April 2008 Update

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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

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