Merry Christmas All!

My goodness, what a hectic few months it has been. I have been dividing my time between Genesys and TSC with very little room for any of the other modules I am supposed to be studying. There have been some horrendous multiple choice quizzes but some fairly decent attempts at the assignments which should hopefully go some way to contributing to the overall score. I have given myself all of the Christmas holiday to revise for my January exams - of which I have three all squashed into the first week with just a single day separating each of them.

A Bit of a Catch Up

Well, well, well, hasn't it been a long time since I was on here again. I know I said that my posts might become a little more infrequent but I genuinely hadn't imagined that months would past without a few scribbles and for that I apologise profusely. So a quick run down on the more memorable events of the past weeks and some music recommendations whilst I'm at it. I will work in reverse chronological order for the sake of my memory more than anything else.

It's Been a While

Greetings all, sorry it's been so long but I'm afraid the gaps in-between posts may continue in their infrequency for the near future. I have found that any spare time I have recently has been taken up with either catching up with work or catching up with sleep.

Freshers Week

There was very little chance of me being bored this week with the plethora of events happening. Saturday night was the official start to the week with Pop Tarts and as this event is almost guaranteed to have a fire alarm go off at some point, I decided to avoid being stage manager and went for the cowardly general crew option. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. Everything went to plan and there were no major occurrences - typical.

Two Weeks in Training

This post might end up being quite long as I have two weeks worth of very full days to catch up on. I have been attending the TSC senior training course for the past two weeks and they have been some of the busiest weeks of my life. With socials organised almost every night and a full days training during the day, I have only really been in the house to sleep and very little else. I often found myself coming home, getting changed and shovelling some food down my throat before heading back out again and so haven't had any time to keep up with the blogging.

Getting Settled

Today has been about getting settled into my new surrounding, stocking up the cupboards, fixing bits and bobs and some cooking. As I had little else to do today, I decided to go to the massive Tesco on Abbeydale Rd in the hope that they had a decent clothes department there. I had seen a coat on the Tesco online website earlier in the week on special offer for £10. It seemed too good to be true and so I wanted to check it out before committing to buying it to save on the hassle of having to return it if it wasn't what I wanted. Sadly the menswear department there is practically non existent. They have womens and children but very little mens and so all I ended up with was a rather expensive shopping bill, and a lot of time wasted sitting in traffic.

Packing and Unpacking

It's another travel day and I'm back off to Sheffield again. This time I am moving in for good (although I'm coming back to Birmingham next weekend because due to a lapse in judgement, I decided to book the coach from Birmingham rather than Sheffield). This morning's packing has been greatly helped by yesterday's boredom which meant I had a significant head start. As I am almost guaranteed to have forgotten something, I think I did quite well this time as so far I only appear to have forgotten my toothpaste (something easily rectified by the multitude of toothpaste dispensing outlets nearby).

Many Singles from the Many Weeks

Given that the last time I did one of these was the 14th of August, I think I have been slacking a little. I haven't been paying too much attention to the new releases lately so keeping up with what has and hasn't been released is a little difficult. On top of that, I spend most of my time switching the radio on and off to avoid the horrific songs that are being played at the moment. Particular annoyances are 'We No Speak Americano' which has been played to death and I now reach for the off button as soon as I hear the fist note. If I were playing Name That Tune, I'm pretty sure I could name it in one it's been played that much.

The Elm

Now that I've had the phone for a day - and just about used all of the features on it - I think I'm in a position to give it a review. Overall, I am very impressed, as I said yesterday. There are a few things which seem a little bit odd and could do with a bit more thought. My main gripe is that the social networking integration leaves a lot to be desired. You can access Twitter, Facebook and MySpace through the home screen however, this is shown not as a separate app but just shows the feed of updates / tweets. There appears to be no way to update your own status / tweet / view profiles and pictures etc however, you can access the photos by going to your photo album (where you would expect to find your photos and those stored on the phone). Here there are options for many more social networks including flickr, picasa and blogger and if you want to include a picture, there is an option to send a tweet, create a blog or send the photo to facebook. You would think that if they can provide the facility to update with a picture then you should be able to update without a picture?

I Have a New Phone!

I have posted about my dilemma about finding a new phone and until today, that dilemma still held. I didn't want a touchscreen device but I did want the features of a smartphone. Preferably I was looking for another Sony Ericsson Phone as I was already familiar with the layout and am particularly bad when it comes to using other phones. I had been initially looking for a smartphone with a querty keyboard so that I could overcome my fear of having to type on a n unresponsive touchscreen but the only few that I was considering seemed to have a major flaw in them somewhere. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro Mini for example had a very poor battery life and many people complained that this really got in the way.

Bad Sat Nav

My task for today was to fix my sat nav which is now wholly unusable and won't get past the splash screen - despite many, many resets. They say that desperate times call for desperate measures and so I have pinned the problem down to an error with the memory card. Switching the device on without the SD card seems to work fine - well, as fine as a sat nav can be without the maps and the software to tell it how to run. So I formatted the SD card.

The Very Last of the Summer Wine

Today sees the end of one of the longest running sitcom in the world, Last of the Summer Wine. I wasn't an avid viewer of the programme but it became one of those things that you assume will always be there. Peter Sallis's superb vocal talents gave rise to the instantly recognisable voice of Wallace (from Wallace and Gromit) and he has somehow managed to stay in the show from day 1, throughout the 31 series and despite now being almost 90 years old. Because of his long term involvement, it was only right that he got the last word of the show that was not only funny, but summed up the show "Did I lock the door?"

Reading Festival

Today has been an amazing and very very long day. An early start this morning for the drive down to Reading sans satnav and with a couple of scribbled down directions and we managed to find it without getting lost! This was mainly down to my passenger who spotted the signs to the city centre and for the festival once we got a bit closer. I managed to pack in a lot of music at several different locations around the site and we even had time to stop off at the alternative stage and watch Milton Jones. That was one of the funniest half hours I have ever witnessed. How he managed to fill the time with just one liners is amazing and he is definitely one of the cleverest comics around today.

My Car is Falling Apart

I had a couple of errands to run today and after each one, I noticed that some other part of my car had broken / fallen off. , as I was driving back from Portsmouth I noticed that my passenger windscreen wiper had split not long after I had had the car serviced. I decided it must just be bad luck and that they were just old and had had their time.

E-Numbers

Recently, food has been through a resurgence from the tradition introduced in the 80s where food and science first started to really merge. Back then, scientists were discovering all sorts of wonderful chemicals that can be added to food to make it taste nicer and look more appetising. In the last five years or so (perhaps more) there has been a strong tend towards organic, locally sourced food where you know exactly what has gone into what you are eating.

The Great British Waste Menu

Before I watched this programme this evening, today's post was going to be about how I'd spent most of today listening to Radio 4 (and rather enjoying it!) Instead, this programme really caught my attention - save for the endless repetition which I suspect may be in part because it was initially designed to be several separate shows.
Despite this, it was a really enlightening programme highlighting the waste generated by our food culture.

A New Set of Wipers

As I was driving back from Portsmouth the other week, I noticed that one of my windscreen wipers was flapping around at the bottom. At this point I was more concerned about it not falling off before I got home than anything else. The weather was changeable and when it rained, it rained quite heavily. The last thing I wanted was a wiper out of order - and if the blade came off then would it scratch my windscreen?

Bugs

My step dad has today found a flaw in the shiny new website I developed for my parents villa. When he went to look at the site on his work laptop - which surprise surprise has internet explorer 6 on it - found that it looked slightly different to the image he had seen before. What is odd is just how different it looks; the navigation bar is vertical rather than horizontal and the pictures have squashed themselves as if they have forgotten how wide they should be.

The Next Big Redesign Begins

Having finally decided on a design for my blog, I can now apply it to my personal website which is looking worse and worse by the day. I have several options here, the first being a simple copy and paste job and the second a more lengthy extraction process where I comb through the hundreds of lines of code to try and find the sections that I have actually used.

The Great British Bake Off

The superb partnership of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins has once again been reunited for this lastest programme in the food calendar. There have been mixed reviews online with the Guardian recommending it as a pick of the day and the Telegraph labelling it as a poor Masterchef copy.

The Journey Home

We knew the weather wasn't going to be great for driving but I certainly wasn't expecting to be awoken by the sound of thunder at 8am this morning! The rain was hurtling down and at one point, we had considered staying a bit longer until the storm had passed.

Into Tenby

We have once again been very lucky with the weather which held out just long enough for us to take a trip into Tenby. In the summer sunshine, it is beautiful enough to rival many of the European cities with clean beaches and fabulous views. Out of the sun however, the attraction fades and it becomes like many of the other seaside towns in Britain that are so reliant on the changeable weather. We managed a good two hours and had a look round some of the shops, a sit down in a café and by overlooking the harbour. Another chance for my mum to play with her new camera of which the smile detection element came in very handy taking some of the photos when we were squinting away from the sun.

A Trip to the Beach

We have been very lucky with the weather today and apart from a few spots of rain this morning, which rather cut short our trip into the village, we have had mostly sunny skies. We managed a nice walk down to the beach this afternoon to make the most of the good weather and lay on the sand for a bit to soak up the rays. I have since discovered that my watch doesn't like the sand as I struggled to get it off this evening. I hope a good wash will get rid of all the bits that have clogged up the release mechanism but that is the downside to the beach I suppose. I wasn't brave enough to take a dip into the sea, even with the warm weather, but there were plenty of people who were paddling around.

To Wales

Today has been a rather pleasant day with the weather holding out for the most part other than a few spots of rain on the road. First stop was Barry near Cardiff to pick up my grandma. We stopped off at the Captain's Wife in Sully for lunch and I had the most delicious open chicken pie. The food all looked very nice but I rarely pass up the chance for a nice pie. Pudding was in the form of a normandy style apple flan with toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream and was equally as nice although I have my doubts as to whether or not it was made on site.

The Big Redesign

It has finally happened, I have got round to giving this tired old blog a much needed face-lift. It has been many months in the pipeline and as part of the first birthday celebrations, I put my head down and started typing. The most difficult part of it all has been the conditional elements and I still haven't quite got those sorted.

Website No. 2 - Done

I've finally finished the website for my parents - and about time too. I sat down last night and kept going until the very last bit was done. I have had the seal of approval from my mum and will await the fate of my step-dad's verdict tomorrow. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it as I've been the one making the decisions about the design and layout rather than asking someone else relying on specifications given to me.

Choices

This post is substantially less philosophical then the title may suggest. It is in fact dedicated to the latest release by the Hoosiers. A first for this blog will be that the video clip embedded for your viewing pleasure will be utilising YouTube's new embed code which doesn't force Flash upon its users and those of you with HTML5 compatible browsers will be able to watch using that instead.

Happy Birthday Blog!

It's a bit late but I've just realised that on the 11th of August last year, I wrote my first post on this blog. I can't believe that it's been more than a year and I find myself somehow both in the the same and a very different position at the same time. I am heading off to Wales soon - as I did at about this time last year - but on the other hand, I am coming towards the end of my university life. I am searching for jobs, filling out application forms and have actually got quite a lot on my plate.

Better Luck Next Time

I had thought that today had gone reasonably well. Time seemed to go very quickly during the time I spent at IBM and after a brief introductory presentation about the company (which in hindsight was a bit of a waste of time) was the bit that seemed to last the longest. We then had two group sessions to complete as well as a confirmatory aptitude test.

To Portsmouth!

The day of reckoning is upon us... technically it's tomorrow but for me, I'm more nervous about getting here and finding the building tomorrow morning than I am about the day itself. I've always been a nervous wreck when it comes to doing new things and things involving travel even more so. I usually give myself way too much time and end up very early and over plan everything. Even little things like going to the train station, I have to plan for things like delayed trains, missed trains and cancelled trains and then I'll spend ages on Google maps checking and double checking where to go.

Multiplayer Mahem

I collected my car this morning and paid the hefty bill. Turns out I had a corroded exhaust and needed new front brakes. I didn't know anything about the exhaust - I assumed it would be particularly noisy or smoky or something but hey, what do I know about cars? The brakes don't seem particularly different although the handbrake has been adjusted so that I don't have to pull it up so far to prevent the car moving. I fear it may have been more than a little bit abused on the hills of Sheffield so it's good to know my car isn't going to be rolling off and causing damage during the night.

MOT

I found out when I was renewing my tax disc last week that I was a tad overdue for my MOT. Today was the earliest it could be done and so I hauled myself out of bed at silly o'clock this morning and headed down to Kwik Fit for 08:30. I usually take it to a Vauxhall garage but as my warranty has expired anyway, I thought I might as well try somewhere a bit cheaper. You hear horror stories about all the garages but I think Kwik Fit has a good enough reputation to trust them.

Galleria

The website is coming on nicely now and I've found the original photos taken from years back rather than being stuck with the poor quality 600x450 ones currently online. I've been trying to make some modifications to the javascript gallery I'm using but thus far with very little success. I don't mind creating things myself but I always seem to struggle when I have to use code from other people. Perhaps we just think in very different ways but some people seem to have no problems at all with it. I can't even get the examples from their website to work!

My New Favourite Ingredient

I came across this small jar of wonderment whilst routing around in the cupboard and now I can't get enough of it. I haven't found a similar product in any other supermarket so I might have to stock up before I return to Sheffield. Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Caramelised Red Onion Chutney has made this weeks mealtimes so much better than they would have been without it. It has worked wonders on a chicken sandwich, a cheese sandwich and as of today, on top of a Ritz cracker between two slices of fruity Wensleydale cheese.

Fruity Fixing

I received a message today requesting my services as someone who is good with gadgets to try and fix an iPod nano. As I read the message, I saw that small i and knew I was in for a hard time. These things - the nano in particular - are troublesome little blighters. They are sealed units which prevents you fixing any internal problems and they are made by Apple which means you have to use iTunes to put songs on them. If iTunes is the problem then you are stuffed and you have a very expensive memory stick with a screen.

Another Flashy Project

When I started my university course almost three years ago now, I vowed to my friend that I would one day learn how to make a game so that we could play over a long distance. She resides in London during term time and we greatly miss our gaming sessions. The game in question is the British version of Blackjack which is more akin to UNO then 21 / pontoon. The game isn't widely known and there are so many variants of the rules that finding an existing game is very unlikely.

Inception

It's taken me a good deal longer than I wanted it to but today I finally got round to seeing Inception. Overall, I have to say I'm very impressed. I wasn't expecting this much from a movie but someone had clearly put a lot of thought into it rather than just rushing it out. I always think that movies that make you think are the best ones and this film certainly has that Matrix feel to it with a philosophical twist that makes you question reality.

A Spot of Scrabble?

In a nostalgic trip back to the olden days, and to help combat my mother's addiction with a Facebook hosted rip off of Scrabble, we decided to dig out the board game from the depths of my wardrobe and have a couple of games. I was beaten by almost two hundred points in the first game thanks to a lucky set of tiles that allowed the word 'jewelled' over two triple word squares. I pulled it back in the second game however with a distinctly less impressive three point lead scraped during the final few tiles.

Broken, Recovered and Fixed

Not necessarily in that order however. Today has been a rather frustrating day in PC land. Since bringing my PC back from Sheffield, I have had to reinstall windows XP after it refused to dual boot with the existing Windows 7 installation. This problem is my own fault since I installed it afterwards and thus knackered the boot loader. When I did go to reinstall it however, I came across two problems. The first was a lack of blank CDs so I ended up scrabbling around online for a way to make a USB memory stick bootable to install XP. I did eventually find one such method with a program called PeToUSB and although it was slightly different to the usual setup process you have with a CD, it worked fine.

A Bit of a Tip

Somehow, whenever gardening gets done in this house, it is always just after the green waste has been collected. As such, we decided that leaving almost fifteen bags of garden rubbish outside in the hot and damp weather for a week and a half would be a bad idea. A trip to the tip was in order and it has changed a lot since I was last there.

Tree Felling

I have taken to the outdoors today for a spot of tree felling. This wasn't my intention at the beginning of the day however, my assistance as a 'tall person' - something I'm not sure I agree with but still - was called upon to try and trim back some trees overhanging into our garden from next door.

From Old to New

Today, I put the finishing touches to my friends website and it is now pretty much finished. The gallery isn't yet uploaded as it still needs to be filled with pictures however, I have left that to my friend to finish off and have given him a Picassa template to use to generate the galleries once he has decided on which photos to use.

They Have It In For Me

Having received the email about my IBM application and the next steps to take on Tuesday, I was surprised to find that I still didn't have the email they supposedly sent at the same time. I'm not a fan of webmail interfaces on the whole - although I quite like GMail - and so for my Yahoo, Hotmail and university email accounts, I use Microsoft Outlook. I'm not sure quite how I'd manage without it really as not only do I use it to retrieve all of my email but I use the calendar on it as well which nicely syncs with both my online Google Calendar and the calendar on my mobile.

Sherlock

A chance to test out my new TV now with Sunday's episode of Sherlock. From the pen of Steven Moffatt (of Dr Who fame) and Mark Gattis (from the League of Gentlemen - and Dr Who) this is a modern take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous books about Sherlock Holmes. I have to say it's very nice to be watching it on a proper TV for a change but enough about the TV, what about the show?

All at Once

Moving days are usually a bit busy but today has been more so than usual. This morning all I was concerned with was getting my deposit cheque back from last year and packing my stuff up to go home. With that done, I was happily on my way down the M1, ELO playing on the radio until it happened. The closest I have come to having a road accident. In the microseconds that it took, I was convinced I wasn't going to make it out unharmed.

Last Full Day in Sheffield

The week has come to an end and I have very little left to do today. This morning, the biggest problem I was facing was the eternal dilemma of what to eat for dinner! Thankfully a quick trip to Sainsbury's fixed this and I found a pack of two chickens en croûte in the reduced area which will do nicely.

101 Ways to Ruin a TV Gameshow

Today is pretty much a repeat of Friday unfortunately. As expected, I surfaced at around about 3pm unable to concentrate on anything really. The internet was being painfully slow again - something we may have to look into if it continues like this. When there are five or six people in the house, we are looking at speeds of less than that of the 56k days which is wholly unacceptable in this day and age. Either that or I shall be spending considerably more time in the library this coming year!

How Long?

This weekend has seen the Tramlines festival come to Sheffield. It is a massive event spanning the majority of the city centre and hundreds of different venues with hundreds more acts over the three days. More astonishingly, it is totally free and the only thing you have to contend with are the enormous queues bound to ensue from the thousands of people flocking to the city for the event.

Streaming is Not an Option

After yesterday's long day, today was most definitely a rest day. So much so in fact that I could have summed up the day with a single line along the lines of "I spent most of today in bed". I had a couple of films to watch thanks to the BBC's film weekend last week and a few previously downloaded iPlayer programmes. It didn't take that long for me to run out of things to watch though and despite finding a couple more things on the iPlayer, the internet speed in this house is so unreliable that streaming programmes simply isn't an option.

A Longer Than Expected Day

I offered to come in this morning to continue fixing the lights as we had quite a few left to do before our Saturday deadline. Sunday is a special day because of the Tramlines gig happening in the Octagon. A big external event means that everything has to be perfect. Any small slips can seriously damage the reputation of the venue and can have a huge impact on future bookings.

Half Way There

We are half way through grad week now and a lot of my friends have now come to the end of their university lives. It's weird seeing all classmates and friends from halls all graduating when I'm not. I kind of feel a bit left out really but then I still wouldn't want to be graduating just yet. I could quite happily stay at university for another two years I think although the second year would be a bit more difficult unless my housemates all decide to fail the year / continue studying.

The Future of 3D

I went to see Toy Story 3 today (in 3D of course) which has prompted me to think about the future of 3D TV and movies. First of all, let me say that despite the extortionate amount of money I spent on watching this film today - nearly £20 - I would do so again and again. It was simply brilliant, a great film full of highs and lows with plenty of the great humour you expect from one of these films. It was nice to see an audience of similarly aged people as well. I was half expecting mostly children although as it was during school time, perhaps not (have they broken up for the summer yet?) There was only one kid there and the rest were either adults or students.

Getting Stuff Done

Today has been a pretty productive day all in all. I started with a trip into town to open a new bank account to pay all the bills from. We have agreed that this is a much better way to do things than the old wall of debt style system we have had for the last two years. It also means I wont end up chasing people for money when we all go our separate ways at the end of the year.

Pottering Around

I'm still getting used to this new house and its quirks. There are a couple of things that are really bugging me at the moment. The first is a lack of hot water - something many people in this country would probably consider to be a basic human right. I have no idea why this isn't working and the only thing I have managed to deduce is that the boiler is simply refusing to acknowledge the existence of the hot water pipe. It works fine if you tell it to heat up the radiators and if you turn the hot tap on at the same time as it is doing this, then you can - by proxy - get some hot water simply because the pipe happens to be passing through the flame.

Another Gazebo

I am slightly regretting working last night now because I had a very early start this morning (comparatively) and am only still going because I had a nap this afternoon. The early morning start was courtesy of the Computer Science Society and a Skype meeting that was moved forward - at my request - to 10:30 as I was starting work at 12:00.

Moving In

Today has been a very long day and as if moving in wasn't enough, I am also working tonight... whoopee! As with every new house, there will be upsides and downsides but the hope is that the good outweigh the bad. Initially of course, there will be teething problems, especially if the previous occupants aren't as fussy as us when it comes to getting things fixed. This certainly seems to be true with last years tenants because our snagging list is several pages long and that's only after having been here a day or two. As we live here for a bit longer, more and more problems are likely to come to light.

Starting to Get the Hang of Photoshop

Photoshop is one of the only applications I've ever used that continues to baffle me after such a long time. I can usually work something out within a couple of hours at most and I can normally gt my head around even the least intuitively designed pieces of software. For a long time however, Photoshop has had me baffled, flummoxed and bewildered.

Reunion

One of my school friends who moved to the far reaches of Scotland decided to make a rare appearance in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield today. To celebrate this, a mini reunion was in order. It was nice to catch up with people again and somehow we managed to whittle away five hours in the pub just nattering on about this, that and the other.

Singles of the Weeks

I've neglected my single of the week again and so this week I shall have two. Coincidentally, they were both also released this week but as one was available from the album when I should have posted it last week, I can be forgiven. I shall start with last week's single from Pendulum. As I mentioned here, there are only a couple of songs from the album that I actually liked but the good ones aren't just good, they are incredible. It's a shame the whole album (or at least a bit more of it) couldn't have been like that but then perhaps the contrast makes them that little bit more special.

JQuery and IBM

Today I have been putting some final tweaks to the website I am revamping for my parents. The only bit I now have left to do is the photo gallery converting it from the hideous flash incarnation that is currently in place to a javascript version that is more accessible.

Race Online 2012

If you haven't already heard about Race Online 2012 then I suggest you check out their website. It is the idea of Martha Lane Fox, the government's digital champion (whatever the hell that means). The idea behind the scheme is to get everyone of a working age online as there are currently about ten million people missing out.

Results

Today is the big day, the results are released. The good news is that I passed with a 2:1 so I am able to continue with my masters course for another year. I got a first for my dissertation which makes me very happy indeed. I was only a couple of percent of an overall first which has given me a bit of motivation to put a bit more effort in next year in the hope that I can reclaim that few percent and jump to the next grade boundary.

Javascript Hell

I have spent most of today reimplementing some code I had written in PHP as JavaScript. Unfortunately, Virgin Media don't seem to support PHP (despite what their website says) so I have had to rewrite it all in JavaScript. I have mentioned a few times about my hatred of this language but now that I have used it a couple of times, I am starting to see the benefits.

A Baking Success

At last! I have made a new recipe without it being an absolute disaster. Far from it in fact, the lemon and ginger cupcakes I made were fantastic. Deliciously soft, moist and zingy they certainly won't last very long and the recipe only made six - despite saying it made twelve.

More Websites

I spent most of today with my friend helping him with his website. We have got a little bit further on the design front but not that much further. It looks a little less photocopied now but is still lacking that spark of colour needed to brighten the whole thing up a little.

Power Issues

A rather curious computer issue arose today on my parent's desktop computer. For while now it has been a bit dodgy - in fact probably since it was bought a couple of years ago. My step dad built the thing from components on a mission to build what he describes as 'a supercomputer' which in essence is really a high spec PC. He usually makes one or two mistakes but eventually remedies them in a rather crude manner, last time this involved manually tweeking a vast number of BIOS settings in order to get his memory to work. It was literally a case of trial and error - or trial an improvement for you young people out there - going through each setting and adjusting it before testing it to see how many errors you got on MemTest.

More Gardening?

Are my green fingers starting to shine through? Perhaps, but the explanation I am going with at the moment is that I have developed a slight case of carpel tunnel syndrome in my right wrist. Anyone smirking at this point can stop reading straight away! In fact I believe it is down to incorrect posture when using my mouse. The way my desk is currently set up at home means that I am at a funny angle when typing and mousing and therefore it is putting additional strain on my tendons.

Two Letters - C and V

How can these two harmless letters cause so much frustration when combined? Today saw the end of this frustration as I finally put the finishing touches to my CV - something I've been putting off since coming home for the holidays. In the end it wasn't actually as painful as I first thought it would be and with a bit of help from a wonderful guide to writing a technical CV from TargetJobs (another excellent twitter find!), everything seemed to slot into place nicely. It would have been very easy to run over two pages and probably the most challenging part of it all was condensing everything down into such a small space. I cheated a little by extending the margins but hopefully this can be overlooked!

A Spot of Gardening

Today's exercise comes in the form of gardening rather than cycling and so I have spent the day being attacked by spiky plants and I have the marks to prove it! After my token outdoor exposure, it was back to the computer to tackle today's challenge - the twitter widget.

Grappling With the Inadequacies of IE

I have spent most of today playing with the CSS for my website. I thought I was doing quite well until now with no major hiccups until I switched my browser to Internet Explorer. Most of the differences were quite subtle but some of them where horribly different to Firefox's rendering.

Recipe the First

Well that didn't take long did it? I've not had the books a whole day and already the temptation to bake has overwhelmed me. Having such a massive choice of things made choosing what to make a little bit tricky but that was soon resolved by checking the total lack of ingredients in the cupboard. A lot of the recipes in the Baking Magic book require fondant icing - explaining why they look so damned good!. I've never seen this stuff in the supermarket and I'm almost certain you won't find it in a small co-op.

New Books!

After an otherwise dull day, my mum returned home from work bearing gifts and they were for me! Regular readers will know that I like to do a bit of baking now and again (usually with at least one mistake each time). No excuse now though because I have two new hardback cookery books. The first is something I was considering buying at the time it was published - Mum's Know Best: The Hairy Bikers' Family Cookbook. I posted many a time about the Hairy Bikers and this book is a real testament to the hard work they (and their team) must have put in over that series to organise the food fairs and collate all of the recipes.

Music Time

I think it's time for a long overdue single of the week. I have been using the Last.fm audio scrobbler plugin again recently to play my recommended radio having gotten bored with my library again. I came across a couple of candidates and this was the only one that passed my criteria for being commercially available. The band are called Music Go Music. As this is the first time I have come across them, I know very little about them other than what I have read on their Last.fm page. I certainly agree that they have a very mid-seventies feel (this song in particular is very reminiscent of that era). I'm not sure whether it is the production, the vocals or the instruments (or perhaps a combination of the three) that give that 70's vibe but whatever it is, I like it.

Disaster Strikes

Two house related hiccups today, the first came from a mis-reading of the electricity meter. I only discovered this thanks to a very helpful telephone operative who thankfully noticed that it was about 10 000 units higher than the previous reading that had been given by an authorised meter reader. We had one of those horrible old-fashioned dial meters so I'm not especially surprised that it was read incorrectly. It took me a while to get the hang of it the first time I did it and I have a feeling this was also done in a rush.

The Return of Top Gear

Without meaning to go back to the old days of weekly TV reviews, I made an exception for yesterday's finale of Dr Who and I shall make another today for the beginning of a new series of Top Gear. Not any old Top Gear however, the new - more serious - Top Gear (supposedly).

All is Revealed (ish)

Tonight marks the finale of the latest series of Dr Who. As I mentioned last week, it has been a mixed series in my opinion but I really enjoyed the conclusion. There was a vague hint that the whole thing might be in some way related to memories but I think they pulled it off in such a way that the solution to the seemingly impossible situation didn't seem like a cop out.

More Tinkering

After waiting overnight for some of the problems to remedy themselves, some of them indeed did. I managed to delete all reference to davwil00.co.uk so that I could start again from fresh. I reset all of the DNS settings but somewhere there is still a reference to it and I cannot see where. In the end I gave up and have filled in the help form on the website. Rather worryingly, I received a copy of the email with a note added to the top stating that a contact could not be found and so the email has been sent to the server administrator. It's almost as if it would have sent the help request to me if I had added my email in the communication preferences box.

Spur of the Moment Decison

It seems like everyone I know these days has a personal website. Okay so that's a massive overstatement but a lot of people I know have one. Following on from designing my friend's website yesterday, I decided to start designing my own for the domain name I now own.

Project Number 2

The second project I have for this summer is to update and redesign my friend's website. He is currently studying acting at the University of Northampton and has had his website for almost a year now. As he only knows some basic HTML, he used templates and pre-designed applications to make up the content for his website including a gallery and a blog.

An Impulse Buy

I have decided to take the plunge and buy my domain name. I'm sure no-one else would ever want it but I get a bit panicky with these things and assume I have to snap them up before they get taken by someone else - as if someone else would dare steal my moniker. This same thought process is now why I have two Hotmail addresses and it is only laziness and lack of need that have prevented me from acquiring the @live.com extension as well.

Not as Easy as I'd Thought

There are advantages and disadvantages to being at home, the advantages generally outweigh the disadvantages but sometimes the disadvantages seem more important. The main advantages come from things like an expansive tool kit and a loft full of computer components, cables and various other only very occasionally useful bits of technology that have been accumulated and kept from years of electronics. The disadvantages come from those things that have been replaced by modern equivalents that I have gone out and purchased and left in Sheffield.

A Summer Project

Hurrah! I have something to do over the summer! With a bit of luck, it won't actually involve that much effort but it might earn me a bit of money (provided I can deal with my conscience telling me that I can't charge my friends for my time). The same people also came round to the house not once but twice (three times even for one of them).

The Pandorica Opens

Tonight sees the beginning of the end of the current series of Dr Who. There have been highs and lows this series with only a couple of the episodes meeting my high expectations. There have been some very good decisions - such as casting Karen Gillan as Amy Pond (the Doctor's assistant) as I think she has done a marvellous job at bringing something new to the role. There have also been some - not so much bad but questionable - decisions such as revamping the Daleks who now look more like a child's toy than an evil super-villain. On the whole I have enjoyed watching it and with this final episode, the writers have really pulled their socks up. It is by far the best episode of the series, closely followed by the episodes with the weeping angels and I cannot wait to see what happens this time next week. With a bit of luck it won't just turn out to be all part of Amy's imagination and that they will employ a clever trick to get the Doctor out of this sticky situation.

Cake and CV

I think the title pretty much sums today up. Obviously the cake came first - at the moment I'll find anything to do other than writing this blasted CV. It wouldn't be so bad if there was some sort of standard structure to them; but they are all so different depending on age, experience, industry etc that you almost have to make it up as you go along.

Unpacking

As much as I like living out of a box, the summer is long time to be in one place and with some pressure from the parents also, I reluctantly spent most of today unpacking. For the most part it makes living easier - especially not having to drag the huge suitcase out from underneath my bed each morning; but for other things, knowing that the answer to the question "Where is..." is always "in the box" is quite reassuring. In some cases, that object may be fairly small and so tracking it down amongst all of the other stuff can be somewhat time-consuming but it's better than not being able to find it at all because it has been hidden away somewhere sensible.

Home Time

Today is the last day I will see the inside of this house. It has been fairly good to us without too many problems and overall I think we preferred it to the previous house we had. The kitchen was smaller but the hobs were gas not electric, I was stuck in the attic and in a much smaller room but all of the nooks and crannies meant that I still had plenty of storage space for all of my junk.

Errands

I had a few lose ends to tie up today and first up was a meeting with the societies development coordinator (or some title to that effect) about the Computer Science Society's ambitious intro week mini festival. The outcome of the half an hour or so conversation was that the idea was far too grandiose for a new society with no money and to attempt to organise it over the summer with limited face-to-face contact and limited staff support was very bad timing. It was also noted that having an event during onto/freshers week was simply madness and would be a huge drain on the scarce resources.

I was always sceptical about such a alrge event but was starting to believe that with the right help and support both from the committee and the expert staff at the university, we could just pull this off but this was a big reality check. Not to be disheartened, she did say that if we wanted to have something similar later on in the year once we had some more members and more importantly more time and funding, she would be more than happy to help us with the logistics of organising such a large event.

Next up on the agenda was to give blood. I was half expecting for it to be shut but to my surprise, it was open although a notice on the door did say that it would be shutting for lunch in a couple of hours due to staffing shortages (which they have had for the last 6-12 months it seems). Alas, I had celebrated soon as they were operating on an appointment only basis because of these staff shortages. I managed to get a slot in an hour and a half which gave me just enough time to go back to uni and spend my food voucher that otherwise would have expired over the summer. I am going to have to remember to start booking appointments for giving blood because it always takes far longer than I hope it will either due to it being shut or simply long waits. Saying that, once I returned, I was in and out in under an hour with the majority of that being my the fault of my stupidly slow veins.

More Packing

Today was a much more productive day packing wise. Four boxes and a whole host of other bits of kitchen equipment and white goods that are all staying in Sheffield courtesy of my good friend who has some room in her garage. If I'd have had to take all of my stuff home then I would have definitely needed two trips but as luck had it, I should just about manage to squeeze what I have left into my car.

The Beginning of the End

Now that I have finished my third year of university and have no more lectures and assignments, I also find myself having finished TSC work as well. Today marks the beginning of the end of this academic year and over the course of the next three days I will be slowly packing my life away into boxes and bags ready to return to Birmingham for the summer.

Summer Social Part 2

Continuing on from yesterday / this morning, we headed back to the union at about 10:50am to be there for the opening of the café for breakfast. Amazingly, there were several people there before us but we clearly dominated the outside and I'm amazed the kitchen kept up with the orders. About thirty meaty breakfasts were cooked very promptly and eaten just as quickly. I had reached the point at which I didn't feel great and couuldn;t work out whether that was from eating something dodgy or lack of food. I put it down to lack of food as I'd not managed to eat a lot of dinner and had been playing on the sea-saw swing rather a lot which wouldn't have helped.

Summer Social Part 1

And so begins the day that never ends. I somewhat foolishly perhaps, decided to get up early to put the finishing touches to my housemates birthday cake. Officially it was yesterday but I didn't have time to finish it before we went out and as I wasn't going to be back until tomorrow afternoon I thought it best to get it done now.

All Done

Today should have been a much needed - and I think much deserved - day off in preparation for the never ending day that is tomorrow's Summer Social. Instead, I have been stuck in the physics computer lab from 10am until 5:30pm finisheing of this final assignment. It can be very frustrating sometimes working in groups when the skill level is so very different. Working with two non computer science students is hard enough but at least they have an excuse for their ignorance of the more technical elements to the assignment.

Volunteering Showcase

Final event in the hideous run of six today which is the volunteering showcase. This is an awards ceremony that brings together all of the volunteering projects from over the year and invites guests who have been involved in the scheme to make some speeches commending the wonderful work done by the universities volunteering schemes as well as the raising and giving (RAG) committee.

Gazebos

Today's event involved erecting gazebos for some of the outdoor events taking place later in the week. I was expecting a very short couple of hours for this and was expecting some easy money. How wrong could I be? There was a reason that this event was paid - it was more like four and a half hours of heavy lifting and heights.

Oops I Did it Again

Not content with working four days in a row - something most people consider bordering on insanity, I have signed myself up for two more days at the meeting today although on the plus side, they are both paid events and neither of them are in the evening so no late nights!

Last Laugh

Day three and today is slightly different. Rather than a club night, what with it being a Sunday we have a comedy event instead. This one also finishes a lot earlier - 11pm so I will have a chance to catch up on some sleep before the final event in my calendar tomorrow. I am in charge of the lights which would have been great if it weren't for two things. 1) I have never been to a Last Laugh event before and thus have no idea what the setup will be. 2) My job actually involved putting up two Fresnel lights and gelling two of the install PAR cans red for 'atmostophere'. Once these had been focused and dimmed to an acceptable level, that was pretty much my job done for the night other than taking them down at the end.

Next...

I managed to recover fairly quickly from last night's Space and although packing up wasn't quite as quick as it was last week, it was a damn-sight better than when the even is held in the Octagon (and we were one crewman down on last week). That leads me to event number two in the four day run which is Pop Tarts. There is almost nothing new I can say about this any more I have worked that many of them. Nothing especially bad or good happened and it was a fairly standard night. In fact, the only difference was that this evening I didn't come home and watch Dr Who but went straight to bed thanks to the lack of rain and exhaustion from working two days in a row. Roll on tomorrow!

No Laser for Me

Another PC has been fixed! Continuing on from where I left off on Wednesday, I had to track down the logs for Microsoft Security Essentials to find out the name of the virus it had found. Despite not being able to remove the virus automatically, it did give me a name to search for and find an appropriate solution. It turned out to be a nasty rootkit but thankfully not too painful to remove with the right tools.

A Day Off

I am having to make the most of today as a sleep catchup day in preparation for the long four day working weekend ahead. My main aim of today was to restore my VPN access to the university which has recently stopped working. I assumed that it had stopped working after I accidentally reset my password. I was pretty amazed that I actually did reset my password in the first place because I was trying to rest someone else's. Because I was logged in to the university portal, logging into the password management system with another account seemed to confuse the poor thing and so it decided to totally ignore the fact that someone else had just logged in and ended up changing my password instead!

Mr Fixit (again)

I seem to be double if not triple booking myself for these last few weeks of term. I don't know whether I'm being taken advantage of for having no exams, offering out my services because I have no exams or whether I can foresee the potential boredom gap that is the summer holidays. Not that I haven;t got plenty of things be be doing during that four month period but it will be very much based around sitting in front of a computer.

A Tedious Day

Today has been massively tedious, with the occasional joyful interruption of some playing around with Freestyler (a free package for controlling lights). As it is open source, there is a great deal of potential for customising the interface and using the Magic 3D Easy View software to construct a model of the venue so that you can see the output of your programming without having access to the lights.

A Forgetful Personality

A brilliant start to the day meant that I ended up leaving my house three times in the space of ten minutes. The first time I didn't get very far because I forgot my keys and thus couldn't lock the door. I had also forgotten my phone but thankfully remembered that when I was picking up my keys. Attempt number two I got significantly further, five minutes down the road further and I had to do the embarrassing turn around in the middle of the road and head back in the other direction thing. I would normally have come up with some pathetic excuse for having to turn around so as to avoid the embarrassment but I was too tired and fed up. Thankfully there was no one around to see so I think I got away with it.

Jabberwocky

Despite a stupidly late night last night - I didn't end up going to bed until about 7am, I woke up at about twelve o'clock unable to get back to sleep. I also managed to function fairly well during the day until it got to about six o'clock when I could no longer keep my eyes open. A short nap later and I was wide awake once more.

Mr Blue Sky

Another Saturday, another Pop Tarts. This is starting to become a regular occurrence but I quite like it. My plan is to do the event so much that it becomes second nature and thus I should have a good idea as to what to do when I eventually have to Stage Manage something.

Space Lights

Just as I'd finally caught up with my blog posts, I start working again and thus it all goes to pot once more. It is going to be a busy few weeks until term ends and the holidays begin and the boredom kicks in in which case I shall be longing for those busy weeks gone by.

TV Catchup

Another catchup day today and this time is is for TV. Having been at the blog for the last few days, I totally forgot how much missed TV was building up in my iPlayer. If I was still using my old laptop I fear I may be running out of disk space at this rate. Thankfully the generous month long deadlines meant nothing had expired.. yet but some were mere days off going the way of the dodo.

The New iPlayer

A big day in the world of tech and TV today as we see the launch of the new look iPlayer. Having been a huge fan since the inception of the product many years ago now when it was called the IMP - I was a beta tester for this and couldn't imagine how much it would change my life.

How Many?

For the first time since our assignment groups were allocated before Easter, today was the first time I have actually met one of them and also the first time we have all been to the same meeting! Incredible when you think that Easter was at least four weeks ago (maybe more, I really can't be bothered to count) and we have only got this far. Goodness knows what would have happened if the lecturer had been like the other lecturers and actually set a proper deadline rather than just anytime before the end of term.

The End of Lost

It is the end of an era, six years of programming have come to an end with the season finale. For the first time in TV history, the episodes were broadcast in both the UK and the USA at the same time! Admittedly the USA didn't make the compromise - we did but I'm sure a lot of people got up at 5am to watch it live. Perhaps finally the TV schedulers are learning that we won't wait for days or weeks for it to be shown over here and we want it at the same time as the USA.

Catchup

Having neglected this blog somewhat over the past few weeks, it is time for a massive catchup. I have been keeping a note of the events that have happened for most days and there are some days for which I have decided to write the post down on paper. I find it nicer to write the old fashioned way in bed rather than having to unplug my laptop from all its wires and carry it over and I prefer scribbling things down in the evenings rather than being kept awake by the glow of the screen.

Marina and the Diamonds

Since seeing Marina and the Diamonds on the NME Radar tour last year, I have been longing for her to make it in the hard world of music and for her next big tour. Now that she has and the day of her return to Sheffield is here I am very excited. Arriving slightly early at the Leadmill, there was already a substantial queue outside and because I am silly and didn't think things though properly I brought no drink with me. Did I mention that today was one of the hottest days of the year so far?

In Charge of the Laser

After not quite finishing the assignment off yesterday evening, it was back to the lab today to get the final bits in place. I am a little disappointed that we didn't quite finish on time and ended up handing in the assignment two minutes after the deadline. With a bit of luck the lecturer will be lenient enough to see that it was only two minutes rather than just accepting the 'late' stamp added by the Blackboard software.

Playing with Lasers

It’s been a long week, up early and late to bed but the end is nearly upon us. Today was the practical side to the laser training, learning how to use the laser control system and putting into practice the safe programming techniques that we learned yesterday. Once again, it is one of those things that they can tell you how to do a million times but until you actually try doing it in practice, you will never really learn how to do it. The schedule for the day meant that before lunch, two people would have to program a single head show and one person a two head show. The more senior members were allowed to do the two head show and I was using the single head. We had about thirty minutes for the two of us to program our shows which should last the duration of the song we had chosen. It was a pretty big ask given that we had never before touched the control system and only one person could use it at a time meaning that in reality we only had about fifteen minutes each.

Lasers Are Dangerous

Out of the two courses, I was most excited about this one - laser training. Sadly, the lase is only used once a week when Space is held in the Octagon. The main reason for this is that the room is many times higher than in the Foundry and so the risk is significantly reduced. The downside to being laser trained is that I will no doubt be asked to work more at Space which is doubly bad because you have to actually sit in the main area when operating the laser and subject yourself to the awful noise made by the resident DJ.

Playing With Lights

Today was far more hands on than yesterday and the first thing we did was disassemble two of the slightly older models of light. We didn't have access to these yesterday and thy have certain peculiarities that are worth knowing about. We then spent the afternoon fixing the stash of broken lights although a couple of them turned out to be working fine because we couldn't remember which ones were the broken ones.

A Week of Training

I have mixed opinions about this week. During the day, I am hoping that it will be quite fun as I will be on two TSC training courses. However, during the evening I will end up in the library working on the assignment that I should really have been working on during the day, Th course runs from 10am-6pm which leaves 8pm-12am to do the assignment. Long days and ling nights for four days in a row is bound to screw with my body clock so I will be trying to cram in little naps left, right and centre.

Portal is Free

I have been meaning to get my hands on this since I heard about it at the beginning of the week but never quite got round to it. I finally got round to downloading it yesterday and have been playing with it for the first time today. I remember when it first came out my friend showing me a trailer for it and actually being quite interested in a computer game for one. I could never quite commit myself to paying the £20 or whatever it was for it though so I never bothered. When I heard that it was free however, I couldn't resist - especially as I am nearing the end of the year and will be looking for a source of entertainment.

Going It Alone

I have once again offered my services as a programmer to my friend whi is struggling with her Actionscript project. The last time I offered to help was on the promise that I would be fed a delicious roast dinner - which by the way didn't appear - and so this time I made sure I would be fed.

CSS Meeting

The only event on the calendar for today was a Computer Science Society meeting in Bar One. It is the first meeting I have managed to attend as I have only found out about the others after the event. One of the first points on the agenda was this lack of communication both internally within the committee and externally between us and the students. One of the things I most want to bring to the committee is to involve the members more than they are at the moment. As it stands, all of the social events are decided by the committee and then the members are informed and encouraged to turn up. Last year I received a few emails from the committee informing me about these events but I had no input in where and when they were and had very little interest in going to the events that had been organised.

Junior Apprentice

Today was the first real start on the intelligent web assignment. We made some progress but tiredness on my part got in the way and I made so infuriatingly silly mistakes with my regular expressions. It can often be quite difficult to work out where you have gone wrong without butchering it to death and writing special code to test it. I usually end up using Python to build and test the expressions before copying them into Java when they work.

My First Tech Position

The big day has finally arrived, not only does today officially mark the end of my dissertation - culminating in a poster session - but it also marks the day where I am finally given the responsibility of a technical position in TSC.

Damned Printers

Tomorrow I have to present a poster about my dissertation project. As such, I have devoted a large part of today to printing the poster which is A1 size and thus I have had to split the text and pictures across about ten A4 pages - which I then had to cut out and arrange to build the final poster. Tomorrow I will have to stick everything into place - hurrah! I feel like I'm five again doing collage at school.

The Great Napkin Hunt

I arrived fairly late for yesterday's barbecue and so ended up taking the cake I made back home with me. I had planned to share it out during the TSC meeting today but somehow totally forgot about it and ended up leaving it in the office instead. Despite having spent the morning chasing down serviettes for the cake - the sot of sponges I make are far more suited to being eaten with a fork and on a plate than on the move. My first thought was to pop to the local shops and pick some up before hand however, to my disgust the Co-op were selling them for about £2.20 for 20! There was no way I was paying that much and I probably needed a few more than 20 anyway so the only thing for it was to hop into town and get some from the pound shop.

Barbecue

If I hadn't had enough of the TSC lot already then today was another chance to talk technical at the barbecue social. I couldn't quite face the full eight ours or so that it was supposed to be so I decided to just go for the evening and the pub quiz afterwards.

Apart from being a bit on the chilly side, it was a good night and we did reasonably well in the quiz too. The picture round was especially clever, they had pictures to represent the films in a catchphrase sort of style. As usual I was useless at films but thankfully a lot of my team mates were film buffs and managed to work them out before I could tell what the pictures were even supposed to be. One of my personal favourites was a rat, a tattoo and a Wii - Ratatouille! Whoever came up with them is a quiz mastermind as far as I'm concerned so well done to them (unless they stole them from the internet in which case they are big cheats).

I decided to bring along a cake but I ended up bringing it back home with me as there weren't enough people or time to eat it. I will probably end up handing it out at the meeting tomorrow so it won't go to waste.

Watercolour

This is going to be a very short post today as it was pretty much sleep, eat, more sleep, more eating and then some more sleeping again. It does however mean that there is plenty of room for me to put my single of the week up. This week it is Pendulum with their brand new single Watercolour from the forthcoming album Immersion.

It reminds me a lot of Propane Nightmares with quite a heavy vocal part which I really like. I'm not such a fan of the more instrumental songs and think that Rob Swire's vocals really bring the song into the mainstream rather than exclusively for drum and bass fans. I really hope the album is more of this but there are rumours that they have tried to make it more like their first album. The single was out at the beginning of the week and the album is released on the 24th May.

Let's Go Disco

I had to force myself out of bed this morning as I had promised to help my friend with her Actionscript scripting project. I had agreed to do so on the promise of being fed and I was expecting a roast dinner. Sadly, this did not happen and I left having helped rather a lot and with a very empty stomach. Turns out that because the date had to be changed, food was no longer part of the deal - the first I'd heard of it!

Go Safari

I was having a particularly lazy day because of yesterday and knowing that I was working this evening meant I was going to make the most of the time I had at home. As such, I lost track of time and forgot my tutor meeting about my poster. I hadn't designed anything yet and was about to email him to apologise when I realised I should probably have an attachment to send him as well to prove that I had actually done the work. A couple of hours later and I had a draft that I thought was acceptable and sent it onto him. I haven't had a reply yet so I don't know whether or not he got it.

The End

I decided to get up early today to make sure I didn't get held up in the dissertation hand in queue. As I got to the lab however, there was only one or two other people there. With that done, I met my partner for the next assignment and attempted to make a start on the Intelligent Web assignment due in a week and a half.

Printing

IT'S FINISHED!! Finally, after many many months of scribbling, typing, coding and testing, my dissertation has come to an end. Well, apart from the poster session next week but that requires very little thought. I have spent most of today trying to print the damned thing, 60+ sides of A4 twice over is not a fun task. If the printer isn't complaining it's run out of (or lost track of) some of its cartridges then it's complaining about no paper.

La Roux

Ah, bank holiday Mondays. Most of the time I would be grateful for them - especially the early Mat bank holiday because it means I get a day off if my birthday happens to fall on a Monday. Today however, it has been more of a hindrance than a help.

My Birthday

HELP!!! It is official, I am now 21. Actually, it isn't that bad really. I haven't found any grey hairs or wrinkles and I don't feel any older than I did yesterday. Not that I expected to mind but twenty-one makes me feel really old, no more excuses for acting like a child anymore, I am officially an adult. Well, most of the time anyway - I'm not yet ready to let go of my youth for good and I will still be very immature when the situation allows me to.

The Wrong Door

To justify going out this evening, I thought I should spend at least some time on my dissertation today - don't worry, after Wednesday you wont have to read those words on here again, I know I keep blabbering on about it but it has somewhat taken over my life.

Fly Yellow Moon

Most of today has been spent working on my dissertation in preparation for taking the weekend off on account of my birthday. The good news is that I have now nearly finished and thanks to some feedback from my mum, I should be able to get it all finished on Monday.

A Different Type of Training

A long day today including a meeting, a lecture and some non TSC training. First up the lecture and whilst I wouldn't usually mention a lecture, this one was particularly useful for a change and pretty much told us what we were actually meant to be doing for our assignment. I hadn't been giving it much thought until now - mainly because my dissertation has been taking up pretty much all of my time.

FOH and Mons

I remember being at the first TSC meeting not having a clue what people were on about when they were referring to FOH and mons. I now realise that FOH means front of house and that they are the people standing behind a large desk controlling the sound that the audience hear. Mons on the other hand is short for monitors and they are in charge of what the band hear out of their monitors. Makes sense when you know doesn't it. Anyway, today was all about how to set these two tech positions up and have a brief introduction to what the buttons and knobs on the big scary desks actually do.

Group Confusion

I have come back after Easter to find that one of the members of our group has left the course leaving us with only two people. AS there are a few other groups left in this situation, several of the groups have been merged. The problem with this is that the group we are supposed to merge with officially has three members and the group size limit is four.

Oops

As the end of the year approaches and the assignment deadlines start looming, I seem to be losing the will to actually do anything. I missed my first lecture of the day - although in my defence it was probably utterly pointless as it has been for the past few weeks. I did make it down to the union for the TSC meeting however - and I'm quite glad I did because it did turn into a very fun meeting.

Bleurgh

As I expected, last night's events have drained every ounce of energy from my body and today I am too tired to do pretty much anything. I went through the usual routine of trying to listen to the radio or watch TV but always ended up sleeping through 80% of it. No matter how much sugar and caffeine I consume it makes little or no difference. You simply cannot beat a good nights sleep!

The Night From Hell

Tonight was a busy night at the union. There were a couple of events going on at the same time which always makes things a bit difficult but one of the events was the International Cultural Evening which is a massive event joining together a huge number of international students and the various societies and committees that represent the vast number of countries with students at the university.

Fake Empire

Today is the day of my penultimate dissertation meeting which is a scary though when put into perspective. I have been working on this project all year and it is all coming to an end. I have had another tester email in offering to take part which is nice and brings the total up to six. It's not quite as many as I'd hoped for but my tutor seems to think that will be enough and understands how hard it is to find people to agree to take part in these sort of things.

Barbecue

Today's volunteer was the most difficult person to track down. For all of the others, one phone call to say "I'm outside" or simply recognising each other from the description I emailed was enough. Today however, not only was he slightly late - so much so that I was just starting to walk back home when he rang but when he did ring, all I heard was static and then nothing. I tried phoning back - nothing, I sent a message to the number (which was not a UK number so probably cost me quite a lot of money) and the reply came that it was indeed my tester.

Two at a Time

Two testees today so I had to haul two laptops and two mice down the the Information Commons (the library). There wasn't room in the bag for two power bricks as well and as luck would have it, one of the laptops ran out of batteries towards the end of the session.

Victim Number 1

I met my first testing volunteer today in a somewhat strange arrangement that consisted of a series of emails exchanged with regards to our respective appearances so that we could identify one another outside the library where we had agreed to meet. I was slightly concerned that the testing session would go horribly wrong and that it wouldn't be very beneficial but that couldn't have been further from the truth.

The Week Ahead

Today was a somewhat organisational day. Lectures in the morning were nothing special as usual but the rest of the day seems to be preparing for the rest of the week. I will be working Pop Tarts again this Saturday, which seems to be becoming a regular occurrence these days and I attended the Computer Science Societies AGM.

A Sleepless Night

Despite working last night and thus by definition I should have got home and collapsed into a wonderful slumber, tonight was possibly the worse night's sleep I have ever had. It was almost daylight by the time I got back to the house which didn't help but then the torrential rain rattling off the roof prevented me from drifting off.

A Smoky Event

TSC work will start to get a bit repetitive from now on as I've worked at least one of each of the regular events now. Tonight was another Pop Tarts but thankfully there were some interesting happenings to keep me interested. During the set up there was a problem with a few of the lights and I still don't know what is wrong with them but it is being looked at on Monday. Despite this the lights still looked pretty impressive - something I'm always aware of for when I start venturing into the tech positions. For the mean time however, being a general crew bod means I can get a little bit of work done during the event with only a few interruptions.

Testing Times

Today has been surprisingly successful for a change. I did forget to add myself to the payroll for TSC but that can wait until Monday. I finally got round to doing some shopping and gave the car a bit of a run at the same time which is good. As usual, I went a little bit mad and now have enough food to last me several weeks but nevermind, that's why they invented freezers. A very noteworthy bargain though - sadly on a non-list item: a five pack of Crunchies for £1 a potential saving of somewhere in the region of £1.50.

#LeadersDebate

Tonight sees history in the making, the first ever televised debate between the three main candidates for the job of Prime Minister. Despite other countries such as America having done this sort of thing for nearly fifty years, this is the first time the UK media companies have managed to convince them all to appear together, unscripted and answering questions that they have never seen before.

A Taste of What's to Come

The only event planned for today was a presentation on the Genesys Solutions module that we have the option of taking next year. Basically, it gives the students the experience of running a software development company which is a subsidiary of the University of Sheffield. It was one of the main reasons that I decided to do my degree in Sheffield and I've been quite looking forward to it for a long time. I had however, forgotten that this talk was happening today and although we received a reminder yesterday, I was reminded by a course mate at the TSC formal on Monday night. Had it not been for this I may not have even noticed the reminder email.

Missing Time

I managed quite well this morning despite lasts nights escapades and got through an hour of presentations and even wrote a half decent abstract (I think). It was then off to the lab for a couple of hours and here I managed to get the modelling program we are supposed to be using to work before the demonstrators had arrived to show us how. When they did arrive they repeated the exact steps I had taken so I was pretty impressed with myself as nearly everyone else seemed to be struggling.

TSC Formal

As if I hadn't had enough TSC in the last week to last a couple of months, today was the AGM and the formal. With my first and only lecture over and done with and with the added bonus that our second assignment is not due until week 15 - I thought the last week of term was week 12 so this means it would be due during the exam period which is practically unheard of, why can't all lecturers be this laid back? - I put in my vote and opted to work next Saturday's PopTarts. This should give me time enough to catch up with all my work and this event doesn't require a huge amount of effort so Sunday shouldn't be too bad either.

A Much Needed Rest

After all of the previous four day's activity, today was a much needed rest day. I caught up on some TV and some much needed sleep. I have also remembered that I haven;t posted a single of the week for ages and so here is one for you that I heard yesterday. I was slightly early - by about 45 minutes - when waiting for the crowd before PopTarts yesterday and heard this on the speakers. It was a wonderful cover of Jump in the Pool by Friendly Fires and so after some YouTubing and Googling, I managed to track down the artist.

The Final Training Day

It is all nearly over and I'm slightly sad to see the end of it. The twelve or so juniors who may only have spoken to each other once or twice have got to know each other really very well and have become part of the TSC family. Today's training was much the same as yesterday but this time in the Fusion. The set up in here is on a much smaller scale than the Foundry and a lot of the equipment is permanently installed.

Day 3 of Training

The next two days are split into four sections and we have been divided into four groups so that we can rotate between them all. Today we were Foundry based and the first section is lighting. After yesterday's Perl training session, today was more focussed on rigging the lights and making the physical connections. Our group seemed to develop a rather bad habit of wireless communication - which (for obvious reasons) doesn't work.

Day 2 of Training

Today's training is all about lights and focuses on how to use the lighting desk - the Perl. When you are confronted with something that looks like this for the first time it can seem incredibly daunting. Thankfully, we had a professional trainer on hand to teach us all how to use it and once we had grasped the basics, it actually became quite intuitive.

Day 1 of Training

So today begins my four day Easter training for TSC. The hope is that at the end of this I will be able to fill the technical positions at disco events (a disco event is anything without a live element to it i.e. a DJ). The topics for today were health and safety and sound. The first bit was obviously not as interesting but very necessary as we will now be working much more closely with the equipment and can be held responsible if anything should go wrong.

To Sheffield

As always with a travel day, there are only really two things that happen. The first being packing and therefore, the second is unpacking. There is of course the driving bit in the middle but seeing as that is just me sitting in the car listening to music then as far as I'm concerned, that's juts a dead period in the day.

As of now there are four out of five residents in the house - all back quite early (mainly due to lack of work or boredom of our respective locations but as we are now nearly all back, I don't think the productivity side of things will improve too much.

As far as the travel bit went, it was probably one of the best journeys up to Sheffield I've ever made. The sun was shining in the sky, the music was all very good, the traffic light and the journey pretty quick and problem free. If only they could all be like that, life would be so much easier.

Tomorrow marks the start of my four day Easter TSC training course which also means an early start sadly but I hope to learn lots during that time so it should hopefully be worth it.

Catchup

This will be my last full day in Birmingham until the summer now and so being typically disorganised it was a last minute rush to go round organising some sort of gathering before I departed for Sheffield. Usually in this case I have been far too organised, tried to set up everything in advance and then ended up cancelling it as people gradually decided they were no longer able to come. Endless rearrangements later and some pathetic compromise has been met and we have to live with that.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! I hope your day was filled with food and chocolate as mine was. Only one egg this year but then that beats last years grand total of zero. On the plus side however, Easter lunch was a feast to remember somewhat akin to Christmas - although on a slightly smaller scale.

Dr Who?

Today marks the debut episode of the new series of Dr Who with Matt Smith at the helm. Overall impressions... very good. The first episode is always an important one because it has the difficult task of being the introductory episode where all of the characters have to be introduced, the new doctor has to be introduced - not just to us but to himself as well. All in all, with one or two exceptions, I think a good job was done by all.

A Brummy Birthday

The highlight of today has been my friends birthday party and a chance for me not only to leave the house but also to venture out into the scary land that is Broad Street in Birmingham. Despite having lived in the city for most of my life, I have only ever been there twice and only once to a club. Compared to Sheffield, it seems like the scariest place on earth with visions of drunken violence and crime so I have always steered clear of it before, preferring a quiet visit to the pub or other activities outside of the city centre.

Winter Bites Back

Just as we thought spring had sprung, old Jack Frost rears his ugly head again and decided to bring winter back. Subsequently, I have spent most of today shivering and am thoroughly looking forward to the warmer weather staying for a much longer period.

Today has been a sadly fairly boring day but the dull necessities of food shopping and visiting dear old Granddad have to happen at some point and make those days when something exciting does happen all the more special. Saying that, I do sometimes enjoy food shopping, especially in this case when there are special events to buy for such as the two dinner parties over the weekend and the more luxurious Easter food in general - notably of the egg shaped chocolate variety. I feel quite conned by this years eggs and as much as I would love a KitKat mug, I can't bring myself to spend £6 on Nestlé chocolate and a bar of KitKat senses - especially seeing as I don't like them. I remember several years ago when they bought out a limited edition orange KitKat chunky with liquid orange goo inside. A small taste of heaven that has been replaced by some nutty rubbish much akin to a Kinder Bueno from what I can see. Anyway, we decided to go for the cheap Cadburys Creme Egg eggs instead. Much nicer chocolate, hopefully a Creme Egg and a fraction of the price - although still hugely inflated compared to a standard bar but there is something much nicer about thin chocolate that you only get with an egg so I'm willing to pay a small premium.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

I was somewhat dreading today because it involved me making a rather large decision. Nothing hugely important in the grand scheme of things, but important enough to matter. We were venturing into Birmingham - to the jewellery quarter to find my birthday present. Being a 21st birthday, my mum has insisted on buying me something special, that I will have to keep almost indefinitely, which seems like a good idea to me. The decision was made that I shall have a nice watch - nothing massively original but at the moment I still use a Casio analogue and digital combination watch that seems a little bit childish now.

It's also in a very bad state scratched and worn but it is pretty much the only watch that I haven't either lost or broken. The last watch I had actually ran out of batteries - from overuse of the backlight I suspect but that was a totally digital watch and I thought it was about time I made the move to analogue and learned to tell the time properly. So this one has been with me for nearly five years I would guess and whilst it is a good work watch, it would be nice to have something a bit more grown up.

Not having any ideas about what design, strap, shape, functionality etc I wanted, we headed off to a shop that had been recommended by a friend. Talk about choice, this shop was huge and there must have been at least a thousand maybe more watches on display. Where to start!? After looking round them all and immediately dismissing a lot of them, I found a couple that caught my eye but nothing immediately screamed 'this is the one'. After looking in a couple more shops with a much smaller collection, we decided that the first shop was the place to look and so we returned. We went back to one of the ones that caught my eye - a touch sensitive watch from Tissot. It was pretty amazing really combining a lot of functionality into an adult watch and somehow managed to make it not seem gimmicky. The one I saw initially was quite large though and as my wrists are ridiculously thin, it looked somewhat silly. Thankfully there was a smaller watch with a very similar design but it was made from steel rather than titanium like the previous one. This made it considerably heavier and put me off a bit despite it being a much better fit.

Then my mum came to the rescue with the age old adage - 'if you don't ask, you don't get' - and so with a few words to the shopkeeper, she found the catalogue and found exactly what I was looking for. A very similar model made from titanium. The face was actually a bit different and whilst preparing myself for a compromise, it actually turned out to be much nicer. I had done it, this was the watch for me. And here is it, a picture of the watch that will soon be mine, my birthday isn't for another month yet and I will be back in Sheffield before it arrives which is a shame but means it will be even nicer when I get it on the big day.

From Joy to to Woe

Good news from the science and physics front this morning with news that the LHC is finally working as it should do. They have started the machine running at 7TeV and have managed to keep it going for nearly four hours. A large amount of data has been collected but it will take a long time for anything to actually come out of today's events apparently. I think it's wonderful that we can have a real time feed of what is happening in Geneva and at CERN via both a live webcast and twitter.

Mr Mechanic

Today has been a wasted day work wise. I kinda accidentally installed the Zero Hour expansion pack to command and conquer which resulted in a lot of wasted time playing the new campaigns. The main part of the day consisted with me fiddling under my bonnet, something I don't do very often and for good reason too but it was fairly necessary in this case.

Lemon Fudge Cakes and #tomsontoast

Searching through some recipe books earlier today in search of a pudding for Easter Sunday (yes I know it's not for another week yet but we were making a shopping list) led me to look back over the recipes from the Hairy Bikers Mum's Know Best show. I came across Aida's recipe from the first show (if I remember correctly) for lemon fudge biscuits. So they have been made and are currently cooling in the fridge. They supposedly only needed a couple of hours but they still seemed a bit squishy when I iced them earlier so I have left them overnight in the hope that they will harden up a bit. Also, if they are any good (as I suspect they might be) then I will post up the recipe.

Springing Forward

Not content with the amount of work I got done yesterday, today was even more dotty but I have now finished the next phase of that prototype and can move on to the final one tomorrow. Early tomorrow morning, the clocks will spring forward an hour and whilst I usually either forget or change them so early that I confuse myself, this year presents another challenge. Because I am in Birmingham for the holidays and my alarm clock(s) are in Sheffield, I will have to remember to change them all in two weeks time. It's difficult enough remembering on the day let alone a couple of weeks afterwards. I have managed to configure Outlook to send a delayed email which will hopefully remind me but we shall see.

Seeing Dots

I have managed to get quite a lot of work done today and as a result of which I am now seeing red and blue dots all over the place. This was the first proper attempt at a prototype for a teaching tool and looking back over the coding that went into it, even if it was my first attempt at actionscript is frankly unacceptable. I think I started with around about 500 or so lines of code and I am now down to perhaps 300 and that includes all of the extra functionality that it has been given today.

Voting

Despite convincing myself that I would continue with the early starts, I thought I deserved a rest this morning so I had a little lie in. Okay, quite a lot of lie in - something I'm now regretting seeing as I feel even more tired than I did the previous day. To even further hamper any thought of getting some work done, I have been playing with Command and Conquer at least two or three times a day since installing it and I have today installed Microsoft's Ribbon Hero game, which tests your knowledge of the new ribbon interface in office 2007+. As suspected, I'm pretty good with most things although there are some nifty presentation elements to excel that I wasn't aware of which takes the conditional formatting to a whole new level.

The Arcadian Kicks

Today was the last day I have to get up early which is a huge relief because I am now knackered. It's not even as if I've done loads - in fact, apart from the morning drive to the other side of Birmingham and back, there isn't a lot else that I've done.
I did however, make a point of stopping to get some petrol before the dreaded rise on Sunday.

Here, There and Everywhere

Today has been a very busy day and I have been so tired that I have taken a nap in the car and in someone else's house. An earlier start than yesterday meant that I could obviously fit more into the day and my mum made sure that I did just that.

FlashForward Returns

As a treat for being back home, I have been designated the local taxi service and so for the next few days will be ferrying my mum around at stupidly early hours of the morning. In fairness to her, I did offer to do it (because I'm kind like that) but after this morning, I might be regretting that decision a little bit.

Back Home

Today has primarily been a travel day despite the actual travelling only taking up about two hours. The Easter holidays have officially begun and so I am now writing this post from the comfort of my home in Birmingham. It's always weird being away from my student home because the way of life here is so very different. There is a totally different time zone (about two hours in front of what I'm used to) so in a sense I suppose I can blame the inevitable forthcoming tiredness on a sort of jet lag.