University is over

Wednesday, 2pm, Staffordshire University, Information Systems Development Trends examination. That was the last thing I ever had to do for my university degree (which is a BEng (Hons) Software Engineering). The degree classification I'll receive is now in the hands of the powers that be.

I have now got to turn my attention on to a few web projects to get on with, and an important one to be finishing up.

I have the Staffordshire university summer ball this evening, so with a bit of luck it will be the perfect way to end a great 4 years!

FYP In!

A sense of relief is upon me as Monday saw me hand in my Final Year Project. 30,000 words (and a 7,000 word appendix) should be enough to keep my supervisor going for a while.

For my Final Year Project I decided to pursue the trend being set by Google among others of moving desktop web applications to the web. Back in September, I was bouncing project ideas around with my supervisor, and we ended up agreeing on a web-based programming environment. Java was chosen as the language (due to it being modern and having a large support base, as well as being free and cross-platform).

I am yet to demo this project at a Viva Voce this month, but hopefully all should go well. I'll think about implementing the Web-Based development environment should I get time over the summer in amongst web development for clients and flat hunting in London with my better half.

I now have revision to do...

So very very busy

It is always a stressful time of year for any final year university student. I am not excluded form this crowd, as I too feel the pressure of looming assignment deadlines and exams about to creep up and bite me where it hurts.

My Final Year Project is effectively built now, and I'm now having to fix bugs and try to get it to work in Internet Explorer properly.

I'm sure I'll get some time to myself sooner or later...

To hell with wires!

I've finally decided to give up with Internet Connection Sharing and getting my XBOX 360 on-line. A firend was kind enough to lend me the Wireless Networking Adapter for the XBOX, and I was amazed at both how easy it was to set up, but also how much my connection performance increased.

I am now the proud owner of a wireless XBOX 360 now, and can now continue to shoot aliens to my hearts content with my friend Nick. It's a hobby of ours... honest...

The waiting game

I was well travelled last week. Tuesday saw a trip to Bracknell to a large I.T. Services company, which was a 2 hours 30 minutes in the car each way from Stafford. An early 5am start to my Tuesday meant I was wide awake when the presentations/assessments began. 11am saw an early finish to a swift morning, and I drove back to Stafford feeling good about my presentation and appearance on the day. Two numerical and verbal reasoning tests on-line that evening saw an invite to an assessment day pop into my email box. So far so good.

Friday was also a day of travel for me, but thankfully I had a chance to lay in bed that morning. A trip to London was in order, this time for a second round interview with an extremely well respected I.T. Service, Consultancy and Outsourcing company. I did have a giggle when I realised that the interviews we're being held at their Old Bailey office.

Friday's event kicked-off at 3pm, giving me all morning and a train journey to prepare. Arriving at Euston, I was ready to travel the London Underground system which I adore so much. Arriving early, I settled into one of the many Starbucks of London to sip a latte whilst admiring St. Paul's Cathedral.

A late travel home (leaving Euston station at 6:30pm) saw me arrive back in Stafford at 8pm. I felt good about my performance during the day and expect to hear if I have the job or not within the next 10 days. Fingers crossed!

Transcending CSS

Over the weekend I purchased a book, going by the same title as this post. I have barely been able to put it down!

I have almost finished reading it, and have to praise the artwork and photos. There is just so much in this book to draw inspiration from.

I just hope I don't get that bug to re-design my home page. I'll keep quiet about that!

Anyway, for anyone interested in web design or anyone who makes web sites, I recommend Transcending CSS: the fine art of web design to you.

Connection Woes

Being a web and software developer, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. Every so often, it is nice to be able to take a break. My distraction item of choice is my XBOX360.

I have used the XBOX Live service for some time now, but for the last 4 weeks, my connection has been awful.

My XBOX360 is connected to my PC, which is connected to a wireless network. There are 3 other machines on this wireless network too.

Whenever I do an "internet connection speed test", I always get good results. I have almost 2 Mbps coming down the cable internet connection and 185 kbps going up.

Occasionally, one of the fellow house-mates will download some music or stream a TV episode, so I can understand why things may appear sluggish at those times. I also have another house-mate who constantly seeds torrents, but that is limited to 5 kbps.

Is there a way to configure the wireless router to give my XBOX360 traffic the same priority as regular internet traffic (so I get an equally strong signal at the times when connected to XBOX live)?

Is there another issue that is ensuring that I have the worst imaginable gaming experience?

This is a genuine plea for anyone with knowledge in this sort of thing to contact me.

Visual Studio 2005 on WindowsVista Business... ...Success!

Yesterday saw a successful installation of Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista Business edition. Following Microsoft MSDN advice, I installed Visual Studio 2005, then Service Pack 1, then Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista.

After several hours of installation, I was able to actually run Visual Studio 2005! Thankfully all went well. I set up an Asp.net C# web application and run it using the local server. This ran with no problems whatsoever, and I can now happily continue with migrating programs.

Windows Vista Business Progress

Today has seen me install Windows Vista Business edition and grab a few screenshots. I must say that on first impression it all looks rather splendid. Everything installed so far works fine, but the real test will come when I have installed Visual Studio 2005 (my development tool of choice) and associated components.

I have two screenshots for you all, simply to show off the new interface and window transparency.





Tomorrow should see me post about the installation of VS2005.

Fingers crossed...

Windows Vista Business

I'm lucky enough to be enrolled at a university that is part of the MSDN Academic Alliance program. This entitles students to obtain select Microsoft software for free. The catalogue fo free software was updated to include Windows Vista, so I thought I'd give it a try this weekend to see if it can cope with my way of working. If all goes well, then I'll actually upgrade to it as my primary operating system.

The Windows Vista added to the MSDN Academic Alliance library is the "Business" version, meaning it is essentially the same as the "Ultimate" version, but minus the Media Center.

I'll post over the weekend to let you know how I get on, with any teething troubles identified. I'll also post some pictures. I am keen on trying the new interface, and especially interested to see if all the programs I use on my Windows XP install work without issue on Windows Vista Business.

Here goes...

XBOX 360 on my old CRT

After purchasing the Gears of War game for my XBOX 360, I found that the game wouldn't play because my XBOX 360 had its display settings set to Pal-50. Apparently, Gears of War requires Pal-60. No problem, as its just a simple case of changing the display settings. Or so I thought...

Previously, I had been playing my XBOX 360 by pushing the video signal through my PC's TV Card (as a composite signal) and the audio through the PC sound card. I then used InterVideo WinDVR to display the composite signal on my TFT monitor. When I tried changing the video settings to Pal-60 on the XBOX, InterVideo WinDVR seemed to mess the picture up. Numerous video capture programs were tried yesterday without success, and this made me consider purchasing the XBOX 360 VGA HD Display Cable. Being a poor student, I was reluctant at first to part with some much needed money.

This morning saw me re-arrange my desk (for the 900th time in the last 3 months) to accommodate my 17" CRT monitor that my mother donated to me, along with her old PC. It is a superb condition Philips "Slimline" CRT (if such a thing ever existed).

As things are never fully straightforward, I realised that the CRT has a moulded connection to the monitor, and a male connection on the other end of the cable (as you would expect to connect it to a PC). Trouble is, the XBOX 360 HD VGA Cable has a male connection at the other end to connect it straight into a monitor that has a VGA input. I contemplated the fact that I may have to source down a female-to-female VGA adapter, costing me even more money.

To my surprise, the XBOX VGA Cable also included a female-to-female VGA adapter, so all is well.

Since connecting it all together, I have my XBOX 360 pushing out a video signal at a 1280x1024 resolution, and I also now get the added bonus of no more lag whilst gaming (it takes time for a video signal to go through the TV Card, get processed and then displayed on screen). I have a CRT as if it were a dedicated XBOX 360 TV, and my games have never looked so good since the signal is now defaulted to Pal-60.

If only I could decouple the sound having to go through my PC's sound card and instead get it to go straight to the surround sound system, then that would be even better. Oh well, next pet project is decided at least!

Design, Exams and XBOX Live

So today saw me complete the technical design of my final year project. I'm slightly concerned that the final report will be accompianed by a huge appendix when I go to hand it in at the end of April. The report carries a word limit of 20,000 words. Thats roughly 100 pages. The repost is also due to contain 6 chapters, one for each of the following:

• Context and Preliminary Investigation
• Analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Testing
• Project Critical Evaluation and Summary

To put it bluntly, I have written 22,000 words, across 109 pages. I am yet to finish chapter 3.

Also consuming my time is the exams I have this week. Two on wednesday (with a one hour gap in between), and one on Thursday. To top it all off I have an End of Semester Viva Voce on Friday. What a fun packed week this week will be!

I have also recently discovered XBOX Live since getting a months free gold memberships with the shiny new XBOX360 I so gladly received on Christmas day from my father. I am addicted to Project Gotham Racing 3 at the moment, although I am being a good student and not letting it contend with studying for my time.

Oh well, back to revising Design Patterns, Advanced Porgramming Language Concepts and Algorithmics...