Day 1392

Beautiful weather, positive mood. Went to see my adviser, worked out a functional languages project. He said I had potential which was encouraging to hear. Did some notes for the group projects, finished the code for the C++ assignment.

Day 1391

On campus at ten, stayed until four, putting in six hours' work. Solved the C++ problem with an e-mail to the lecturer. Did the psychology experiment I volunteered for yesterday - flash word recognition, only got one wrong.

There's another science assignment to be done so I'd better get the software engineering one out of the way by Monday.

Back at 5.12, tried on the big check shirt which the catalogue had delivered, was pleased with it.

Played Sim City, watched The X-Files.

Day 1390

Got 74% for the science. Worked fruitlessly for hours on HTML forms and C++ - kept getting inexplicable 'Segmentation fault' errors using fstream::get(). It was quite a good lab session though.

Left at four. In the evening Watched Our Friends In The North - good stuff. Exercised.

Got the 'bottom of the week' feeling again. It's worth it though, I felt so good on Friday lunchtime and Saturday evening that it more than makes up for it.

Day 1389

Worked on the C++ assignment, experimented with lex with the idea of re-doing my C parser with it and yacc.

M rang up in the afternoon asking questions about how to test car batteries, gave her my best advice.

Got that 'bottom of the week' feeling again, inevitably. Back to Effolk tomorrow - hope the weather doesn't disrupt the buses too much. That was quite a good weekend, I think.

Day 1388

Snow had fallen overnight, went out for the paper in it. Worked on the C++ assignment, played Sim City.

M rang up about 3.30 to suggest I come round. Went, and watched the rest of The Five Doctors, drank tea.

In the evening went out for a curry with M and E, and S and her boyfriend. The restaurant was where the Weffolk Arms used to be. Had a great time. A good day.

Day 1387

Even colder today. Snowed all day in Dulchester. At the C++ lecture, he gave us the usual Canadian stuff about snow. He told a tall story, claiming in Canada it's so cold you can take a cup of coffee outside and it'll freeze over so fast the ice'll be hot.

Left about 3.45, cleaned the ice, snow and icicles off the car. It started first time, 'full marks to the people who manufacture these things'. Drove very cautiously home - the snow stopped at about Siding Hay. Got home about five, took the car back to mum's, cooked tea for them.

Watched Paul Merton doing Twelve Angry Men, it's not the same. Got my Sim City ribbon development up to arcology population (120,000) - currently the population is 350,000+ with five arcologies.

Discovered (with a metal/magnet detector) that not all uni library books have magnetic tags. Could be useful?

Day 1386

Up feeling as if I could have slept another couple of hours at eight, in order to get the early train. This was a wise choice as there were massive traffic jams in Ferry Farthingale. Arrived on time for the C++ lecture.

Stayed till three trying to get queues working with my C parser. The 2.50 bus came late and wisely I opted to catch it, because the jams were even worse on the way back.

Home for Sim City and parser notes. I ought to do some reading but I'm always too tired when I get in.

Exercised, watched Game On. Leafed through old RPG's for diversion.

Got the databases assignment back - 100%, 10-10! Brilliant. A third of people got the same but it's still pretty good. Some positive feedback at last!

Day 1385

Suffered delays on the journey, got computing about noon. Rewrote parts of my C parser, realised I need some sort of multiple backtracker to cope with function declarations.

The 4pm bus was 8 minutes late, caught the train in seconds flat. Came back, tidied up, worked on a queue structure for the backtracker, had a bath, played Sim City.

Horribly cold again and likely to be colder tomorrow.

Day 1384

Vile weather: dark clouds, freezing North wind, rain. Train was late. Worked on the science exercises, eventually got the last bit done in the afternoon. Lecture with beardy bloke none too exciting.

Back by 5.11, cut the walk home to 23 minutes from 24½ by marching. Watched Men Behaving Badly and The X-Files.

Day 1383

Walking to the station in a bright hazy morning, I had an unaccountable feeling the day held promise. Went to the science, worked very hard on the exercises, nearly finished 'em.

The 1600 bus drove straight past so I went in the libe and leafed through the sexuality section. Home after 6pm. Saw Venus like a diamond 8° from a very thin silver New Moon. I remember pointing it out (and the accompanying Earthshine/'old moon in the new moon's arms') to T five years ago. Five years! Where has the time gone?

Watched Our Friends In The North (1966).

Day 1382

Worked very hard on the first part of the science exercises, eventually sorted it. Played Sim City. Continued reading old White Dwarfs.

Back to the course tomorrow. Wonder why all the discs I use for transfers keep developing faults?

Day 1381

Played Sim City, started the new science exercises, went through the list examples he was talking about yesterday. Read T's e-mail of yesterday, she seeks to persuade me of the living-with-her idea.

Met M'n'E at the Crown at nine. Afterwards went back to theirs for Scotch, tea and The Five Doctors, discoursed learnedly to E. on Who esoterica.

Day 1380

Another long productive day. Lectures getting into interesting territory now, lists in science and C++ in OOP.

Put more work into the C parser, had to stop and think about how to do local/global variables. Went to get the 3.10, but it didn't come, so went back to the lab and exchanged e-mails with T. Got the 4.00 OK, home by 5.12.

More Sim City. Got some course exercises I should go through this weekend, but not to the exclusion of all else.

Day 1379

Walked to the station in a dank, dark morning. Got the 7.38 and the 8.29 bus - latter very crowded.

Bought the C++ textbook for object oriented programming, exchanged e-mails with T made progress with the parser. (But how to do local variables?)

Back in 72½ minutes flat. Played Sim City - repaired most of the fire damage to New City.

A phone call revealed that Granny had died. She was very old after all. Dad seems OK so far.

Watched Game On. One of T's e-mails was a suggestion I should move in with her if I work in London. I was proud to be asked and felt it could work, with rigid rules.

Very tired after getting up so early.

Day 1378

Had to go back to fetch a bank statement. Walked to the station through the fog thinking Mercury must be retrograde. On the train read in the horoscope that Mercury had indeed gone retrograde that very morning.

Put in some good work on the expression evaluator, turned it into a C parser (stage 1). Gave the bank statement to the Access fund woman.

Downloaded some interesting RPG stuff from the WWW.

Decided to have an absolute 30-minute gap between non-drinking fags. Same for drinking ones, with a 20-minute gap.

Day 1377

96-minute journey to campus via the new route. Went to the lecture, worked in the lab, making progress with the parser. I will next attempt a full C parser.

Searched the WWW fruitlessly for Out of This World info. Home in 73 minutes, excellent.

Sent T a fax with a scanned pic of the X Files book review in Private Eye.

In the evening watched Men Behaving Badly and the X Files. 'Død Kalm', triffic stuff.

I now realise that, as the nasty bloke in Game On says, 'There is a time to surf and a time to wax your board', ie there's a time to get pissed, the weekend - and a time to sit around and say it's the bottom of the week, now.

Day 1376

Got up at seven; Ceefax said there were no trains so I borrowed mum's car and drove to Dulchester through the fog, getting there about nine. Saw the access fund woman, might be hope there.

The new term's timetable isn't bad, there's a 3-hour block on Fridays but a hole has been punched in the middle of the Thursday morning monolith, for which much thanks.

Copied the Psion series 3 emulator for M, got a load of ep guides for comedies off the Web. Gave the serious bloke some HTML advice. Went into the town to get a new bus pass. It's just £31.

Came back home, tried some Sim City scenarios. Watched a new drama series, Our Friends In The North, the first ep set around the 1964 election. Great stuff.

Day 1375

Didn't wake up till 11.30. Alternated Sim City with adding functions to my EE.

Made preparations for going back to the course tomorrow. It seems to be going well enough - 86% in the only assignment I've had back so far. I hope the other two I've done turn out OK.

Day 1374

Alternated Sim City with working on a 'package' version of the expression evaluator - included variables by having the main prog pass it a list of them. This lets the EE access them but doesn't limit it to any given format. Was quite proud of it - and it could be useful for my project. I'll add functions tomorrow - got most of the machinery in place already.

Went to the Crown with M and E. Nothing beats a good Saturday night out.

Day 1373

Went to the bank, went to the library and copied out Pluto's positions for the year for every 5 days.

Came back, did some work on my parser/evaluator, played Sim City extensively. Read the Faber science book. Technically today is the last day of the holiday - it's been a good one but I wouldn't like it to go on much longer.

Day 1372

Up at nine, got to campus by 10.10. Did some serious work on the parser/expression evaluator.

Found a Jack Vance site on the Web. Brilliant stuff, so nice to hear someone else talk about Kirth Gersen.

When I got back, played Sim City again - great fun. Watched Game On. The book club sent me The Faber Book of Science, which I hadn't ordered but decided to keep as it was pretty interesting.

Day 1371

Walked into town to get my hair cut. The place has gone upmarket since I was last there! Bought Sim City 2000, came back and spent hours playing it. I'll have to intersperse it with work or I'll never get any done.

Hope S comes back this weekend. I love going round to M'n'Es but I don't want to start fearing they're getting sick of me.

To campus tomorrow.

Day 1370

Dull weather again. Worked very hard typing up the database notes. Found a Sim City 2000 demo on the Maxim CD-ROM, had fun playing it.

Watched Men Behaving Badly and The X Files - the last a rather jokey ep but good enough. I think they want to give BBC1 viewers the idea it's a sort of Northern Exposure.

Better get my hair cut tomorrow - it'll give me something to do anyway. This long break is feeling uncomfortably like being unemployed again. Still, back to the course on Monday.

Day 1369

Loafed about in the morning, parcel came at 12.15 also with a new catalogue. Had an early lunch, went to Dulchester. Took the Plinies back to the library, got out Juvenal.

Back not long after four. Carried on working with on the improved lexical analyser version of my expression evaluator.

While it's been pleasant having 3 weeks off so far, I think much longer would get boring. I ought to take steps not to be unemployed after the course. On the other hand, being unemployed wasn't so bad during the Great Abstinence; ABC had yet to happen and M was still around. I think it was probably the months after she left, Oct. 93 to Feb. 95 that worse.
But now, rather than the will to temperance and nothing else, I have friends, something to do in the daytime and regular nights out. What's missing now is the temperance. It's like when you spend ages looking for a right shoe, and when you find it, you've lost the left.

Finished Lord Valentine's Castle. Some nice ideas - but - it was all too easy. Read Juvenal.

Day 1368

The Sun shone! Felt much better, aired out my room. Thought about M's project thing, but remembered it might be too late to put in a project proposal of my own.

Sorted the problem with my expression evaluator. It's quite sophisticated now, can do + - * / < > >= <= == and unary -, and recognise constants and functions. But I can see its limitations.

In the afternoon went to Lakeside with C. Had a look round PC World, then walked over to the main centre and wandered round for 75 minutes, just managing to cover all the shops in a methodical search pattern.

In the evening did a successful telnet session to Effolk.

Day 1367

Added assignment to my expression evaluator but ran into problems. Avoided the lottery, not wishing to risk winning £40m, and put 45p e/w on Master Oats in the King George. Came 3rd at 1/5 of 9-2, got back 87p from £1 - with a lottery ticket I'd've lost it all!

Took down the decorations while listening to Kind Hearts and Coronets on the radio, with Harry Enfield doing all the Dascoynes. Very good.

M rang up after tea, went to the Crown in a light drizzle which'd changed into a freezing downpour. Had a great conversation with her and E. They might get married in May. M mentioned a project idea.

Day 1366

Started on the database notes, had various e-mails from T. (Sent her one saying, sorry I'm typing on-line at 9.8p/min, message to follow and got an appreciative reply).

Remembered the advice in The Sirens of Titan - 'Never touch your principal, and keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom'. I immediately placed my wine box in the kitchen.

Day 1365

Finished off the notes and did some e-mail. Waited for some catalogue stuff which failed to arrive.

Had dinner early, borrowed mum's car and drove to Dulchester. Worked on my expression evaluator - added = and <, > to it. Had a look round the Web; had a letter from the Access Fund woman. That could be good or could be bad. Got lost on the way home, ended up on the A45 and was half an hour late.

Game On is being repeated - in the right order this time. It has its nasty bits but also a certain charm.

Carried on reading Claudius the God. I've left out all the Herod bits this time.

Day 1364

More note typing, more T e-mail. Weather still dark, damp and horrible. Don't think the sun's come out since last Friday. Went to the library, wandered about in town. Bought Old Moore's Almanack because it had Tony Blair's horoscope in it.

Not much else happened, frankly. Can't expect every day to be wildly exciting, I suppose.

Day 1363

Worked hard typing up my science notes, exchanged e-mails with T.

Found parts of the day rather slow, almost like pre-course days. Got plenty of work done though.

Day 1362

..I woke up at 9.40 with a terrible hangover. Sat around drinking tea and talking to Natalie for an hour. Left at 10.45, got a lift from mum from Pizzaland in the High Street. I was anxious and felt terrible till about 3pm.

Watched a prog about Elvis Presley's diet.

I'm glad I went to the party.