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Electronics and Computer Science, Page 6

IT Innovation

As you may have read I've done a summer internship at IT Innovation. At first I did some user interface design work, followed by some business process modelling, and finally, some Twitter research! I researched how to rank users based on their influence rather than using a trivial method such as looking at the amount of followers they have. Continue reading →

Playing with emerging web technologies

During the last week I've been playing with some of the emerging Web technologies that aim to make the Internet a more interesting place over the next few years. I've just finished redesigning my ECS Web site with HTML5 and a little bit of clever CSS, partly to see what can be achieved in a modern browser and partly to see if I could build a really simple content management system (CMS) in PHP without using a database or a web-based front-end. Continue reading →

Exams – Its That Time Again

Exams (1) Is it that time again?[1] Examinations are the bane of the course. A sheet of paper containing questions that we do not know, and we have to be prepared for almost every possibility[2]. But that's almost constant for any form of academic training, whether down to Java Certification[3], all the way up to the last examinations of General Certificates of Education, and of course, university. Continue reading →

Ranked Top 5 Overall for Computer Science

One thing I have come to realise is that being a course representative for a course which is ranked in at least the top 5 overall for Computer Science is not a trivial responsibility. Furthermore, as a course representative, you have to fulfil more than your position. You must not only do your job, but also look out for your course-mates; these people will be with you for the next 3/4 years, possibly longer. You want to treat them well and if you do, they will most likely do the same. Continue reading →

D4 Design Exercise

Three weeks ago all the second year electronics students headed off to a special extra lecture, where we were to be set the final design challenge of the year, D4. We all knew it was going to be something pretty big due to the hefty mark allocation associated with it (75% of one module – roughly the same as one exam paper) but I don’t think anyone was quite prepared for what was to come...”you have 11 working days to build a digital oscilloscope”... *gasp*... Continue reading →

I Met Tim Berners-Lee!

I've had an exciting day going up to London to the Royal Society to attend a Web Science panel. There I saw Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web – very exciting indeed. In fact, I even spoke to him and asked, “How do you feel about the non-conformance of W3C Standards with Internet Explorer?”, to which he replied, “Well, I will be using more and more SVGs [Scalable Vector Graphics] … if you're using Internet Explorer, you won't be able to see these pretty pictures”. Continue reading →

Nerdy Specialist Banter

My first day at work in ECS Helpdesk consisted of mostly nerdy specialist banter*, though I did manage to help a student who couldn't log on to a Mac for some unknown reason. Also whilst I was 'off-duty', I helped one of my friends who had just happened to pick the only faulty monitor in the room - it turns out it was a bad VGA cable, which Toby and I replaced promptly. Continue reading →

Busy, busy, busy

As expected, the rest of December and January were hectic. Coursework deadlines hit hard and fast, followed by frantic exam revision. It all culminated last weekend with the final exam being the hardest. The weekend was spent, finally, getting some third year project work done. The questionnaires are going well, though I need to get a move on if I am to get a decent sample. Continue reading →

Exciting Innovation

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. Continue reading →

Stag’s Head Karaoke

Stag's Head Karaoke As usual, last Thursday I headed down to the Stag's Head on Campus for Karaoke. Mark (our DJ) was already there with John from Entz and I decided to give them a hand (I always have done, and it's good fun). Mark told me he'd bought some new discs for the system. The next question was how to import them. Courtesy of a little research I'd done just before Christmas, I knew of PyKaraoke and more importantly, cdgtools. Continue reading →