Entries from May 2007 ↓

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life

I tend to agree with most of them too, from my relatively small amount of life experience so far.

I wouldn’t normally post a job position on my personal blog, but my supervisor is having trouble finding someone with Matlab skillz.

Basically someone in the university has got some research funding to do some grid computer, and my supervisor wants to get a whole lot of Self Organising Maps and Multilayer Perceptrons (both a type of Artificial Neural Network, ANN) running on a computing grid. All the code for the ANNs etc is there, from my understanding it just needs to be adapted to run in parallel across the computing grid.

Shoot me an email if you are in chch looking for some temporary work ( joel.pitt@gmail.com ).

Well, it’s been ages since I wrote on here about what I’m up to generally with life – so I thought I’d give everyone an update.

PhD

No, I’m afraid you can’t call me Dr. Pitt yet. I’m still writing my thesis and getting a few bits of analysis out of the way. I’m aiming for the end of July, but then I’ve been aiming to be finished in a couple of months for a while now. Grr. I’m seriously sick of the subject – don’t get me wrong, it’s somewhat interesting, but I feel like I’ve departed from the science I’m most interested in. Stuff like AI, genomics, and system simulation.

I got a writing scholarship to write a scientific paper about the spread of Argentine ant in New Zealand, so that’ll help with finances. My scholarship ran out back in February, and since then I’ve been on the student allowance. It’s tough going from approx $25k/year to an allowance, but I’m managing somewhat.

After PhD

I’m not too sure what I’ll do afterwards. I’ll be spending a couple of months developing a GUI or web-based version of my simulation tool and being paid technician rates, so that’ll tide me over while I decide. Currently my plan is to move to Wellington after I’ve finished up the GUI. From there I have a few options:

• Consulting for AgResearch – I presented my work at a weed modelling conference in Hanmer in April. AgResearch had a similar project to my work which has been on hold for a few years while seeking new funding. They recently got some, and were looking for people to help with it, expressing interest in recruiting me.
• Senior Biosecurity officer – There is a position for DoC (I think) who want someone to take up this role. I probably couldn’t go directly into the position, but they indicated they are willing to groom the appropriate person towards this position.
• Some miscellaneous programming job – if all else fails, I’m a pretty damn good programmer (in comparison to most Computer Science graduates).
• Get a part time job, work on my business ideas – I could just get some menial part time job, maybe a IT/customer support role, and work on my website ideas in my remaining time.

I don’t plan to stay in Wellington for too long, maybe a year or so. Then once I have a little cash I’ll bugger off overseas and see all those people who have already made there way to Australia and the UK. Of course I might decide to be a complete freak and run away to China, Japan or Dubai where there is mad cash for researchers doing some totally whack stuff (Totally whack is my new phrase).

DJing

I’ve so far had two events in clubs (more here and here) and one outdoor event at KiwiBurn. I have another couple events lined up in June, so I’m looking forward to those. Generally my sets have been pretty well received, and I get a real buzz from the whole experience. It’s definitely something I’d like to keep up with and take as far as I can.

Oh and I was invited back to Curve in Wellington to play this Friday. Fun

Life

I’m keeping mostly healthy. Emotionally, I’m a bit a fragile after parting ways with my ex. Still, I’ve been meeting lots of new people and generally forming new friendships. Friendships which I realised I was lacking in when I became single.

Oh, and this is cool

This keyboard I’ve mentioned before. It’s awesome and is now available for pre-order! I’d so be buying it if I had the cash.

Since the Joomla forge has been taken down there are a few components/extensions that are no longer publicly available as their authors haven’t migrated them to the new Joomlacode site (at least this is my understanding of it all).

I spent a while trying to find the Gallery2 bridge for incorporating the classic Gallery webapp into Joomla. I found it for download in the forums, but you need to be a forum member to download it. For those who can’t be bothered registering for every little website on the net, I’ve decided to mirror the file here until the author gets time to migrate his code across.

Download G2Bridge 2.0.13 beta2

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

This is my lucky number.

It also seems to be the lucky number for HD-DVD.