Publicity

by Kieran

For those of you whom may not know, two articles have been published about my meningitis story.  One was in the Guernsey Press in Guernsey, and the other was in the Portsmouth newspaper roughly two weeks ago.  Scarily enough the Guernsey Press decided to make me the feature article placing me on the entire front cover as well as page three.  I’m mostly glad that it has allowed people to see that meningitis is in fact very real, and happens to regular people, as well as it being a very serious, yet conspicuous.  Thanks to all whom were involved.

Hand + Forehead = Doh.

by Kieran

I’ve been making some very short, yet to the point posts recently on my recent discoveries with Mac OS X.  Okay, so tonight’s was the best one.  I’ve been trying to figure out XAMPP, and not having a great deal of luck, I did a load of searching and hunting and commonly saw the word "MAMP" crop up, but ignoring it just assuming it’s a variation of XAMPP I don’t require.  Well, when you find out it stands for "Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, PHP" then the hand definitely wants to reach for the forehead in a quick, swift, and noisy movement.

Open Office 3 Beta 2 Under Mac OS X

by Kieran

I came to the confusion of using the X11 version of OpenOffice under Mac OS X (10.5) and wondering why all the menus didn’t work the way they should, and why X11 ran alongside it.  I just quickly had a bash at this download to find the Beta 2 OO3 version which was most splendid.

It’s really quite nice, and definitely worth trying out if you’re using Mac OS X.  It only works under 10.4, however.

Eclipse Ganymede with Subversive Under Mac OS X

by Kieran

As I’ve been struggling to get the latest Eclipse release, named "Ganymede", working with Subversive under OS X I thought it would be a good idea to fill you in.  It can be done, but it’s better just to wait.  I’ve been faffing around with it all for a day and decided to give up in the end and just go back to an older version of Eclipse where it works perfectly.  I’ve only just now got everything working slowing down development by quite a bit.  Ultimately it’s down to whether you want to spend an hour or so just setting up a few simple options.  I need to get used to not using Tortoise SVN anyway.

I’m not sure what’s so great about Ganymede anyway, I just thought it’d be nice to get, not realising at the time what would happen ;)  On with development then.

The Big Switch

by Kieran

Well, I had written this post but due to my incompetence in the use of Mac OSX I happened to hit a shortcut key which backed up.  For some reason WP hadn’t cached my page, unfortunately ;)

Anyway, today I got my MacBook Pro 17" with a glossy screen.  Yes, it’s very nice.  The build quality is fantastic as many of you Mac owners are well aware of.  It’s really quite a massive laptop, though it’s replacing any desktop systems I previously owned, and I do quite literally all of my work on the computer all day, and all night so it’s quite a justifiable purchase (courtesy of my family as a graduation present… yes, I am spoilt rotten).  Unfortunately I don’t have a skin or a backpack for it, so I won’t be taking it outdoors for a while.

Already there have been some quirks I’ve found, but that’s not really quirks, it’s more like "I’m a ten year windows user trying to get used to Mac".  Installation was the strangest thing as I was able to run Skype without installing it, but then the installation process still used my user/pass combination afterwards.  I’m not familiar with the process of installing applications and what’s done with what.  My main applications are Eclipse, Firefox and Skype which wasn’t too difficult as you can imagine, once I had learnt how to install them that is ;)

Other nifty features include the changing background, which I’ve actually got on at the moment, set to every thirty minutes.  Of course I only have it on because I’m a cool Mac user who wears thick black rimmed glasses.

The MBP seems to very shortcut-driven as I’ve quickly discovered in my brief use of the desktop.  A friend showed me a few quick shortcuts which I can see are extremely handy.  I must learn more when I get the time as I’m sure they’ll be a great help in speeding up everything I do.

For now there’s not much more I can say as I’m still getting to grips with the general usage of the desktop trying to figure out the context-sensitive menu-driven systems which whilst confusing are actually far more logical than Windows’ desktop.  Oh and for the record, I am so copying Steve with this new MBP craze ;)

Rock Band

by Kieran

Last night was the first time I had played on the ever-famous Rock Band in HD on the XBox 360 with the full kit.  I had a go on drums and guitar, and left the singing part out to save embarassment ;) the drums were my favourite I think, I was "in the zone" as so to speak.  The song range is really quite good with many famous tracks both new and old.  The best part is the ability to get extra songs from XBox Live for a small cost.

The general feel of the game is really quite impressive and will keep your attention really quite focused onto your own instrument.  The quality of everything is also very high.  The only thing I’m not keen on is the level of difficulty between easy and medium being quite dramatic.  Easy was just too easy, but then the medium setting I found a lot more difficult.  I play instruments myself which gives me an upper-hand, but only marginally as Rock Band is a different concept.  It’s hand-to-eye coordination in a sense, whereas guitar isn’t played in that way usually.

Rock Band generally makes me want to buy an XBox 360, although a) we don’t really have either the time or the money due to our wedding only being 6 weeks away and b) I’d only really like to play one on an HD TV, which we don’t have.  Perhaps next year when the prices go down and we’re more settled, but I really can’t justify it right now, as tempting as it is ;)

Taking The Trophy

by Kieran

Over the last year I’ve met struggles beyond comprehension, things I would have never expected, yet I’ve also met with tribulations more-so than ever.  To be honest with you, if it weren’t for my family, and friends, I would have never got as far as I have, so when I say "I have succeeded", it’s not just my personal success, it’s the success of those whom surround me.  If I could point individuals out, they would be my immediate family (i.e. mother, father, brother and sister), my in-laws to be, my fiancee, Dan Bryant (whom I studied with at university), Joe Haines, Jo Cooper, and Steve Taylor (also course buddies), Steve Streeting (unbelievably patient with my absurd questions ;)), and various other friends such as Rhys, Stu and Fab for supporting me after my illness.  It’s quite amazing how such little efforts go such a long way.  All in all though, there have been a large quantity of individuals who have helped me one way or another over the last year and a half, especially from Solent Community Church and my flat mates Phil and Lou, and church elders Matt and Richard.  Again, I could go on and on, so apologies if I haven’t mentioned you.

Over the last four weeks I’ve been at my new job and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it, and because of this my focus has completely changed from university life, to working life (and amazing at how quick that has happened already).

So, this brings me to my actual point of this post.  Yesterday I was awarded with a first class honours degree in Computer Science, and I must say, it was the biggest struggle I’ve ever had in my life.  It was a scrape, but I feel comforted to know that my efforts, and the efforts of those around me, finally paid off.

As for my future in education, I’ve decided to slack off for a bit because life is just far too busy for anything.  I’m spending all day every day coding at the moment, and the evenings give me zero time for anything else as I’ve got a lot of house work to do, or I’m at the gym.  If I don’t respond to e-mails (as many have already noticed) then it’s because I don’t check them until lunch times.

A big thankyou to everyone!