Probability is a Measure of your Ignorance

.... That'd be about right. I wonder if my ignorance of probability means anything.

Anyhow, so, a few weeks ago I put a new feature in, which allows me to find the traffic on this blog. It means I can spy on people =) I actually just wanted to see if anyone was reading it, and it turns out that at least some people are.

As it turns out, about six or seven different people visit my blog each day, even on the days which I don't update. (Having said that, one of those people each day is me, checking for comments).

The most visits have come from (unsurprisingly), "Vancouver" (that's me, and possibly other people on this network), Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. However, apparently I've also got a fairly frequent visitor from Perth, which kinda concerns me, because I didn't think I knew anyone from Perth.

So if you're that person from Perth, leave a comment and let me know who you are =P or just email me if you don't wanna do that.

I've also got a few visits from a person in Japan, whom I assume is Kaori, who is on my msn list and therefore knows of this blogs existance. So hi Kaori =) We should catch up when I'm in Japan at the end of January... if you're around then.

I've also got a few random visits from Surrey (suburb-like thing in Vancouver... and I don't know who that is, so hi whoever that is =P).

And yeah, hi to people in Adelaide who read this blog. Not sure who all of you are, but hi anyway...

Anyhow, now that's over, let's see what I did in the week since Friday. On Saturday I actually did play some Ultimate Frisbee. 'twas quite fun, and the first bit of exercise I'd done in a while, bit of a wake-up call (but probably not enough for me to actually do anything about my un-fit state at the moment).

Sunday I tried to study all day, and managed to fail miserably - didn't actually get started until 2. Monday I had my AI mid-term. That was an interesting one. Just before the exam started, the lecturer and his two TAs had a little conversion. Apparently they'd given us the wrong Part B, which made the exam really really thick. We got told not to look at Part B, and just do Part A, while the lecturer ran off and photocopied the right pages.

It kinda ruined how neat the exams were. Each exam was individually numbered on every page (mine was 00019), and when you have to rip out more than half those pages, and staple new ones to it... well, I was a little bit disappointed.

I also managed to get my exam results back today. 'twas quite funny. Part A was worth 60 marks, and was 10 questions, selected from a bank of 40 questions which were given to us before hand. The average for that part of the exam was 52. Part B (40 points) was not given to us before hand. The average for that was approximately 50%.

Anyways, I managed to study most of Monday, and I did pretty well in that exam - looking at the result. I actually didn't feel comfortable at all actually doing the exam, and I really didn't study enough for it.

Tuesday I had a lecture in the morning, a prac and then another midterm (Computer Graphics). A little bit more exciting than the previous one - if only because I opened the exam, and realised I hadn't studied the material for the first question, and hadn't studied enough for the 3rd and 4th questions - and there were 6 questions total.

I also went looking for the room for my Wednesday midterm after that. That was a bit of challenge. First I walked past the alley to the building (which was a library). Then I turned left at the entrance instead of right, and went into the main library. Then I searched all over the library before leaving it and eventually finding the room. Took about 20 minutes longer than it should've in the end. Luckily I did it before the exam itself.

Unfortunately, the room change was a little bit stupid. This is our normal lecture room, and where I had my midterm on Monday (taken about halfway up the rows of seats):

Here is the room which the lecturer moved to for the midterm:

Sure, it looks cool, but it's a crap place for an exam, the only advantage is that it's bigger than the normal room - but then he didn't take advantage of that because he placed people at every second seat anyway. Although to quote one of the guys who walked into the room with me on the day of the exam "This room is so seventies, I feel like I'm in Clockwork Orange."

So Wednesday morning was my final midterm. Which I had in that room. It was actually much easier than I expected. Being a Theoretical course (Theory of Computation), it could've been much, much worse than it was. As it turns out, there were a couple of questions which we had already seen, and it was only a 50 minute quiz, so he couldn't put too much in there.

The rest of Wednesday (yesterday) was pretty awesome. I wondered around the shops a bit, came back to my room, watched house, slept for a couple of hours, had lunch, chatted with a few guys around the dorm for a little while, watched Heroes (in 720p =D), went to my lecture, came back, played Puzzle Fighter, went to dinner, and finished Halloween with a game of poker (which I managed to go down pretty hard on the first hand, and never managed to get it back - even though I was in for a long time).

Anyways, today was a bit of a very lazy day. Had a lecture in the morning, and came back and slept for three hours because I went to bed stupidly late last night. Had another lecture and since then I've been in my room on my computer =P

So, the other thing which I haven't mentioned at all in this post, but has been happening since Monday is Sock Wars. Sock Wars is an awesome concept. Basically, every gets assigned a person to sock. Sock literally. As in, hit with a (clean) sock. Once you sock your target, they are out of the game, and your new target is their old target.

All players in this game are people who live in my house, or live in the girls house about 10 metres away. The game operates pretty much 24/7 (although they've just introduced a rule saying that you can't get people during quiet hours). Thus, you're constantly in a state of paranoia about being socked from behind.

You are, however, safe in your room (unless you invite your assassin in), in a stairwell, in the caff and in the bathrooms. So, on the way to getting something to eat, you walk particularly fast, and always look over your shoulder.

The person I've been assigned is called Susan, and she lives in room 114 in the other house. Unfortunately I still don't have any idea what she looks like. The girl that's after me, however, definitely knows what I look like. On Tuesday Night, I was coming down the stairs from the caff (safe zone, yay), and as I'm about to turn to go back to my house, I see someone peeking out from behind the pillar, and I stop on the stairs. They see me stop on the stairs, and so they know I've seen them. So I've had to go back up to the caff, and tried to leave through the side door. Unfortunately, they (she hunted in a pack of 3), were heading back to the house and saw me.

My friend sees this and yells at me to get back. They see me as he's yelling, and I run back to the caff, with them chasing me. I make it back to the stairwell. (Yay). So they come up to me, and do the whole "watch your back" thing, and the leave. I go out the other exit, loop right around, and get someone to open the back door of our house for me (because that's an exit-only door).

So yeah, they've seen me and I'm in trouble. It happened again last night actually. Except I was aware of it this time, so I finished my icecream on the steps, and get socked. But I'm safe so it's all good. (In the process of finishing my icecream, I see two other people get socked just off the steps - seems like a happy hunting ground. I again had to loop right around and get in the back entrance.

But yeah, Sock Wars is a great concept - a lot of fun, but I guess it doesn't work too well in many other contexts.

And the one other thing I want to talk about is another prank, which is kinda off the record. Basically, it may or may not have involved a lot of rope, tied between the room doors of one of the floors in another house, such that the doors are tied together and hence can't open. Very cool prank =P (but I can't say too much about it).

And, in the spirit of crazy marking things, I've got this on one of my midterms:

As far as I can tell, that's "not not nice" (the ! infront and the hat on top of the i). Considering he gave me full marks for the question, I don't think it's just "not nice." Either way though, they write some crazy things on papers while they're marking them here...

Anyhow, that's it for now. A while since my last post, and hence this post is stupidly long. I'll try to keep them more frequent and shorter in the future (although I don't really like my chances).

Happy Halloween everyone. Unfortunately the pumpkins which I was going to take photos of disappeared on the Saturday morning, so I didn't get a chance. Oh well...