Friday, June 26, 2009

帰ってきた

Back from Japan, so I thought i'd do a quick post just to share some of the photos with whoever wants to see them!

These are some photos from a few different places I went. Most were taken at the start of the journey but as time went on I became less and less motivated to take!
Good fun though! Id recommend anyone to go to Japan especially Kyoto, it was definitely one my favourite places!

For those of you who know me, you will know that I have the worst memory and find it hard to recall information on cue! That is why I kept a diary of this trip! Once I go back and read it I might blog about some of the adventures I had!


Friday, April 24, 2009

終わりがドキドキー

Hello me. 

Fourth year. (almost ) over, exams to come.
Projects. Done.

Cannot wait to finish college! And I never thought I would utter those words! 
Really, its kind of a relief to be finished. I'm not sure is whether this is due to the amount of work that was placed upon us or what but I have become pretty sick of the place. Though I will miss some elements, like good lectures ( though few and far between )  and friends - it is inevitable that contact will be lost, no point sugar coating it! Its interesting to think of the directions people will go, I'm not sure if many will enter the industry, from the chats I've had few have aspirations to do so. I'm not even sure if I will, right now I have many different interests in the IT sector, mainly graphics and software development, and could definitely see myself returning to college within a few years to post grad study.

Started watching Galileo recently as a possible replacement for GTO. Its not bad, has some of the same humour and general underlying theme (Hero of the people sort of thing). Here is a link on hosted on the omnipotent ~YouTube~



BTW: What do people want to do the day we actually finish? Dinner? Pub? Other??

Saturday, April 11, 2009

(sigh)

Introductions are such a pain. The report introduction that is ;)
Today was gonna be the day I finish this report but have not got past the starting line. Distracting myself installing OpenSUSE, watching lost, listening to Portishead, going to the beach and now with this...

Thursday, April 9, 2009

FYP

Submitted my software on monday and i'm relieved to not have to do it anymore, though it was fun. I had plans on finishing my report this week but cannot find any real tempo. At the moment I'm at 10487 words on 60 pages. However ( I am sooo sick of writing that word! ) there is a good few pages dedicated to pictures. I still have to write about LOD, lighting, camera, all those other things in my application that did not form part of the research! Sounds like a complete mine-field. Oh and the conclusion,Intro and future swork. Also I have most of my research papers either on my fried laptop or my Mac in college so its kinda annoying.
What I did do this week was convert my report to tex format so the maths now looks much better!

I packaged my software for use on Mac OS X leopard only. I was going to compile a version for windows but would be way too much effort with OpenGL. As far as I am aware the current OpenGL implementation for windows is 1.1 ( Its crazy! ! ) is it true?? That would mean i would have to specify extension points for a lot of my code! No way!
Anyways i put a link to the package here, it installs GLUT, GLUI, FreeImage libraries! So you might want to keep that in mind...
Also I have only tested this quickly on one other machine so I am unsure of its reliability!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Why Japan? Why Japanese?

I cannot remember the amount of times I have been asked "why did you start Japanese?" or "why Japan?", and I find myself unable to answer. I started back at the start of second year (has it been 2 1/2 years already:!) and have been studying it slowly since then. Unfortunately I cannot afford it the time it deserves, especially these days with the quantity of work part that comes with a final year in college. It is real pity because everyday i forget more and more :( I have the worst memory ): .
So why Japanese? Is it the people? The culture? Escapism? The language? 女の子?
Yes it is these but there is something else about Japan that I cannot put my finger on. In fact I can't even explain it. Everytime I speak Japanese or do some Japan related activity I feel great! I'm not sure why or where it comes from. I wish I had a coherent answer for "why Japanese/Japan" and it actually really bugs me that I cannot explain why. I'm sure it encompasses lots of things but there must have been something that spurred me to feel this way.
Obviously Japan is not perfect, its got its flaws like every other nation, and there are things I do not agree with, e.g whaling, death penalty process (jury is still out on the death penalty itself, excuse the pun). But most of its culture is simply fantastic. The sense of loyalty amongst the population is remarkable, and the spirit of historic japan seems to be still evident nowadays.

There was the notion amongst samurai of being loyal to a master until death. Even if a samurai was disgraced in some way he would most likely commit the act of seppuku(切腹)which is death by disembowelment. The last known act of this was as recent as 1970! In modern Japan obviuosly people don't do this! However there is still the nature where once a Japanese person starts work at a company then that person will stay working there as long as possible and be completely loyal the company. I remember talking to some Japanese friends and they kept quoting things they had to do, calling it their "duty". I was shocked. A duty to whom? To a company, to Japan. It seems crazy and a bit like a totalitarain society but its these thoughts that help keep Japan so intimate and almost impermeable to foreign influence. Look at Ireland, what do you think epitomises Irish culture? When I am asked this question I cannot think of a suitable answer and just keep thinking of a pub with pints of Guinness splashing about. Don't get me wrong this can be great fun but its inherent to have a social scene as part of a culture. Ireland has lost its spirit in my opinion and been replaced by spoilt kids with too much free money. Actually I am not going to get into the problems with Ireland here, it would take too long.
So why Japan, the divine wind, the land of the rising sun ? Why Japanese? Can you tell me?

Friday, March 20, 2009

The end of 4th year is nigh

Last wednesday I, once again, spilled water on my laptop, once again while I was asleep ! Its a little perplexing to think that I did this in my sleep twice, and I am still waiting for an alternative explanation ;). Anyway that left me without a computer to work on at home. This was both a good thing and a bad thing. I felt I was spending too much time on it at the evenings but I now had no way of doing college or more specifically my FYP. From today we have 2 weeks to demo day and around the same for the submission of software. I realise that I will never be satisfied with what I achieve and as such will stop software development in the middle of next week to focus on a Flash project that is worth 50% of another module! I have attached two videos of the progress made so far with the FYP, so there wont be much change come two weeks. I have relinquished the idea of creating a nice LOD scheme and lighting effects. 
Its time to depart limerick for the weekend and enjoy some BBQ's and surfing in clonakilty! :) 

video video

Friday, March 6, 2009

日本旅

やっと,日本航空券予約した!
出航・コーク⇒ロンドン⇒パリス⇒成田空港  23/05
寄航・成田空港⇒パリス⇒ロンドン⇒コーク  18/06

値段は600ユーロになった.それから僕のお金が大きに減って数週間に生活金は普通よりに小さくなる.好機だからきっといい考えだったな
来日とき後で無計画だって瑞希ちゃんと止めるには埼玉県へ行って,リックと東京に止める(リックは僕の日本語講義を通って日本で働いてるやつだ).多く友達と会いたいけどいろんな場所に住んでるしじゅうぶん時間がないし会うかどうか知らない.予定は本州を旅行して九州に行けたら喜ぶんだ.これを読んだらきっと本州と九州知ってるから説明しなくていいね!!
したいとか見たいってことを記録したほうがいいでしょう
とりあえず今つまらなくて厄介な学期をしまわなきゃといけない.我慢しています.FYPって結構よくてシステムアナリシスも悪くないけどかなり大量な仕事だ.僕の意見にはFYPも終わりそうでLODと空地図(スカイマップ )とCausticEffectsしか無いと思ってるけどFYP監督者が月曜日見に行って彼とよると僕の今までしたことはじゅうぶんかないか教える.
だから来週このプロジェクトを要約します.じゃ今度まで