The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Pre-amble to a write up...

"That's a bit of an odd topic title!" I hear you cry, and alas. I concur. As a self confessed geek, I feel I need to be deducted some geek-cred for not having a copy of Skyrim yet.

The reasons are many, among them there is university studies - Im busy as all hell until about the middle of December, and the abundance of Death that has happened around me and Kat in the last month has thrown us off course a little (AKA, a metric Fuckton.) As a result, I am heavily commited to getting coursework done and out of the way before I risk gaming addiction on the level that this promises to enforce...

In an attempt to compensate for this, when I finally get to indulge in the game I am going to do a couple of things: 

Firstly I am trying to get my mits on a second monitor to help simplify my working experience. The new one shall be bigger and better for gaming which will enhance the experience I hope.

Secondly: I am going to try to keep a written log/journal of my characters adventures and randomness. I shall refrain from giving away main-quest info or spoilers (Or I might focus on the main quest and just give a write-up as if it was a journal from my character... that could be cool.) - I know I have been trying hard to find a few blogs/sites that provide this fix for myself without giving too much of the game away with little success.

As for now... well... Importance fact at the moment :: life > game 

Honours project is a go!

With university back under way I have been hard at work on an Industrial Team Project - which ended last week. I am now working on the new subjects and my honours project. As part of the project I am required to maintain a Blog detailing the research and development so... heres a link!

www.hadoopproject.blogspot.com

Back to Uni...

So - here I am sat in the library of the university of Dundee - twiddling my thumbs...

I am about to venture forth into the 4th year of my course. My wife has just matriculated and is starting a Psychology & History course here aswell - so I have been in and out of the university over the last couple of days sorting stuff, finding stuff out... This morning I had an Induction that is required if you want to do lab tutoring. I think my skills are very inefficient when it comes to actually trying to help people in labs, but there seems to be a shortage, and I dont mind trying to help others whilst also expanding my own knowledge on the subject in question. Im kind of looking forward to it even, if it means I can help others get through some of the evil labs!

I also had a meeting regarding my honours project and got some more information on what the objective of the project is, and a reading list - altohugh, conveniently the library has not got a single book in that I want to borrow.

My internship ended a few weeks ago and I have been working on the final report (a min 5k word document covering what I done, and a 10 minute presentation.) which is coming along slowly. The kids are both in nursery full time - which should make this semester the easiest with regards to ability to atend and time to sit down and get on with solo or group work... I just hope that my lack of ability to attend last year and the year before has no hampered my grounding knowledge too much.

Anyway, looking forward to getting started - Im sure I will have many an interesting blog post to put up as the course gets underway and I get some new stories.

Bleh, so tired.
-V

Another day in the Internship

So, I have been working at an internship for two weeks now at a local company that has sites distributed throughout Scotland. At the minute the work is not hard. In fact, the toughest part about it is trying to find some of the sites as they are literally houses with rooms converted into offices, and sometimes there are patients living in them that I must contend with.

Well, having gotten most of the city sites out of the way - I must say, I am rather enjoying the more remote sites. Today I took a drive along the country roads out to Aylith, via Meigle and past Glamis through to Forfar. I ended up cutting the trip short as the Mrs needed me to come watch the kids - so Im currently sat at home working on the paperwork that comes with the position (the downside of it I guess! - lots of documentation.). I must admit though, it was very relaxing, driving about down the quiet country roads, listening to some Sonata Artica and Nightwish. Very chillaxing, if only every day at work was like this!

I have been trying to tag all the places I go to on FourSquare - but I have come to the conclusion that the Android App SUCKS... IF I manage to get a GPS signal to find out the local area, it can take several minutes for it to show - and there doesn't seem to be any way to refresh your location save hitting refresh on the places page, after using the google maps App to pinpoint my location...

More later. Work to do.
-V

Freedom! Exams over.

That is the final exam over and done with. Assuming nothing went drastically wrong, I am now the proud owner of a Bsc in Applied Computing on top of my BEng in Electronics & Electrical Engineering.

Woot!

It feels good to be free, but my agenda is no less busy. I have a meeting tomorrow for my summer work placement as an IT assistant at a local housing company. I will most likely be starting on Monday. In addition to this, I am going to be starting a web-design business to work on part time over the summer and after I start back at uni after the summer. I have a few projects to get on the go, and I am quite looking forward to getting started on them!

The witcher 2 collectors edition is pre-ordered. Little treat for me and the missus!

Anyway - we finally got around to tidying/unpacking from the move in 2 weeks ago. Lots still to be done, so I am off back to it!

Procrastination must not be added to!

Study study, pack, clean, study, play/feed/take care of kids, study study clean clean pack pack study study... Aargh! Wanna play my Death Knight :/ cant wait for the holidays...

Course... approaching... end! So much still to do :/

So - the last handin is due tomorrow, then its FREEDOM! - at least until the exam diet starts in May. So much to do in that time!

The latter half of this semester has been so dominated by assignments I have not attended many lectures at all, and have a LOT of studying to do before the exams. In addition to this, after last Friday's Hack day, and chattering with Christian Heilmann ( @codepo8 on Twitter) and Rowan Murray from Yahoo uk - I have been in the process of trying to arrange flights to the Bucharest open hack - which should NOT be so complicated...

My choices are British Airways - which involves getting to London somehow then paying over £400 round trip to Bucharest and back to London, then get back home to Dundee again. The alternative is fly from Edinburgh airport with KLM for about £300 - but have a stopoff in Paris on the way there, and Amsterdam on the way back - and the whole trip totals in excess of 26 hours when its 3 hours either way... thats 20 hours sat in airports for a weekend away... MADNESS!

I am also in the process of trying to set myself up as a business for contracting and web-design purposes. This is quite a lot of work and is pretty time consuming. Liability is the scariest part of it all. I feel competent, but will someone that is paying for services that run into an issue going to be accepting or monsters? Oh well! As an aside to the business - I have been tinkering around with Google Ad-sense as I would aim to have one or two placed on the websites I design - but as far as I have seen - its relatively pointless as they are rarely ever clicked on. I do notice I have got a habit of reading them on other peoples websites and viewing anything that  interests me!

Oh, I am also twiddling my thumbs waiting for news of an Internship I had an interview for yesterday. Hopefully I am taken on as it is a pretty sweet deal, with the added bonus that because of my computing background, the degree I will be qualified for when I start as well as my electronics degree, and 9 years employed as Electronics Engineer and RMSS engineer they are looking to extend (hopefully to the full 12 weeks so I qualify to have the summer placement be graded) the placement and have me do various other items of work for them.

Hmm... much to do, back to this report I go!

-V

My first game creation. Part 1: The background

I stole this idea from a friend, I intend to keep a few guides in this blog that I and others may find useful for future reference.

The Game:

As part of my Applied Computing degree at Dundee University, I am required to design and build a 2D game.

I have settled on doing a 2D dungeon crawl type of game. The avatar will be moved around the dungeon and will collect keys to open doors to eventually attain the treasure chest and win the level. In the way are monsters and the player can only defeat them with the use of a potion.

The game is being build in C# using Visual Studio and the XNA libraries to help make things a little easier.

More to come...