Unfortunately I was in work yesterday so most of the day was spent like any other, but when I got home; I found out that my sister Megan was cooking me an absolutely gorgeous 3 course meal. It was fantastic. A few bottles of wine between me, my brother and my parents finished the night off. A very good birthday indeed.

I also got a brand new black, 30Gb iPod, with “daibach.co.uk” engraved on the back. It came just in time, as my old iPod finally died a few days ago.

Work is continuing on Project Metis – expect a detailed blog post on this in the next week or so where I will formally introduce the project and a new blog covering the ongoing developments. The front end of this new website is 99% there and we are now in the process of making the final changes and implementing the back end content management systems. With any luck, we should be able to go live in time for Freshers Week at Swansea University.

In other news, one of my systems has been put to the test during the enrolment of new students at Hereford Sixth Form College. The ‘enrolment 2006′ system was built to enable the new students at the college to submit their GCSE results electronically to the student records system. The website went live on Thursday last week (results day) and has been used by the majority of students to submit their results.

Finally, this is my final post as a teenager. I’m 20 tomorrow – very very scary!

That’s all for now, keep an eye out for the Project Metis entry coming soon.

Daibach

The week started with the UCEA offering the lecturer’s unions a 12.6% pay rise over three years.  This was rejected by the AUT & NATFHE.  This quote taken from someone on the Swansea University Computer Science Forum most probably best explains why:

First, the rate of inflation at the moment is around 2%.  This means that salaries that don’t increase by 2% or more PA are going down in real terms.  While 12% may sound like a lot, remember that it is over three years, and so works out at a little under double the rate of inflation over this time period.  Hardly a huge increase.

The pay rise was promised as a compromise during the last round of pay negotiations.  The lecturers took a smaller increase than they were asking for last time because they were promised a larger one this time.

The Raven – 14/05/2006 15:05:18

Since this offer, things have gone insane and there is now even less of a chance of our exams going ahead without any kind of a disruption.  The exam timetable is being decided on a week by week basis.  The first week of exams are going ahead on schedule as they are mainly third years and masters’ students and lecturers have decided to support them as they are most affected.  However, it remains to be seen whether this is the case for our exams.  I’ll post more details as and when I hear them.

Dan’s 19th Birthday

Last Wednesday I made the trek back to Hereford for Dan’s birthday.  After an appalling train journey (thanks to Arriva Trains Wales), I made it to Hereford about 9pm and found Dan, Phil, Paul and loads of others in Wetherspoons – their drinking already well underway!  It seems they started around 4 and so by the time I found them were pretty wrecked.  The photo on the left shows them around 7ish walking between pubs.  As you can see, they were rather drunk.

After a measly 2 drinks in Wetherspoons before the bar started refusing to serve the group, we headed into Dusk nightclub, where we spent until 2ish drinking and dancing.  The music reminded me a lot of Jumpin Jaks on Thursday nights here in Swansea.

Needless to say, on Thursday morning I had one hell of a hangover.  Of course, never one to say no to a party, I joined Ian and his girlfriend in Jaks the following night!

Photos from the night can be found in my media section

All that’s left to say is Happy Birthday Dan!