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.

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