Degree Results and Graduation

Posted on 04/07/2010 by Craig

Aberystwyth, May 2009

So, after four years of work, I finally have the legal right to add three letters to the end of my name.

After gaining an Upper Second Class Honours BSc (in non-academia, this translates to a 2:1 honours degree) from Aberystwyth University, it’s a strange feeling knowing that the last four years of your life are now officially over.

I will be graduating along with around a hundred of my peers within the Computer Science department at a ceremony in Aberystwyth in two weeks time, and although the ceremony itself will be a celebration of the previous four years, it will also be a celebration of the beginning of the next chapter.

Hopefully I can find a job among the millions of other graduates vying for the same opportunity, and start anew, although the fact that I am now (technically, at least) in the “real world” is a bit of a scary thought! I have definitely emerged from university a changed person from when I started in September 2006, and as I wrote in my farewell post from Aberystwyth, it is an opportunity I am lucky enough to have had and even luckier to have succeeded in.

I can only hope that success will carry forward!

Aberystwyth: Reflections on 2006 to 2010

Posted on 29/05/2010 by Craig

The obligatory "poser" shot - April 2006 on Aberystwyth promenade

As of today, Saturday 29th May 2010, I am no longer a student – well … I have no more exams to take, I still need to formally graduate in July.

After one year of work placement at The Sixth Form College in Colchester sandwiched between three years of university in Aberystwyth, society has apparently deemed me ready to deal with this alien environment called the “real world”, so perhaps this is an apt moment to reflect on what has been four (academic) years of life as a student.

You need to weather (sometimes quite literally!) Aberystwyth as a place to survive here. Coming from what I thought at the time to be a sleepy commuter town in Essex, it was a culture-shock to say the least when I arrived as a fresher in September 2006 to find somewhere ten times as sleepy as my hometown. Having said that, once I got used to the place, I grew into the atmosphere.

Aberystwyth, May 2009

Given the choice again, I would still choose Aberystwyth, despite the fact that it has – at times – been a fairly isolated and claustrophobic place to spend three months at a time.

I’d make the choice again because of the journey that has happened over the last four years, and especially because of the people I have met while on the journey. I’ve learnt lessons not only in the lecture halls but also in Aberystwyth’s many bars and pubs, and the lessons don’t just extend to how many bits there are in a byte.

University has been a truly life-changing experience, and it’s an experience that I’ll never forget and an experience that I’m thankful I have had the opportunity to have. If any prospective students – for Aberystwyth or any other university – happen to come across this blog in the future, my advice is to take the chance and go out there and do it – you might actually enjoy it.

OpenBooking – Testing Needed!

Posted on 27/04/2010 by Craig

Although not in the relaxed way I’d have wanted, but my dissertation project has now been handed in! After a week of frantic, Red Bull and Relentless -induced coding and writing, 9,500 words of write-up and 14,500 (ish) lines of PHP, SQL, XHTML and CSS are complete

The overall system is a distributable web-based resource booking system, mainly aimed at schools/colleges/universities, but it’s customisable enough to be used in pretty much any environment. Admin users can create slots, locations, categories and resources and then users can create bookings.

As it’s a distributable project (released under the Mozilla Public License – Wikipedia – legal text), if anyone can actually use the project, let me know and I’ll get a copy to you. Only requirements are a database server and an LDAP (or Microsoft Active Directory) server, but most networks should have these. I’ve only tested the app with OpenLDAP and MySQL/PostgreSQL, but in theory it should work on other platforms.

Even if you’re not able to test the system personally, but feel free to suggest it to bosses, managers etc. The existing public code trunk has been updated and distributable archives have been uploaded to the OpenBooking Google Code account. I’ll be getting a full-featured homepage with forum and wiki running in the next week or so

End of the Aberystwyth Years Part 1 (2006 – 2008)

Posted on 28/05/2008 by Craig

Aberystwyth If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last two years at university, it’s to expect the unexpected. So many things have happened since I left Essex in September 2006 that if someone had told me back then what was going to happen, I’d have told them exactly which cliff to jump from!

The reason I’m writing this nostalgic and slightly cliché blog entry is that I’m now coming to the end of my first “stint” at Aberystwyth. On Sunday 31st May, I’ll be moving back home to Essex for 18 months and on 30th June I’ll be starting a full-time job at Colchester Sixth Form College as an IT Support Technician for a year as an assessed part of my degree course.

While this is obviously a great opportunity for me to expand my knowledge of the industry and get valuable experience in the specific area that I hope to move into when eventually (fingers crossed!) graduate in 2010, it does mean that I’ll now be out-of-sync with a lot of people who I’ve become very close to here in Aberystwyth. When I return in September 2009 to start my final year, a lot of my current friends will have graduated and left.

I’ll still hopefully be coming back every so often over bank holiday weekends, so it’s not as final as it may seem, but it has to be said that will miss both the people here and the place itself.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings – that’s your lot!

2008 – The Year So Far

Posted on 16/02/2008 by Craig

So, what’s been happening in the last two months?

Linux – Transition Complete

I’ve now finally got Fedora 8 up and running on my desktop PC as well as my laptop so Linux is my main operating system – with Windows being used from time to time for various web design tasks (the recent redesign of my university webspace being one of them) and I have to admit that despite my stance as a self-confessed “Windows user” a year ago, I’m now really enjoying the Linux experience. Everything is so streamlined, but it does take some getting used to and playing around with to get it the way I want it (some of the difficulties and shortcomings being detailed in my transitioning blog) – but I’m generally happy to play around and try different things so maybe this suits me better than others.

SonicaCMS goes live!

SonicaCMS – my plain-text PHP content management system – has now been released as an alpha version (meaning for very early testing and evaluation purposes). It’s been a work-in-progress for quite a while and with a general lull in university work I’ve decided to go public and make the first version available, so if you’d like to download it and try it out, by al means head over to www.sonicadesign.com/scms – I’d be very grateful for any bugs/feedback.

University - New term

As far as university goes, I’m awaiting the results of my first semester exams on Thursday 28th February – some more eagerly than others though. I’ve also actually given a lecture on web development to first years – a somewhat daunting experience but turned out well in the end once I’d gotten over the nerves and into the flow of things. The lecture mainly covered bits and pieces that I’d picked up over the last year and a half of doing websites on a semi-professional freelance basis as well as some search engine optimisation (SEO) material. By the end I actually started enjoying it, so I could be making a return to the lectern at some point in the not-too-distant future…

Along with the new term comes new modules – one of which I’m actually (shock, horror) enjoying: CS35910, aka Internet Services Administration. It generally covers a lot of the things I’ll need to know when I’m out in industry, and it’s material I’m genuinely interested in which always makes a difference. I’ve yet to be given any assignments this semester, but I’m sure they’ll start rolling in soon, as there’s only four weeks left before term ends for Easter.

Liverpool FC - Benitez to go?

Away from computers and all things geek, Liverpool FC are having a bit of a rough period recently, with several high-profile spats between manager Rafael Benitez and the club’s American owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks. After being knocked out of the Carling Cup by Chelsea and the FA Cup today by Barnsley, as well as being effectively ruled out of the Premier League title race by a string of sub-standard performances against sides we should have been beating, we have to yet again concentrate all efforts on the Champions League, which despite all my optimism, isn’t looking too promising either seeing as we’re up against the Italian Serie A champions Inter Milan in the last 16.

I have a feeling that if we don’t progress against Milan, then Benitez’s job will definitely be on the line – more than it ever has done in the past – and, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing him go. Obviously he brought Liverpool the Champions League in Istanbul in 2005 (a night which I will never forget and get goosebumps every time I watch the replays on YouTube) as well as the FA Cup in 2006 in Cardiff and he has secured one of the most important signings in recent LFC history in Fernando Torres, but something tells me that Benitez’s time has come. Maybe I’m being over-critical, but time will tell I think.

We Will Rock You 2008: A New Dawn?

Over Christmas I boosted my show-count to 51, seeing the new cast that took over in September for the first time – and what a cast. You can read detailed reviews about each show on my WWRY website forum, but the shows on 17th December and 10th January certainly gave me the impression that the show is in extremely capable hands, although I haven’t yet seen Sabrina Aloueche in the Scaramouche role – being treated to Sarah French-Ellis on both visits – but I have it on extremely good authority that she is every bit as good as the rest of the cast. My advice – if you’re anywhere near London and are even remotely interested in musical theatre or rock music (or both), book and see this show – you will not regret it.

To go with the new line-up of cast members, an all-new souvenir brochure has bee released, and I have been lucky enough to have been posted a copy by a friend. All fifty-four scans are online on the WWRY-London.co.uk Gallery, I’ve also been busy making my first new banners and wallpapers for over a year, so please check them out! Also in a completely shameless plug, please also feel free to join up on the WWRY-London.co.uk forums.

OK, maybe this entry has been slightly longer than I originally intended, but with two month’s having passed, I thought it was about time for an update.

Decem-whatnow?

Posted on 03/12/2007 by Craig

So….where the hell have the last two months gone? Well, university work has really picked up,but I’m now just two weeks away from being back at home for Christmas and some well-deserved (or at least I think so) rest, so I’m really looking forward to getting back. I’ve also got my first We Will Rock You show (and 50th overall – I miscounted by one in September) booked, so I’m also looking forward to that – it should be interesting to see a refreshing take on the show from the new cast – from what I’ve been told, they really do the show justice.

Backtracking slightly to university work, I’ve just finished a programming assignment which involved coding a program in Java to decrypt a variety of ciphers – namely the Caesar, substitution and Vigenère ciphers. Not really being much of a programmer, I only managed to implement the Caesar cipher decryption, but I’m still pretty proud to get it working that much.

The other assignment that was handed in a week ago (26th November) was Formula 1 results analysis using the C programming language. I’m quite a keen follower of F1 – and have been since the Michael Schumacher/Damon Hill battles of the 1995 and 1996 seasons – so even though the assignment itself was a hell of a lot of work, I half-enjoyed it because it was on a subject I actually knew something about! In the end, I over-engineered the assignment slightly, getting a bit carried away and going above and beyond the original specification! I’ll probably end up putting my source code for both assignments on my University Webspace at some point.

As well as all of these assignments, I’ve also had to start actively job-seeking for my Industrial Year placement, which runs from July 2008 through to September 2009. I’ve got a pretty solid idea of what type of job I would like to do and where I’d like to be – network/systems administration in the Essex/London area. Ever since leaving my job at Rickstones in August 2006, I’ve wanted to go into the network/technical support area because it’s something I’m interested in and also something I enjoy. So – if there are any prospective employers out there, check out my CV and drop me an e-mail!

Away from university work, Liverpool are now almost through to the knock-out stages of the Champions League after thrashing Besiktas and Porto 8 – 0 and 4 – 1 respectively at Anfield. I watched the 8 – 0 drubbing live on ITV and it was one of the most beautiful games of football I have ever seen. Also, staying on the note of football, England are now out of Euro 2008. The night of the fateful match against Croatia it was a flatmate’s birthday so we held a surprise party for her, so it took quite a lot of the disappointment out of the defeat!

In music news, Iron Maiden have announced that they will play Twickenham Rugby Stadium on 5th July 2008 – just four days before my 21st birthday. As a Maiden fan club member, I got exclusive pre-order for one day, so I booked up along with a friend and his brother. I’m really, really looking forward to the gig – it’s Maiden’s only date announced in the UK on their entire Somewhere Back In Time tour, which reprises tracks from the band’s biggest albums – Somewhere In Time, Powerslave and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as well as all of the classics and also includes their legendary “pyramid” stage-set. It should be an awesome show!

So I guess that’s your lot, cheers for reading and up the ‘kin Irons!

Craig

New University Term

Posted on 09/10/2007 by Craig

Evening all,

Well, having been offline for the best part of a month, I figured I’d better fill you lovely people in on what’s been happening in an insanely busy month and a half. The reason for being offline is a combination of BT screwing up royally with getting our phone line up and running (due to a “system glitch” our original order was lost, so we had to do it all again) and Orange springing the surprise that the “upto 8meg for £5 a month” offer was only available to customers starting a new contract. The upshot is that I had to upgrade my phone with an upgrade fee of £100 or keep my current handset for another 15 months. While I do like the Samsung D900 (my current phone) I wasn’t too keen on being tied to it for 15 more months, so I upgraded through gritted teeth, but at least I now have Internet!

As you may have guessed by now, I’m now safely back in Aberystwyth and into the third week of the new university term, the term itself is going pretty well, but I’m sure that will change when the assignments start rolling in. I’ve also started developing my own Content Management System, called (aptly) Sonica CMS in PHP, to try and forward my knowldge of the PHP lanaguage. More on the CMS is at www.sonicadesign.com/scms. I’m hoping to have beta (test) versions of the software available in the next month or two, depending on university workload.

Away from such geekery, my vinyl collection is slowly growing (click on the link for a phot of the collection), just bought Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell as well as Iron Maiden’s eponymous album, both are in the post, so they should arrive in the next few days – strikes permitting of course. I’ve just finished a couple of freelance web projects for Colin Charles, who has just left the cast of We Will Rock You after playing the role of Britney for the last few years – AD Agency and Impact International Management (a link to Impact will be coming very soon, the site should be live in the next few days).

We Will Rock You itself has had a few major changes in the past month as well, with five new principal actors and a host of scene and script changes. I haven’t had a chance to see the new cast myself due to the fairly obvious fact that I’m at university in the depths of Wales, but I have it on very good authority that they’re awesome, which is just what the show deserves and needs. These changes are also wrapped in an amount of sadness, because I really do respect the outgoing cast – they’re an amazing bunch of people (and extremely talented vocalists and actors).

Anyway, that’s your lot, cheers for reading.

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

Summer 2007

Posted on 26/08/2007 by Craig

Well well well boys and girls. After quite a nice slow, relaxing start to the summer, things have gone slightly crazy. For the past month, I’ve been working as a call centre operator for O2 Insure, taking calls from people who have misplaced, dropped or otherwise broken their mobile phones. While I’m bound by the company’s confidentiality agreement and can’t discuss specific claims I’ve taken, I can say that certain people have provided me with quite an entertaining day.

Apart from that, I’ve managed to squeeze a few more We Will Rock You shows in, bringing my running total up to 49 by the time I leave Essex again for Aberystwyth on Saturday 8th September. I can honestly say that my last show before I go will be quite an emotional one – as I’ll be seeing the present cast for the last time. While this may seem quite sad and geeky, I’d like to take this opportunity to say what this show (and more specifically, this cast) has done for me in the past. They’ve given me an outlet for so much enjoyment, brought me closer to some very good friends who I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I have never in my 49 shows left the theatre not wanting to go back, and that’s certainly a great testament to the effort and energy that the cast (and also the band – these guys are often forgotten up in the wings) put in, night after night and week after week. So, if you’re in the London area before 29th September (or indeed at any point in the future), get down to the Dominion Theatre and see this completely mind-blowing show.

It’s also brought me (indirectly) a bit of web design work. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Tony Bourke, the show’s drummer, to set up his personal website and I’m currently in the process of completing work for another of the show’s cast – further details will be on the way soon!

Away from web design and more We Will Rock You shows, I’ve also taken my first step into the retro world of vinyl (as in the black stuff that was the predecessor of the CD) – snapping up a Dual 505 turntable and Cambridge Audio A1 amp on eBay. While a lot of people will disagree with me, I think that vinyl has a certain resonance and “personality” that a CD just doesn’t have – by definition a CD is digital and will therefore produce the same results every single time. At the moment, I just have a slightly crackly copy of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and The Goons’ The Last Goon Show Of All to my name, so if anybody has some vinyl that they would like to get rid of- please drop me an email – you can find out a bit more about my music tastes on the about me page of this website.

So, with all that said, I’m now looking forward to getting back to Aberystwyth, seeing people who I haven’t seen in 4 months and actually having to work for a change. It’s hard life…..

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

A (very) Belated Update

Posted on 16/04/2007 by Craig

Well well well. After a bit of a break (well, more than a bit; almost three months), I’m finally writing another blog. Life has been pretty busy in recent months, with university assignments galore as well as my Easter break back in Essex and three more We Will Rock You shows, including two within the space of two days!

I’ll start off with university, the assignments are going very well, with 100% in the first of my Web Design assignments and 80% in the first of this semester’s Java programming assignments. I’m still waiting for results of the second one for Web Design, and the second project for Java is well under way. It feels quite strange to think that in just over two months, my first year at Aberystwyth will be over. It seems like only yesterday I was moving into a completely unknown world. Still, I’m extremely happy in Aber and I wouldn’t have changed the decision for anything now.

Now onto Easter, and my two-shows-in-two-days stint at my spiritual home, the Dominion Theatre. A mini-review of both shows on my We Will Rock You website at www.wwry-london.co.uk, but these were two absolutely awesome shows with Rebecca Trehearn in bloody good form as Killer Queen. My third show in as many week is booked up for this Wednesday (the 18th), so I don’t doubt that I’ll be going back to Aber on Saturday on a high note.

Other than watching We Will Rock You and doing university assignments, I’ve managed to sell my trusty laptop to upgrade to a nice new Acer model. The specs (if they mean anything to you) are Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz, 1Gb RAM and 120Gb hard drive, so it’s a considerable upgrade from my current one.

I’ve also been trying (and failing) to write a track for a band that I’m now part of in Aber. As yet, we’re un-named, but we’re aiming to be gigging by September and so far we’ve got a couple of Queen tracks, some Whitesnake and a few others as well (you’ll have to wait and see for the exact set-list ).

So, all-in-all, its been a pretty good couple of months. Actually, it’s been a bloody awesome couple of months. I’ll try to keep this blog more updated in the next few, but with my first semester exams coming up, I’m not sure if I’ll have the time.

Cheers for reading

University Progress

Posted on 06/12/2006 by Craig

With under two weeks to go until I leave Aberystwyth for almost a month over Christmas, the assignments are gradually piling up, though I think I’m on top of things (just!).

I got my Databases Part One assignment back today. 90%!! The last time I remember getting anything in the 90′s was my year 8 Humanities end-of-year test! As you can probably imagine, I’m pretty pleased with it to say the least.

Java is going surprisingly well, having almost completed the group project (due this Friday), which makes up about 30% of my total mark for my Java programming module. Out of the two progress tests we’ve had so far, the highest mark has been 87%, which goes towards another 20% of my total module mark. The exam in January carries 50%, but I’m trying not to think about that at the moment!

So I guess that’s it, I’m really looking forward to going back home – both spiritual (Dominion Theatre, London) and actual (Witham, Essex) – as well as the Music Marathon I have planned for my first week back:
Monday 18th December – We Will Rock You
Thursday 21st December – We Will Rock You
Friday 22nd December – Iron Maiden: Earl’s Court Standing
Saturday 23rd December – Iron Maiden: Earl’s Court Standing

Now that is going to be one very very good week!