Well… I am so excited! It’s 9:00 am and I am typing into my blog. I got a new 19” monitor, which I am now using as an external monitor for my laptop.

My laptop’s lcd screen got completely screwed up over the last days. It’s full of blank horizontal lines. After a quick market research it seems that a new one (even a used one) would have cost me around £200, which is quite a lot for a 15” lcd screen. So… I decided to get a new external 19” monitor to use with my laptop for £175.

I got a Yusmart 198QP LCD monitor. It’s… big! It’s a wonder how both the monitor and the laptop fit on my tiny desk. I got two pictures, one of the desk and one of the monitor. The quality of the picture is acceptable and I can now have 1280×1024 resolution, which means I can see more text while I type (or program).

At last I can now work from home! (Well… the desk is still too small and the house does not inspire me to study, but I have that option when I want to program, check or type emails etc).

My desk with both the monitor and the laptop.

The new monitor!

The only problem I am having is that it has around 20 cm depth, which means that it’s too close to my eyes when I sit on the chair to type. I will see if I find a solution to that problem soon.Regarding the rest of the news these days… I will post an update!

Things back home are getting a bit rough! They had two 6R earthquakes (one at 8:45 in the morning and another one at around noon), but I just read on naftemporiki that a possible bird flu incident has appeared at Aignousa. I suppose it’s a bit too much news for a day.

Yesterday we were supposed to play basketball for the IMS league but the medics did not even show up, so we just trained for a while! It was really fun!

I also established a rough timetable for each day of the week and try to follow it. It seemed to work well today, though I had a rather big break after 16:00. Tomorrow the whole day is assigned to demonstrating tasks. We have a meeting at 10 in the morning and then lab sessions. I am planning to go to the city centre to watch Panathinaikos against Barcelona. It should be a nice game and if we lose by less than 5 goals… I am happy!

Researchwise I have started writing rigorous transformation rules from OCL to Alloy in the ATL language. I am going to define the rules for a very small subset of OCL initially and then implement them to a tool. Right now I am just too tired to write about anything! Going home to relax.

Well… even though I did absolutely nothing the whole week, I am still not planning to do anything today. In the morning I met again my flatmate from Jarratt (while I was staying over there two years ago). He came back from China for a while and I saw him again after almost 1 year. It is great to see people from the past.

I am also going to play basketball at 16:00 and then go home, have a shower and go to the GR with Thanos, Elias and Philipp to watch the Greece-Denmark game. That means no work today! Well.. tomorrow I have to get back to heavy research business, otherwise I will start getting stressed, which is not good!

In the morning I was woken up by Telewest. After that I tried to sleep a bit, but couldn’t really and I saw some of the most weird dreams I had ever seen! Anyway… I off to basketball… I just hope it stops raining… it’s been raining like hell for the past 2 hours and it’s gonna be difficult to go out…

This is the end of a quite busy week. The bottomline of this week is that there was no or little progress with research, as I had other issues to take care of. Had to register for the new term, give 2 lectures, demonstrate at the labs and take vivas. I honestly can not understand how time flies like that. It seems like yesterday as the previous week was coming to an end. Well.. in more details…

On Monday I started preparing for Tuesday’s lecture on the Foundations of Computer Science. On Tuesday I had the meeting for SSC1 and in the afternoon I had to demonstrate at the labs. So there goes 2 days. In the evening I also had to prepare for Wednesday’s lecture. Not so many people turned up, so I guess they didn’t like the first one on Tuesday. 🙂 Then I went home and had to sleep. On Thursday morning I had quite a lot of sleep and then came to the uni for the labs sessions. Today, in the morning I had to stay in and wait for the technicians to come and fix the gas boiler. They didn’t for another time, claiming that their dealer didn’t have the spare parts they were supposed to get. So we rearranged the appointment for the coming Wed. morning.

I also paid the tuition fees this week. £3085! I have filled in the form to ask for the receipt, so as to send it back to IKY and get back the money. I hope I get it back soon!

I also booked the tickets for the Dio concert on Friday the 21rst. I hope it’s gonna be fun!