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My lovely wife just got me another bouncy-ball for the collection (power-ball, if you’re American), and it’s brown with a monkey face on it. So, as you do, I asked her how many points you score for the brown in snooker – and she hadn’t a clue. So love, this is for you

Pot the reds then, screw back
for the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black!

Funny stuff – hadn’t thought of that in years… Also, quality dubbing! Ha!

Yesterday was the main day of the University of Ballarat Research Conference 2011, and it was a really good day. Along with some great talks (the Mayor of Ipswitch (Queensland) was one of the best speakers I think I’ve ever seen) and discussions about academic shenanigans, there were prizes available for best paper, best three-minute thesis, best poster and best presentation. As I really needed the poster experience I thought I’d give it a shot, and thought I may as well give a presentation as well, even though a lot of my day-to-day teaching often involves nothing but presentation. Practice makes perfect, right?

Obviously I put a fair swag of effort into them both, but so had everybody else – and although I was aiming some kind of win (ya know, aim for the stars and you’ll hit the trees – aim for the trees and you won’t even get off the ground), I wasn’t about to get my hopes up too much only to have them dashed. So I did my poster (as mentioned previously), and gave my presentation to the best of my ability. And guess what?

Winner-winner chicken dinner! Even if they did spell my first name wrong! =P

I did pretty darn well! Woo-hoo! =DDD I think the last thing I won was probably a colouring competition when I was 4! (Got a trip to the ballet in London, no less – because that’s what four year olds are into!)

Anyways, I’m really delighted with the result, especially in the face of some stiff competetion from other fellow students. Everyone did really well & gave a really strong showing – so congratualations to all who turned up and took part.

Finally, I’d just like to give a quick thanks to my wife, my study group and especially to Assoc. Prof. Jim Sillitoe for all they’ve done and continue to do in helping to make the hard yards not only immeasurably easier, but possible at all. You guys rock!

Fair play to the Sony marketing bods – that’s a pretty unique idea. It’s still not any kind of gathering I’d want to attend, though – it’s a god-damn sausage party in there! =P LoL

That’s just astonishing… wow!

Explanation

I signed up for the advanced stream of the Stanford AI class (where there’s homework and exams), and it’s brilliant – I love the concept, I love the ambition, I love the teachers (except for Sebastian’s 9′s looking like g’s), I love the format and the content intrigues me no end – it’s all awesome. Hell, I love the price, too! Where else can you get access to truly world class lecturers, giants in their field, without paying a single cent?!

But as much as I love the price, I had no idea about the cost… I just don’t think I have the kind of time needed to do the course any justice, not on top of everything else, and not without losing my sanity and my marriage. So I’m going to continue with the course as if I’m doing the basic no-homework stream, in the only time that I have available to give it. I might give the homeworks a shot, but I’m not going to worry about it anymore. If I fail, then I fail, and no harm has come.

No matter how I do the course I’ll still have learnt a lot, I’ll still have enjoyed it (in fact, I’m likely to enjoy it a lot more with the pressure off) and it’ll still have been worthwhile, whether I get a signed piece of paper or not. But I’m not going to push myself to the brink over it, because as much as I’d like to have that piece of paper, right now the cost is more than I’m willing to pay.

All power to anyone in a similar situation who’s decided to tough it out for the long haul – You can do it! You can do it! You can do it!

And if you can’t then don’t even worry about it – maybe we’ll both do it again next year =D

Update: I managed to stick it out in the end, and finished with an overall grade of 91.7%, putting me in the “top 50%” of the class. I say top 50% in quotes because that’s the top 50% of the 20,000 or so students that completed the course. 150,000 started it. You do the math However you work it, it was a fantastic course, and one of the best things I’ve done in my entire life. Highly recommended.