30 June, 2011 in Personal by Aonghas

A Coughing Start to the Holidays

I was really looking forward to the beginning of the holidays. After I finally finished my last exam (which just happened to be on the last day of exams!) I thought things were going to get better, but unfortunately for me it was just the start of what would become a downward spiral of health. I should start from the beginning though…

My last exam was on Monday 27 June in the morning – hardware design programming. Seeing as it was my last exam and I didn’t want to fail, I thought I could probably stay up really late and study into the wee hours of the morning. I figured if I could just make it through the 3 hour exam, then it wouldn’t matter if I was completely wasted afterwards because I’d be on holiday by then and I could just sleep it off for the rest of the day (or even week for that matter). so after falling asleep close to 5am and then having to wake up at 7, I didn’t really get much sleep and I was feeling a bit woozy in the morning. Nothing that a cup of green tea couldn’t fix, I thought to myself. In fact the exam turned out to be not as bad as I thought, and I think I probably answered most of the questions adequately. When the exam was over, I was exhausted. I just wanted to go home and hibernate. It wasn’t until then that I realised I was fostered on to work at IC that night from 7pm till midnight! Uh oh… Either way I still needed sleep so I decided to catch the next bus home and I slept until I had to catch the bus back into town. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it through the whole shift awake, but because it was the last day of exams, there weren’t many students still at uni that night thankfully. At 7:45 I had to go downstairs to cover the break for short loans. It was probably the quietest 45 minutes I have ever worked at uni. Not one person came in the whole time I was there and I ended up giving my eyes a rest without realising. Near the end of my shift I started to feel lightheaded. I didn’t feel nauseous as if I wanted to vomit, but my head felt like it was taking longer to move than the rest of my body. I didn’t want to be a nuisance so I tried to press on, but it was quickly becoming apparent that I needed sleep. Luckily the taxi ride home was swift and I managed to get to sleep before long.

The next couple of days were not much better. In fact, Tuesday was probably the worst. I ended up lying in bed, restless with a headache and cough. Not exactly the best way to start the holidays. I’m starting to feel a bit better now but I just hope I’ll be fit enough to go to the V20 Conference tomorrow.

9 June, 2011 in Development, Personal by Aonghas

Introducing PicStream

PicStream is a new initiative for photo sharing

I often take random photos on my camera, phone or iPad whenever I see something interesting, but I never knew how to organise or categorise them properly into albums. As a result they always ended up stored in memory somewhere and I’d never look at them again. I wanted some easy way to share these moments and memories with everyone, so after some thought and quick brainstorming I created the PicStream initiative. Similar to photo blogging in some ways, PicStream is a running stream of photos that I plan to add to everyday which basically displays things I come across in my daily life journey. Whether it be people I meet, places I go to, random signs or symbols I see or friends sleeping in lectures, PicStream will hopefully one day become quite a unique album of photos. I’m planning to extend PicStream in future, but I hope you enjoy browsing through the photos in the meanwhile. You never know, you might end up in the PicStream yourself one day!

Note: Initially you will only be able to see the 8 most recent photos on the homepage. In future there wil be a gallery where you can view all the photos in PicStream.

7 June, 2011 in University by Aonghas

Two Weeks to Go

In exactly two weeks from now I will have my first of three exams for this semester. My first exam is for the management (ENGGEN 303) course and I’ve got to admit, although the content isn’t conceptually hard to understand for the most part, there is a lot of content to cram into two weeks, not to mention the other two subjects I still have to study for. For the management course we were pretty much introduced to some important aspects of business management, specifically management relating to the engineer. We started off by learning about accounting and all the different financial statements that are usually involved when it comes to dealing with money in the professional industry. Our lecturer’s name for the accounting section of the course was Jordi Garcia, and I created a Facebook fan page just for him after he succeeded in delivering what is perhaps one of the most boring subjects (in my opinion!) in a way that was somewhat interesting. I’ll never forget about the “magic pen” business model he used throughout all his lectures as a way to demonstrate examples. Luke Dickinson, you know what I’m talking about

The second half of the semester focussed more on project management and strategies that businesses use to schedule projects etc. We were taught about innovation and had several guest lecturers come to talk to us about their respective careers involving management of some kind. The only reason I remember this much is because we had to write weekly reflections about what we had learnt in class. They were kind of a pain to do at the time, but I guess in the end the did actually help me retain at least some of what I had learnt in class.

The next two weeks are going to be a tricky balancing act for me as I try to work out how much time to spend on each subject leading up to the exams. I’m sure procrastination and distractions will try their best to lead me off track, but I’m going to do everything I can to stay focussed! Studying at uni till after 10pm tonight is perhaps the first step in achieving that goal!

7 June, 2011 in Development, Website by Aonghas

AONGHAS.COM Meets Facebook

Connecting your Facebook account is simple

Things just got a whole lot easier. Last week I launched the mobile version of my website and now I’m pleased to announce the next AONGHAS.COM development with the all-new Facebook integration. Now you can post comments using your Facebook account, so you don’t have to fill in all your user details ever again! Simply click the “Connect with Facebook” button at the top of the comment form and sign in with your Facebook credentials. Now you’re good to go! This is a first-time only procedure, so in future as long as you’re logged into Facebook, you’ll automatically be logged in and ready to post comments without any further steps. You can also “like” any posts or pages and share them with your friends. And don’t worry, your personal information will not be used or shared for any other purpose.

So why don’t you do me a favour by giving it a try? Click on the Connect button below and start commenting!

5 June, 2011 in Personal by Aonghas

Getting Sick

With the winter colds and flus making their rounds, it was only time before I was bound to catch something. A couple of days ago I started getting a runny nose and I hoped it wasn’t the start of something more serious, but it turns out I may have caught something (possibly from my brother who also got a cold recently?). It started with teary eyes and a runny nose but now it seems my throat is itchy and I’m coughing a lot more.

This sickness couldn’t have come at a worse time either, two and a half weeks out from my first exam. At work today I mentioned to my workmate that I was starting to get a cough, and a customer overheard me and quickly exclaimed,

You know coughs are most contagious when they’re first starting out!

I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I was careful to cover my mouth every time I coughed just in case. I guess if it’s any consolation, I’d rather have a cold now and have it clear up before exams than to be sick during my exams. I remember last year I was sick during my exams and it looked like I was crying all the way through my exams, not to mention the abrupt nose blowing every five minutes. Let’s just hope the cold symptoms don’t last long. I’ll have to get Calum to formulate some magic cure at the pharmacy!

1 June, 2011 in Update, Website by Aonghas

AONGHAS.COM for Mobile is Here!

AONGHAS.COM for Mobile works on all portable devices.

It’s a whole new site for a whole new platform. AONGHAS.COM for Mobile is an optimised version of my website that works by detecting supported devices like iPhones, iPads, Android & Blackberry and more, and delivering a theme that best suits the device instead of the regular full-fledged website. The new Mobile version of AONGHAS.COM is easier to navigate especially on devices with smaller screens, while still maintaining all the content that is available in the full desktop website version. Of course you can always switch back to the desktop version if you want to – you can find a toggle switch at the bottom of the mobile page. Of course the mobile version is only available for portable devices; the recognised user agents are listed below. Don’t forget to bookmark my site, and be sure to check back to read the latest news and check out the latest media.

Currently the supported user agents optimised for the AONGHAS.COM Mobile include: Android, Cupcake, Googlebot-Mobile, Bada, Blackberry 9800, Blackberry 9500, Blackberry 9520, Blackberry 9530, Blackberry 9550, Dream, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Incognito, Galaxy s8000, webOS and Webmate. If you are having problems with AONGHAS.COM Mobile on your portable device, please let me know.

1 June, 2011 in IC Helpdesk, Work by Aonghas

Smoochy Discipline

This afternoon I had a quick 2 hour shift at the Information Commons at uni. Halfway through my shift I was looking at my Google calendar online when I was approached by a “mature” female student who was having a problem where she was studying upstairs on level 3 in the silent study computer lab. By “mature”, I mean she was probably pushing 50 years old, if not older. Apparently there was a distracting couple sitting next to her and she couldn’t concentrate because they were constantly whispering and “smooching”. She wanted one of us to help by telling them off effectively. I looked over to my workmate who gave me a facial expression that said “you can deal with it”, so I told the lady that I would be up shortly to survey the noise levels.

A couple of minutes after she had left, I went up to level 3 and roamed down the aisles to make sure everyone was obeying the silent rule. I found the offending couple near the end of the room when I noticed an Asian girl sitting on a guy’s lap. I assumed he was her boyfriend. Although they weren’t in individual booths like they were supposed to be, it didn’t seem like they were making too much trouble when I walked past. I noticed the chair next to them was vacant but still had books open on the table, so I guessed the mature student had been sitting there. I thought I’d stay on level 3 just in case anything else happened, so I logged into the staff PC in the middle of the room and thought I’d check my email. A couple of minutes later the same mature lady came back and said to me, “did you see the couple? Are you too embarrassed to tell them off?!” She told me they were still whispering and distracting her so I followed her back to her desk and tapped the guy’s shoulder and asked if he realised it was an “individual silent study area”. As soon as I said the word “individual”, he quickly replied “oh yes yes, sorry I’m just waiting for a free computer…” Hmm didn’t really justify the fact he and his girlfriend were getting cozy with each other on the chair and playing with each other’s hair. By this time everyone else in the same aisle had turned around to see what the fuss was about. I just stood there right next to him until he felt awkward enough to leave. Even when they were parting ways, they extended their arms out to each other as if they’d never see each other again.

Ahh dear, young love huh?