The first two weeks of college are calling to a close, and it’s just been insane Fourth year is fun, and interesting, but busy and tiring… I now actually have a notion of what’s going on at the DCLRS talks we go to, I know my way around college, and I’ve managed to stay on top of the homework so far…

Last Thursday included a table quiz with such questions as “Mr Brown has a cholesterol of 198, a blood sugar of 114, and a potassium level of 10. Is he alive or dead?” - and it wasn’t even a medic setting the questions! My team scored full-marks on the vocabulary round, and had a lot of fun overall. One of the guys, Jeremy, had greeted me at the Chocolate Fountain Party during Fresher’s Week with “Hi, are you Noirin Plunkett?” - turned out, he’d been in Eoin’s class in St Andrew’s. Another one of the team, Kieran, was convinced he’d met me previously too, but we couldn’t work out where.

I’ve been planning on visiting CORE since my days in Media Lab Europe, but I finally made it on Sunday - it was really enjoyable, and I’m looking forward to going back sometime soon

On Monday, Nadia & I were giving the AI lecture - Day 1 of the Learn Prolog Now course - a couple of my classmates mooted afterwards that I had a fine career in lecturing ahead of me, but I’m not sure that’s where I really want to head. Of course, I may be doomed anyway - on Tuesday, I was called on at the last minute to explain Turing’s proof of the intractability of the Halting Problem to the same class… Bah

I discovered a truly yummy dessert on Tuesday evening - put Maltesers (I don’t usually enjoy them, but they’re the best part of this recipe), and various other small sweets (Smarties/M&Ms etc) into a freezer bag, and crush them… Mix this in with ice-cream for Oh-so-much tasty goodness… We also figured out how Kieran knew me; when I was going out with Christian, we visited Bob’s church - which is also Kieran’s - Ballincollig Christian Fellowship That was weird and co-incidental, but cool… Truly, Ireland is a teeny-tiny country.

Stephen stayed over on Wednesday night, to save him having to get from Balbriggan to the Burlington for stupid-o’clock on Thursday morning - mum made chocolate cake, and all was nyom I discovered the joys of German translation, and am working hard to keep on top of stuff. So far, thankfully, so good - fourth year rocks, in the scariest ways…

So, my very funky Moo cards arrived the other day… They’re uber-pretty, even if they are taken from my photos, and the presentation was an object lesson in shiny

Unfortunately, I’m currently holding off on ordering a bunch of them, because of the text on the back… I wanted to have my name - Nóirín Plunkett - on them… Somewhere along the way though, someone got grumpy about charsets - so I now have ten beautiful little cards, with gorgeous photos on the front, and NóirÃ-n Plunkett’s name on the back

I’ve written to the Moo folk, to see if it’s a known issue, so we’ll see if they come back with anything…

The Noo-est of the Noo, originally uploaded by NoirinP.

Stephen "Noogler" Shirley, as photographed on Conall’s camera phone

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The last week has been somewhat more hectic than was hoped, but was, all-in-all, wonderful.

Not a whole lot of note happened, although Stephen’s noogly-humiliation was celebrated with some most delicious nourishment courtesy of the Mongolian Barbeque on Friday, and there was a (not unusually) wonderful visit to River of Life on Sunday (followed by an unusually bad headache, but oh well).

I passed third year, have a vague semblance of a timetable for fourth year, have done the whole “Fresher’s Week” thang… All’s looking relatively calm and sane, for now!

I met Sean, my cousin, at the Fresher’s stuff, which was much fun - except the bit where I asked how Wolfie (our first dog, who’d been living with Sean’s family for the last $n years) was… Sean laughed a bit, and informed me that Wolfie was dead (then promptly apologised for the laughing)… He died a couple of months ago - but since he hasn’t lived with us for many years, I hadn’t known. I never really expected to be sad about his death, but actually, I kinda am. Apparently he died naturally though, in the arms of my aunt Pam… He was /ancient/ (Sean reckoned 15, though I think he was more like 13), and had gotten blind, deaf, and generally old in the last year. He was the king of the hill right til the end though - God bless the little psychopath.

Finally of course, in happier news, I am no longer single - just like my favourite Noogler.

Squee