AIESEC, University, The Founder of the Web...

It's all just too much!

I sprang out of bed bright and early on Tuesday morning for the return to University. After the neccessary shower, coffee (from my shiny new coffee maker yey), orange juice and waking a very hungover Thom from the dead, the three of us headed on our merry way down to the infamous Kings Buildings (where they ship off all the Science and Engineering students to make sure they don't alarm the Arts students). Some were more merry than others, notably me flashing my camera with everything and documenting the whole malarky. Thomas was notably less merry thanks to his over-merriness last night which resulted in a monumental rant about the grumpy old man downstairs, now dubbed Mr Spottiswoode as he seems to be under the impression he owns this street.

So far he has complained to us on three occasions already! The first time was for me "causing a disturbance" by quite reasonably moving in at a very reasonable time of day, the second time for Thom playing his guitar very reasonably and the third for Thom for "slamming" the door to our flat (i.e. closing it). His hobbies appear to consist of complaining, putting up little signs with regulations on them, plumbing, sweeping the hallway, vandalising people's bikes left maliciously in said hallway, complaining about that then sweeping the hallway again just to get him in the mood for some good old complaining.

Anyway, yes, University. It is good. It's quite exciting being back, choosing courses, ready to get stuck in to it all and so on. Should be some fun stuff this year - more lego robots, computer graphics, very advanced databases, neuroscience, etc. It is rather nice living the student lifestyle again, although the pressures of (actual) work seem to be trying to take up all my time (but I'm not letting them).

Today I went to see a talk by Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web and head of the W3C. So a pretty important chap to all us Computer Scientists, and everyone really. A very enthusiastic and entertaining speaker with all sorts of ideas about the future of the web and more precisely the "symantic web". The idea is a lot like the world wide web but instead of linking documents together, data itself is described and linked up in a structured way across many different domains - scientific research, e-commerce, entertainment, mapping, calendars, history, recipes, what you like to watch on TV, who you know - everything will be described and then we can ask really interesting questions about the whole lot and get information at incredibly detailed levels. For example you could read a scientific paper, trace this back to the exact experimental conditions used: when, where, how it was performed - even things the experimenter did not think about - then use the raw data yourself in some other kind of analysis. Or you could walk into a restaurant and your phone would tell the ordering system your dietry preferences enabling them to serve up a menu specific to you, then maybe you could find out exactly what had gone in to your food, where it was made right back to the field it was grown in and the conditions at the time. You can see there is a huge wealth of possibilities when we start linking all this data together and using/analyzing it in unexpected or unforeseen ways. We're clearly a long way off from all of this but things are beginning to happen with web services, RDF and all those buzzwords. It should all be quite interesting.

Now, my third topic of the day: AIESEC. Declan and I found out who the blue man is today!! It was the introductory meeting of AIESEC Edinburgh. It all started in the traditional AIESEC manner: lecture theatre, dimmed lights, loud music and a swooshy powerpoint presentation. Then there was form-filling in aplenty, them seeming to want to know our entire life histories and previous ten phone numbers. It was a lot like filling in a job application form, but of course there was loads to write about what with all the wonderful AIESEC experiences I've had. So hopefully will get past the screening process and allowed to join in on all the fun! After all that stuff we all headed to the pub to get to know everyone. They seem like a really nice bunch, and there looks to be a lot of interest in the society so I'm looking forward to being "back" in AIESEC again this year. Yey!! I'm so happy they're a proper LC!! It seems they aren't quite as well-known (or financed) as AIESEC US and could do with improving their visibility in the eyes of local companies. I hope I can play my part in developing the LC and being part of the AIESEC experience. Oh, I'm beginning to sound like them. The brainwashing has once again taken effect! :-)

Looks like it's going to be a fun (and busy) year...