Students blogs

28 October 2011

There is a definite feeling of la fin du siècle* around at the moment. The white-heat of the 3rd year project has a gone and the associated pressure has long since dissipated. Up until this year, there was always a certainly of some form of academic continuation and a mission to accomplish. Now in the fourth year, my primary objective of a good degree is in the bag. I can leave now and graduate with a first class bachelors degree in Computer Science. It is necessary to be honest with myself and be sure that I'm putting the effort in where it counts, as I feel this year is going to be as hard as the last two have been.

Talking about hard work, the summer period was spent in London working for FactSet whose offices are located close to Liverpool Street. This area is the financial heart of the country and naturally runs at breakneck speed. FactSet gather financial information from across the world and then provide that financial information via their own software to organisations in the City of London and beyond. As well as offices in London, there have bases in other parts of the globe including Australia, France, India, Hong Kong, Japan and the US. It is multi-tier operation with includes round-the-clock gathering and processing of financial data and development of software to provide that information in the best form for its customers. Given the scale of the operation, they have teams working with a multitude of technologies. I had an opportunity to work with Perl and a distributed MySQL technology on a project to record timeliness information. It is not difficult to be relentlessly positive of the whole experience, which included many social activities such as poker nights and 5-a-side football (the latter of which I couldn't make :( ). However, I felt really comfortable there and it was a rewarding and challenging experience. The most striking aspect of the company was the understanding that good products are built on good engineering whilst not losing focus on the end goal.

During this time, it was also necessary to plan for a biking trip across Europe, which would represent my first holiday for three years. This involved four other motorcyclists and would last a week. In total, this was to be a holiday involving one electronic engineer and four computer scientists on a journey around Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and France) with only the vaguest idea of the route and place where we'd stay. All bar one of the participants was at this University. Yep, we're proper hardcore. The journey started the moment I'd said my goodbyes at FactSet as I biked it out of London and made my way to the Ferry at Harwich - punctuated by the rather excellent 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy', which was showing at Chelmsford. To cut a long-story short, the holiday was as much fun as it sounded and despite being hard work in places, I'd recommend it to anyone.

This holiday quickly reminded me of one major reasons behind my return to education: work abroad. Whilst I have no misconception that working in a foreign land would be like a holiday, it is a challenge I wish to pursue whilst the opportunity presents itself. The internship at FactSet boosted my confidence in my own technical abilities, whereas the holiday highlighted that my language skills aren't far off the level needed to work. So my mind is made up. Despite the challenges of the financial situation that would lead to the suggestion that one should be grateful for any job offer, I feel that the University course and my collective experience put in place where I can be more selective. The fallback position still remains a job in the UK, but the Continent is my preferred destination.

So whilst the air of la fin du siècle* remains, it is also married to a need to resolve the future. This will need to be harnessed quickly as the group design project - worth two-thirds of the marks this semester - will begin to dominate.

* The end of the century.

4 June 2011

The Viva presentation was sorted two weeks ago and all the examinations are now done and dusted. Barring some very unexpected poor results, it should confirm that I have achieved my original aim - when I started back at University - of obtaining a good degree from a quality university. My academic career will continue for another year, which will allow the transformation of that presumed Bachelor's degree into a Master's degree. Many students would have been in solid education for the previous sixteen years at this stage and no doubt think it just another step on the route to adulthood.

Having returned to education from years in the Real World(TM), I wasn't even sure I could complete the course due to the amount of report writing involved. So the sense of achievement is matched by a sense of relief. If someone told me then that I could write coherent documents of 15,000+ words at a decent rate, I would have laughed. I've always seen myself as a Software Engineer. Thanks to this University and this degree course, I feel that the major weakness in my toolkit has been sorted: I can now fulfil the documentation and communication aspects of the role as well as the practical aspects.

Back to the recent past, the Viva itself seemed to go well enough and I am able to comment on the project without fear of prejudicing the outcome since the marking has been done. Although, the mark will not be given for a few weeks yet. I think the presentation went very well as I wasn't found wanting for a good response to any question - a good response being defined as one which answered the question posed. The big risk in the approach to my project was focus on research content. If my supervisor and second examiner were content that the background argument, the questionnaire data and conclusions from the prototype were plausible and added to current research, then I'd hope for a good first class mark. However, if the emphasis falls on the software engineering and funky algorithms, I'd be struggling to get out of low-end 2:1 territory.

Regardless of outcome, I am pleased with the prototype of the project. During revision, the prototype was extended to include the ability to load and save files. I felt that my prototype was better that the other offerings on the market. My own opinion may be biassed, so it was further underlined when other people asked if they could have a copy. There is a real boon when other people appreciate what you have done. The downside is that I have a pile of feature requests and bugfixes, but it'll give me something to do when the need to chill out goes and I need something to do. The prototype itself will be released in both binary and source code forms under the GNU Public License 3. I'll post here when this has been done.

Meanwhile, I've hit a diary vacuum. Since October, I've not had the opportunity to stop. So this vacuum is a time to enjoy some serious relaxation. This is a time to be social before saying goodbye to people who return next year and au revoir to those who have finished their academic careers for the foreseeable future.

Tis only a short pause though. Next up, a hectic three months in the capital.

13 May 2011

Project submitted!

The project report has been handed in: the piece of technical literature which will have the greatest weight on my grade for this academic year. This was, in fact, done nine days ago, but it has taken me this time to recover and find the time to express the event in words. With the stress of the individual project having been lifted, there exists a sort of limbo which feels something akin to the day after the lord mayor's show. This is unfortunately something of an illusion since the exam period kicks off in earnest on 24 May which seems almost routine. Regardless of the outcome of the project, it is still necessary to put similar effort into the revision for exams as in previous years.

The project report does not mark an end to the project itself. The Viva process remains. This constitutes 10% of the mark, but in reality it is worth far more. A common complaint with the marking of coursework is the lack of an opportunity to explain the thought process behind the approach; show the end result in action and answer questions that the examiner may have. The Viva serves this purpose. A project typically has two examiners; the supervisor and academic from another part of ECS. Chances are that the second examiner will have met with the project student on two or three occasions for a brief insight into the project and would have read the project report by the time of the Viva. Whilst the supervisor will be aware of the path taken by the project, the second examiner will be much less involved and would have developed an impression of the project from afar. That distance allows the second examiner to cast a critical eye on the project: I'm told that this invariably leads to the dynamic of the Viva resembling something like an interrogation with the supervisor playing good-cop and the second examiner playing bad-cop. (Wasn't me gov, honest). Although this definition has a negative cogitation, I'm treating it like an opportunity to put a positive spin on the project and justify the work done. I've spent the last eight months on the project, so how difficult can talking about the project for half-an-hour be? I could probably go on for several hours... Since the Viva serves as my right-to-reply to the initial assessment of my project report, I'll resist the temptation to go into a deep analysis here of the final report until the process is done and dusted. Better to avoid running the risk of prejudicing the outcome one way or the other.

The project submission tipped off a hectic period. I had aimed for at least a week off during the Easter, however this dropped to a few days including a trip to Hertfordshire for Networkshop 39. For those unfamiliar, Networkshop is a conference organised by ja.net, who essentially act as an ISP for the UK's Higher Education and Further Education establishments. This conference is aimed at the network administrators of education establishments. I was there to present on the subject of student requirements in higher education. This included services provided by universities with the aim of improving support of a growing range of devices from smartphones, tablets to laptops and desktop computers. It was only an opportune moment to sing the praises of various services and ideas initiated at ECS. This included Open Data as a foundation for the provision of data for student services. In addition, I spoke of the need to provide slides in a PDF format, which is possible to render on the vast majority of devices available to students at zero cost typically. This is in contrast to Powerpoint presentations, which require the purchase of Microsoft Office or another viewer. It was both a challenge and a privilege to present. Originally I was presenting as part of a pair, but my co-presenter Nick Hatter sadly had to withdraw due to illness. I am much happier about presenting in front of a large audience now and have a better idea of what is necessary. I look forward to having another opportunity to present, if only to improve upon my presentational style.

27 March 2011

Knowing when to stop is an art-form in itself. This weekend has been spent doing very little which is work related. That is not to say that I have not been thinking about the project, but it certainly has not involved writing any of the report, drawing any design or banging out any code. I had found myself in the position of being completely unmotivated and agitated by any change of direction. It could be argued that I would be able to push things forward, which is itself a very difficult temptation to resist, but I decided that a couple of days away from the furnace would be good form. It is very easy to get stressed over the inability to work, but in reality these are days that simply weren't there to be used in the first place. The art-form is assessing the cost/benefit in the face of a frowning and equally stressed management bod. However I have to say my supervisor seems quite relaxed about the project progress.

In terms of project progression, I had a mixture of frustration and joy on the coding front. The prototype is now fulfilling some functional requirements well and in a tidy manner. A few more bits and bobs and it'll be usable in anger from day to day. The frustration was the amount of reworking required in a core component in order to achieve a very subtle, but very efficient piece of user interaction. The effort was justified as the user experience is a high priority.

In addition, the project report-writing is under way. I have an outline and a good idea of what is required. The survey has formed a large chunk of my project due to the time spent in producing it and getting it through the Ethics committee. There are a number of short cuts that could have been made in order to expedite progress, but the survey results would not have been fit for purpose. The amount of good data and the time taken to get it has given me the challenge of making brutally efficient use of the data and showing the time taken was justified. This involves being clear on all the conclusions drawn from the data which are relevant to the project and also publishing the results in a way that doesn't breach Data Protection guidelines.

Anyhow, back to chilling out for a few hours more. As my folks consistently remind me: "Don't work too hard". Keep it quiet, but I might be following some advice.

21 March 2011

I think the blog entries are going to get a little sparse in the forthcoming weeks as it is the stretch of a project where there is an effort to maximise the time available. Fortunately, I appear to have improved during my time at University on matters relating to keeping people informed on my progress. Over the last week I had two meetings with "disinterested" parties in my project.

The first meeting was with my second examiner. Whilst a supervisor can - if they so choose - heavily involve themselves with a project, a second examiner is much more distant. However it is expected that the student keep a second examiner up-to-date on the project. This was the first meeting with a "disinterested" party in the week just gone. In that meeting, I felt I was able to express the project aims, its progress and direction with justifications in a concise manner which was clearly understood. It's not sufficient enough to be genius, it is necessary to explain why(!).

The second meeting was a much more impromptu affair as I needed a signature for an ethics request and both my supervisor and tutor were away. Essentially, I went searching for a suitably responsible academic to sign. Fortunately, Dr Mark Weal - whom many on the Computer Science course will know from Human-Computer Interaction module in the second year - was at his desk and was good enough to provide a signature (and for which I was very grateful). Naturally, it was necessary to explain the user evaluation and the project behind it to obtain said signature. In the process, I also received feedback on some changes that may need to be made in order to smooth the progress through Ethics review. Fortunately, although academics here at ECS are usually very busy, they are usually willing to make the time available to help if they can.

14 March 2011

Project Sandwich

Different supervisors have different aspirations for the students they work with. Whereas I have the relative luxury of a hands-off supervisor who steps in when needs be, there are others who run to a tight timetable. One of my fellow students was asked to complete his report in draft form before the start of the Easter holiday. With my project in its current state, I would find such a request difficult to fulfil. There would be some unnatural ordering of events and some presumptuous writing. Having said that, all projects have different demands. Mine's current demand is bread.

Basically, the general plan of my project has remained relatively intact from the start. That plan can be presented by a prototype sandwich with two slices of evaluation to wrapper it. Given the project will be evaluated during the Easter break (leaving it late? me?) in order to give maximum time for prototype development interleaved with compiling the project report, it is important to get the paperwork done and dusted for said evaluation. This means verification by the Ethics committee. Fortunately, I think I've got an idea of what is needed this time. This form of evaluation differs from the survey as it involves the participants using the prototype. I'd want to be a little more ambitious with the testing procedure, however there are limitations to the amount of time to complete the paperwork. However the paperwork in getting sorted and thus bread is in the oven.

The paperwork for ethics took me three days to compile, which followed on from the solution to my Agile methods problem. As some may recall from my previous blog, Agile methods are not targeted to generating the paperwork, merely the end result. However I realised that the methods still require tracking of issues and bugs. I felt this adequately represented the project management taking place. Since ECS provides a clone of the Sourceforge service, it was ready made for tracking issue and bugs. This did require a few days work transferring my thoughts on remaining tasks to the Forge database. The good news is that I'm now well on top of the paperwork, but it also means I've not developed any code for a week. Development is something that I'm now looking forward to progressing.

6 March 2011

The Ash-powered clock is ticking [1]. This device of torture is the countdown clock which reaches zero at the hand-in deadline of the individual project. Never has such an small block of Javascript, developed by so few, terrorised so many. ECS Helpdesk were good/evil enough (delete as appropriate) to put a version of the website clock on the main screen in ECS Undergraduate labs for a few days. As Alex Ferguson once put it: now is squeaky bottom time [2].

The now regular mid-week meeting with my supervisor convinced me to make some decisions. I've been heavily influenced in the past about the use of agile development methods as outlined in a book called Lean Software Development [3]. One of the key ideas is on the subject of when to take decisions. The great fallacy of early software development processes had been the idea that a design was created and then developed with few alterations. This idea assumed all decisions could be made up-front. However if this restriction is removed, it is necessary to avoid the opposite situation of having a decision made by default. Neither is a good. The art form is taking a decision at the most opportune time, i.e. where there is still a choice of directions and sufficient time has passed to make an informed decision. Typically, I tend to leave decisions to later in order to best assess the situation. However, the discussion with my supervisor led to emphasising the elements required for the prototype.

Up until this point, I had been focussing on those core elements required for a fully working application in beta form. It is not my instinct to leave a job unfinished and thus the concept of prototype showing only the required features does go a little against the grain. However I had also been pushing for sound basis and encompassing original thinking into the end product. The approach taken previously has therefore provided a basis of what is possible but now is the time to split out the requirements list into the possible, new and required against those which would have to wait for a fully fledged application. As the survey is now done and dusted, the justification should not be hard to find.

The issue with agile development methods is that they focus on end product and not on creating a mountain of documentation. However, only the report is marked. Not the end result. The actual implementation is merely a means to an end: the theory is that good software development has already been taught. Many individual projects are based on producing good solid implementations and can receive high marks. However, since I have a background in software development which predates university, this would be reiterating a point and there has been an emphasis on breaking some new ground. Proof that this University produces good graduates can be seen in how many of my fellow students are very competent at cutting code on demand. I allowed myself a wry smile when my supervisor suggested a focus on the prototype even though I have a fair bit of experience in software development. Around here, that's not saying much.

As a random aside, I went to see my folks yesterday and my father asked if I'd gone out Friday night. I responded that I had done so, but it was more like drinks with mates after work than a heavy night out. I actually struggle to remember the last time I went out and came back about 4 in the morning. In truth, I was never much for staying out all night anyway, but it seems to be catching. This is not to say it is all work as congratulation must be extended to Sam Weston for getting his bike licence after more than a few weather related set-backs in getting the first part out of the way. Just in time for the sunshine.

[1] Ashley Browning: housemate and workaholic. One of the bods behind SotonBus. Basically if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and live in Southampton, you need SotonBus in your life. Really.

[2] God knows why I'm talking Football. Tis far too depressing. The mighty Gas - a.k.a. Bristol Rovers FC - are one point off the bottom of the League One. Not a happy season in BS7. However, miracles can happen.

[3] M. Poppendieck and T. Poppendieck, Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2003.

26 February 2011

68 days and counting

No update last week as the project was put to one side in order to prepare for a presentation and grammar test in French. A language module is 16 weeks long and counts as a double module. This means that it runs up until the 4th week of the second semester. The final two assessments count to the remaining 20% of the mark. A good result in both would give me a first-class mark overall, so naturally it made sense to prioritise.

In between all this presentation work, I have also been attending interviews for internships around. Having spent the last two summers in Southampton, I've been looking at opportunities in the West Country and the capital. I have been offered one in central area. More on this when the paperwork goes through. It is interesting to note that employers are very keen to come to Southampton as they seem to have a high degree of confidence in the University and its graduates. Granted that my experience plays in my favour, but other students in my circle of friends who have been on the lookout for employment have been finding a great deal of success in finding work or at least getting to the interview stage. Having had to find a job in IT without a degree, I can tell you half the battle is getting the interview.

In other news, the exam results are out and my results improved slightly on last year - I'm now the right side of the first-class boundary. It is somewhat ironic that my best result came in the Management module, which I was least comfortable with. Good news, since although I've been spending a massive amount of time on my project, I'm doing sufficiently well in balancing that out with the other workload.

At the time of writing, there are 68 days remaining before final report submission. There never seems to be enough time to do most of the jobs remaining, so it is important to keep on top of the situation. It could be suggested that I'm a little cynical about the planning aspect of my work. However, it can be necessary in order to prove to yourselves what there is to be done and prioritise. I have been guilty in the past of focusing too closely on the job at hand, so I will endeavour to keep a good handle on the tasks outstanding. On that subject, I've been developing the rendering element of my prototype, which boils down to primitive drawing based on a XML-based markup language. It should be simple enough, but still involves much work. In the immediate future, my questionnaire is due to close soon and I need to get to work analysing the results. Revolutionising the world must be done one step at a time…

12 February 2011

Second-half kick off

An individual project at University feels very much like managing a football club for a season. Getting points on the board each week is important, and there are a dozen different distractions which have bearing, but the most important thing is consistent good results and by the end of May the result will be fairly clear if not final. This does not apply to the uber-genius class of people who wake up one day and have it done within a month. I risk nothing by stating that I'm not a member of that particular club, so it's very much my responsibility to grind out the work.

The plan remains loosely to design, implement and evaluate a prototype. Talking to my fellow students, it is clear that the pattern varies from project to project. Some will start on design and implementation from day one, whilst others will spend a great deal of time with the research. I know at least one whose implementation is complete for the most part. However mine is circling the design and implementation whilst the survey is out in the wild. Essentially, I am focusing on work that will have to go into the application. This means avoiding doing any work on requirements which may not be included due to time constraints or are dependent on user feedback in the survey.

I have always tended to focus on getting the job done. This could be a historic fallback to my days of rapid application development where the paperwork could wait. However, I'm trying to make a concerted effort to balance the paperwork and the implementation. I spend a couple of hours work on this blog to keep in the habit of writing and thinking about the project direction. The biggest problem that exists with writing up a project is the inability to remember the reasons behind the little choices that eventually have a big impact on the overall result.

One little piece of reasoning has been how to structure the data for visual elements on screen and how these can be searched. It was decided that visual entities are stored in a B-Tree structure which using bounding rectangles instead of values, otherwise known as an R-Tree. Developing my own library for such a task seemed to be a waste of valuable time and Java libraries existed for such a purpose. I found two good examples, but it was difficult to determine which was the most appropriate to use and what impact that would have on the overall design. The focus seems to be on the ability to not only implement, but adequately explain and justify choices. I doubt I'd remember all the little decisions like this when it comes to project Viva.

5 February 2011

Ethically sound

In the immortal words of Professor Farnsworth: "Good news, everybody...": yep, Ethics approval got given for my questionnaire and it is now out in the wild. So the natural progression has been to get anyone and everyone to fill it in. If I haven't got around to ask you yet, it can be found here. Some people in the computer world appreciate getting Slashdotted. In ECS, one can get Joyced. What is Joyced? The term (coined by Samuel Weston esq.) refers to the distribution of a news item by the editor-in-chief and communications manager Joyce Lewis. It was either that or producing a LOLCatz poster ("I can haz your datas?"). It is reasonable to assume that the email from Joyce was far more helpful. Suffice to say that the response to the survey has been very good so far and I hope this will continue. I appreciate the time taken by people to circulate/complete it and thank all those that have done so. It looks like the survey data will produce some very meaningful results.

In another news, I have began making real progress with the prototype. As a natural-born coder, it is so very good to be in amongst the code and producing something. So much of the job involves the paperwork, so the coding makes a positive change. The damn of a new semester has given some subjects which are relevant to the project in hand. One such module is Advanced Databases, which covers Temporal and Spatial Databases, the latter of which is most handy when dealing and searching visual data. In previous years, the first week of the new semester has been quite relaxed as it is only introductory lectures, but this year it has been hectic due to the amount of work required for the ongoing project.

12 January 2011

The oddity of having the third year project progress report deadline before Christmas did have the advantage of pushing the project on to the back burner during the Christmas period. Not having questionnaire data to sift through was something of an issue, but hopefully there will be some movement on that front when everyone including undergraduates have had feet under desks for at least a week. The University itself has been open since the 4th and I took the opportunity to make inroads into exam revision. I have been fortunate enough to have some subjects which cross over with my project. One good example is Hypertext and Web Technologies (aka COMP3016): this involves the parsing of XML documents and the validation of such a document. Since I have to write configuration files, it seemed appropriate to practice this whilst implementing part of my third year project. Bonus.

As elaborated in my previous blogs, I've been working towards making a decision on target platform. The two options have been reduced down to 1) using Java/Swing which is supported by all mainstream desktop environments or 2) using Java on the Google Android platform. I have therefore been producing some rendering code to resolve some known unknowns (Yes, strike it off your management-speak bingo card if you have one). I've decided to find some appropriate devices to test the code. Fortunately, I own a cheap and cheerful Android phone and have been granted access to a Samsung Galaxy Tab which is on loan at the Learning Society Labs. This process is ongoing. In the meantime, I've been hedging my bets by developing some backend code in Java which should remain unchanged for both.

As I arrived back from the Christmas Break before the start of term, I took the opportunity to meet with my supervisor. Bit nervous as this was the one point where I would get feedback before working on the final project report. Got a few points on what to include in future and also that I need a designated proof reader. Plus ça change.

16 December 2010

A story of coffee, pasties and the plan for the future*

It's done! The 'it' being my project progress report. Between 8:30am on Sunday and 1:30pm on Wednesday I clocked up 36 hours of work solely on the assembly of the project report. This involved being rooted to the spot in the undergraduate labs and subject to regular caffeine fixes at predetermined points of the day. For someone who likes to run long distances, there is decidedly not natural and had left me feeling unhealthy. Although I have discovered that the spicy chicken pasties on offer from the staff bar are very good. Cue lots of hugging as various people completed and submitted their progress reports. I was not alone in this.

Up until recently I had so far managed to avoid the need for long hours. I do not like to "cut it fine" as the work produced is usually not the best. However, this is largely my own fault for failing to put a contingency in the original project plan for the progress report. Project plans are generally works of fiction with a small basis in reality. Like any plan, they usually don't survive the first five minutes of the battle without some kind of alteration. Their real purpose is one of providing confidence to the stakeholders in the project. However they do need tp make realistic points, even if they can't be the accurate, detailed and up-to-date documents ideally required. The contingency was necessary to include the weeks taken up by other university work and the questionnaire task which didn't exist on the original plan. Having limited experience in the production of questionnaires and the due process led me to underestimate this task.

Errors of judgement have the habit of eroding confidence, but nothing repairs and bolsters confidence as demonstrating the ability to adapt and learn from any perceived or real mistakes. Naturally, the Gantt chart that got bundled into my progress report included time allocations for the exam periods, breaks for Christmas and Easter and a two-week contingency for the final report. Given the currently limbo status of my questionnaire, it was also necessary to include a list of tasks that may occur as the outcome of the feedback received. Nobody likes surprises in a planned project.

Anyhow, onwards and upwards. I'm now much clearer on what is known, what is not known and what needs to be done.

* Title inspired by Ash Browning.

8 December 2010

Snow, ethics and the ability to blag

It has been an interesting week which was initially dominated by the snowfall and the disruption that it caused. There was never any question of putting my feet up and using the abject weather conditions as an excuse - a simple case of far too work to do. As I'd be holding back on a day off from work, I had no problem with getting involved in the snowman construction - Man with shovel, will travel - on the Thursday. But then the weather focused my mind on the job at hand whilst stripping away the distractions. Oddly enough, it was possible to resolve some of the Data Protection Issues that were hovering around my questionnaire on that Thursday. I have resubmitted the questionnaire to the Ethics Committee which included assurances about the security of the data. As I am asking questions that in an extreme instance could identify the person who took the survey and included a question which may be considered sensitive data, it would be necessary to secure the data. Encrypting the data is a minimum to ensure that if the data were lost, it would be near possible to discern the contents.

In the meantime, I have also met with my second examiner. Most ECS students will meet Professor Michael Butler as part of the first year module on formal methods. I have to confess to being somewhat nervous in the approach to the meeting due to a lack of confidence in personal ability to express the concept. I have confidence in the idea, but I'm not well practised in expressing it. This is as valuable a skill in academic circles as it is in industry. This is especially true as academic funding faces a significant reduction - it becomes necessary to convince external parties of the validity and potential of your research and support it. This support can come in direct funding or the loaning of hardware.

Second examiners will be in the same subject field, but not the same research field. There are different expectations. At present, my supervisor has been very happy for me to progress with the research element of my project and thus I have deliberately delayed making some fairly major design decisions on the prototype. The major concern that my second supervisor expressed was the lack of a test application on all of my platform choices. Ideally, this prototype will run on multiple OSes. Initially, I had earmarked a cloud application running on a web browsers to provide something that would work on this. In theory, this would cover the bulk of devices - PCs, Netbooks, Tablets and even Smartphones - but it would not give the best user experience for all those devices and would lead to problems if a connection to the internet could not be maintained. In addition, this would require a server component to be developed and also a server to run it all on. Not impossible, but there was a question of time. (Incidentally, I had already covered the risks in my risk assessment.)

The alternative would be the development of an application for a tablet. As much as I appreciate the effort that has gone into the design of an iPad, its cost to users remains prohibitive. Plus iOS is considered a minority OS and requires applications to be developed in Objective-C, which I am not familiar with. Google's Android presents a much more developer-friendly environment for me personally. The principle development language is Java and a quick overview of the graphics libraries seems to have most of what I am looking for. Despite the fact that manufacturers have been slow to develop and release tablets which use the Android operating system, they are likely to be within the economic reach of more users - a niche product in a niche market is not what I want to produce. The future direction of this project may well depend on the availability of hardware and my ability to convince a hardware manufacturer or supplier of the validity and potential of my project.

1 December 2010

A question of ethics

My aim has been to write a blog weekly, but there is a limitation to the amount of verbal output I can achieve in one week (I accept that this may come as a shock to my parents and a fair few people I know). My primary occupation recently has been the development of a questionnaire., as I need first-hand data to draw conclusions in addition to those that I have drawn from research. Naturally this involves humans, and anything that involves humans involves a submission to the ethics committee.

There have been occurrences in history where scientists have been somewhat enthusiastic about their work, but have not considered the lasting implications on their participants. I like a (fortunately) fictitious example to demonstrate this point. Imagine, if you will, two boats on a river. On one boat is a floating prison, complete with a full complement of convicts and prison officers to keep an eye on them. On the other boat is a ferry full to capacity with a random selection of the general public. Each boat is rigged with explosives, which will sink said boat and kill all those on board. Each boat contains a detonator for the other boat. Each boat is told that they can save themselves by destroying the other boat. If no detonator is activated in 5 minutes, the explosives on both boats will be detonated.

This is a fascinating experiment in regards to how people react. Tad unethical though. (This appears in a recent Hollywood film, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone by giving the name.) Practically speaking there are few ethical issues: consent was not given by the participants; likely to be traumatic for all involved; fatal for some and most likely criminal.

The ethics committee is there as a safeguard to prevent scientists from being overly enthusiastic. This applies to questionnaires as there would be nothing to prevent my framing the questions in such a way to determine all the single females of a given age with a given list of interests and either using it to find myself good company or selling the list to others. Well, at least not without obtaining clear consent first and proving the data were valid to my research.

The process for ethics committee referral involves the completing of a form and creation of a document with an explanation of how data is used, funded, any external review processes, technology involved, the form of any requests for consent and the questions themselves. Having compiled a list of questions to ask on a survey website, it was necessary to express each question being asked, the logic for the inclusion of question (if any) and the possible responses.

The form itself and supporting document must be emailed to the chair of the ethics committee and the secretary of the committee. These both need to be printed and delivered to the secretary of the committee as the form requires a signature.

Having spent the best part of the previous week compiling the questionnaire, followed by meeting with Mike Wald (my supervisor) and E.A. to review, this established the need to find guinea pigs for testing. This meeting and the testing was done on the Friday of that week. Naturally, I was keen to get this done and dusted. I ensured that the paperwork was complete and ready by the end of the weekend, only to find my supervisor was away at a conference on the following Monday and would be for a few days. Hence a flurry of emails to find someone to sign on behalf of my supervisor and after walking I finally found someone able to sign on Mike's behalf. The urgency was based on the need for data for inclusion into my progress report.

The need for ethics approval is often related to the data protection act. My view was and remains that it would not be possible to identify a person from the data collected, therefore the data could be classed as being anonymous and thus the data protection act did not apply. The ethics committee differed on this point and thus rejected my initial request for approval. This was incredibly frustrating given the effort involved. However, I do understand that the ethics committee must protect the reputation of the University and therefore are likely to be very cautious.

Naturally, I immediately flagged a meeting with my supervisor to best determine a method for getting the questionnaire out there whilst putting the ethics committee at ease. Watch this space...

20 November 2010

Requirement Evolution

My flow of blogs was delayed by another management essay - this time on consultancy and entrepreneurs - but the third-year project still moves on. Having settled more firmly on the intended outcome of my project, I decided it was time to revisit the purpose of the project.

Two reasons:

1) In all third-year projects, a second examiner is appointed. It is typical for this examiner to come from a different grouping in the lab and provides the challenge of expressing clearly the intended work to someone unfamiliar with the academic theory but nonetheless capable of critical evaluation.

2) Any experiment must reach a conclusion, which is based on results and results require some method of evaluation. In this instance, there must be some method to evaluate and judge the level of success of any prototype.

This began to make me think about the wider justifications and the academic literature which backs this idea. More specifically, I need to think about how to write this in a logical flow. As mentioned previously, I intend to issue a questionnaire and have been forming one that will hopefully provide specifics on the perceived weaknesses of other software on the market. This survey will give justification by way of first-hand user experience, but will not provide understanding behind why users prefer one feature over another. This is the purpose of the literature review.

Having reached the stage of writing the literature review, I do not think that the stage has been reached where new requirements can be discarded and have found myself to be always thinking. There was a program on BBC Three - Kara Tointon: Don't Call Me Stupid (Available until the 4th December in the UK), which follows an actress and her handling her dyslexia. Kara had been diagnosed young, but she only recently took the time to revisit the implications in her daily life and improve handling of it.

Being a soap actress is quite a demanding job in the respect of learning a script due to the time constraints involved. The condition can be expressed as a weakness in short-term memory and one of the techniques presented to Kara for dealing with this involved movement and post-it notes. By placing notes which related to the script on various items in a room, Kara was able to improve the time taken to learn scripts. One of my requirements will be to factor this idea of movement into application. There is already apresentation editor which makes good use of camera rotation around a canvas called Prezi. I feel the idea is ripe for expansion. The greater point here is that even though the technique is intended as a solution for someone with a learning difference, it should be useful to a wider range of the population. I have lofty hopes for the prototype.

10 November 2010

Eureka!

I think I may have finally hit one of those eureka moments. Fortunately for the residents of Southampton, I wasn't in the bath at the time and simply just expressed this is as a knowing grin for the rest of the day. For many months, I have had a vague idea of what I wanted to achieve in my third-year project, but was struggling for the academic justification and/or supporting evidence to provide foundation for my work. Software design is an evolutionary process and people typically join at different parts in the cycle. At what point in the cycle of evaluation, requirements, design and prototype should I enter? The first step was taking the jump. For me, this was creating a fixed point by establishing of requirements with only a vague academic basis - the full basis could be fleshed out, or maybe even contradicted, at a later date.

Following on from this brain-storming session, I started working through putting together the content of a survey, which would provide some first-hand justification (or not) for my requirements list. During this process, I was engaged in a seemingly idle conversation with a fellow student over exactly what I was hoping to achieve with the project. It seems that I had been developing a reputation of being the mind map guy. Having read the theory of this form of expression, I found myself at odds with the textbook definition.

Let me elaborate: one of the arguments against the reams and reams of text found in modern academia remains that it is a very narrow bandwidth of communication. Mindmaps seek to allow people to express ideas and reduce reliance on short-term memory by using associations sourced from a central point. There are a number of issues with the strict definition: 1) the word associations are personal to the person who wrote them, which makes sharing difficult; 2) Every mindmap relies upon a central point, which during the learning process is unusually not known; 3) The formalisation of the process essentially creates another form of expression that is more difficult to comprehend than the ideal it should be seeking to replace and arguable just as narrow a form of communication. The idea of mindmaps have developed and been promoted by people who receive money for their services, so it should be of no surprise that claims are preached with enthusiasm, whereas solid academic grounds and citation are a little more difficult to find. It has merit, but it is certainly not the be-all and end-all. I felt something had been lost in the process.

Therefore it was necessary to review and look at what was good and not so good about the process, the tools available and find that missing element. By having this conversation - that seemingly idle one - I was put in a position to articulate and show my current thinking. Although words may fail me on the odd occasion, I tend to find that a demo is a good backup skill. Sam Weston - my interlocutor on this occasion for who I owe thanks for asking - gave me the response along the lines of "you've thought a lot about this, haven't you?". Yes, Yes I have. And at that point, I had centred on what I wanted to do and why it was different and potentially innovative. This allowed me and my supervisor to work out a good method for expressing this in a meeting originally designed to review the questions in the planned survey. I can even summarise my project in two words: Supermassive Whiteboard (with apologies to Muse). Eureka!

3 November 2010

On the back burner

The advance of my project slowed significantly for week 4. The third-year project accounts for a third of the workload, so there are going to be weeks where very little is done despite the best intentions. That being said, it was possible to continue with a drip-drip approach. For example, I managed to complete an initial project plan in a 40-minute gap squeezed between two lectures. This is limited by the second deliverable - the progress report - which is due on the 15th December. The content of the report will include requirements, feasibility study with a cost/benefit analysis and a specification at a minimum, at which point it will be a clearer idea as to what can be done and the project plan will be revised to reflect that.

The same approach is being applied on the progress report: construct the component parts and assemble them come the finish. I feel better equipped to rework a draft with potentially too much material and reduce that down, then put the document together in a week before it is due and be struggling for material - although this sometimes doesn't aid with producing a narrative, as it can look bolted on as an afterthought. However if the component parts are clear, it is merely a case of thinking though a linkage between each which fits between introduction and conclusion. Time is rarely a friend here. A recent essay for Accounting and Finance (part of the management module), the primary consumer of my time in Week 4, was a difficult task as I lacked a decent narrative until the day before it was due. Fortunately, given the time spent on this project so far, I'm confident that a strong argument with a flowing narrative should be relatively simple to construct given the research material that already has been assembled.

I think it goes against the grain to put something of the size of the third-year project on the back-burner, but it seems to be bubbling away nicely.

27 October 2010

Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation

Repeating something three times is a method to emphasis heavily à la mode of Tony Blair's 1996 conference speech. Evaluation is very much at the core of the project. It is all about user requirements and fitting them not only well, but very well. In a typical application, one focuses on functional requirements and does the best to fit the non-functional requirements first.

The project (my Third-Year Project) itself is focussed on the arena of putting thoughts on canvas, a deeply individual activity, leading to integration into a personal knowledge base. It seems to me that people take several passes at taking in and sorting through information before it becomes something that can be expressed in a coherent form. Typically applications designed for the purpose - Microsoft OneNote, Evernote, Inspiration etc... - are very good at certain aspects, but lack the flexibility to truly replace paper and pen.

The prototype which will be developed is something to be used day-to-day and therefore must pass the pop-music test - meaning to be immediately accessible for all types of users - whilst being useful in the long-term. The driving factor behind my reason for taking on the project which I envisage is that no application in the field currently passes both. Therefore, I suggest that the non-functional user accessibility methods become critical.

Naturally, this involves large chunks of evaluation in the beginning to validate (or not) my personal view on current competitor applications in order to establish requirements, feasibility and specification. On development of a prototype application, there is the need for a second phase of evaluation to establish the success (or otherwise) of the prototype. Due to time constraints involved, only the pop-music test is possible to complete. This is a shame, as my interest in this area has been driven by the long term use of such tools and the belief that writing a shed-load of notes which never get referenced again is just sheer waste. The primary cause of this waste is that there is no good way to index, revisit and re-factor. Something that should be very possible in the modern era of computing.

20 October 2010

Developing good habits and a plan

The aspiration for this week is developing the plan. Given the choice of writing about a project and getting on with the grunt work, I very much prefer the latter. In my ideal world I'd have a subordinate who'd handle that for expressing the plan.

Projects imply size and therefore large chunks of time. Accountants will say time is money, so it is a sure bet that such a commitment of time will require somebody somewhere to give the OK. One of the purposes of the group project in Part II would have been to provide exposure to the whole idea of this planning which involves expressing facts, developing a potential fiction and being aware of potential failures. These would be the development of a skills assessment, a gantt chart and a risk analysis respectively.

The issue at present is the exact requirements and therefore the exact tasks and the exact skills required for such tasks until the research phase is complete, therefore it pays to be somewhat vague and produce something which behaves as a basis for future work.

First, there is the skill assessment. Although this may reflect personal opinion to a certain extend, an honest person will produce something which is close to the truth and can be considered fact. Second, there is the gantt chart. Given this is likely to be modified heavily before the end of the project, it is assumed to be a fiction of sorts. In manufacturing, this would be quite poor, but this is software development. Finally, there is a risk analysis which aims to handle potential failures. This is difficult to get right in the mathematical sense, since this would require either a time machine or a functioning crystal ball. Clearly there not many of these about since how many people had Volcanoes in Iceland on a risk assessment written before April?

13th October 2010

This entry is a brief reintroduction for people who have not read my blog before and an indication to its future direction. At this point, I'm a mature student - comes with being ten years senior to most of my fellow students - studying Computer Science, and this will be my third year at the University of Southampton. I've worked in the IT industry as a developer for several years prior to my re-entry into study.

The option to travel and work in different parts of the world appeals to me and a degree-level qualification is a very solid stepping stone to achieve that goal. Experience would appear not to traverse international barriers, even with our friends on mainland Europe. I was determined to research my options thoroughly and go to the university with the best reputation in a town that appealed to me. Southampton fitted that bill nicely, although I confess to having applied to the University with the expectation of a rejection.

All universities talk about a combination of A-Level grades, whereas I had to argue that a good A-Level in Maths (which I was in the process of studying in 2007), a BTEC National Diploma (obtained between 1995-97) and my experience in IT was sufficient weight. During my initial inquiries, one big Scottish university warned me that they required two A-Levels in the prior two years before considering any application. Holding down a full-time job and studying an A-Level in Mathematics already, I naturally struck them of my list. Given my experience thus far, I'd say that the time taken in making the decision was a good one and that if faced with the choice again I have no intention of changing that decision.

As a challenge to myself, I intend to use this blog to document the progress of my project. Maybe this will be useful to my fellow students and future students in the progression of a large individual project. Either way, talking about my progress will be as much a record for me as anyone else. I have to confess that the prospect of an individual piece of work such as the third-year project was a motivator. In the workplace, there is usually much less provision and scope for such a task. I don't really intend that as a complaint, but more of an observation on the realities of the situation.

Anyhow, this is week 2 in terms of project time. Prior to the start at the beginning of the last term, we had the process of selecting a supervisor by use of a marriage algorithm. I was lucky as I already had a good idea of both the focus of my project and the academic with whom I would want to be working with. This is not the norm. In fact, it was necessary to go through another round of selection as the initial selection paired me with a supervisor who was not confident of being able to supervise a project which I was proposing.

There are essentially four deliverables in an individual project:

1) Project brief: An single page on the proposed idea. Deadline: end of week 2. Unmarked.

2) Interim Report: The bulk of this is focused around the background and literature review showing the research that goes into the project plus an explanation of work completed and the project plan. Approximately 3,000 words. Deadline: end of week 11, which occurs before the Christmas break. 10% of the project mark.

3) Project Report: Everything and anything pertinent to the project. The problems, goals, background, design, implementation, testing, evaluation and conclusions. All in something like 30 pages or 10,000 words. Deadline: shortly after the Easter break. 80% of the project mark.

4) Viva: A presentation on the project, where a second examiner (who is appointed during the autumn term) will lead the questioning of the specifics of the project. 10% of the project mark.

As this is Computer Science, it is assumed that at least two stages of the software development process will be attempted and the project should be a shining example of these.

At the present time, I have written and confirmed my brief with my supervisor, which has just been submitted at the time of writing. In addition, it has been necessary to lay the ground work, which has involved setting a project on the forge server with appropriate categorisation leading to access to a version control server. Additional work on the paperwork has included setting up the structure of the Interim report, selecting the correct paper size, sections and fonts. Finally, the big piece of work is to begin reading through the literature. Naturally, this being a research-led university requires that good projects are built on good research. My in-tray currently contains, amongst several smaller reports, two recent dissertations by two Masters students which are at least 60 pages long. In between all this, I'm also looking at developing a coherent project plan.

To finish, I should quickly put some names to principle players in the theatre of my project: my supervisor is Dr Mike Wald who recently won an award for his Synote project. Mike works in the Learning Societies Lab and therefore my project titled "Notes to Revision: Development of a note-taking tool to aid the learning process" is very much in his field of expertise. I should also mention the ever-bubbly E.A. Draffan, an ECS research fellow who specialises in this area and has been very encouraging.

3 October 2010

University Eve

I write on the eve of another university year. Freshers week has passed and was an opportunity to get back to see friends after the summer period. Even in the age of IM and Facebook, going down the pub reigns supreme. In amongst the relaxed air of relative freedom, I detect a more sombre mood as the experience of the second's year graft has sunk in, with the majority expecting a repeat performance to maintain their marks. However, not entirely the same: people have different timetables, have different modules and there is the challenge of the individual project. This will also be an opportunity to meet new people. As many have left on year-long industrial placements, so will many return to university after finishing them.

My habit with choices has always been to make a few challenges for myself to keep things interesting. With the focus on web interfaces for the masses, I find myself on E-Business Techniques module, as well as the Hypertext and Web Technologies module. These are the ones which I am most comfortable with. In support of my aspiration to travel and work abroad, I continue my study of foreign languages with French for Engineers. This selection fills two modules, one in each semester. And finally, I opted to do Management 1, both as a challenge and to provide the option of further study. Although, I'm yet to find anyone with whom I am share the same lecture slot. It's either going to be a quiet lecture hall or there could be a few new faces to get to meet.

30 September 2010

Innovation strikes back

People who have read this blog may recall that I spent last summer at the IT Innovation Centre. For those unfamiliar, IT Innovation is a company which is owned by the University Of Southampton and develops ideas generated at ECS with partners from industry. My original intention this summer had been to put my feet up and relax. I mean, how often does someone get the opportunity to lounge about for four months in preparation for a gruelling academic session? However I received an invitation by Matthew Addis of IT Innovation to return for second stint as an intern.

I'll be honest to say that I wasn't entirely convinced that going back was a great idea, since I'm familiar with the old adage in football that one must never go back. Having enjoyed the previous summer there, it wasn't a hard decision to do a volte-face and this would also ease any financial worries.

As always with IT Innovation, the development of prototypes usually involves getting stuck into some cutting edge technology. Internships or any other role in an IT company will usually involve working with existing technology and complying with convention. This is also true at IT Innovation, but to a much lesser extent. This means the opportunity to learn new skills and also demonstrate the ability to pick up the current trend.

However, my experience was a different from my previous year. In my first summer it was working collaboratively on different components of the same project plus a large chunk of virtualisation to boot. In this instance, I was paired with an Operational Research student whose work was to form part of his thesis. This stand-alone project involved producing a model related to PrestoPRIME. What is PrestoPRIME? This is a European level project existing to handle problems in the preservation of digital archives. Organisations such as partners like the BBC in the UK and the Institut national de l'audiovisuel in France have a need and responsibility to maintain these archives and require to plan ahead.

First time around, I was involved in the development of Avatar-M, which was a software implementation of an archive system. This year, my work on PrestoPRIME essentially evolved developing a front-end for a model to determine the rules for such software. This was an interesting challenge as I found myself in the world of client-side scripting on web browsers. Hence this involved a dip into Javascript (using JQuery, jqplot) and HTML5.

I'd recommend any student at ECS (and beyond), who is interested in the implementation of research, to apply to IT Innovation for an internship since it is both intellectually challenging, but in a relaxed working environment. My thanks to Matthew Addis, Stephen Phillips, and my wingman for the summer, Jake Bai.

28 September 2010

Decisions, decisions ...

I'm a big fan of flexibility. Being asked to make a rushed decision is not something that I welcome. My landlord will no doubt be asking in late November as to whether we want to renew our house contract or start showing some over-eager freshers around to take our place. Note to freshers: leave it to after exams in February; the people in the houses will be more friendly and the houses aren't going anywhere. In contrast, the choice of degree programme and modules is reasonably flexible. It is permitted to modify the choice of modules until the 3rd week of the given semester. In part III, or the third year if you prefer, the bulk of the module choices are optional with the exception of the project (2 modules each semester) and Management 1 if a person is on a four-year course.

However, I have something of a dilemma on the final point. If I wanted to keep the option of doing a fourth year and going for the Master Degree, I'd have to take Management 1. However, this is expected to be one of my weaker subjects. When I started University, the target had been an upper second class bachelor's degree and everything more would be considered a bonus. So this is scheduled to be my final year. However, instilled with confidence of achieving stated aim, this follows with the question of whether to push onto the next level. During the summer, I've had the opportunity to be reacquainted with family and old friends. The classic opener in any conversation is to ask what someone has been doing, to which I explain that I'm currently at University studying for an undergraduate degree. The follow up question is usually "and this is your final year?". To this not-very-open ended question, I tended to greet it with indecision.

So what are the pro's and con's of going for the MEng?

Pros:

* Looks very good on the CV.

* Get to enjoy the student lifestyle for another year.

* Ego boost: "Master of Engineering" has a nice ring to it.

Cons:

* Costs at least £20k in real terms: Loss of earnings (at least £14k), tuition fees (> £3k) and living expenses (> £3k).

* More tuna salad.

I have a poster in my bedroom which reads: "Achievement: In life you should not pursue goals that are easily achieved, develop an instinct for what can be only just achieved through your greatest efforts".

Decisions, decisions...

6 April 2010

This is a slightly off topic post which is just an opportunity to point out some of the research here at the University, which fascinates me, with current affairs. I talked recently to my tutor on the subject of taking a fourth year and how that differs from the second and third years (or how part 4 differs from part 2 and 3). Dave explained to me that the ability to learn about a subject in sufficient detail remains important, but the ability to pose philosophical questions and give reasoned answers - backed up research - gained were more important in part 4. This is my attempt to try pose those kind of questions and link that into a subject being pushed forward at this university.

I'm guessing that if you are a resident in the United Kingdom and haven't had your head in a bucket (or been addicted to World of Warcraft, Call of Duty or 'insert name of game here' etc...), you'll know that there is a general election due on 6th May. I can pretty much guarantee that half the people reading this have just switched off. But please, bear with me here whilst I explain why this is a truly fascinating time.

This will be the first UK general election where the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook could have an influence of the outcome. Rather famously, a national newspaper claimed responsiblity for influencing the result of the 1992 election. This suggests what people read had an impact on their eventual vote. Since that time the web has exploded onto the scene and since the last general election in 2005, social networking on the net has likewise gathered a head of steam.

It could be argued that the evolution of the web has reduced the influence of the "old" media (in the form of press) and the editors that run them. It could also be argued that the funding gap between the various political classes would be less of a disadvantage by effective use of Social Networking sites. I don't make any statement here as to the validity of those claims, but these would surely be the meat and drink of any student interested in Web Science as a subject. This is an interdisciplinary field kick-started by leading academics at this university like Dame Wendy Hall and Nigel Shadbolt, looking at the impact the web has had on society in general and what it will have in the future.

Le'ts return to the point at hand, a good example of new media in action was the Chancellor's debate. This was a live debate between the financial spokepeople of the main political parties in this country. This lasted an hour where the broadcaster broadcast on the web, printing tagged tweets and running an online poll. This brings up many questions: did the output of printed tweets alter the view of people online? If so, was the online poll reflective of those people who tweet? Do people who tweet tend to be of one political persuasion or another? Was the online poll an accurate reflection of the people watching on television?

Having watched the event, it is like very much going to a football match and then reading the report in the paper afterwards. Very often you wonder how the reporter has come to the conclusions they do (and on occasion wonder if they were reporting on another match entirely). There seemed to be a sizable gap between the newspaper stories and the vibe on Twitter. The question of time was less of issue since the journalist would have been writing the stories at the same point as the posts were being made. It could be argued that the "old" media had two reasons to publish a report which pushed aside or overstated the opinions being stated on Twitter: one is a question of political allegiance, the other is that advertising Twitter and the likelyhood that increased use of social networking may result in the reduction in desire for the printed word. On the other hand, it is not uncommon from two football fans stood next to each other, who supported the same team, to have deeply contrasting opinions on the same event viewed from the same location.

Regardless of your opinion on the event itself, it seems fascinating, it's happening now and would also seem to provide ample material for study.

* For those that are interested, you may follow me on Twitter.

31 January 2010

Over the Christmas period, I was invited to join up with the people I used to work with during the summer at IT Innovation for their post Christmas drinks in Southampton city centre. This gave me the opportunity to catch up with the developments on the projects that I worked on. For those unfamiliar with the work of IT Innovation, the organisation develops ideas from the University in partnership with industry. This was a good laugh as I had the opportunity to work on the AVATAR-m, which involved working with the BBC and a provider of large-scale hardware to develop software for the storage of audio/video data over multiple mediums on a grand scale. The key points to this software was both the ability to support planned migration from medium to medium, support for data replication to ensure data integrity and the ability to represent data spread over several different servers on different protocols as a singular volume.

My work involved preparation work for a demonstration at the IBC conference in Amsterdam. This involved all kinds of development work from PHP, Java to some low-level coding in C, setup and configuration of some seriously high-powered servers* using Linux. Once all that was done and dusted, work included migration of existing project servers to virtual servers with a minimal amount of configuration changes. I still talk about it with enthusiasm, so yeah, I'd recommend it. I've previously worked in small towns and the centre of big cities, so the environment of a science park a few miles outside Southampton was a nice change. The location required that I needed my own form of transport and the local authorities have seen fit to provide a cycle path from the Avenue out to Chilworth, which was much appreciated and well used. At the time it was typical for a large minority of the staff to cycle in. In addition, there was a local pub and the science park had its own coffee shop which was straight down the corridor from IT Innovation's offices. So generally a very pleasant working environment. My thanks to Richard Lowe, Matthew Addis and Sue Jenkins for making me feel welcome and keeping me challenged whilst I was there.

* For the technically enthusiastic amongst you: these were 4 machines with Xeon processors, 8Gb RAM and 12TB local HDD space. These were rigged to a storage device containing 24TB of disk space separated into RAID10 and RAID5 volumes. The space of the storage device was 24TB after accounting for the RAID overhead. No, they wouldn't allow me to take one of them home with me when I left, but I did get a bookcase...

28 January 2010

First blog of 2010 and the first blog of year. Yep, its been hectic and challenging as predicted. I recall telling people that I felt the second year (or part 2 as they say round here) was going to be where we'd be kept busy with everything plus the kitchen sink being thrown at us and it has not disappointed.

At this point in time, this is the day after the last of six exams. This is the time where it feels odd not to be revising or procrastinating on revision for some such subject. Most people have either returned home to loved ones or delved into some obsession which has been put on the back-burner since the start of term.

In reflection, the first semester has been tough, but also challenging. One module that best represented this has been the Human-Computer Interaction. This is a massive subject due to the number of sciences which apply to the design of interfaces between people and technology. The coursework was worth half the module which involved designing an interface for a telemedicine application on a mobile device, which included a discussion of accessibility issues raised and methods to solve those. It was also important to justify every assertion with reference to academic sources, surveys or other published research.

Due to the hectic schedule of coursework, the time available to do this coursework boiled down to six days solid work with my head-down in the library (12 hours each day, but I always made sure to head back to the house for lunch - a man has got to eat). In the event, it was handed-in ten minutes before the deadline after a last night about-face on the extent of support for users with a visual impairment. This was stressful for many reasons: the extensive research; the struggle to manage the word count - first too little and then too much; the pressure to develop an original idea and the spectre of its value to the course. In the last stages, I was content with the result of the effort. I have been provisionally awarded 72% and the areas which I put a lot of effort into were rewarded, which pleased me. Although one of the comments in the feedback was the depth of evaluation and some coverage of disabilities, which were all aspects which were subject to a word cull late in the day; no matter - good effort in my book.

As a random aside, my mum got an acknowledgement beyond the normal "thanks for the support" entry that populates the section of various academic authors and the odd OSCAR acceptance speech: her many years experience as a care assistant both provided the initial idea and an expert to go back to for reference.

30 June 2009

Feeling slightly elated after receiving my results a couple of days ago. Only 40% is required to pass and the grades from this year have no value in the overall degree. Hence, it would have been easy to adopt the attitude that this will be easy therefore only the effort required to do this should be made. To use the vernacular: that would have been something of an epic fail. (Yes, I had to look up 'vernacular' in the dictionary as well.) Three reasons: the modules that are taught in 'Part I' form a solid basis for what is to come - internship interviews went well because of what I had learned; the amount of work to get by in 'Part II' is higher than 'Part I', so it's wise to get up to speed now and get the best out of the university learning style; Lastly, bright students can be awarded a bursary.

Suffice to say I got an average in the high seventies, which translates into a first. I reserve the right to wear a smug grin on my face for the next couple of days since I'm keenly aware that any repeat of that mark next year is going to be something of a mission.

At the moment, I'm on a break from packing in the move from halls to my new house. The biggest pain of which stems from the unique way the telephone system in this country has been fragmented in the name of competition. Not so much the lack of phone line, merely the lack of broadband which is vital for anyone in the IT sector and arguably increasingly vital for those outside of it. What I would like is to have a phone line with provider A and broadband package from provider B on the move-in day, or at least within a few working days. It's nearer three weeks, especially if the present occupiers haven't got around to cancelling their current arrangements. This isn't a fault necessarily of the people moving out, as moving is probably the most stressful event most people in a civilised society go through and it's easy to forget things. Maybe I should just drop the naive idea that the technical challenges should be the only major contribution to the time taken in setup. (I'll descend from high horse now.)

Anyhow, after the move-in I start an internship locally which will keep me occupied for the Summer. This is related to long-term storage of data. Although it doesn't sound the most sexy of subject matter (but then not many IT roles have that factor), it is of considerable importance to organisations which generate large amounts of data and has some interesting challenges. More of which I will find out about in due course.

Best get back to packing. Fortunately, the BBC have large chunks of music from the Glastonbury Festival on iPlayer and this could provide a decent soundtrack to the move.

31 May 2009

As you can no doubt imagine, it's been a little hectic since the end of the Easter break. The steady flow of coursework deadlines, in-class tests and lab marking sessions has kept everybody on their toes. Whilst we were in the Stress-Agony-Panic-Relief cycle of multiple coursework deadlines, we are now in the Stress-Agony-Panic-Relief cycle of exams. This is worse than being a footie fan.* It's the equivalent of having several different project deadlines come at once, followed by presentations and examinations of said different projects.

This has been an interesting exercise of juggling a lot of short-term priorities and picking the appropriate time to pause. Something of which technology has come to the rescue. I think that anybody returning to education should be given a crash course in communications on the edge. This naive idea of using a mobile phone for talking to and texting people is simply not sufficient.

Things you need to know how to use, if you don't already:

1) Facebook is a place to post photos, hobbies, histories and other contact info. The establishment of a relation is quite formal since anyone wishing to be known as your "friend" in the Facebook has to be confirmed by you. It is possible to restrict information based on whether people are friends or not.

2) Twitter is a personalised news and noticeboard feed for others to follow. Although control can be afforded to the user to control those who follow, the relation is not so well-defined as is the case with Facebook. The act of posting is 'to tweet'. Twitter restricts posts to 140 characters, so this promotes short and concise messages.

3) Instant Messenger have been around for quite some time and fulfils the need of instant communication without starting a vocal conversation. The strength is that conversations via an IM have the benefit that they give the opportunity to compose a response as the conversation remains on screen. Multiple conversations are possible as immediate responses are not necessarily expected. (Incidently if people use MSN and you have a unix box, I'd point you in the direction of aMsn.)

The technology for posting information in the first two forms has been around for sometime, however it only now that people have a simplified and standardised form to use. Choice is never bad, however the easy-to-use and popular consistent form is a big win as people have to get familiar with the given form.

How useful can they be? Pretty damn useful. ECSS organised a 6-a-side football tournament. Since I was drafted into a team of random people from Electronics, as well as a few from Computer Science. Unfortunately, our manager didn't have direct method, meaning mobile or IM, to contact me. Initial messages got passed by a fellow student via Facebook and managed to co-opt one of my tutor group into being a sub via IM.**

Separately, the Odeon Southampton has this technology to thank for an increase in revenue for the new Star Trek film. A discussion in a pub, which itself was organised over IM, led to the suggestion to see the film. The time was subsequently confirmed over IM, which was followed up a post on twitter by one of the group. The expected number of people was three. Eight showed up as result of the twitter post. Result. Made for a interesting post-film analysis on the 45 minute walk back to our respective halls.

As a footnote, digesting the Wiktionary page on Internet Slang is probably a must if you want to understand some of the short hand. Although anyone who dislikes colourful language would be better avoiding the page.

Lastly, feeling not so much smug than relieved after the Data Structures and Algorithms exam plus a little proud after a 45 minute run, I managed to leave my Student ID card in the sports centre. Thanks to whoever returned it to reception. Losing that would have truly spammed my plans for the forthcoming weeks.

* Anyone who has been a dedicated season ticket holder of a football club will recognise the cycle of Stress-Agony-Panic-Relief. The build-up to matches is stressful, watching the match can be agonising, there is always a moment of panic/extreme stress before the final whistle of any given match and possibly a moment of relief if you team got the result they needed. However, the cycle will soon start again.

** You'll note the lack of detail on what happened here. Let's just say it was a very enjoyable run about and that it is the talking part that counts. Next year WILL be very different and may involve at least 6 months of training (!). (However it was fun. Honest.)

8 April 2008

I'm writing this in the middle of the Easter break. The draft timetable has come out and suddenly it's evident that the end of the academic year is approaching quick. In fact, I needed to remind myself it was April. The exam period begins at the end of May. As with all exam periods, this could be a little stressful, so I intend on getting the work in over Easter and hopefully not finish the term in a mad rush. Campus is relatively quiet as you would expect. This is a double edged sword as the social scene is naturally a little quiet. On the other hand, this week has been great work wise and I'm plugging on nicely with the work outstanding.

It has been a marked improvement on last week where I got hold of a new machine and started to tinker - sorry, "configure" - said machine. As this involved building large chunks of an operating system from source code, there are plenty of puzzles to be had. A lot of what was covered in two modules were put to good use or could be applied. For example, since only a very basic text editor exists in the environment all the little bits of shell scripting from System Administration Tools and Techniques came in handy and having done a bit of background reading from Computer Systems and Architecture, the options in the Linux Kernel make a little more sense.

For the non-technically obsessed amongst you, this is the equivalent of solving the crossword in the Times, but it can take a little longer. Talking of newspaper crosswords, this may well have been where our lecturer for Advance Programming got the idea for the second coursework in that subject, which got set before the break up of term. Yes, its a crossword application. It is one of those nice visual pieces of work that makes you think about font rendering, mouse event and keyboard events. It is also something you can show to friends and family without the need to explain the theory of complex numbers*. That being said, the spec does outline what the definition of a crossword. Seems odd, how could you not know what a crossword is? Then I stop to remember the international village that the University is part of. That being said, I only just got around to familarising myself to the very British creation that is Monty Python. Now I tell you this parrot is dead...

* The first coursework involved rendering a fractal, which was visually pleasing. However, it did involve absorbing several wikipedia articles to get to grips with.

23 March 2009

The spring term has just come to its conclusion with the time to pause and catch breath. The past week has seen some phenomenally nice weather; although this does seem to be the norm when coursework deadlines start to arrive. Fortunately, it promises to hang around for the next couple of days and thus will provide an appropriate setting to relax in. The exodus from campus for the Easter break has meant the atmosphere is halls is similarly laid back with a few mostly international, medical or mature students left to hold the fort. Despite the bare statistic of a four week break, sufficient work has been allocated for the most part. There are at least three pieces of coursework outstanding and a fair bit of background reading to do. So if the weather holds, then it should make a chilled working environment.

So what have learned so far? I've heard it said that you learn a lot about yourself at University. This is true for me on many different levels. Arriving in October, I was nursing two on-going sports related injures. People at work used to tell me that aches and pains start occurring about this age and I suspect it is a culmination of all the abuse that the body gets put through over time. Fortunately, Dr James of the University Medical Centre has extensive knowledge diagnosing sports injuries and the physio Selina have been very helpful. They were able to treat on the shoulder and refer me to a specialist to resolve the issues with my feet, which were found to be less than ideal for running on - but not bad going since I've done two half-marathons and was in the habit of running 10k at least twice a week for the two years. Anyhow, It has involved me being very patient in holding off from the running and swimming, but hopefully I can back into those activities full throttle in the next academic year.

Next up, I was recently assessed for learning differences and found to be dyslexic. We tend to assume that as people have increasing intellectual capability, that all abilities will rise in a relatively uniform manner with perhaps some slight variation. In the case of a person with a learning difference, they will be excessively bright in some areas and relatively weak in others: the variance of those abilities is outside the statistical norm. Reading and writing at sufficient speed for University education is not uncommon. For example, I take a longer time than most to ingest a technical specification for a software project, but once the idea has been conveyed, I will work at double quick pace when it comes to the implementation of it.

This isn't really any great surprise to me or most of my former work colleagues. In fact, it was one my main reasons for returning to education at University level and to improve my ability with regards to write ups and the like. Fortunately, the people at the Learning Differences Centre (LDC) at the University are very friendly and have expertise in developing learning strategies around the various strengths and weaknesses that a person may have. This may well mean the difference between a 2:1 and a 1st, but also will involve extra work on my part to show what I can do, but no issue: I felt this was the case before I arrived and anything I pick up here will be of use when put back into the professional arena.

Finally, Semester 1 results got returned to us just over a month ago and I have come to considered view of them. After the exams, I felt I would be coming back in the summer for one, if not two, of the modules as some of the exams did not seem to go well. As it turns out, I achieved a first (70%+) on four of the modules and only missed out on that grade for the remaining one. So a decent set of results all round. Considering my background and the approach taken during last semester, this is probably as expected. However, all these results have to be taken with a pinch of salt as a lot of it was old ground for me personally.

14 February 2009

House hunting time! OK it is not the most romantic subject, with respect to the date, but a job to do.

As you no doubt imagine, this task was not the magical mystery tour for me as it can be for many others. The questions are deeply ingrained in my head: Gas or Electric? Does it stay warm in the summer? Are the neighbours noisy? How far is the nearest supermarket/pub/barber? Is there a reliable net connection? Although, there is obviously no need to ask about how many the Council Tax is and therefore knowledge of house prices in 1991* can be safely put to one side.

The student bodies - both the university and the student union - are keen to point out the number of student properties in Southampton is more than sufficient to account for the combined number of students in the area. This has had two effects: 1) the rents are very competitive and do not vary a great deal, which means finding a property within budget should not be too difficult given a little patience and 2) the various tenancy agencies seem to be behaving like the doormen outside a nightclub on a quiet evening, where in order to create the illusion of a busy club they allow a queue to build up. So any impression of there being a shortage of properties in Southampton should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Given all that, I was determined to be cautious and picky. The experience of making some bad snap judgements in the past has reinforced this way of thinking. That being said it took two days of looking and six properties before the tutor group settled on a house. In all honesty, it is a truly cracking setup. Otherwise, I would not have been happy with making a decision in such a short timeframe and the deal looks to be a good one. The group were very much in favour of the property from the initial viewing. Although, I felt it necessary to force at least an hour of deliberation to ensure we were not missing anything obvious.

The problem that I encountered was the Guarantor form, or rather lack therefore of. As neither of my parents work (one is retired and the other is soon-to-be retired), this ruled them out from signing one. I understand that if you are a student with no credit history and no references then the need for a guarantor is justified. After all, if you are running an agency then one of your responsibilities is to find tenants who can pay and will pay. But hold on a sec, I do have references, I do have a credit history and I do have proof of funding for the next couple of years, so should that not be sufficient? it was good enough for my previous Landlords/Agencies. Apparently not, judging by the expression of one of the women in the office. They had just been bowled a googly and had no idea to respond. Not quite "Computer says no", but not far off. Perhaps I would like pay a year in advance? No thank you. Call me old fashioned, but I'm not keen on trusting my bank with that kinda money, so they stood no chance. Fortunately persistence and patience pays off: a word with the director of the company and sanity prevailed.

Our soon-to-be Landlord is an interesting character. It is usual to be accompanied by a representative from the agency, but it is more unusual for the Landlord to be present also. During each viewing, he would give a brief history of the property, what work had been done and also what could be done in the future if we so required. As I would later find out, the guy owns a fair chunk of Southampton, yet is seemingly quite content to drive around in a V-reg Honda. Respect is due.

Now the place to live for the next year is settled, better make sure I'm at the Uni to enjoy it :).

* The amount of council tax is calculated using the value of property or assumed value of property in 1991. Successive governments have decided against revising these figures to a later date. Such a move would take a brave politician. However as a nation, we tend not to elect many brave politicians a second time.

17 January 2009

It has been an interesting couple of weeks which have just followed the Christmas break. The lectures have generally been in a relaxed style, but there has been a noticeable tension with the approach of exams. Thrown into the mix have been the remaining Maths module tests, which form the Engineering Mathematics for Computer Science coursework, and a presentation to make on the viability of Open Source software.

The presentation was a relief to complete; I've done some level of presenting before and used to stand on a shop floor selling Hi-Fi's and PCs for a living, so one would think it easy, but I tend to find it goes well or it doesn't. It seems to depend how at ease you are with your audience. Incidently, one of our lecturers has a tendency to ask "Are you buying this?" to confirm with the audience if they have followed what he just finished explaining. This seems an odd question, but from the point of view of a salesperson it's the ultimate confirmation of understanding and there is nothing more frustrating then to have lost your audience. I'd conclude that presentation is one thing that I think gets more comfortable over time to do, but only gradually. People in IT are generally quite adverse to the notion of presenting an idea to real people, but any great idea needs to be championed and hence I feel this to be as important as the technical skills. What's the point in conceiving a ground-breaking idea, if you are unable to share it?

Moving on, the Maths module tests were a pleasure to finally put to bed. The repeated testing has been arguably the most stressful part of the first semester. That being said, a set of half-decent results in these tests and the practice of focusing every week for a couple hours on Maths has put me in good stead for the exam.

As I write this, the sun is shining and the weather is sweet, if a bit fresh. This makes a nice change from the cold and miserable week that has just passed and represents my general feel about exams: there is not real panic in the air, but a requirement to be focused and on your toes. All of the subjects require slight revision, as opposed to any rushed last-minute introductions. This feeling is bolstered by the fact that the tutors are looking for us to succeed, although judging by the past papers, there is plenty of room to go wrong; but undoubtedly knowledge in depth will be rewarded.

6 December 2008

Next week will be the last week of term before the Christmas Break. It's amazing how fast the time has flown by and also how much seems to have been packed into such a short space of time.

I'm looking forward to digging deeper into a few of the forthcoming subjects. Last Friday, I attended a lecture on Computer Systems and Applications where a brief overview of AI was presented. Given our lecturer is very into his subject, it's not difficult to find the motivation to get up first-thing in the morning for that reason. The subject is really fascinating and immediately after the lecture, the conversations started on how such theories could be applied. There is too much interesting subject matter to research, I should consider the possibility of cloning myself...

As this is being written, my mind occasionally meanders onto the technical report due at the end of term and the group presentation due immediately after. Both challenges are focused more on the ability to execute the task in hand than to the content itself - although the latter is important, especially in terms of accuracy. These both have provided a good opportunity to research a previously unknown topic. It's not too difficult in the computing world to find an unknown subject, so it is good to have the chance to read up on a few. As all this requires a dig through a lot of academic papers, the concept of how an idea gets developed in academia and pushed into the public domain in brought into focus. It seems that knowing how write a decent report could indeed change the world.

Onto a quick social life update. Since my last blog, I've attended the final beginners session at Archery. Needed a break on that week and this was just the job. Despite not scoring many arrows, the gradual adjustments to the bow had done what had been expected and paid off. Therefore it wasn't just down to fluke. Unfortunately, I've not had the opportunity to go back since, but I hope to get a session in before Christmas and carry on in the new year.

8 November 2008

Infinity and beyond

Getting to grips with this university lark, I think. Having being told by various former work colleagues that, despite the best attempts of universities to convince otherwise, studying at undergraduate life involves attending a few lectures and not much else, I would like to know to which establishments of higher education they were referring. It bears no reflection to how much work that I've been putting in.

My month's worth of experience at Southampton has taught me that someone will get as much out as what they put in. Although it is possible that one could get by attending lectures and a little reading, I doubt that such a pattern would result in a decent mark.

Similarly, it is a little bit frustrating that course tutors have this habit of being vague in the outline for coursework, so that one cannot systematically tick off the criterion necessary to achieve a good mark. As a professional, in what seems like a previous life, this kind of vagueness would have resulted in an ongoing conversation/interrogation with the other party to determine their exact requirements. Whereas at Southampton, the course tutors seem to be trying to break the habit of dependant learning and get students to properly explore a subject. This sits well with me as there is the occasion, if not the obligation, to know why something exists and what the purpose of that thing is.

In the interview stage, I was keen to state that studying at undergraduate level was not viewed as merely an exercise required to rubber-stamp previous experience. It had been thought that for a software developer by trade, the first year may be a little bit void of new material and not much to learn. In fact, I have been surprised how much relevant new material has cropped up and even if the base material is known, there is plenty more room to explore. This is reflected in the mark scheme.

Knowing everything within the syllabus, such as one exists, in the subject matter will get about 70%. There is still an extra 30% to find, which seems to be achievable only by additional work, understanding and development of the subject. I'm not sure if 100% is actually possible with an internationally ground-breaking piece of work. This is the reality of studying at a research-based university: the sky is the limit. Knowledge is an infinite set; nice to have a challenge.

There is a judgement to be made as to how study is required to grasp any given subject to the required level, and therefore this judgement involves knowing when to stop. In the Programming Principles modules, there are the "space cadets" sessions to keep those that have a firm foundation in software development interested and/or occupied. The challenges set contain a basic task and the freedom to explore the task further by extending the work, in exchange for permission to skip the lectures if necessary*. Call me sad, but a good coding puzzle can be fun and I could quite happily miss sleep, food and life in general to find a neat solution to one. Suffice to say, a little discipline is required. As a side note, I like these sessions as there is competition with other people in the class to come up with something different, which almost guarantees the learning of something new.

As there is only a finite amount of time and a potentially infinite amount of study to fit into it, where an appropriate level of understanding of each module would itself alone fit into a working week, it would seem important to get in the habit of allocating time outside lectures. This does not include the vital social activities, extra stuff and sleep which need to fit into the rest of the week. As I have taken an extra module in French and get out every week for some archery, that amounts to about 6 days out of 7 taken. I think I've just mastered that scheduling. Useful as the coursework has just started to arrive. How good is the schedule system? It is about to be stress tested. Big time.

* ECS legend Eric Cooke does his best to give colourful lectures on an occasionally dull subject ...

12th October 2008 - Part II

Part 2

As expected, the work has already started to flow in. The mathematics module is self-taught and frequently tested. Most of the subject matter will be familiar, but even so it takes time to complete the exercises provided.

As knowledge of programming varies considerably between various students in part I, ECS-speak for the first year, all levels of ability are catered for. The danger of knowing too much, and more importantly, not being on board when your level of knowledge is reached, has been recognised.

Students of considerable experience are encouraged to involve themselves in "Space Cadets" group sessions. As a software developer in a previous life, I feel obliged to join the latter; I am aware that puts me in a class of very smart people and any notion of comfort or even superiority, should be probably be left at the door. Conversely, there are "Ground Controllers" sessions for those who were not coding at the age of 4. Either way, the through-put is more than sufficient enough to prevent boredom setting in. Forget the bare facts of the timetable: this year is going to involve serious amounts of work.

In the first year of computer science, students are presented with a pick of two modules for the first semester: Introduction to Digital Electronics and the blandly named Computer Systems and Applications. The first is a grounding in the underlying electronics that we all rely upon and the latter covers a history of the common concepts. Honestly, I'd like to take both.

This stems from a belief that a good grounding in both the building blocks, as well as the history, is necessary to be successful. The best example of this is Valentino Rossi, who currently holds the world title in motorcycle racing. "The doctor" as he has also been known, is noted as a hard racer as well as something a party animal which is in common with most of his fellow racers. Unlike a lot of fellow racers, it is also a matter of record that he has a strong interest in the history of the sport coupled with an understanding of the science involved in two-wheel racing.

In truth, either choice is a good one and I suspect that I will opt for Computer Systems and Applications as the lecturer has a tendency to tangent off at the end of the lecture to link in his own work. This enthusiasm for one's own work is not unusual here and therefore can only bode well for the future.

12 October 2008

Part 1

Hot coffee, cool orange juice and a freshly baked baguette at the ready. Maybe its not most people's idea of a Sunday breakfast for a student, but it is not expensive and it gives time for a moment of reflection as the clouds have began to settle after a seemly hectic two weeks since the beginning of term.

As a mature student*, there are more than a few little concerns and expectations that arrive with you: the first is that the world you are about to enter has been tailored for those whose jeans don't quite fit. This is a undoubtedly a misconception: if anything the staff at ECS and the university as a whole react to you as they find you. Ask an adult question, get an adult response. The most refreshing aspect of this environment is the open-mindedness of the staff and willingness to be flexible that can sometimes go missing in the professional world. For the technically minded amongst you, I run a Linux laptop and have no access to windows. No problem: pages for configuring access to the university systems from using samba shares to logging in via VPN are up on the university website.

This extends to the campus environment. Any good chess player will know the value of a bolt-hole. I prefer to move out of my pad in order to work. The Hartley Library has quickly become my bolt-hole of choice for this. The red-brick exterior belies a modern interior, which includes almost as much space for study as that provided for the books. This gives rise to the possibility of punctuating the study of subjects like maths, with the odd chapter of something like the American Civil War - an old passing interest - from the shelves nearby, in order to form a break when one is needed.

Another possible misconception is that of attitude to work. The sentiment that as a mature student I would be far more focused on the work than that of my peers has been suggested more than once. Not quite true: whilst I was still researching important matters, such as the location of the nearest decent supermarket, quickest route from halls to campus etc..., the various members of my tutor group had already got stuck into reading ahead on the syllabus for each forthcoming subject. But then again, we are already award winning. All ECS Programmes feature Jumpstart, where one of the tasks involves a walk around Southampton to find various people and places, whilst getting to know the members of your tutor group. Pictures are posted to a blog in order to prove that a task has been attempted. Perhaps we surprised ourselves a little when won overall, bagging a yard of Jaffa cakes in the process, but it was a result nonetheless.

(A quick hello, as promised, to James, Ryan and Tom, who form the rest of my tutor group. The latter of whom will no doubt be keeping you current with his blog on these pages sometime soon.)

* Apparently that is what my birth certificate says: the date of birth field ends with 79. I'll let you do the maths.