What a crazy few days it has been.

Since I first posted that I was looking for work, I’ve been rushed off my feet following up on all of the companies that approached me. Most of them were as a result of my CV submission to just about every job I saw advertised containing the phrase PHP – rather than as a result of seeing the post, but one company – an American company – did approach me as a result of this tweet. (more…)

In just over one month, the employment contract I have with South Worcestershire College will have expired, and I will be unemployed.

They’ve extended my contract once, and have been a really good company to work for, but I’m ready to move out into the real world of work, and start to make my mark.

Listed below are details of what sort of position I’m looking for, and what skills I’m able to offer in exchange. Please don’t take this as a begging request for work, as I fully intend to do the leg work required to find a job – although saying that, if you like what you see, please feel free to contact me (more…)

Today was going to be the launch of my latest project – the new site for my current employer: South Worcestershire College. Due to technical difficulties with the server hosting the site, however, it’s now not going to happen for another two weeks.

The problem stems from the fact that the server is running both Apache (for my site) and IIS (for the college’s internal systems), and is resulting in all requests coming into the server, regardless of the URL, being grabbed by Apache and forcing people to view the new site.

I have to admit that I’m feeling disappointed – not so much at the fact the site hasn’t gone live yet (after six months of development, I can wait another two weeks) – but in the way that some people at the company reacted and the nasty comments directed at Jason (the guy who was doing his very best to fix the problem and keep everyone happy).

Although this is something that is entirely out of my control, I can’t help but feel guilty.

Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, I’ll be able to make a new post celebrating the launch of the new site, but for today, I’m on a bit of a downer

This is a reply to the message posted by my friend Cos.

While I agree with some of what you say, and admit that Dawkins can be a bit extreme at times – I think it’s only fair that the atheists get someone that is willing to put themselves on the front line by standing up to be counted. Maybe he is going about it in the wrong way, but I, for one, respect him for what he is trying to do (no, he is not my god).

I’m an atheist. And I have to say that I hate religion. But don’t get me wrong, that’s not the say that I hate religious people. People can believe in whatever they want, if it keeps them happy, don’t make any difference to me – it’s the organised forces that prey upon such people that I dislike.

You talk about 9/11 – yes it sucks that Muslims the world over got a bad rep as a result of it, but if it wasn’t for Islam (or any religion), and the idea that you have to do what this imaginary authority figure tell you to, then there would not be people (religious leaders of all forms) taking advantage of their followers.

From what you’re saying, it sounds like you’re all for the idea of the pope being arrested, you just don’t want Dawkins to do it?

I just wanted to take a very quick moment to give a plug for a game built by a couple friends of mine – Egyptian Labyrinth.

In Egyptian Labyrinth you collect idols while avoiding sandpits in treasure mode, strive for perfection in timed mode, and conquer the warped maze in pyramid mode. There are 50 levels per mode.

They’re also hosting a competition via their Twitter account where once they get 100 followers, they’ll give away a free copy to one of their followers.

So make sure you check it out.

I got a very nice email from the University today asking me to log into the SOLE page (the place where students can see information about their course and grades, etc).

Within this site there is a link titled Award Details, I clicked this link, and this is what I saw:

Click to enlarge

I can’t believe that I’ve got a First – I’ve known that I’ll be getting a First for the past nine months or so, but now it’s official, and I still can’t quite believe it.

When I first started university, I figured that I would be getting a 2:2, maybe a 2:1 at most if I worked hard (I always classed myself as a B student), but to come away with a First is… well… indescribable.

I think some celebration is in order

It has been a few months since I last did a Wordle for this site, so I thought I’d do a new one.

Just a short post to let everyone (and by everyone, I mean both of you) know that I’ve successfully moved into a new flat. For the first time in my life I’m living on my own. My kitchen is MY kitchen! My bathroom is MY bathroom! It’s great!!! Check out my Twitter feed for some photos of the flat.

Because of the move, however, I’ve once again fallen behind schedule on my Independent Study. According to my project plan, by Friday I need to have completed two Cognitive Walkthroughs and be ready Monday to start my data modelling – I can’t see that happening at this rate.

Oh well, now that I’ve finally sorted things like moving my telephone and broadband connections to my new address, I think I’m going to enjoy the rest of my evening, then start fresh tomorrow morning with the rest of my project.

I just wanted a share a website that I discovered today while browsing the Magic: the Gathering blog – something called Wordle. It’s quite simple, you just point it at any site with an RSS feed and it creates a word cloud.

Here is the one for this site:

Right – back to work now I guess!

I would just like to take a moment to thank Google for providing a fantastic service. Why am I thanking them? Because I’ve just set-up a direct synchronisation between my Windows Mobile phone and my Google account.

Up until now, I had been syncing my phone with Outlook, which would then sync with my Google calendar – and this works, all except for the fact that it required two different sync-systems to work (doubling the chance that something could go wrong – which it did), and that it didn’t sync my contacts.

Now, thanks to Google being awesome, I’m able to sync my phone with my Google account directly – over the air – without the need for the Outlook middleman – not only that, but it also syncs my contacts as well.

There are some issues with it, such as my phone’s instanstance on making single name contacts (i.e. Amy) their surname, but these are minor problems. My ultimate aim is to get a T-Mobile G1, but this will have to wait until my current phone contact expires.

In other news, I’m meant to be working on the assignment that’s due in tomorrow – but instead I’m installing Windows Se7en beta on one of my laptops.