Marc O’Morain

Today Daryl gave me a call to tell me that he had a spare ticket for the concert outside Buckingham Palace in honour of the arrival of the Olympic Flame. Here are some photos of the ’stars’ that we saw.

We managed to squeeze up through the crowd and get very close to the side of the stage. Unfortunatley we couldn’t see much, because it seems that the crowd was there to be filmed as a backdrop for the TV show, rather than to see the acts. We listened to Rod Stewart, Emma Bunton, Will Young, Rachel Stevens and James Brown. Kelly and Ozzy Osbourne also sang a duet, and Kelly has massively fat arms in real life.

Yesterday I learned a new life lesson. If you do not eat fish, then don’t eat raw fish.

We went to a sushi bar called Tamo for lunch, just across Regent Street. Ian suggested the place because his friend is the sushi making man there. There were ten people in our group, and not very many of us were into sushi, so Winston (The Man) gave us all sorts of bits and bobs to try. This is where the bad thing happened. I ate raw fish. I did not eat a little bit of raw fish wrapped in seaweed and rice and other nice things, I ate a chunk of raw fish. I chewed on it slowly, and managed to hold it down. I had a few big gulps of tea, and some noodles, and all was ok. We also has some soya beans - you have to eat them by popping them in your mouth and eating the beans inside without eating the pod.

I watched the England match in a pub full of English people. I was a great game to watch. The highlight of the evening was when the goal was disallowed and some random punters threw a glass bottle at the plasma screen TV.

Andy from my house promised to take the book on Finite Element Analysis (FEA) out on loan from his university (Imperial) library for me today. That saves me a lot of money, which is always a good thing. Amazon says that the book has fortran code examples. I need to now learn fortran. It can’t be too difficult however; my mother had to program it with punch cards at university.

Wikipedia has some information on FEA that I have been reading recently.

My supervisor is Carol O’Sullivan. My project is:

Physically-based sounds for collision handling:

In (Van den Doel et al. 2001) and O’ Brien et al. #1, #2, physically-based sound is described. This project would involve the integration of sound into our collision handling framework. Depending on interest, this could involve an investigation of haptic (or touch) feed-back, using our Phantom force-feedback device. In addition, issues relating to the perception of collision sounds and touch could be incorporated.

Things that I need to do:

• Get in contact with Carol, and get her to give me a copy of her physics engine.
• Get my hands on a copy of this book on finite element analysis.
• Learn finite element analysis inside out.
• Learn about sound:
  • How is it stored on computer?
  • What library will I use to interface with the computer’s sound hardware?
• Decide on what sort of project I will aim for:
  • Perhaps develop an application that lets uses play with sound and physics in real time
  • Perhaps do some tests on peoples perceptions with varying levels of accuracy.
• Decide on a widget set (MFC/FLTK?).

My photos from portugal are on the web.

(20:12:54) Alex: omg marc
(20:13:00) Alex: you hair doesnt look stupid
(20:13:05) Alex: whats goin on !!
(20:13:07) Alex: ??
(20:13:16) Alex: it almost looks… normal

I flew back to Ireland last Friday for the weekend. I took a half day at work, and took the tube to Heathrow and flew with Aer Lingus to Dublin. We arrived on time and I was in Trinity just after four o’clock. I met Alan Caniff in Front Square, we had a chat, and then I wandered over towards Gordon’s flat in Botany Bay. Gordon, Stevie, Paul and Brendan Bruen were there, watching the Family Guy. We had some beer for an hour and then went to meet up with the others for our dinner. We ate terrible food in a terrible restaurant called “Indigo Yard” on the corner of Dame Street and George’s Street. I will not go there again. They don’t even have a website that I can link to.

After that we went to Capital on George’s Street, which had some nice cheap cocktails - Paul and Annie won a bottle of champagne, which was nice. From there we wandered up towards the Palace, but it was full, so we went on up George’s Street to the Odeon. As if by magic as we arrived at the Odeon, a queue formed. There were four people ahead of us in the queue, and the bouncer let them in, and everyone except me, Aine and Grainne. How nice. We told him that we were with them, and John Gilbert came back to tell him too. But the kind bouncer told us to shut up and wait. Nice. After 40 minutes of waiting he told everyone in the queue to go home, because the place was full. It was annoying enough without the fact that Alex and Aoife were inside, and so were all the guys from College. I am going to write a nice letter to the Odeon now to congratulate them on their wonderful doorside manner.

On Saturday I went down to Cavan with Aine. We ate chinese food and watched Saving Private Ryan. That is about the sum total of things to do in Cavan. And mass.

I want one of these! They are training monkey slaves!