Bahamut

I started rebuilding this website while I was writing my dissertation mostly as a means to stop myself going crazy but since then not much has happened. I started development of the website using struts 2 a few months back but this never got very far. Mostly due to my lack of free time.

Now I'm getting settled into a work routine it's time to start development again. This time I have SVN and Trac setup to help me manage my code and keep track of bugs and goals. http://grhughes.trac.grhughes.com/ The original design has remained similar (to the one created earlier this year) but has been remodeled and improved quite a lot. I've gone for a more sensible fluid layout which makes use of screen space and removed the top banner. The colours may change before the site is finished though. http://www.grhughes.com/

This is still being built in Java but this time I will be using Apache Wicket with hibernate and mysql in the background. XStandard which I've been using on this version is going to be replaced by FCKEditor too.

I've had to make this post with phpmyadmin because there's no XStandard for linux. And the website does not let me enter html directly.

The last month has been quite busy. I've started back at work, got my grade from University and moved into my own apartment. It's quite tiring adjusting back to a normal routine again after my final year at Uni. It's also quite nice to have a sleeping pattern and it'll be nice to have some money when I actually get paid. I've managed to spend quite a lot of money during my move, admittedly I didn't need the 40" LCD, surround sound system or PS3 but I also spent a lot on deposit/first months rent and various bits of furniture. The PS3 purchase was ruined by the recent announcement by Square-Enix that FF13 will also be coming to the 360 thus rendering my PS3 a bloody waste of money.

My apartment is a fairly big 2 bedroom in the city centre, it's great having some space for a change and not having to deal with people watching shit on TV and complaining about noise and any slight noise, and not using a coaster. And after living in 1 room for so long and with so much stuff this is a welcome change. Internet is provided though the building from Ask4, it's very fast but a little temperamental. This means I don't need to pay BT for a phone line that I'd never actually use.

Work has actually started this week, I started at the end of June but spent a few weeks 'training'. I actually enjoy it more when I have some work to do. The Flex training I was doing was interesting and it's something I'd like to pursue but following a book gets very boring after a while. I'm back working on the Buying Solutions website which is ..fun and written in PHP. It does involve a lot of JavaScript work which I quite enjoy.

It's a huge relief to have University over, I got First Class Honours which I was very pleased with. I said I would have been fine with a 2-1 but honestly I would have been disappointed with anything less than a first especially after the amount of work I put into my dissertation. It makes those 4 years seem worthwhile which I was beginning to question towards the end.

As the last month has been very busy I haven't done any more development on my new website other than a few style changes. I'm also not sure which language it is to be developed in again. I'm thinking Rails or Java at the minute. Rails would make the hosting less of an issue as my host currently provides rails support. This is something I'm going to get into more when I get a little more settled and adjusted to leading a normal life.

After spending all week sitting on my arse doing nothing but play World of Warcraft (Which has been awesome). I decided to get some work done on my website. I haven't yet put much development time into it other than the initial JavaScript library and initial design. Getting started using Struts 2 is proving to be quite difficult but I did make some good progress today with Tiles and templates. Tiles is a really nice way of reducing code. I have 1 main template and every page then uses this template replacing certain sections as needed.

There's still a lot of development work to go before it's at the same level of completion as this website and it has some more advanced functionality such as the search box and will definitely have more Ajax. There's not much rush right now anyway, some sort of hosting has to be arranged and Java hosting is more complicated than PHP. I may be looking to rent a server in the future which will be able to handle this.

So I am finally free of University. 4 years gone, hopefully my final grade will be adequate. I probably could have put more effort in this year but I wasn't willing to give up my life entirely for it. 3 out of my 4 exams went quite well (I think). The management of IT projects exam was horrible and I'm not sure that I passed it. I'll just have to wait and see.

The last month has been rather busy with my dissertation being handed in and another 2 - 3 assignments on top of that to complete. Hopefully they were of a high enough quality to get at least a 2-1. I saw Sonata Arctica in Sheffield too which was a great concert and I have Dream Evil at the end of this week. Meanwhile I'm relaxing finally and playing some games (GTA4, Mario Kart Wii etc).

I bought the domain www.grhughes.com and may be the place where I host my portfolio website. I've started work on the new Java website using Struts 2 and Hibernate. I'm not too happy with how the Struts URLs appear things such as /Blog.action which would be viewing a simple Blog page. I might run Tomcat behind Apache so I can make use of mod_rewrite and keep my more attractive URLs or see if any other alternative is available. The Struts 2 way of dealing with requests is much more elegant than Servlets even if it does remove the front controller you get when using Servlets. I'll be posting more here later about development once more progress is made.

Now into my final month at University. I'm quite terrified about handing in my dissertation which was printed and bound today. I normally panic about assignments so this one is much worse. I just need to get it done. This should be a huge relief but no, I have 2 assignments due in the next 2 weeks. There's really not enough time to do them. We have had them quite a while but finding time for them with the millions of other assignments and my dissertation has been a nightmare. After that there's just 4 exams to go then I'm free! Providing there's no resists to do...

The rebuild of this website has stopped for now, it's something I might resume in June. I was originally going to simply replace the front end of this website and leave the old PHP5 core alone. I have decided that I wouldn't learn anything from this and this website really sucks at the moment. I'm not happy with the PHP use. I'm going to develop it using J2EE with Struts, Hibernate and MySQL. As for hosting I intend to rent my own server after I start working and I can run Tomcat behind Apache. I haven't decided if I'm going to get Linux or Windows hosting yet. I would prefer the linux hosting but Windows leaves the .NET option open.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/uk-rock-band-release-set-for-may-23

American Price - $169 (£85)
English Price - £180

Getting fucking robbed as per usual - priceless.

A lot of progress has been made on my dissertation over Easter thankfully. Managed 10600 words and have only got the critical evaluation left to write. I still have to work on some appendices and the main program but I'm glad that the main body of the report is almost done. It still needs proof reading and I need some feedback from my supervisor. I hope its good enough for a first.

I got my mark back for my advanced web applications unit, 82%. Better than a kick in the teeth. http://aces-web.aces.shu.ac.uk/students/grhughes/

I've grown tired of this web site so I've redesigned the website from the ground up. http://www.bahamut.co.uk/dev. I'm dropping the use of Prototype because I'm good enough at Javascript to be able to solve cross browser bugs myself without needing a 4k line Javascript file.

I've started writing a collection of functions and fixes that handle events, Ajax and other common problems for use on my website. The latest version is here; http://bahamut.co.uk/dev/Util.js. I'll be moving this into the portfolio section at a later date, most likely towards the end of this month after my dissertation is complete and I finish redoing the website. Because of the way the new gallery scroller and search work a lot of code changes will be needed and I don't have much time for that.

I went to the Nightwish Concert into Manchester last night, pictures here; http://bahamut.co.uk/gallery/Music/. It was a great show the new singer was better live that I expected. Next up Sonata Arctica in a few weeks!

After doing many assignments this year using ASP.NET it's a welcome relief to using J2EE. I thought it would be horrible as I've had little experience using JSP and the little that I have had were bad. I must say servlets combined with struts, jstl and hibernate make a good setup and I've actually enjoyed programming for the first time in quite a while.

After I finish uni I'm going to look into getting some JSP/ASP hosting or hosting it myself and rebuilding this website in something less shit than PHP.

IE8 Blog

Somehow I had missed all of the IE8 news until recently. I've tried the beta and it's currently awful, I wouldn't even put it at the level of beta personally but it shows some promise is they achieve what they're aiming to achieve. The development tools are also a nice touch but still aren't anything compared to firebug. Letting developers opt out of the new standards is a little bit of a cop out but I can see why they've done it. Let's hope it's as standards compliant as they promise and hopefully we'll get some SVG support.

You never know, give it 5 years and we might not have to contend with IE6 any more.

Three assignments out of the way, had to hand in one each of the last 3 weeks. The work load is getting quite stupid. It ended up in us submitting work which is quite substandard so my grade will take a hit from it. I'm still stressed from the last 3-4 weeks so I'm currently relaxing and playing WoW. Tomorrow I need to get cracking on my dissertation research and write up.

I would like to finish this year with a first but the chances are sinking. I'm just worried I won't make a 2-1 grade especially with the exams too. Perhaps I'm just being too paranoid. I'll feel better once the grading of my last assignment is done and hopefully it wont be as bad as I'm expecting. I don't like how pretty much all of the final grade comes down to this year. I don't have long left now. I just need to get writing my dissertation and complete the other assignments that we have coming.

For some reason I keep finding strange bugs in my website that have never appeared before. For some reason it wouldn't let me delete a post. Strange. I want to rewrite this website in .NET after I finish Uni as a way to learn the framework better. The assignments at Uni don't really give us much oppertunity to explore the language, especially with the deadlines we've got this year.

Anyway, today went quite well, We got 95% for the programming section of my CSSD assignment which is great. We lost a couple of stupid marks on the basic features that we really should have got but I'm glad it's out of the way. That brings up the lower mark we got in the design section and keeps me on track for a first although those chances may get lowered considerably if I don't manage to finish the advanced web apps assignment for this Friday. It's an awful assignment. I also bought myself a new laptop, not really needed but I wanted a new one with a screen that doesn't bleed and a power cable that's not splitting.

I think i'll feel a lot better once AWA is out of the way and I can finally get some more project work done. I wanted to spend some more time developing but as I need to really get started on the write up I doubt much more will get done.