I always have high hopes for the evenings – maybe go to the gym (and make use of the membership that is dutifully being taken out of my bank account every month), maybe finally get around to doing the blogs I keep meaning to write, maybe getting the Govilon history website finished.  However, by the time I get home, I’m always so tired, these things rarely happen.

I think part of the problem is the commute – an hour and a half each way.  If the traffic is good, I can do the journey to Cardiff in just over 45 minutes, but at peak times it takes up to an hour and a half.  The train is just as bad – always overcrowded and now that we’re well into winter it is frequently late.

Just before I went away on holiday, I worked some extra hours to cover for a workmate on paternity leave.  This meant I was getting into work an hour earlier than usual, and leaving an hour later.  The difference in the traffic was amazing.  I could leave the house at half 6 and be in the office for 7.  Leave the office at half 6 and be at home by 7.30.  Just the half hour difference in the morning gave me a whole extra hour at work.

When my colleague is back in the office, I’m going to try and move my hours so I start earlier and leave earlier.  Maybe then I might be able to get through some of the things I want to do in the evenings.

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 VSI-Thinking in Cardiff Bay.

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!

I’ve removed the daily digest of twitter entries from the homepage, archive pages and RSS feed. I decided they were cluttering things up a bit too much. You can still follow my twitter messages though at twitter.com/dafyddbach or keep up with the daily digest in the ‘tweets‘ category.

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 VSI as I have for every summer since Y10

August
- More working at VSI

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.

Bring on next time!

I am so sorry I dared talk to one of your friends (who, in case you had forgotten, was also my friend not so long ago).  I am so sorry that i dared disturb your personal space to such a degree that you decided to contact me for the first time in what, 8 months to express your anger.  There is only one thing that can be said in response to what is an unbelievably childish act - GROW UP.

Been very busy the last few days.  Helped Charlie move out of her house on Sunday.  Took a while to clean, but I think we left it in a pretty good condition.

Had a meeting on Monday at Hereford Sixth Form with a company who wanted to set up an alumni website for the college.  Unfortunately the meeting didn’t go very well, and the costs were much more than the college can afford.  The final decision is yet to be made (and I won’t be involved in making it), but it was good to be able to get my views across to the marketing team.

Anyway, lots to do and many things to pack.  I’m starting work on Monday morning - working at VSI again.  Will be interesting to see which projects I will be assigned to this time.

I am an editor for the student newspaper at Swansea University – The Waterfront. Along with 26 other editors, we spend a lot of time and effort putting together a fortnightly newspaper, a monthly magazine and a regularly updated website – which James and I built from scratch last summer. We work long hours and do it for free. So, imagine how we feel when the Student Union’s part time Web Editor plagiarises our content and uses it as his own. This has happened several times now and I’ve had enough.

Back in mid March, during the Student Union Sabbatical Elections, a group of editors worked throughout the night. The day started at 3pm and ended at around 7am the next day. In this time, we wrote 46 blog entries, more than 9 articles, kept a live commentary of the events, produced 11 podcasts and kept a photo blog. In addition to this, the editors put together an election special newspaper, printed it and distributed it around campus. A few hours later, when the part time web editor arrived for the day, an article written by Deputy Editor Tim Sculthorpe appeared on the SU website. There was no credit to either the Waterfront or Tim.

Last week was the 2007 Summer Ball. A number of editors attended the event to review the bands and take photos for the Waterfront website. Guess our surprise when the photos we posted to our PhotoBlog appeared on the Student Union website with yet again, no credit to the Waterfront or the photographer.

Now, either the SU web editor doesn’t understand that taking content produced by somebody else and passing it off as your own is plagiarism, or someone higher up in SU management doesn’t. For a university student union, that is extremely disturbing. We get told all of the time how plagiarism is wrong and the consequences of doing it are severe. However, the SU keeps doing it – setting a bad example to students.

Doing something like this reflects very badly on the paper and the union. As a further point, why are students going to continue contributing to the Waterfront when their efforts are stolen by the SU with no credit to their work?

This year we have applied to the Guardian Student Media Awards. This jeopardises any chance we might have of even getting a nomination. It looks as if we are the ones plagiarising the SU web editor.

So, what happens now? Well, firstly, any images used on the Waterfront website will now carry the Waterfront logo as a watermark. Secondly, the next time this happens (and I have no doubts that there will be a next time), I will walk away and resign from the paper.

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!