Dan Rooke’s Blog

It’s been a fairly quiet news couple of weeks. Here’s a few noteworthies.

Becca’s graduation
This was a big occassion for all, except Becca. It was great to finally see all the hard work which she has put in over the last three years being recognised officially.

A rather shaky photo of Rebecca Elizabeth Parnaby BMus (Hons) shaking Patrick Stewart’s hand.

The University’s chancellor, Patrick Stewart, was in attendance awarding the graduates along with some cheap jokes about X-Men III and his one man stand up show in London!

Work
This week I finished my first project working for the University’s School of Education and Professional Development. A simple PHP web application to list and manage notices for students of the summer school held by the department. I used some new features to PHP5 such as the try catch structure as well as experimenting with PEAR DB_DataObject package.

Honeymoon
Becca has now booked the honeymoon! We’re off to Patterdale in the lake district. Next weekend we shall be visitng the Registry Office as well as our Vicar.

Christmas
It’s that time of year again! Well that’s what the retailers would have us believe anyway. Preperations are well under way here, we have even bought our very first tree together. Don’t worry though, it’s not up…yet!

Well maybe it hasn’t been such a quiet couple of weeks. It’s certainly kept me busy enough to not be able to post on this here blog! Hopefully the next post will be sooner, see you next time!

It’s been a busy week, having finished off working for Blackcat and starting work for the University of Huddersfield. I have also been busy looking into setting up a business with friends Andy and Chris.

An aspect of the business will be produced high traffic websites, the first of which is now live at huddersfieldstudent.co.uk hud.yourstudentvoice.co.uk. We are currently in the process of developing a business plan with a view to pitching our business idea to potential investors. I shall keep you posted as our plans for Fused Networks progress.

I finished working for Black Cat Fireworks on Saturday, after a gruelling 8 hour shift almost continually unloading heavy boxes of fireworks. Needless to say it was a tiring day, extremely tiring!

As a bonus everyone got some free fireworks. I also bought the biggest selection box available (buy one get one free). Myself and Andy combined our fireworks to amass a huge number of gun powder based goodies. A group of us had fun letting off about a third of the stock pile. We’ll remember for next time to buy bigger and not to go for selection boxes with smaller fireworks in!

It was a good three weeks of work, very enjoyable. I might even be back there next year, we shall see!

Uni
I have now started my second week back at University. All has gone well sofar and I’ve even managed to get a final year project proposal down onpaper, all I need to do now is polish it up and submit it.

Job
I’ve applied for several part-time jobs in the search for money. I tookpart in a traffic survey on Saturday in Huddersfield town centre. Thiswas a couple of hours standing in a very windy and cold street markingdown registration numbers and the type of vehicle. Not overly exciting,but money none the less. I will also be joining Black Cat FireworksLtd. in Crossland Moor in the run up bonfire night. This should be abit more enjoyable and will also keep me busy for three weeks.

ISPs
We are now connected to the W3 via Freedom 2 Surf’s services. Thetransition went smoothly, however I am having a little trouble gettinga refund off Pipex for services not rendered - no surprises here. Ihave found that Mozilla Thunderbird’s read receipt notification to beparticularly handy as it reports back exactly who has read an email andwhen, lots of lovely evidence to throw at Pipex which may hurry them up.

Cheaper Calls
And finally, the prospect of phoning Pipex up again on an 0845 numberwas not too enticing. Luckily, I came across a great website whichessentially provides geographical alternatives to these more expensivenumbers. The website is SayNoTo0870.com and comes highly recommended.

I officially finished at CCL last Friday (9th). I received lots of goodies, one of which was a carry case for Holly. This has been very useful already and hopefully will be throughout my final year at Uni.

I’ve had a great time at CCL and learnt a lot, I will miss several people there as well as getting computer kit at cost price!

I have now got until 26th September to get various things in order before starting back at Uni - One of these is my final year project. I have a few ideas floating about which I will need to research further - Wish me luck!!