Luke’s Place

Dear Sir,
I am currently a Ph.D. student at Strathclyde University, and have
been in Higher Education for the past 6 years, earning a BSc (Hons)
and MSc from the University of Edinburgh. As your readers will be
aware, the April after graduation, the Graduate Endowment becomes due,
costing £2,000. For those continuing in education, the option to defer
this payment until a later date is offered. On the 10th of March, I
received a letter from the SAAS informing me that due to recent
changes in legislation, this was no longer the case and I would have
to pay this debt by the 28th of March. Having queried this, it seems
that myself, and countless others who have continued their education -
often at great personal cost, will be forced to find a way to pay this
in the next 18 days. For those who cannot afford to, they suggest more
loans, and more student debt, further compounding the plight of the
current crop of post-graduates.

Am I alone in thinking that a deal is a deal, and that Government more
than anyone should not be allowed to renege on agreed repayment terms?
And surely if they are to pull the rug out from under us, it should be
done with adequate notice and reasonable payment options?

Yours aye,
Luke Dicken

I recently celebrated my 24th birthday, although technically it is my 25th considering that on my first birthday I was 0 years old and for some unaccountable reason the very first day of your life doesn’t seem to get counted. Regardless, such a monumentally bland occasion as a 24th birthday gave rise to a reflection on the state of my life. Which is not to say that it was a bad birthday, more that its a bad number. 24 is the beige of ages; at 24 you are no longer 21 or thereabouts, but neither are you almost 30. You exist in a sort of no-man’s land of age where there isn’t really anything funny to be said about your age other than “you’re older now”.

This is by way of an introduction to the resurgence of my habit of blogging, in some form and to some degree. My last post was back in September, and I have been remiss in not updating these things. But no more! I shall endeavour to post on a somewhat regular basis, and certainly to not let 3 months pass between postings. Let us begin then with the tragic realisations at age 24.

At age 24 I have come to realise:

• That moving back in with my parents was not good for my ego.
• That I have a habit of spreading my work out through the whole day so I always look to be busy.
• That I’m probably never going to become any sort of comic book super hero.
• That its highly unlikely I will ever see Heather Locklear naked.

I never claimed they were particularly profound realisations…

I’m still in Spain relaxing and working in equal parts. Yesterday I took it upon myself to check out some statistics for the sites I host - I try to do this once a month just so that I’m keeping an eye on things, but truthfully, it had been a while longer than that. I was absolutely blown away by what is happening over at my Tech Blog.

Unbeknownst to me, it seems my discussions of various tech issues have become really big hits in the IT world. I knew that the series on “Switching” was being pretty well received by people, but the Google searches that are landing people at the site are amazing. If you google “Decrease ping in wow”, then you hit my site on the front page of results - and thats a really really common term to search for. Maybe you want to think about “do physics card affect fps” - front page again. It seems that somewhere, the article I wrote on the Killer NIC is getting a lot of attention.

All this is by way of apologising for my hiatus, and announcing that it seems that I’m coming back to writing blog entries - with results this good, I can’t really avoid it.

Incidentally, the first of my new tech articles is already out, and covers Tuesday’s iPhone announcement in the UK. To summarise - I laughed a lot.

L

Its hard to believe that I haven’t posted here for four months, but at the same time not all that surprising either. In my last post all that time ago, I talked about a trip I would be taking to Dublin. What I didn’t know at that time was that I would meet someone pretty special there and we would end up spending a lot of the next few months together. My MSc project was already in full swing by the time things kind of came to an end with her, and honestly, I’d probably slacked off more than I should with that, so the next month or so was devoted more or less exclusively to catching up on uni stuff. Exams went OK, and my thesis has now finished.

Right now, I’m in Spain catching up on the R&R. I’ve got more paid-work on than you can shake a stick at which is largely keeping me occupied and out of trouble. I’ve said here previously that I had given up on Eve - after my exams I went back to it, and have eventually ended up (against my better judgement and will) running LiveTech again.

So the last four months have been a bit of a rollercoaster emotionally and mentally. Things are much more settled emotionally now, although the current kind-of-relationship that im sort-of-in is the usual brand that you get in my world, vague, unclear and not overly well specified. It kind of reminds me of work Mentally, I’m not sure what I’m doing next. There is a rumour that maybe a PhD would be good, and that maybe there is a place for me at Strathclyde, but that isn’t confirmed at the moment. I’m sort of in limbo right now.

I’m at Suzi’s wedding next weekend, with a whistle-stop tour of the country seeing clients before returning to Spain to finish up my holiday - how very jetset!

…there are only 24 hours in a day, and I tend to spend a lot of them asleep. Which is rapidly becoming my own personal inconvenient truth.

I’m being examined on Automated Planning on Wednesday, which will be quite good fun. It is one of the only hardcore AI classes I took this year, mostly to keep my hand in in terms of robotic minions taking over the planet. I’ve got that one this week, and then the following week I have Computer Security, Software Testing and BioInformatics 2 on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday, which will be fun for me. Then I’ve been talking to one of the guys involved in my research project about getting started with that on the Thursday. So busy busy busy.

I want to get cracking with the research though because the week after that, I’m going to have to take a few days off while I travel round the country doing the consultant thing. I have a new client, who want me to travel north for the day to talk to them about different ways they can repurpose and share their data. I’ve got a pretty good proposal I think, which fits in well with the corporate politics at work, but I’m going to have to talk to them to work out if it actually is feasible given the nature of the data they are using. So basically, sit down and go through what is best for them. It should be pretty fun though. Then I’m off to Dublin. Unfortunately (kind of) that isn’t a work related thing, so I’m having to pay for the flight and not getting paid for being there, but crucially, its a sailing trip, so I will get to do some racing. It will probably be a crewing gig, but there is always an outside chance of a helm. It is team racing, so in some respects I quite enjoy not being on the helm, as I can put my head much further outside of the boat and look at the whole course and call tactics to my helm. Last year I pulled some very sexy stunts in Belfast (and some that totally backfired too), which I like to think contributed significantly to the crushing defeat of the Fairy class by the Gareloch class. This time around we’re going to be racing the Howth 17s, which are very old and use a gaff rig. I’ve raced in Howth before (a few years ago though) and they have stunning facilities and a very nice villagey/towny/suburb there. The only criticism I have is that their harbour seemed incredibly crowded (and I nearly totalled the 17 I was in, but that was probably due to care and attention or lack thereof). Anyhow, I’m really psyched, can you tell?

New post went up on Luke on Tech this afternoon, continuing the Switching thread of articles. This one was about the process of ordering a Mac, which is rather dry but there are some important things that needed mentioning, both positive and negative. Digitally Deluded ep6 will be recorded tonight, for sure this time. We shirked it last time around due to our other commitments, so I am pretty much sworn to record one tonight. There is a lot to get through lately too, not least that I have finally managed to get into the Joost beta. If anyone wants inviting, you can leave a comment, or email me, and I’ll try to get them all sent out.