Skin of Stars

Well if you’re not going to blog about your degree results, what are you going to blog about? Firstly, I want to say that I’m happy to do it in the three year time period. I know that is what is normally expected, but I know so many people that are having to take extra semesters or even years that I’m happy to have just got on with it so I’m able to move on to other things. Anyway, let’s cut to the chase;

I got a First Class Honours BSc in Multimedia Systems and Communication, Media and Culture.

Shocked I was. Smiling, but shocked. I knew that it was mathematically possible, but I was really just aiming to get a good 2:1. Perhaps that be seen as aiming low, but I didn’t come to university to flog myself every night for a grade. Yes I wanted to do well, but what I really wanted was to spend the time thinking and learning more generally. I wanted to learn many things and being at university, in a learning environment, I could spend time discovering so many other things. For example, I developed a somewhat nasty habit of wanting to learn Linux stuff. Not just the technical system management but also how open source as an idea can be used in so many aspects of life… Anyway, the point is that I wasn’t targeting a First, my target was to do everything well, just good and solid with treats thrown in here and there and still time to live a little.

I saw the grades themselves first before I knew the final result and I knew it was looking good. Nothing was below B+ and I had a nice collection of As. I was pleased to see my dissertation had got an A, I knew the coding was pretty good but I felt my sociological investigation of open source development had been a little weak. I’d also got 100% on my final web design module, which is unheard of (I suspect the tutor may have had some explaining to do there!) so I felt good for the 2:1. I checked my percentage and saw 68.7% (the boundaries are 40%=3rd, 50%=2:2, 60%=2:1 and 70%=1st). How tantalisingly close, within 2% of a First. I did as anyone would do and promptly posted what I believed to be my result to Twitter. Feeling pleased I decided to have a look around the results pages a little when I came across the line stating your degree result, “First Class Honours”. I could do little more than point and look at my girl Emily who’d also just got her results, a 2:1 in Linguistics.

Well as it turns out, if you score four or more B+ or above in your final semester (my final year was 5 As and 3 B+s) then they lower the bar for a First to 69%. I’m guessing this is to allow for improvement over the two years. And of course we can’t have decimals points in the percentage, they need to be rounded.. up in my case. I got a First within a margin of 0.7% (they round up all)! Twitter needed an update! With exclamation marks!!!

For one thing, the narrow margin certainly means I’m not complacent in the result. I know I could have done better and probably should have done. But it certainly makes the future look a little brighter. I don’t expect prospective employers to be pulling my arm off, but when looking at future Masters I know that I will now have a greater choice. The biggest bonus though is how proud my family are, my Mum said she had a little cry. Not too bad a result for someone who left school at 16. Guess I need to hire a gown now.

Hey All,

Just thought I would tell you all about a new site that I’ve created for homework. It’s for an Oxford based band called Branch Immersion, a three piece acoustic outfit, some friends of mine. The site is hosted on the uni servers at the moment but I expect we’ll host it here at SkinOfStars towers soon enough once they’ve bought their domain name and I’ve ported the static pages to WordPress.

This is an original design and I must be honest, one I am very proud of. Please check it out at the temporary address (I’ll update with the final address later):

http://wwwusers.brookes.ac.uk/06021836/u75131

http://skinofstars.com/branch_immersion

I’m preemptively titling this post as Boxfire 1 as I know there is more info to come. My dissertation produced a website, or should I say that I have produced a website for my dissertation. Either way, it’s a collaborative news filter for Oxford that relies on user interaction to find the most important news story for the area. Please try it out and tell me what you think:

http://boxfire.co.uk

Just finished my final exam (computer networks) for this semester of my second year. That should mean I’m exactly half way through, not sure I am though. Unfortunately I feel that I did terribly this semester, including this exam, and I’m kinda woried that it will mean I’m going to have to add an extra semester onto my course. Still, we’ll see, I may yet be able to pull it back. Otherwise, I’m pretty glad this bit is over. The last few months have been a real struggle and I’m looking forward to coming home for an all be it brief period of time.

So now it is time to go have a few ales. I’m gonna try to hold back tonight as tomorrow is my birthday and we’re planning a raucous affair. I’m in Wales for Christmas but will be spending NYE in Thanet, most probably at the Lido, where I hope to catch up with some old friends. I’m a little sad to say this may be one of my last trips back since the family home is now up for sale with the intention of leaving the area. One can’t help but feel a little loss at the thought of not returning to an area where I spent so many of my formative years but its difficult to imagine that I would return without a family home there. I guess some people flee from the nest, others are pushed and some just have the nest taken away while they’re not looking.

And the heavens opened. Does the summer really have to end so abruptly?

Here are my marks so far for my first year of Uni. Not too bad considering how drunk I was:

Computer Systems – A
Multimedia IT Skills – A
Human Development and Learning – B+
Human Communication – B+
Communication in Groups – B+
Playing the Game: The Culture of Digital Games. – B
Structured Programming – C

It would seem that I’m at my best and my worst when I’m with computers, go figure.

Tonight is my long deserved break. Tonight (all be it a bit late) is our Halloween party. Halloween is my absolute favourite festival of the year. It includes fancy dress, goth overtones and none of the pressure of Christmas or New Years. Of course, I’m not really likely to get a real break as I’ll inevitably be sorting decorations, working the door and having to answer all sorts of questions even though its not me organising this party… Don’t get me wrong though, I love this kind of stuff. I’d be miffed if I was just sitting in the corner all the time and not being involved.

Collaboration not competition… Jeez, I’m such an OS geek sometimes.

It looks like I’m now going to be sitting on two academic committees as a student representative. Firstly, the Quality Assurance Standards Committee; this is where we discuss possible future courses and ensure that they meet an acceptable standard. Secondly, the Learning, Teaching and Taught Programmes Committee; where the actual standard of teaching is assessed as well as the methods used. I felt that these two were so intertwined that I should probably sit on both.

Ok, enough of this, to the party. Also, as a party worker I get free drinks and we have new ale on that I’m looking forward to trying. Thankfully we are moving out of the summer pale season, which I was becoming a little sick of, this looks like a nice amber type, hope it tastes as good as it looks.

p.s. This Firefox2 has an awesome inbuilt spell checker for forms, I recommend the upgrade. Just need a good grammar checker now. You will all soon be forced to upgrade to IE7 soon anyway which is bloated and ugly, Get Firefox2.

Today has pretty much been my first lecture. I had one yesterday in human communication, but frankly that was a condesending insult, so I will just count this one. Today I learnt my first bit of the pascal coding language and wrote my first program. To be honest, i didn’t really feel like I had learnt it as it was more copying than anything, but its a start.

The main problem I have had though is getting a copy of delphi (the programming enviroment) for myself. I finally managed to pick one up on this thread via polish site. Still setting it up at the moment, but all seems fine. I really wanted to have a version that worked in a linux enviroment, but it seems they stopped developing that some time ago, so I guess I will have to leave that and come back to the tux when I move on to C & Unix in the next semester.

I will say though, its great to be learning again, even if alot of it goes over my head