Niall’s virtual diary archives – October 2005

Tuesday 25th October 2005: 9.13am. Ergh, it is rather early, but then I'm glad I'm up. So, a month and a bit in, I suppose it's settled into a fairly respectable routine though I'm making use of this week being slightly lighter a workload than usual (because I don't have one of the tutorials this week).

Nevertheless, I am behind in the reading in all areas. I don't know how one is supposed to keep up. I've been putting in certainly forty hours a week and even with skipping most of the Economics lectures I still can't keep up. My only conclusion is that everyone else is also either behind on their reading or not doing it at all, and for almost all of them this seems to be true. It would seem that if you have any kind of social life at all, you cannot maintain the workload.

Johanna was slightly annoyed with me last week because we hadn't been spending much time together, and I was getting a little frazzled doing all the tutorial prep (which kinda requires you to do all the preliminary reading you see) which meant I wasn't really up for trudging all the way into town to be with her for a few hours, especially given the recent weather. So last weekend I thought it about time for some relaxation and spent some of Saturday coding, and technically link nodes are now finished though they are totally untested.

Other things happening are many. I found myself unable to contain myself last Friday from writing the introduction to my book on the new Economic system I wish to design, for which I am going to steal the name Neo-Capitalism (I already registered the domain). Last night I added substantially to it containing the beginnings of how the biosphere is to be modelled, and when I have enough of it done I'll knock up a small python example and see how she ticks.

Relatedly, I have invited the renowned critical Economist Paul Ormerod to give us a guest lecture on 21st Century Economics, for which I am scheduled to lay on a preliminary lecture giving the groundwork. That'll happen February next year, so no rush. I also got the new Constitution for the AMH Committee through, launched a petition against IT services for chopping our network, and quite a few other bits & pieces. Hmm, I suppose it seems those may be the cause of my busyness, but most of that happened during the first three weeks before the coursework came on.

Anyway, I'm thinking that now is time to either finish off the lab for Friday or to start writing some preliminary lecture slides. Probably the latter. Y'all be happy!