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Well, I think I'm going to have a lot of work to get through this month. It's scary how time flies. I've already been back at university for a month now. Only having to be in three days a week is really deceptive and I'm not starting to notice that coursework is slowly building and I really need to start making some progress with my honours project / dissertation.

If you're interested, the idea behind my honours project is that I'm going to attempt to achieve audio stream between two Android devices using ad hoc WiFi. So far, it doesn't seem like it's going to be all that simple. I'm not familiar with Android programming, but it should be easy enough to learn. Audio streaming on the other hand seems to be way more complex than I imagined. There seems to be a lot of stuff going on under the bonnet that I've always taken for granted. Ah well, it will be a challenge at least. I just hope it's not too challenging!

I'm also finding myself wanting to spend more of my free time programming or reading up on programming related stuff. As far as I'm concerned, this is a good thing because despite having been programming for the past 6 or so years now, I still feel I should be a lot more knowledgeable. I think the reason that I'm not is because unlike most good programmers, it's never been an actual hobby of mine. It has always been something that I'd only do as part of my education. It has always been pretty rare for me to program something just because I wanted to. Most of the time it's just because I struggle to come up with projects of my own that are actually achievable for me and would be worth while developing.

I've gone through phases of wanting to take programming more seriously in the past, but they never usually stick. So far, things are looking a lot more promising this time. I came very close to coding my own forum using PHP and MySQL at the end of the summer. I'll hopefully get back to finishing that off at some point and maybe even try and put it to use. I'd probably end up needing to rent my own server for that though, which if I find myself getting more into web development, I just might do. Depending on if I have the money to spare of course. I've thought of renting a server in the past because I currently make use of free servers just now but they're slow and really limit what you can do on them.

Speaking of money, I'm usually skint but I've essentially sold my car so I should be getting money from that some time soon. It's not a lot, but enough to keep me going for a while although I'm tempted to blow that money on building myself a nicer PC. I've never owned a decent PC and as I'm losing my interest in the current gen of console gaming, I think switching over to PC gaming might be the logical step. I don't know though. I spend a lot less time gaming these days and my current computer is fine for my day to day computer use, so I might be better off just keeping the money and waste it on other shit. I could use some new boots, trainers, a jacket and all kinds of non-exciting items of clothing, so I might have to spend it on that.

I think my parents are also going away next week which means I'll have the house to myself for a while. Kinda. I think my brother will still be around. WHOO PARTY AT DEAN'S PLACE!

Nothing else springs to my mind right now, so that's probably it for another monthly update. It was terribly exciting for you, I know.

Maybe you guys could help me out actually. Since I mentioned that I'm always struggling to think of little programming projects of my own, is there any kind of web application or small piece of software that you can think of being useful to you? For example, are you ever browsing the web and thinking "man, I wish there was a site that did [insert idea here]!" If so, leave suggestions in the comment box and if it sounds interesting to me and I think I might learn something from it, then I may just try and build it.