Coming to Aberystwyth back in 2006, I recall moving into my house in PJM (91, room C) with my family, Mum fussing about unpacking everything in my room, and my sister shoving all of my kitchen stuff in my cupboard (I never knew exactly what I had in that cupboard until I moved out the following summer).  I recall them leaving and being terrified to go downstairs, when I had plucked up the courage to go downstairs to meet my new housemates I was greeted by a friendly face offering me a cup of tea.  This friendly face was, of course, Faye’s and we spent many hours sitting in that kitchen drinking tea.
The year went on and I met new people, learnt new things, and had some wonderful times.  Perhaps most memorable is the ‘snow day’ in late February 2007, the revision sessions with seven of us crammed into my PJM room and generally ended up with Street Fighter being played on my SNES, and the long summer days playing frisbee on the University grounds.

After a long summer working, second year was upon me.  New lessons to be learnt, both in University (computer architecture, network programming, data structures and more) and in life (managing bills and other household issues).  Shortly into my second year Faye and I started going out, meaning we’ve been together just over two and a half years as I write this.
The second year saw me get an interview with Sun Microsystems and after an exam in January 2008, I was offered the job.  Revisions sessions got bigger and moved to lecture halls with projectors and elaborate slide shows.
The most memorable events of second year has to include mine and Faye’s “one month anniversary” dinner (after spending all day working, we were just about to get ready to go out when a friend knocked on the door and had us talking for three hours.  After getting ready and finding a restaurant that was still serving, we managed to order lots of tapas, but they refused to make us paella), and going to see Bill Bailey perform Tinselworm in Birmingham.

As soon as second year finished, I was plunged into yet new situations.  Moving from Aberystwyth to Camberley, I started work at Sun Microsystems.  Rather than go into any sort of detail here, I’ll direct you to my various postings of which there was one a week detailing what I was up to in Sun.
Sun gave me a lot of new skills, and made me realise what I was interested in and that what I learnt at University might actually not be much use in the big wide world…
I loved being at Sun, everything about working, and working for a company that did what I wanted to do, and in a way in which I wanted to do it.  I hope that I have a similar employer in the future.

After spending the summer working for the MOD, I entered my final year of University.  It was difficult to get back into lectures, and I found coursework terribly difficult to get on with.  I was constantly pining to be back at Sun, back at my desk in GMP03 collecting tickets, tinkering with servers, and having a chat and a laught with the great people around me.
Of course, I had to go on.  The first semester didn’t hold much for me, apart from an overly crowded timetable.  After a terrible Christmas, I was back to do terribly in my exams (all passes, but not great ones).
Semester two came and went.  It was filled with loathing for my degree and a want to break out of the formalities and just learn things that would be relevant to me.

So would I do it again?  If I knew then what I do now, well, I wouldn’t do a computer science degree would I?  I’d already know it all
Seriously, University itself hasn’t always been a happy experience, and of late it’s been the cause of much anger.  But the people I have met and the relationships I have gained have been so great, how could I turn that down?

So, after four years, it comes to a rather awkward end: I’m still here in Aberystwyth, I will be for the next 24-30 months as Faye finishes her masters in fine art.  I am looking for work, hopefully something IT based, but I’ve just got to pay the bills.
If you are thinking of coming to Aberystwyth University, I’d advise that you have made the correct choice.  If you want to email me about it, I’d be happy to answer your email, and if you have an interest in anything you see on my blog or on my website, I would be thrilled to meet up and share a quiet pint chatting about it with you!  Drop me a line to arrange a time.

If you know me and are reading this, now, in six months time, or six years time, send me an email and say hi, I’d love to hear from you too

I spent Sunday in London too, walking around shops and generally seeing the London sites. I still marvel at the London Underground, I think it is an awesome service, I love it!
I’m also marvelling at the state of modern technology. I love that I can hook my phone up to my laptop for internet use, which is what I’m doing at the moment, whinging my way down some train tracks out of London Paddington while writing this blog post. I think its brilliant!

Anyhoo, off home to Melksham now. Will be seeing family and friends for the next week or so, as well as trying to tidy my dissertation code.

First up, I’d like to say that the lack of an SD card reader really doesn’t bug me. All my photos are stored in iPhoto, I transfer them there via a cable from my camera. And this is, perhaps, one of the reasons why people seem to hate the fact there is no viable file system on the iPad. Windows users are used to dragging files around, Mac users (with the introduction to iLife) have enjoyed the magic of self-organised photos, movies and music. Windows users have applications available to them, but many don’t see to use them, Mac users seem to like the increased productivity iPhoto and iTunes gives them.
I believe in a number of years, all these files will be gone. File space and network speeds will mean that compression is no longer needed, so people will only have to concern themselves with Photos, Documents, Music, Spreadsheets, Movies, etc…Apple know that the desktop isn’t ready yet, but the mobile platforms of today are.
Having said all of that, Apple have created an accessory for connecting a camera via USB or by using a SD card.

The lack of Flash doesn’t worry me either. I visit very few sites that require Flash to get the most out of the site. Most Flash on the web seems to drive adverts. It’s a shame that Flash games won’t run, but I tend not to play games that often…
Flash videos can go, with the introduction of H.264, YouTube doesn’t need Flash and neither does a number of other sites offering video streaming.

iPad. I guess it could conjure the image of an Apple branded nappy:

However, I feel the name has slightly more technical and historical background.
In the late 1980′s Xerox PARC’s Mark Weiser coined the phrase “ubiquitous computer”, a term to mean “computing all around us”. He believed that we were entering a new era in computing. We’d had the mainframes (one computer to many people), we’d had desktops (one computer to one person), but now we were entering the ubiquitous era, with many small (perhaps task specific) computers serving many people in everyday life.
PARC created three devices in the early-mid 1990′s, the tab, the pad and the board.
The tab, a small palm device that ran applications on a server and the GUI on the device, it encouraged computing on the go and had the vision of always being connected to the network.
The board, similar to an interactive whiteboard today, allowing many people to interact with it both over the network and physically.
The pad, a smaller more personal board, one could use a tab to drive a board. Pads ran on workstations with forwarded graphics.
Today’s iPad, in my mind, fulfils pretty much what the Xerox PARC Pad tried to accomplish almost two decades ago. The iPhone/iPod Touch is similar to the tab.

The iPad’s hardware is something to marvle at. Whatever Apple have in there it’s super power efficient as Apple claim the iPad will last for ten hours on a single battery charge, and it all squeezes into an incredibly thin package.
The tablet is powered by a 1GHz Apple A4 chip. The A4 chip is a CPU and GPU all on one chip. I’m guessing the added bonus of having this combination is perhaps less power consumption and added room in a cramped space. I can see the next-gen iPhone having an Apple chip. The A4 drives all of the applications and the 9.7″ screen which runs at a 1024×768 resolution.
The three capacities given are 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, each costs $100 more than the previous.
Apart from that, I think it will be interesting to see the first break-apart.

Pricing isn’t too bad. The 16GB model is $499 as of 31/1/10 that’s £312.79! Perhaps Apple will up this to £350, though I fancy that they’ll charge around £400 for it.

I’d like to see how the iPad is recieved when it is released. I’m also looking forward to seeing the second and third generation iPads.