Last night I went to Emma Hunt’s NYE party at her parents’ place in Milson’s Point. We had great views of the fireworks there. They were quite nice, particularly the heart shaped ones at the earlier 9pm show.

This year I’ll be doing a PhD, probably on something to do with computer security models and user interfaces. I got an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship which will be great to keep me solvent for the next three years.

Have a great year everybody!

The previous two trips were planned afterward but we ended up doing StarCity last. We had a really nice relaxing few days. Breakfasted at the Garden Buffet, got pampered with a massage at the Star Spa and just generally relaxed and enjoyed ourselves.

Greg, Katie, Steve, Julieanne & I shared one apartment while Thomas, Tomek, Emma Fitzgerald & her boyfriend Matt shared the other. It was a great group of people, mostly CompSci with a bit of Physics and Math. As a Music major Julieanne was worried she’d be left out, but she’s just as geeky as the rest of us and got on well with everybody :)

With 9 people we took 3 cars up, nobody wanted to be squished into the back of a car with three people for a 12 hour trip from Sydney to the Gold Coast. 7 of us were drivers, but 6 of those could only drive automatics and Greg’s car is a manual. So, he had the fun task of teaching Katie & I how to drive a manual a few days before we left. It was more difficult than I expected from playing Daytona at Timezone :) However, by the end of the trip I was at the point where I hardly stalled it at all!

On the first night we walked into town and had dinner at an ok restaurant that cost a lot. They refused to give us tap water and made us pay for bottles! Evil! Apparently having a liquor license in Queensland doesn’t require you to serve free water, unlike in NSW. We then walked back home along the beach, quite pretty at night time.

A bunch of us visited the beach one day. I sat on a towel reading Mindstar Rising and minded everybody’s things while they went swimming. I don’t particularly like swimming in the beach, too much sand. I do enjoy the view though :)

Katie & Julieanne made a sand mermaid, while Thomas and Steve attempted to write on the sand all the most important mathematical and physical equations for the benefit of future generations.

On Wednesday the group split into those who wanted to go to a theme park, namely Dreamworld, and those who didn’t. Having already visited Dreamworld several times I opted to give it a miss this time.

Emma, Matt, Steve and I then went bush walking around Mt Tamborine for a few hours instead.

Earlier that day Steve & I spent a few hours watching a show called Andromeda that Katie brought along on DVD. It’s a cheesy but fun scifi show, a bit like Star Trek but not. Interestingly they seem to attempt to make the physics more real, for example energy weapons don’t have a beam that travels slower than the speed of light. However the writers don’t seem to understand black holes particularly well. It also makes the classical mistake of sound transmitting through the vacuum of space. Still fun to watch though.

Later in the trip almost all of us went bush walking again. This time in the Lamington national park. It had fantastic views of a valley with a river winding through it. We also saw a little family of two wallabies while we were walking around.

We all went kayaking in the rivers nearby for about an hour. Had a great time, although it was quite tiring. I also forgot to put sunscreen on my legs and they got a nasty burn. Not as bad as Greg though.

For our last day Emma had organised horse riding for all of us. It was the first time I’d been on a horse before and I had a great time. At first I was worried about the smell, but you quickly get used to it.

We had a 3 hour walk around with a short stop in the middle to rest near a creek. There wasn’t really much we had to do for the horses, they all just followed the experienced leaders in front. A couple of times they needed a bit of a kick to get going again though, and they were constantly trying to slow down and snack on bits of plants along the way. My horse had a sore eye and tried to rub it on his leg. As soon as I loosened the reins a little to let him rub his eye more comfortably he jumped straight for the grass! Clever horse :)

The fastest we ever got to was a horse trot, which was fairly jarring because I wasn’t experienced enough to move with the horse. I ended up just bouncing rather uncomfortably on the saddle!

The whole trip was lots of fun. It was great spending time with all my friends, especially as I’ll not be seeing as much of them all this year. Thanks for a great time everyone!

During a D&D session with my high school friends Tom & Emma, we spontaneously planned a trip to Melbourne. We drove down in one day in Tom’s car, taking shifts driving and resting while singing along to CDs. Emma spent a significant portion of the trip insisting that Tom & I were like brothers. I think that the highlight of her day was when a random stranger asked, with no prompting from her, if we were related :)

We were delayed getting out of Sydney thanks to car troubles so we didn’t arrive in Melbourne until about 9pm. I had Google Maps switched on my mobile the entire trip; lots of fun watching our location but also useful to find places to stop. We stayed at the Quest on Bourke, it had no view but the rooms were very nice.

We did lots of walking around the shops and I bought Christmas presents for most of my family members. Melbourne is a really well laid out city, the CBD is basically a grid with very predictable streets. It’s easy to find your way around both walking and driving. Oh, annoyingly all the car parks all seems to shut at or before midnight, this is despite being fully automated so they could easily stay open all night.

Emma had her birthday while we were down there. Julieanne and I made her breakfast and then we all wandered down to Federation Square for the day. Unfortunately since none of us are morning people it was late afternoon when we got there and the art gallery was closed. We did have lunch/dinner at a good place nearby. Tom and I ordered the same food for about the third time on this trip, adding further weight to Emma’s proposition that we’re brothers. After that we had some tasty miniature cup cakes and lazed around the gardens for an hour or so.

On another day we visited Eureka Tower – the highest observation platform in the southern hemisphere. It has stunning views of the Melbourne city and its surrounds.

Julieanne and I also met up with my cousin Adele while I was down there. She had just got married a few days before so I was very excited for her. I got to meet her husband, John, for the first time. The four of us spent a few hours in a café in St Kilda that Adele recommended. It was a good day :)

As well as all that I got a paper accepted into ADCS, a conference held in Hobart on December 8th. This happened to be during the Melbourne trip, so I flew there and back in the one day. I reused my presentation from my honours talk, the audience seemed interested and asked a few questions so I guess it went pretty well.

For the trip back home we had planned to take the longer and prettier coastal route, however we all ended up sleeping too late to be able to get back at any reasonable hour.

It was a great trip. Thanks for a fantastic time Emma, Julieanne & Tom!

This last week I was really busy finishing everything, I feel pretty confident that I’ll do well. Greg, Katie, Sam & I all stayed back at Uni on Thursday night to give us more time to write. I was still calculating results from my performance testing up until an hour before I submitted :\

It feels really great to have it all done. I can finally start planning things other than working on my honours project. This includes applying for work, thinking about doing a PhD, organising holidays, writing code for cool random software.

Speaking of holidays, I’m all booked out for this December. Going to Melbourne, Hobart, the Gold Coast and StarCity hotel :)
It’s gonna be an awesome end of uni celebration.