PhysX

A couple of weeks ago we visited the backs of Cambridge. They’re amazing to see! The backs are basically ‘the backs’ of the colleges here in Cambridge. Most of them are really huge and have a great architecture. It’s an interesting visit if you’re in Cambridge. We should go punting before we leave it seems cool too. Punting is driving a boat with a large stick you push in the ground (that sounds kinda lame but it isn’t ). Yesterday after work we got some beers at the Mill, a pub next to Caret. After that we went for some Chinese food and checked out this pub called ‘The Fez’. It was awesome!

You should definitely check out all the pictures we’ve made so far. All pictures from everyone here are in my gallery. You can find them in the ‘Cambridge Internship’ directory and subdirectories. Check them out and leave some interesting comments if you want.

Cheers

Bert

Tomorrow and Monday we don’t have to work (well, at Caret…). Tomorrow we’ll probably work on our thesis and in the evening go into the city to have some fun. We were planning on visiting some things like the university this weekend so I hope the weather’s great.

Normally I’ll go out and take some pictures too, I haven’t really done that and that’s a shame. Cambridge is a really nice town for photographers.

Cheers!

Bert

Time is going by really fast the last 3 weeks. We’re constantly busy with work and if we’re not working we’re doing some other stuff around Cambridge. Time goes by so fast here, didn’t even realise that my last blogpost was a week ago. It’s good the hour changed, especially handy for photographing Cambridge because it doesn’t get dark so soon in the evening. Too bad I haven’t really got any time to just go out with my camera because we’re doing all this other cool stuff in that spare time. I have more than 2 months left to photograph so no problem .

Cheers

Bert

Had a great weekend so far! Yesterday after work we went to eat in Dojo. It’s a restaurant where you can order chinese food and they serve pretty good noodles. Afther that Olivier, Henry and me went to explore Cambridge some more.

Our first stop was Henry’s café. A fancy bar with a bottle throwing coktail mixer that messed up sometimes . The “Henry’s mojito” was pretty good! After that we went to “All bar one” (or something like that) and had a pint of Carlsberg.

The club next door seemed pretty cool from the outside so we went in too. Funny thing to notice is that Henry and myself could walk inside with no problem and Olivier was stopped to show som id . We were approached by a drunk Letvian guy that asked us for a drink. His 2 friends joined us too but they weren’t drunk and actually pretty cool guys. We got to know them and Olivier even switched sweaters with one of them for a week. Normally we see them next week in the club again so that should be great fun.

Today we went to the science fair again to see a lecture about the CERN and the Large Hadron Collider. The Microsoft exhibition disapointed us because they didn’t show any new stuff and the things they did show were not even presented in a proper way. Maybe they didn’t think it was necessary to create a bit of a hype on the new Natal project? This evening we went to see Alice in Wonderland. Great movie too

Tomorrow we’re probably going to stay indoors to work on the thesis a bit.

Cheers, Bert

Today I finally started a project on my own where I have to create a widget for use on Sakai (http://sakaiproject.org/). There is a website called Identi.ca, you can compare it to Twitter. People post a status, have friends, join groups,… The widget I’m creating is doing stuff with the data from that website. It’s JavaScript, Ajax, HTML and CSS and it’s cool to create something like this.

I’ll keep you guys posted about the progress of this project. We already got a cool widget working on Sakai, maybe I’ll post some screenshots about it later on.

Cheers, Bert

Someone left an hilarious note on the dishwasher today.

Yeah I’m running short on decent titles for my blog posts… I’m sorry for that.

Today was a cool day at work. I did plenty of JavaScript and got great feedback from some colleagues. Tomorrow I’m going to be working on a widget for Sakai. It’s going to be the perfect method for learning all about how Sakai works. I’m really looking forward to that.

This evening I wrote a piece of my weekly report and I’m working on my thesis right now.

Oh and we received our student cards so we can get a lot of stuff at student prices like cinema and such. Cool!

Bert

I’ve finally taken some good quality pictures (not crappy cell phone quality) and I’ve posted them at my gallery. Check out the gallery often because I’m going to be photographing a lot the next 3 months.

Bert

Yesterday was the last day of work this week and we joined our fellow colleagues for dinner. In the evening we joined them as well to have a drink at a pub not far from CARET. It’s great they ask us along to get to know them and the city a bit more!

Today is Saturday so we went to the science festival as planned (http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/sciencefestival/). We had the impression most of the stuff we saw was meant for a younger public but we met some very interesting people there. I’ve added some pictures at the bottom of my post with some information about what went on at the moment. The lecture that interested me the most was the one given by a Microsoft employee about machines and how they can learn things.

After the science festival we went shopping for food and rented bikes. We didn’t really need them for transport to work but now we have them we can visit some neighbor villages by bike as well.

I’m going to finish my internship website today and put it online. Maybe I’ll write the weekly report today as well  (or just tomorrow… ).

Olivier playing Cancer Hits or Miss. It’s a game that teaches you the basics of how cancer operates. I lost

The lecture that interested me the most. A Microsoft employee came and explained the technologie they are currently working on. He gave some examples like giving a computer the ability to predict a curve. When you pour 300 little balls in a maze  you can predict how they will come out at the bottom and predict the curve.

He also talked about project Natal for xbox 360. I’ll give you a link so you can see what it’s all about. Cool! Project natal page on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/xboxprojectnatal?blend=1&ob=4 and on xbox.com http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/

This is some fancy high-tech guy we found.

Yesterday I got a briefing about a new assignment just for me. It’s just for me because I’m the only Multimedia student currently in CARET. I didn’t start the assignment yet because I helped Henry out today with the widget we are creating for Sakai. It had some work waiting to be done and I’m really interested in Sakai as well so the choice was easy.

I’m amazed about how much I’ve learned so far about javascript, JQuery, GIT, Sakai,… Practical experience really is the key to succes :-)

Tomorrow evening we’re going to have a drink with some colleagues so that’s going to be fun too. We’ll probably drink some Belgian bottled beer (inside joke xD).

I’ll keep you posted so check out my blog!

Bert