creamed-coconut.org

Yesterday, I finally got round to taking a trip down to PC World to spend the Christmas money that my Dad had given me. I bought my first ever webcam. It ‘s a Logitech one, and I will probably use it mainly for MSN Messenger, as it’s specially designed to be compatible with that. I tested it out today, and it’s working fine.

I also bought another PHP book – this one is a lot more detailed than the one I bought last year – it’s the one by Wrox called Beginning PHP, Apache and MySQL Web Development. There were a couple of other PHP books there too, but I chose this one because I like the way it has several examples of fully-working scripts such as building a content management system, mailing list, bulletin board etc.

I also got a book about Visual Basic programming called Visual Basic 6 Complete. I have never been formally taught VB, but I think it’s a good programming language to learn, so I’d like to study it in my own time.

The final thing I bought was a Learn Spanish CD-ROM (by EuroTalk Interactive) which will help me with my beginner’s Spanish studies at university. I’ve already tried it, and it seems quite good. And even after that, I still had some money left over!

I have spent most of today working on my final year project – it all has to be handed in by the end of Easter, but I’d ideally like to get it out of the way before then, so I can concentrate on revising for the exams. As part of my research, I sent out a survey to all the first-years in the computing sciences faculty, asking them various questions about whether they use online tutorials to help them learn to program.
Today I’ve been drawing pretty graphs and pie charts in an Excel spreadsheet. The results so far are quite fascinating – it appears that the students with previous knowledge of Java programming are more likely to use online tutorials than those with no prior experience.

But in about 3 weeks’ time, I have to stand up and give a presentation about my project research so far – YUK!! Doing presentations is my worst nightmare! Previously, when I’ve had to do presentations here, I’ve been working in a group, so we share the responsibilities, but this time I’ll be on my own. But at least we’ll be allowed to use Powerpoint slides.

After being ill last week, I’m glad to say that since the beginning of this week, I’ve been feeling much better. I’ve got my appetite back, so I’m eating more again now, which is good because all of last week I felt like eating hardly anything. For example, last Friday night I had a chicken curry and left nearly half of it, which is unusual for me as it’s one of my favourite meals. Thanks to everyone who sent me “get well soon” messages.

SparkleBlog Script concerns
Over the last few days, I’ve noticed that rumours have been spreading on various internet security sites saying that this script contains vulnerabilities. I would just like to re-assure everyone that it is relatively safe if you follow the instructions and ensure that you password-protect the admin folder, so no-one else can post in your blog. Also, make sure you keep frequent backups of your MySQL database, so that if anything does ever go wrong, you won’t have lost any of your site’s content.

It appears that these rumours have been spread by just one person, a self-confessed security expert. I feel it is rather unfortunate that this person has chosen to spend his time spreading these allegations all over the internet, rather than helping to fix the problems he says he has found in the script.

I think that it is a storm in a teacup, as I wrote the script mainly for educational purposes, and for personal homepage-owners to use on their sites. As far as I know, it has never been used on a commercial site. If it had been a commercially-used script, then I’d be able to understand all the worries.

To produce this script, I followed several tutorials at other websites, and I have been told that the script is safe for general purposes, even if it isn’t really suitable for commercial purposes.

Anyway, I am always trying to learn, so hopefully I will be able to make it safer in the near future. If anyone wants to help make improvements, or have found any bugs, please visit the Forums.

This has been an awful week for me, because on Monday morning I woke up with a really bad stomach bug. By Monday evening I was really sick, and I had to miss my lecture on Tuesday morning, but luckily the lecturer sent me the notes, so I can catch up on my own. On the worst day, my muscles were aching and on Tuesday my eyes were stinging for most of the day.

I haven’t been able to eat a proper meal for days (except breakfast cereal in the morning, and rice pudding in the evenings, and not much else). Luckily, it’s almost over now, but I couldn’t eat any fruits because they’re too acidic and would make me worse. I felt rather weak and exhausted too. A lot of people noticed I looked depressed. What a way to start the new year! Hopefully the next week will be better.

It was strange that this illness coincided with my first day of term. Maybe it could have been caused partly by me worrying too much – like this term I have to complete my final project, do my beginners Spanish course, and revise for my final exams. But yesterday I went to look at some past exam papers, and they weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. A lot of my nervousness started to die down after that, and I felt a bit better then.

Happy new year to everyone! In the last few days I’ve mainly been sending out speculative job application letters and CVs to local web design/development companies in my area. Yesterday I sent 16 letters, and today I’ve done 10 more. I just have to post today’s 10 later. Hopefully this won’t all be a waste of time. I posted on a careers advice forum, saying what I’ve been doing, and they say they think I’ve done the right thing, but I mustn’t be afraid to follow up the letters if I don’t get a reply to them.

Oh and I’ve also been getting for the new term! Tomorrow I have to go into university to sign up for a Spanish seminar (I just have to sign a form outside the teacher’s office, saying what time lesson I want). I don’t start properly until Monday. But it’s going to be a busy term, I just know it. I’ve got my project to finish, other coursework and then the final exams!

On New Year’s Day we invited the family round our house for a big feast, as we usually do each year. Another piece of good news is that my Mum is going to get married to her fiance Terry in April. They went down to the registry office and booked a date for the wedding, so I’m really excited for them.

That’s about it for now! Hopefully this will be a good year.

This is a review of all the major things which happened in my life in the year gone by. Beware, this may get quite long!

Way back in January, the year started quite well, as in the Spring semester I was able to study my favourite subjects – Internet Technologies, and Database Systems. I did better in that term than in the previous ones. I also remember that for a few days in January, it snowed quite heavily, meaning that there were no bus services running, so I couldn’t get to the university campus for my lectures! Luckily, I managed to keep up by reading the lecture notes online, and doing more work at home. If there’s even just 2cm of snow in our city, that’s it – everything grinds to a complete halt. That’s probably because snow is quite rare in the East of England (compared with some other regions) so the authorities aren’t well prepared.

In March I decided to transform my personal website into a blog site, and make a proper layout for it. Previously, I just had a very boring site with info about me, personal photos, a little portfolio and a links page. At the time I thought it was good, but I’ve learnt a lot since then.

Before I wrote this blogging script, my blog was completely hand-coded, but I would try to update it about a couple of times a week. Then I started adding more visitor content, and joined some fanlistings about subjects which interest/concern me.

Most of the Easter vacation was taken up with exam revision, ready for the end-of-year exams in May (our academic year ends in early summer). Ever since I was 14, I’ve never been able to have a peaceful Easter holiday, because I have always had to revise for end-of-year exams of some sort. And of course, next year will be even worse, as I have to revise for my exams and complete my final-year project.

Round about April time, I applied to do a work-experience placement in web-development through a placement agency especially for 2nd year degree students. I went along to an interview a couple of months later (in June), but I wasn’t selected, and in some ways I was glad, as the placement was very demanding, and I wasn’t confident that I had all the necessary skills. I think I may just about have the right skills now, but probably not 7 months ago and if I had been accepted, I would have had to study like mad to make sure I could meet the employer’s expectations of me. It would have taken up most of my summer holiday, so I wouldn’t have been able to relax very much.

In May, I did all my end-of-year exams, and they went better than expected. A month later in June, I got my results back, and I was really pleased with them, as I had been really worried about the exam for the compulsory Data Structures and Algorithms module. Before I left university for the summer, I had to choose a topic for my final year project. I decided to do a research study into online programming tutorials, and this will carry on until I graduate in summer 2005.

I bought a subscription to Web Designer magazine, and followed some of the tutorials in there. I also started learning PHP and MySQL. I did a lot of work on my personal site during the summer holidays, as I was at home most days, and thought I may as well do something useful, rather than just laze about. Overall, I think I learnt a lot during the holidays.

In June, our pet dog Glen died of a stroke, just a week before his 17th birthday. He had to be put to sleep, and he was buried in our back garden. He had been living here since I was 3 years old, so naturally it seemed weird to get used to being in the house without him.

One of the best things about Year 2004 was that we would often go out with my Mum and her fiance Terry to local places of interest. During the summer we visited some nice places, such as gardens, halls, rivers etc. I also became interested in photography, as Terry would let me take most of the photos whenever we went out.

My nieces have also done well in their after-school dancing club, and they held special shows several times during the year, at the local theatre where hundreds of people could go to watch.

By far the best thing which happened this year was our family holiday in the Lake District for a week in August. It was very good to escape from any worries for a week, and we saw spectacular scenery.

On my return from my holiday, I decided to buy this domain for my website. I also started releasing open source scripts such as this blogging script. My site started to become more popular.

In September, I returned for the third and final year of my degree course. I think the Autumn term went well for the most part, although the workload was heavy, and I did have one or two problems concerning having to work in a group for my coursework assignment, but they were sorted out.

It was in October that my friend Naomi returned home after completing her work experience placement at a beach club in the USA. She had been working as a catering assistant for 15 months, so obviously I missed her. On her return, we went out shopping together and went to the cinema.

Then before I knew it, the Christmas holidays arrived, and we put up our decorations (including icicle lights and a fibre-optic tree, for the first time). The whole family came together once again, and my main present was a new mobile phone.

On Thursday night I went out clubbing with my friend Kay, and her work colleague Rachel and her sisters. It was very good.
On New Year’s Eve itself, I stayed at home with my Mum and Terry, as I don’t like to go out then, as everywhere is extra busy and expensive. My nieces Anya and Emily came round to stay the night, as my sister wanted to go out and celebrate. We watched a live music show on TV, and saw in the new year. Fireworks were exploding throughout the neighbourhood, which were very pretty.

And that’s how my year went. Let’s hope the new year will be better for everyone in the world!