Quarter Century

Thursday the 27th August 2009 saw me reach the age of 25. I am now in that category of people who move down a box on age range in application forms. I had a great weekend with my best friend Nick Greenhill (who is also half of my Best Men in just under two years time), which involved lunch by the river, beverages in Hoxton Square, reading some XNA books, and visiting a market to spice up the terrace. I've ended up with both Lemon and Lime trees due to my indecisiveness.

I was fortuneate enough to aquire a wine making kit from my Granddad Ray as a birthday present. With some help from Nick over the weekend, I've got 4.5 Litres of Pinot Noir fermenting away in my lounge.

I've been cracking on with a little website maintenance since then, and will hopefully have some updates ready soon. In the meantime, My and Nick's game has benefitted from a meeting to get us on the right track for the next month, where we'll be exploring a 3d modelling tool that won't set us back anything.

Snow Leopard

Now that Apple have announced the release of Snow Leopard, I have ordered promptly! I've the 2.8 GHz iMac so looking forward to giving it a welcome boost.

To give my game a little more focus, I've decided to buy a book on XNA.

Getting back into the swing of things

Since it has been an awfully long time since I've posted to my personal blog, I thought I would get back into the swing of things by posting an update to my personal site at the same time, syndicating this blog on there using the Google Data API for .net. I'm also taking this opportunity to syndicate the blog from AllportGreenhillGames, which is the creative partnership of myself and a chap I know from my time in Switzerland whilst at university, Nick Greenhill. We're writing an Xbox 360 game together using XNA, and hopefully will be posting some screen shots on the AllportGreenhillGames blog very soon.

Apart from still working as a Software Engineer, I'm still playing Xbox 360 when time allows, as well as now planning a wedding following my engagement back in March.

I'll aim to write on this blog as and when time allows, so keep your eyes peeled for site updates and regular blog posting going forward!

Waiting for my 360

9 days ago, I got the dreaded XBOX 360 Red ring of death. I promptly called Microsoft about the problem, only to be told that I had to send it away to their repair centre in Frankfurt, Germany. A week ago I had my precious gaming machine packed up nice and snug for UPS to come collect it.

Whilst waiting for my gaming life to be sent back to me, I decided to give my iMac a bit of a boost by giving it 4Gb of RAM to chew on. Very good for someone like myself who likes to use Virtual Machines a lot on the Mac.

I'm now at that stage where I am waiting in anticipation for my XBOX to come home safe. Fingers crossed.

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...