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.