Unforeseen Circumstances

Last week I received a letter from the university, explaining that due to “unforeseen circumstances” the Brangwyn Hall ‘is unavailable’ for the graduation ceremonies. After a bit of research it was discovered that it was affected by the planned national council strikes on 16th & 17th July.

We would instead be moved to a “marquee” on Fulton House Lawn on campus (360 degree panorama of the site – requires QuickTime). While I can understand the reasons for the strike taking place, and accept that the Brangwyn is unavailable – my problem is with the replacement location. There are plenty of locations in Swansea where a graduation could take place – the Liberty Stadium, the LC, or even in front of Swansea University’s Abbey. But Fulton House lawn is not a good solution – it’s the middle of a roundabout!

This place on campus is probably the ugliest part of the university. Fulton House is an eyesore and it is surrounded by building sites.

Again, Swansea University put its own profit ahead of its students – without whom, the university would not exist.

Press Release

A bit later on, I found a Facebook group with many other students feeling the same way. I decided that someone needed to make a bit of a fuss. Charlie put together a press release which was sent to a number of news agencies, including BBC Wales and The Evening Post. Both ran stories on Monday this week (here and here).

The people at the BBC did a really good job –getting in contact with Unison, Swansea Council and the University. They discovered that earlier that week, Unison had agreed to exempt the Brangwyn Hall from the strike action so that the graduations could take place. There is no-longer any reason for the graduations to take place in a tent on the lawn. However the university had decided not to move the ceremony back to its traditional home – another appalling decision.

The university has defended its action, stating that Fulton House lawn is regularly used for ‘high profile’ events. However I wouldn’t exactly call the badly organised Fresher’s Fayre or Bierkeller ‘high profile’.

With the first graduation ceremonies starting on Monday (mine is on Friday), I hope that I am pleasantly surprised. With any luck the university will quash its reputation for bad organisation and piss-poor decisions – although judging by a friend’s Facebook profile which describes Fulton House lawn as ‘waterlogged’, I don’t hold out much hope.

Either way, the university’s insistence that the event will be a ‘memorable occasion’ will be provided true – although maybe not in the way they want.

We’ll see next week.

Just over a week ago I was given the result of all this hard work – a Master of Engineering in Computing with Upper Second Class Honours (a 2:1).  I’m absolutely amazed that I manged to get a 2:1, especially when you consider all the additional extra-curricular activities I’ve undertaken during the last few years (my freelance work, the waterfront, etc.).  Its been a really difficult 4 years, and I’m glad its finally finished, but it was definitely worth it!

Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m a graduate – for that I’ll have to wait for my degree ceremony on July 18th!

Since getting my results, we’ve all packed up and moved back to our respective homes.  I’ve spent the last few days helping everyone clear up the house to make room for the huge amount of stuff I’ve accumulated while living in Swansea (its amazing really how much stuff I have).

Today was the last day of freedom – tomorrow I start my job as a full time developer at a web design company in Cardiff.

Now that my time in education is finally over (and partially because we found this while tidying up the study at home), I thought it would be nice to look back at when I started school for the first time.  Below is a scan of the front cover of my very first school report from June 1991 (when I was just 4 years old).  Even back then I obviously knew that I wanted to work in IT!

So, here is a quick – and completely uninteresting – update:

July
- Attended Charlie’s graduation and graduation ball
- Went to an extremely wet Global Gathering in Stratford-upon-Avon
- Worked full time at a web development company in Cardiff as I have for every summer since Y10

August
- More working at said web development company

September
- Charlie & I spent a few days in Paris
- I moved into my new place in Swansea
- Charlie moved into her new place in Cardiff
- Discovered that the university had pretty much forgotten about our course and we had to organise it all

October
- Finished organising the course – although many important details still haven’t been sorted out
- Lots of boring university work
- Lots of web development work

November
- Even more boring university work
- Lots more web development work

So, as you can see, it’s been a pretty boring few months with lots of work but nothing particularly interesting happening. Never the less, I am intending to get back into the habit of blogging regularly.

Hopefully my next blog entry should be a bit more interesting.

On another note, the end of term is finally here. I am at home in Abergavenny for a week or so before heading back to the fun that is Swansea and a 100 page dissertation. 6 weeks before it is due in – oops. I really need to crack on with it.

For a bit of light entertainment, check out NewsBiscuit.com – it filled a few hours of procrastination earlier.

That’s all for now!

So, what is this module about?  As the title suggests, it is all about software testing and making sure software does what it is expected to do.  For years and years, the attitude towards testing software has been in the realm of idiotic.  It has been treated as unimportant and unnecessary.  As long as a piece of software appears to do the correct thing, that’s been good enough – and for a while, it was.  Of course, this has probably (almost definitely!) contributed to the bad image of software development.  As a result, it has become essential to change attitudes and develop policies for effective testing of software.  Over the last few years testing has become as important, if not more important than actually coding the program that is being developed.  The purpose of this module was to introduce us to all the various ways and steps involved in testing the applications we produce as computer scientists.  This is also why Professor Schlingloff has been involved in both the development and teaching of the module.  His expertise in both his research into testing and industry experience was an essential component.

My last few weekends have been taken up with this course and although I am now completely out of sync and can’t tell what day it is, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  One of the major contributing factors has to be the informal way it was taught.  Instead of the lecturer walking into a lecture theatre, rambling on for an hour or so, it was much more laid back.  Regular breaks for tea/ coffee as well as long lunch breaks for pizza or a meal at Pub on the Pond definitely made a huge difference.

I seriously hope the department will take the success of this module into account when planning next year’s modules and that it becomes a regular feature for final year students in the department.  If they run a similar one next year, I will be very tempted to go to it, even if I don’t get any degree credits for it!

Dafydd

This year, we had lectures from a software testing engineer from Citrix systems, a computer science lecturer from Nottingham University, several of our postgrads, and a few lectures / professors from Swansea on various computer science related topics such as games and extreme ironing. More on these later.

Gregynog itself is a very large manor house set in the middle of 750 acres of gardens, woodland and farmland countryside near Newtown in Powys. The house was owned by the Davies sisters – granddaughters of David Davies Llandinum who was responsible for the development of Barry Docks and the railways in Govilon (where I live) and Blaenavon. Before the Davies sisters died, they donated the house to the University of Wales to be used as a conference centre. Since then, it has been used by university departments from all over the country, including the Computer Science department for the last 24 years.

Anyway, enough history… what happened this year?

Well, to start with, since this house is in the middle of nowhere, we were treated to a wonderful 3 hour bus ride from Swansea early on Monday morning (20th November). After arriving at Gregynog and selecting our rooms (I was staying with Helen, Gareth and James), we headed off to our seminar rooms to give our presentations. In my group of 7/8 people, I was amazed at the sheer difference in presentation styles. There were some people (very few) who gave really interesting talks, and some people who mumbled their way through and made an absolute mess of it. I was quite pleased with my presentation, although I think I might have rushed it a bit. However, according to my second marker it was very good, so I just have to wait for the marks to come through.

After dinner we had our first lecture/seminar – led by Professor Faron Moller from Swansea – talking to us about games and winning strategies. This hour long lecture included the chance for students to win £1 if they answered questions correctly… shame I didn’t win anything. Even so, it was most probably one of the most laid back lectures I’ve ever had! This was then followed by several hours of socialising and playing giant Jenga at the bar.

Next morning we had a series of lectures, the first of which was from a software tester from Citrix systems. The speaker was telling us about the processes they go through to test their software before they release them – it seems there is quite a bit of money in testing these days (a hint maybe?). Later on we were given a talk by Graham Hutton from Nottingham University about how to solve Sudoku puzzles in a functional programming language. Another interesting talk which unfortunately infuriated one of the department’s lectures as he believes functional programming languages are completely useless. Funny how he shut up when another suggested he show us how to do it in C!

We also had a very interesting lecture from our Head of Department – Professor John V. Tucker – about some of his favourite equations. Despite sounding boring, the lecture flew past and was actually quite entertaining. Lectures were also given by some of the postgrads about their research – unfortunately, I wasn’t paying much attention.

The final talk we were given was from Professor Harold Thimbleby on success – somehow turning it into a sub-lecture on extreme ironing. Definitely worth watching next year if Harold is doing another talk.

The final evening was spent taking part in the traditional pub quiz organised by Gimbo (Andy Gimblett), an amazing piano recital by Markus Roggenbach, a staff-student meeting led by Chris Whyley to give feedback on the course, and finally the usual piss-up… eh… social occasion at the bar.

It was definitely a very good few days, I really enjoyed it. Hopefully we can find an excuse to gatecrash next year’s event.

That’s it for this mammoth entry, next time – the fun of weekend lectures!

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.