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.

A Very Belated Update

Posted on 28/09/2008 by Craig

So where has the last six months gone??

It seems like only yesterday I was packing my gear in Aberystwyth. Since then, I’ve moved back to Essex, packed in a fair few We Will Rock You shows, redesigned this website, played bass in a variety show concert started a new job and and built a brand new desktop PC – so it’s been “all go”!

The new desktop PC has been about a month in progress but it’s finally completed and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s turned out. More details are on the Computers section of this site, so I won’t bore people with techncial specifications here, but it’s safe to say that it was definitely worth the effort!

September 20th saw a parial change of cast for We Will Rock You at the Dominion. Among those to leave were Julian Littman, Lain Gray and Lucy Sinclar who play Pop, Vic and Meat respectively. I have yet to see the new cast, but I’m sure they will be brilliant.

I’m now working at Colchester Sixth Form College as an IT Technician as part of my degree course’s Year in Industry. It started pretty slowly, then sped up quite a bit as staff and students were off for the summer, freeing up the servers and network for maintenance. Hopefully it’s calming down slightly now!

The aforementioned variety show was the brainchild of Hans Montanana, the former head of music at Rickstones School who I’ve kept in contact with over the years. I actually came out of semi-retirement as a bassist to play the concert, not having played seriously for over three or four years! It was definitely a challenge going back to basics and reading from chord charts again but hopefully I’m now back into the swing of it and the next one (if there actually is a “next” one) will be a bit easier!

Last of all, I’ve given this website a bit of a revamp and redesign, and added a new section dedicated to the building of my new desktop PC. The theme of the redesign was partially inspired by the recent events at CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, I’m still not 100% happy with the design so there may be a few further tweaks in the next few weeks!

Anyway, that’s your lot, apologies for not updating over the last 5 months but it has been pretty action-packed!

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

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!

April 2008 Update

Posted on 09/04/2008 by Craig

After a nice relaxing Easter break at home, I’m now back in Aberystwyth for the final two months of this term, before returning to Essex for a year and a half in May.

I’ve been offered a position at Colchester Sixth Form College as an IT technician (the official job title is “IT Support Officer”) – I was originally a student at the College between 2003 and 2005 studying the International Baccalaureate and I’m really looking forward both to being back there and being in a normal job.

Even though I’ll be coming back to Aberystwyth in September 2009, an awful lot of the friends that I’ve made in my two years here won’t be, as they will have all completed their final years and graduated – my industrial year is a “sandwich year” between the second and final years of the course – so essentially this is my last term with quite a lot of my friends, which is an extremely sad thought!

OK, so this has been a pretty short entry (by my usual standards), but not a lot else happened in the three weeks I was back in Essex, apart from three We Will Rock You shows at a rate of one per week, taking my show-count to 54 (yes, fifty-four) and concreting my opinion that the newest cast are – quite possibly – one of the best I’ve seen. I finally got to see Sabrina Aloueche as Scaramouche, and I was completely blown away. I’ve got reviews on my WWRY-London.co.uk Forums for the shows on Monday 17th March, Tuesday 25th March and Thursday 3rd April.

I’m also taking on another freelance web design job for a local singer and the obligatory chocolate-scoffing. Even the journey back to Aberystwyth went without a hitch – for once! I was tempted to include my views on Liverpool’s awe-inspiring win in the Champions League into this blog, but I think it deserves its own entry.

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

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

Site Design Update and Belated Blog Update

Posted on 04/07/2007 by Craig

I’ve just finished a minor site layout change, hopefully you approve

In other news, apologies for not updating this for another three months – things have changed quite a bit. I’m now back in Essex after finishing my first year at Aberystwyth. It feels strange being back – although I am actually broke. So if anybody out there is looking for a freelance web designer, take a look at www.sonicadesign.com and get in touch!

I’m currently doing a bit of recording for a friend’s various metal projects as well as being a general unemployed student. Probably unsurprisingly, I’ve already crammed one We Will Rock You show into the month I’ve been back and I’ve got a couple more booked for the coming months.

One of two highlights of the last month though is seeing Iron Maiden live at Brixton Academy on 24th June with a good friend – courtesy of some quick bidding on eBay. We managed to get a pair of tickets for £60 – which is £20 below the combined face value . The setlist was the same as they played at the Download Festival, with a mix of tracks from A Matter of Life and Death and The Number of The Beast complete with Eddie and tank during the encore. Some photos will find their way onto the Gallery pages quite soon.

Needless to say the gig was a complete stormer, and standing back next to the sound desk gave us a brilliant view of the whole stage. The support acts deserve a mention too, Indian metal outfit Parikrama were surprisingly good – their Indian influences were pretty well integrated into traditional metal, the violin was a brilliant addition in my opinion. Lauren Harris was also very good – I recognised a couple of the songs from seeing them at Earl’s Court last year.

The other highlight of the last month is about my new laptop that I covered in the last update in April. I have now configured it to quad-boot. Yes, you read right. Four operating systems – Windows Vista, Windows XP Media Center 2005, Apple OS X and Fedora Core 7 Linux all on a 120Gb hard drive with some room left for my music and documents. I’m not going to bore you listing all the details, but needless to say that I am thouroughly pleased with my efforts . It was a bitch to get Grub (the Linux bootloader) to work properly, but nothing ever goes smoothly with technology.

I’m hoping to expand the site with a few computer tutorials and how-to’s in the near future, so watch this space

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig