Just been looking through some of the graduation stuff from the other week and came across the class photo of those who also graduated as members of the BCS. This actually turned out quite well given that we were staring up at the sun while trying to look at the camera. Well done once more to the Applied Computing class of 2009, all the best in whatever you find yourself doing.

The full article can be found at: http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/newsandevents/newsdetail.asp?861

Things have been changing in my life over the past 2 years and I felt it was time to close the last few doors to my teenage life as I move forward. After 6 years of further and higher education I have entered into my first full-time job with the great folks over at Rockstar North in Edinburgh. I am really looking forward to starting so I have my fingers crossed.

This prompted me to look back through my life and my online personality, reading old journal/blog posts and realising how much has changed in even such a short space of time. I used to use the internet handle or nickname “Syberius” which was entirely made up on the spot back during 2002, four years after I first found my way onto the internet. It has been used all over the place, on the PHP Code Gallery, my tag for UberNet and IGUK when I work with them, a domain name… the list goes on. An added irony is that in the new Star Wars film, there is a debate over whether or not Kirk says James ‘Tiberius’ or James ‘Syberius’ which I find amusing if a little strange that people obsess over these things.

So, while playing on the 360 this week between sorting out admin stuff and unpacking the flat (GTA 4 for anyone interested, wanted to complete it before I start work ) I felt that the Xbox Live Gamertag needed to change, that I needed something newer and fresher. It took 4 hours, 5 Simpsons episodes and the Simpsons Movie to do it, not to mention a string of names that were already taken but my new Gamertag has been created!

Ok, so I changed my Gamertag, why write a post about it? Two reasons, if I am on your Xbox Live or GFW Live friends list then you may be wondering who ForbiddenBacon is, well now you know. Second so I can close this door in my own mind and say goodbye to the tag that served me well for 7 years.

So, I look forward to see you out there on Live, just hoping I get more time to play games once I start work but somehow I doubt it

Hard to believe that my 4 years of student life at the University of Dundee are coming to an end today. In some respects this has been an uphill struggle, in others it has been a wonderful, enjoyable and rewarding experience. I have made mistakes a long the way, I have learned important lessons and I have worked hard to better myself not only as a software engineer, but as a person throughout this experience.

I was planning on collating a number of resources and tit-bits of information and then posting them to the internal mailing list at university, however I changed my mind and decided to write this post making what I have to say open to all. I hope it is of use to someone as the advice I provide here comes from real, solid, “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt” experience.

Not all of it may be relevant to you but it has helped me. Use the links below to view each page (I apologise as it is rather long).

[Update 06/07/09] – Need more proof of how social networking can ruin you if used carelessly? – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8136395.stm (see 5. Be social but be responsible)

Courtasy of a couple of power cuts earlier in the week which affected most of the City Centre and as far out as the University Campus I had to replace my trustworthy Netgear DG834G router. At first it only appeared to be the power adapter which had gone however yesterday the modem inside of the router failed and forced me to replace it.

Now networking products are a point of contention for me, there are certain brands I just refuse to buy on principle, the worst being Linksys. Despite being owned by Cisco Systems, I just keep reading about how bad their equipment is and so despite being cheaper, I still avoid them. Belkin and D-Link are supposedly allright but  when it comes to routers and networking I work on the same principle I do with hard drives; If a brand hasn’t failed on it’s own within it’s reasonable lifespan then why change?

So sticking with the devil I know I bought another Netgear and effectively the same one, the DG834GT which has 108mb wireless instead of 54mb and came with a USB wireless dongle, that was the only difference. Thanks to the handy configuration backup and restore facility on both routers I could copy the settings across instantly so no need to re-write 30 or so port forwarding rules.

Everything is back online and working quite happily again.

Over 2 years ago I purchased a 12 month contract with O2 which contained an o2 XDA Mini S (Also known as the HTC Wizard), details can be found at XDA Developers Wiki. Now this has been a great little phone (ok, it looks like a brick but I don’t hold that against it), quad band, GPRS, Windows Mobile 5 (and currently 6) not to mention a QWERTY keyboard which is one of the features that drew me to it in the first place.

It has been very durable and survived many accidental drops on to hard surfaces, flash ROM upgrades and other such wear and tear and yet it still keeps on ticking. This is what I like in a phone, in fact this is what I like in electronics, something that can survive without fail and in this day and age such things are becoming fewer in number. Products just to not seem to be made to last any more, we have become a very “disposable” society.

Anyway, I spotted on El Reg today that o2 has announced the newest addition to the XDA family, the O2 XDA Atmos (HTC S730) and so I started thinking about my loyal little Mini S. I compared the spec’s of the Atmos to the 2nd most recent XDA, the XDA Stellar (HTC Tytn II). They both sport the Qualcomm MSM7200 400MHz processor however the Stellar has the better memory (256mb ROM and 128mb SDRAM compared to 256mb ROM and 64mb SDRAM), The camera on the Atmos is only 2 megapixels compared to 3 megapixels on the Stellar. The list goes on, the Stellar is almost better than the Atmos is every way, about the only real upside for me that I could see what the fact it has a numeric pad on it with a slide out QWERTY keyboard.

So, comparison aside I have bought my new phone for the next 18 months, the XDA Stellar won out and will arrive some time this week. I got a good deal on the contract as well making the phone free for only £10 extra a month and double the minutes I currently recieve plus free unlimited landline calls thrown in. I feel quite proud of my purchase.

As for my wee Mini S here, well I know one of my ex co-workers had his eye on it, if he doesn’t want it then I guess I have a spare PDA to play with.