[ISP] Try and think of how all the theory you're reading about might be used. For instance, imagine a database of all the MC games online, all the players, all the IP addresses they were played from, all the timestamps, replicated from the servers in real time while people play. You could come up with fascinating information like how particular players vary their posting times over, er, time, or what each player's favourite move is, or some query which you would actually need a data warehouse for!
That's the way I made some of my AI papers more relevant to me, anyway. At the time it was examples from roleplaying, but the point is the same.
[Boolbar] It's an excessively elaborate fictional naval salute, as devised by Arnold Rimmer from "Red Dwarf", who was notoriously bad at exams on account of devoting two months and three weeks of his three-month revision time to designing a revision timetable.
I recommend the first couple of Red Dwarf books, the authors are "Rob Grant" and "Doug Naylor", who also appear in Amazon's catalogue as "Naylor, Grant". IF you are interested in the DVDs of the series, they are also highly recommended, the stars are Chris Barrie and Craig Charles.