Physics Labs, Hackers and Serviette Chess (Rick)

I started the week for some reason feeling very sleepy. I suspect it was the cold. I’d had more sleep over the holidays but the cold countered that. I also was on for dining hall duty this week. Each night after dinner I washed up all the pots and other huge things. My caterers commented that I looked tired. But fortunately the next day was Anzac day.

Anyway, on Monday there was a Physics Lab tour, where I got to see some postgraduate students working in optics labs, some quantum research labs for the development of quantum computers and a positron accelerator used for testing the structure of crystals. It was over very quickly and I don’t really remember much of what they said. (I was tired that day though.) I also found it easy to get back into study.

On Anzac day I decided to check out my forum on my site, (which is rarely used by anyone as I don’t actively encourage people to post), and found that there had been hackers at work! They put a div on my page, so that in less technical terms, part of the forum was covered with this thing saying about these Turkish hackers. I also spent a large part of this day just catching up on some homework and settling myself back in.

On Saturday night there was a Chess competition at Trinity College. We were playing five minute blitz games, and thus on my first game I lost by a flag fall. (timer runs out). The second game was on a dodgy table where one of the black pawns was replaced with a AAA battery and another was the bottom half of a knight, which made it half size. The funniest piece though was the white pawn replaced with a folded (not neatly) serviette. I managed to win that game due to the fact my opponent moved a piece which allowed me to get their king. (no such thing as check in blitz.) The third game I ran out of time again! Fourth game I was just lucky that my opponent didn’t realise I had them in check. The fifth game was against someone who was very serious. I knew that I couldn’t beat them on time, and eventually missed out on seeing my king was in check and lost. As soon as he’d won he got straight up to tell them he’d won. What a way to rub it in, it felt very cold, but he did make up for it after by coming back and saying good game, etc. Then my final game I just made sure to keep more time than my opponent and won by their flag fall. So in total I won three out of six games, which I felt quite proud of.

I’ve been feeling quite enthusiastic regard to homework this week. Must be the Easter break. There are exams coming soon, (June), and we get our timetables tomorrow. (Monday). Definitely time to start thinking about revision. I’ve got my Scientific Programming and Simulation assignment all done ready for tomorrow. Also now got a project for Introduction to Programming, which I think should be fun as we’re making a program so that we can add, subtract, multiply and divide large integers. Oh Joy!