So for those of us still educationally inclined, what's the happenings? How long have we all got left on our programs, what have we got on this semester and what do we walk away with at the end of it all?

I'm in my last semester of my CompSci program with papers in 3D computer graphics, web programming, advanced OO design and a capstone project. Uni is great but, man, I can't wait to finish. Now I gotta look for a job.

I'm in the midst of study break, done about 5 hours today so I'm feeling pretty good. Got me most of us here are either students or ex-students, what are your study techniques? Got any tricks that seem to work for you? Do you study from home or go to the library?

Personally I'm able to study at home but i'm probably ~50% more efficient if I'm at the library away form distractions. I guess me study technique is pretty standard, I'll collect up all of the previous exams, tutorials, labs etc that I can get my hands on and just work my way through them for each subject, stopping to focus attention in areas where I have trouble with the material. One important thing is to never look at the solutions for a past exam paper or tutorials until after you've done EVERYTHING you can to answer the problems. You learn nothing by looking at a solution and saying, "oh, I could have done that!"

Anyone know good memory techniques, study techniques, relaxation strategies, etc?

OK time to get creative folks, for my last term of study my major assignment has been to do a full business report, it required us to come up with a new product and create a full report and strategy for the implementation and successful running of the business. Anyway my idea is to start scenic flights around Queenstown using microlight trikes (see picture).
the concept is new for Queenstown and the more i look into it the more it seems to be a very viable little business, im seriously looking at trying to start it up once im done with school.
So what i need from you guys is a name and slogans for the business , at the moment Mike's Microlights is about as good as ive got and well that speaks for its self! so yea go crazy and post any ideas you might have.
I also need a logo if anyone is feeling bored and creative, it needs to incorporate some basic shape of the microlight and have a base color of fluro green as that is the color scheme that im using to identify the business.

any input would be great and if its something i can use i will buy you a drink next time i see you

Cheers guys

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For those that don't know, after much consideration I have changed my major (in fact my whole degree) to computer science / software engineering. I'm pretty excited to move on to learn something new and the more I look at job prospects in the future the bigger my grin gets (contract jobs in London for Java developers that pay £600 per day!). It was a pretty tough decision to drop physics and astronomy but at the end of the day I have to think about what I'm going to do when I finish uni and get back to reality.

Hi everyone, hopefully you have heard this information from your resident assistant. First and foremost, Atherton hall is completely secure and safe and there is no reason to be alarmed. If you have any comments, questions or concerns, please contact your resident assistant or myself directly.

(click to enlarge)

Queenstowns a tough place to study!

I just finished writing my essay for philosophy, though some of you folks might get a kick out of it (it's a pretty cool subject). If anyone can be bothered reading it, let me know if it's clear enough and if anything needs to be explained more carefully. Particularly the stuff about synesthesia patients, as all of that is 100% original arguments, not what we were taught in classes so I better make sure it's clear.

Consciousness and the Senses
Martin Doms

In this essay I will begin with a brief description of qualia and their relationship to the philosophy of mind. I will then show that properties such as colour, sound and taste are created internally, and are separate from the outside world. I will use three main arguments: the argument from analogy with pain, the time lag argument and an argument based around a medical condition known as synesthesia.

The world and our experience of it can be separated into two distinct spheres – the internal and the external world. The external world includes all of the physical and measurable objects that are familiar to us. The keyboard I am typing on, for example, or the chair I'm sitting on. The internal world includes the private world that only the conscious entity in which this private world exists can experience. My internal world includes pain, taste, the perception of colour, smells etc.

Although experiences of the internal world all have a physical basis (such as a pin pricking the skin, causing pain) there is a clear dichotomy between the physical basis of the internal experience and the experience itself. We call these internal experiences qualia (or quale, in singular form). In this essay I will argue that colours, sounds, taste and other sensory experiences exist only internally as qualia, as opposed to the naïve realism point of view that says that these things exist in the outside, external world.

My first argument is the analogy from pain. Consider the canonical quale redness. The naïve realist would argue that a red flag is intrinsically red, that redness is a property of the flag itself. But consider an analogous entity, pain. In the internal world of qualia, pain and redness are certainly comparable. The physical basis of pain (for example, a pin pricking the skin) is clearly quite distinct from the feeling of pain. It seems unreasonable to argue that a pin prick and the feeling of pain are the same thing. If we apply this analogy to redness, it would seem that redness and the physical basis of redness are two very distinct things. Ergo, redness the qualia and the physical basis of redness (the spectral profile of light waves) are distinct. This argument can be applied to any of the sensory experiences.

My next argument is the time lag argument. Again I will use the colour red as my primary example, but any sensory experience will work with this argument. When a ray of red light strikes the retina of the eye, an electrical signal is generated. This signal travels through the optic nerve and into the brain, where it seems to interact somewhere in the visual cortex and produce the sensory experience of the colour red.

Let's say we could somehow zap the whole outside system out of existence. Somehow we have been endowed with the power to make everything outside of the subject disappear, including the red flag and all of the light rays currently in transit. We could even wipe out the eyes of the observer and the optic nerve itself, for the sake of argument. When this has been done, for a very short but finite amount of time, the observer will still experience the colour red. This is because the signals in the brain travel at a finite speed, physically limited by neuron and electrical interactions. The time lag is extraordinarily short, but in this argument it doesn't matter.

For this tiny amount of time, the subject is still experiencing the colour red, while the physical basis of the colour (light waves, the red flag etc.) no longer exist. From this we must conclude that the redness is being produced inside the mind of the observer. This indicates that redness exists independently of the physical basis of redness.

I will now move on to the argument from synesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which a person experiences involuntary sensory perceptions in parallel with a regular sensory perception. For example, when a synesthete looks at a the number two, he may see the colour green as well. Synesthesia comes in numerous forms, the most common being “grapheme -> color synesthesia,” where numbers and letters are perceived as coloured. Other forms of synesthesia cause days of the week or months to evoke colours or even spacial locations in an internal world, pain causing tastes or sounds evoking visual stimulus.

Recent research into synesthesia has proven that the phenomenon is in fact a sensory effect, and is not caused by memory or metaphors. While many of us use synesthesia-like metaphors (loud shirt, hot girl, sharp cheese etc.) a synesthete actually experiences the qualia linked to the physical experience. Some synesthetes have even claimed that their condition leads them to see colours that they have never experienced in real life (alien, or Martian colours). Indeed, Ramachandran, et al. tested a colour blind synesthete who had never been able to distinguish between blue and purple in the real world, but routinely saw these colours separately when looking at certain numbers.

Further, many synesthetes go through much of their lives completely unaware of their condition – they think that the way they perceive the world is the same as the way anyone else sees it, similar to how I assume everyone sees redness in the same way I do. This advances the idea that the rogue perceptions of synesthesia patients are comparable to genuine qualia.

My argument goes thus. Redness as a qualia in a normal person is no different to the redness that a synesthete experiences when looking at, say, the number 5. But the number five, on a white page in black ink, contains none of the usual physical characteristics that would normally be attributed to redness. Therefore, redness must exist independently of the physical basis of redness.

These three arguments are intended to show that properties of the world experienced through sensory perception, such as taste, smell and colour, are exclusive to the internal world and exist independently of the external causes of them. This is an important and ongoing problem in the philosophy of mind, but I believe my reasoning is sound and my conclusions valid.

Just a message to everyone going back to school today...HAVE FUN!! :study:

I was up all night after leaving my last financial accounting assignment to the last night and I handed it in 6 mins late, I normally wouldn't be worried, but it looked like the box had been cleared. Gayness.

I come home after tutorial (which I was late to) and skipping a lecture due to fatigue to find out between me heading down and going to tutorial and then submitting it, they had extended the due date by 5 days. Cunts.

But on the way to dropping it off* I worked out the difference to my grade a 40% assignment and an 80% assignment would make. It worked out to 1% of my final grade. Hardly make or break stuff. My econ tutorial, which is worth 0% to the final grade would be more beneficial due to how it helps make comprehension of problems easier to understand.

Same would go for my Management tutorial. This isn't an Econ vs Accy thing. More of what is perceived as better for you.

This assumes poor work ethic. Obviously if you do well all round, then kudos to you. This is more about allocating the procrastinators scarcest resource - Time.

On the bright side at least, I wont be trying to get more marks out of it, allowing me a free weekend

* I used Excel, I don't do math while I'm walking

..could they screw me out of a public holiday. The irony being that being at the uni I presume is named after the Queen and they basically crew me out of a good Queens birthday weekend. This has not been my week.

I have two exams on the 9th of June. FYI that is a Saturday. The Monday Prior being the public holiday. I then have a real hard core Financial accounting exam on the 14th. I'm going to have work like balls to get through that one. I regret choosing Accounting as a second major. All I seem to end up studying is Econ at the library, granted its harder and a much more fun subject. I discovered the other day that I could still change it to Public policy if I wanted, but I fear that too may also suck. Myeh, take it as it comes I guess.

On the flipside, It could save me close to $700 - $1000 if I get accepted to Penn State. By moving out soon after exams and crashing at the olds for a month, which would make up for not having job right now.