Went back to ballroom dancing last night (after skipping last week's… - John C. Kirk

04:40 pm

Went back to ballroom dancing last night (after skipping last week's class to revise for exams). It went well, so doesn't look like I missed too much. We did foxtrot, with featherstep and impetus thingies. I'm doing fine with the actual steps now (i.e. remembering what order they're in), but two of the girls I danced with said that I was being too nervous about treading on their toes, and that I should leave it up to them to get their feet out of the way in time. So, I guess that's just a confidence issue (which is one of the reasons I took up dancing in the first place).

Yesterday's lecture (Text Searching and Processing) went ok, although I unfortunately missed the first 20 mins or so due to getting lost in the rabbit warren that is the CompSci department... Today I had Advanced Computational Semantics, which was much more interesting - this is the 2nd extra module that I'm kind of gatecrashing. It looks like the main focus of the course will be very relevant to my project, so that's good. It did make me reflect again that I'd rather be doing the MSc in NLP (Natural Language Processing) rather than the Advanced Computing course. Still, no real surprise there - I knew that last summer when I applied to Kings, and the reason I chose the course I'm on is that my work experience is more relevant here (algorithms etc). Still, I was talking to one of the guys on the NLP course, and he said that there are only 3 of them on it, so it may not be as much competition for places as I'd thought... Ah well, hindsight is a marvellous thing, and it's basically worked out ok, so I'll stick to my general philosophy of "no regrets".

I've now updated my website with a photo album. Current pictures are cat and snow - exciting stuff!