experiments like measuring the speed of light or the mass and charge of an electron. The course has a reputation of being pretty tough because of the thorough technical reports we are supposed to produce of all the experiments. I'll just have to wait and see.. (and pass the aforementioned test I'm supposed to be reading for!)

Ouch, my head..

Pheww.. I didn't remember studying was this tough. I've had two massive hangovers this week already and I'm thinking once again if drinking is really worth the morning after. This seems to be getting a bit out of hand for me but fortunately the lectures will start next Monday. At least then I can justify not attending all the parties. There are few parties next week that I really want to go to but after these I will definitely cut down on them.

Moved in

My student apartment's cell room
Originally uploaded by biocci.

So I've finally moved back in to my student cell apartment. Everything went pretty smoothly with the help of my mom, dad and brother, most of the stuff were in place in just two hours. I'm really grateful for their help as I couldn't have done this alone.

As soon as my help had left my geek instincts hit in and the first priority was to hook up the computer. Only after that could I begin to arrange secondary things like clothes to closets.

I snapped a photo of the room. What you can't see in the photo are my bed, armchair and closet so you can imagine that the room is pretty tight.

Tiny update

Due to some stupid time planning by me, I actually have some time to post. I'm sitting on the floor of my empty 12 square meter (about 130 square feet) student apartment with my laptop plugged into the campus network.

Anyway it turned out not be so easy to guide a group of over ten people in the crowded school buildings and to make sure everyone heard me etc.

I was a bit surprised to hear that out of the over hundred CS freshmen there were almost ten girls. Our department is notorious for its male:female ratio. For example last year there were four new girls of whom now only one is left. Ok, the last sentence can't be proper English, but I don't care right now.

That's all for now.