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I recall a while back a thread about fellow Hexites getting their results and oh was it torture. Why? Cause I had to wait a couple weeks more and I've in fact been waiting for over 10 months.
On the 24th of July 2008 in London, I was up in my room working on my thesis and collapsed off my chair at around 5 am. The entire room was spinning - whilst leaving out much of the 'gory' details I think I blacked out for several hours on the floor as I am terribly motion sick (used to only be able to play Quake, CS etc for a couple hours). I came to somewhere in the afternoon and the room was still spinning; however I managed to force myself into the shower (en suite apartment) and pass out on my bed after giving my Mom a call who at the time had just flew to Colombo, Sri Lanka less than a week earlier.
I know, the sensible thing would have been to call the Ambulance right? No...I am glad I didn't. She called my cousins who happened to be about 2-3 stops from Waterloo and they were there to my rescue in less than 30 mins. Calling the NHS meant playing 20 questions and being told "your situation is not life threatening, we cannot send an ambulance" - not fun when the room is spinning tbh. My Mom did a quick u-turn and got back to London by the weekend and stayed with me since then as I was completely immobilised.
The doctors confirmed that I had contracted 'Labrynthitis' and I think the worst thing I did was to peruse WebMD when I started to feel a bit better. After about a week, I could just about look at a chair that was 3-4 ft away - anything more and my head felt like it would explode.
It was at this time that I was working on the 'Theoretical Development' chapter of my dissertation - and as my Professor insisted, it needed to be Academic enough to even hope of obtaining over 70% for MSc project/dissertation. On top of all this, I think I developed a bit of insomnia. I can remember lying in bed right through out the night. Even though the 'stematil' stopped the room from spinning my brain felt cloudy and well awful.
To make matters worse, the dissertation was officially due 9th September and I hadn't even built my robot! By the second week of August, I had made much progress propped up in bed with the laptop on the theoretical development, where I think I heard Mel Gi...I mean, God, speak to me and it seems I managed to come up with a rather ingenious application for an existing mathematical model; at least, never been done before in the field of mobile robots.
My Mom helped me to put a small 'lab' together inside the apartment. Ordered what I needed from Farnell, Rapid, and Maplins including an oscilloscope as well. I managed to put my robot together within a week; it's rather interesting using a drill and soldering iron while the room seems to have an axis of its own...mmm, not recommend! I even built most of the power supply units (as I was too cheap to buy a bench PSU) by hacking a few AC adaptors and adding in some components.
The PCBs I had etched in Malaysia (designed whilst in the bed) also arrived in good time. These were the motor drivers of the robot. You can read all about my robot here, as well as check out a few YouTube videos of it in action. The final robot was far less complicated than what I had initially planned, but it got the job done.
The department had given me an extension till 12th December 2008 but I did not want to spend so long on my project - this also meant having to leave the University apartment (something I've never done before) by the 9th of Sept and finding my own diggs in London. After much progress, on the 9th of September, we both flew to my Aunts in Geneva as I was severely depressed and was in much need of Cheese Fondue and raclett - a change of scenery at least. Accompanied with my Dell 24" LCD and laptop, I spent the following week in a room in my Aunt's house...pouring over and adding the finishing touches to my work. After a prayer, the final PDF was created by my LaTeX files in TexShop and I emailed it to the printers on the Strand in London.
The bound and embossed copies of my dissertation were delivered to my Professor on the 17th of September. We flew back to London and I had my viva voce on the 26th of September, where I demonstrated the robot to my Professor.
This put a spoke in matters as far as my degree was considered as the 'extension' provided meant that my project/thesis marks could not be ratified till the next School board meeting. That was held yesterday, the 22nd of July 2009. This came through today via 'myKCL',
Award Type MASTER OF SCIENCE
Award Name Mechatronics
Classification Pass with Distinction
Date of Award 01/08/2009
I think my Mom is actually far more chuffed than I amI only get the actual ratified marks tomorrow, should be interesting. Thought I'd share this with you all.
All the best,
Mike.
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Originally Posted by bsodmike
bsodmike think happy nice watches lol Also congrats!!!!
