A Very Belated Update

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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

New University Term

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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