I really can’t be bothered to write more than a few lines for entries at the moment – then again, don’t think anyone is reading it anyway! I might write a bigger entry tomorrow if I have the time.

Oh, on another note – I noticed that my update the other day somehow broke my website feed so apologies to anyone reading this on Facebook – you might have been spammed with several entries at once!

Had a really good day, tried out some new rides that weren’t there last time I went or didn’t have the courage to go on. Their brand new ride – Speed – drops you vertically down (in fact, it curls back on itself so its more than vertical), spins you around upside down etc (photo on the left). Normally this wouldn’t be my kind of thing, but I decided to go on it. Absolutely fantastic – loved the adrenaline rush! Also had a go on Hydro – got absolutely drenched.

Anyway, lots more to do over the next few days – got Sarah’s goodbye party tomorrow (Friday), SUCS beach party (Saturday), a meeting on with Crickhowell Resource & Information Centre about a new website (Monday) and the 2007 Summer Ball (Wednesday).

Got a very busy week ahead.  work leaving party for Mark Overy on Wednesday, trip to Oakwood on Thursday, Sarah’s “last supper” party on Friday and SUCS beach party on Saturday.  Then the week after that we’ve got the Summer Ball again.  Should be a fun end of term.

Charlie’s headed to Plymouth for a few days to take the first batch of her stuff home.  I think I need to spend a bit of time having a clear out and sort out the mountains of unopened post thats sitting in my draws.  Oh well, I will get round to that soon.

Back to revision I think.

Dai

Apart from all this uni work, there’s been quite a lot of other stuff going on recently. Lots of Waterfront work, lots of web development work, lots of socialising and lots of socialising with a certain person. Sounds a bit cryptic doesn’t it? Well, read on!

The Waterfront website is coming on very well. We now have nearly 150 articles stored in the database, 55 of them from the latest issue. James and I also are getting quicker and quicker putting them on the site. Putting the first issue of the year into the database took us nearly 2 days, but this time we had almost all of them finished before the paper was even sent to the printers on Friday night. The website is definitely starting to look very full now, and Google seems to be doing a good job of indexing all the new content. I think that everyone is very happy with the website, especially James and I. On a side note, James and I had an entire article in the paper dedicated to the website 3 weeks ago; take a look at this page to take a look at it on the website (or here for an image from the paper).

Last Monday (16th), Andy (senior editor), Charlie and her flatmates and I had the pleasure of attending the Pinkathon – an annual event at the University that promotes breast and testicular cancer awareness. We all got to attend as the Waterfront’s contingent (except for Andy who was performing in the band – The Pink Stripes). I got some great pictures of the night, some of which were used in this week’s issue of the Waterfront. They will all be put up in my media section soon. After the event finished, Charlie and I headed over to Time for the rest of the night. It was a really great night, good music, and good company.

This Tuesday (24th), was Ian’s birthday so we all headed off to Wind Street for a night out. By ‘we all’ I mean Ian, James, Sara, Kat, Sean, Frosty, and several others from SUCS, as well as Charlie – see what I mean by lots of socialising with a certain person! After several drinks in Yates and Ice, we all headed for cocktails in Que Passa. Yet again, a very good night, lots of drinking, and lots of fun. As always, photos will be put up in the usual place when I get the chance.

Web development wise, I have almost finished the new Hereford Sixth Form College website – expect it to go live within the next few weeks. The website has been completely redesigned from scratch to include much more information about the college. Not only that, but it has had accessibility options added in from the design stage instead of added as an afterthought. When I finally get it finished, I’ll make a post so you can all take a look.

Also, as I mentioned in some of my posts over the summer, I spent my time working for a web design comapny in Cardiff on the new website for the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport. I’ve been informed by my colleague that the website is now completed and live, so feel free to take a look – www.celtic-manor.com.

Well, that’s it for now. Lots more happening in the next few weeks, including more Waterfront socials, the SUCS Halloween social, and not forgetting actual Uni work – after all, that’s why I’m actually here! Bye for now.

So… What have I been up to recently? Well, the week before last was Fresher’s week. James and I spent that getting the Waterfront website up and running as well as helping the Waterfront and SUCS (Computer Society) recruit new members. This all went very well with the Waterfront signing up over 100 new members and SUCS over 30.

On Monday we started the first 3 of our modules for the term – CS332 Designing Algorithms, CS338 Internet Computing and CS323 High Performance Microprocessors. All 3 modules seem quite cool and they are all taught by decent lecturers so should be very decent. We will have to see how they pan out over the next few weeks. In the evening, we had our first Editorial meeting for the Waterfront followed by a brief social with the team in JCs.

Tuesday’s are pretty lazy days for me this term – no lectures!! However I am supposed to spend this day working on my dissertation (it’s working very well, as you can see). James and I were introduced to the Front team – Waterfront’s sister publication in the evening, then I wandered over to Ceri’s and Jo’s to fix their broken internet. Took me 2 hours to get the damn thing working! Bloody NTL.

Wednesday and Thursday I continued my lectures and started CS307 Computer Graphics II. This one could be a bit (a lot) more difficult than last year’s graphics module. I might actually need to buy a book for this one. I also met with my tutor and started to plan my initial document.

Thursday night was the first official Waterfront and Front social. You can see photos of Andrew (senior editor) while very drunk at the top of this entry, and Charlie (features editor) not so drunk next to this paragraph. We started off in Varsity on Wind Street – which despite Andrew’s complaints, was actually a decentish bar. The table we had was short by a few chairs, which lead to a fair amount of entertainment. Whenever anyone got up to get a drink, someone would steal their chair. It certainly helped the group to get to know each other! After Varsity we headed over to the new Idols. A fair amount of drinking later and Tim (deputy editor), Charlie and I were up dancing. I blame Charlie buying me that 3rd pint on me dancing so early in the evening!

Eventually we headed over to Revolutions and yet more drinks – everyone starting to look a bit worse for wear. Someone (possibly me) suggested going to Jaks, so it wasn’t long before we all spit up and headed off. Somewhere along the line we lost everyone, leaving just Charlie, Tim and I in Jaks. A few others finally made it there, but I can’t remember who! I spent the rest of the night with Charlie dancing and drinking more (not the best idea in the world). Definitely had a great time though. I think I got to know Charlie quite well – she’s around the same height as me (which is always a bonus – nothing worse than dancing with someone twice your size!). Also, she didn’t seem to mind my drunken dancing too much, so i’m quite happy!

Walking into the Waterfront office on Friday morning, everyone seemed badly hung over. So it looks like everyone had a good night, some more than others *winks at the Sports Editor Matt Cannon*. I’m looking forward to the next one.

So, that’s pretty much everything that happened over the next week. I might see if i can get hold of some decent photos of the social and put them up online over the next week or so. Also, depending on how well this document writing goes, I might be able to make more regular entries, but I don’t make any promises. I’ve made that mistake before!

Wish me luck.

Frosty and Elsmo attempting to build the bonfire and getting it to light provided some of us with entertainment, while a huge game of Frisbee took place for others.  Bizarrely digging a humongous hole provided entertainment for another group of people.  At least it got filled in before everyone got too drunk or people could have been waking up down there this morning.

There were so many people there I didn’t know, including some people who had graduated back in 1998!  I had a decent chat to a few people I didn’t know before, and discovered that the department has a scarily large number of people from Pontypool – including Kat, Nick and Tom.  Incidentally, Kat’s mum works in the same college as my mum – it’s a very small world.

All in all, it was a great night and a welcome break from revision!  Some photos from the night can be found in my media section.

While on the topic of revision, most of my exams are now over – only one more to go.  These exams haven’t gone as bad as I expected and I feel as if I’ve done quite well in a good number of them.  Operating Systems and Data Communications have both gone very well and I was really pleased with both of them.  Computer Graphics went pretty well as well.  Computability Theory I expected to be absolute hell but I think that the paper was very generous.  Instead of coming out of the exam thinking “oh my god I’m screwed” I came out quite happy with how I did.  System Specification has so far been the worst exam, I think if I’ve failed any of them, its System Spec.  Oh well, not much I can do about that now – just have to concentrate on Compilers for the exam tomorrow (Monday) morning.

That’s all for now, off to make some food then go do loads of revision.

Edit:  Photos of the beach party have started appearing online from various members of SUCS.  Here are some of the links:
Rollercow (Chris)
Talyn256 (Sean)
Akyan (James)