iMSISS

This week was kicked off on Monday when I saw a piece in the Irish Times about TeenCamp and specifically a small paragraph on my talk, including a quote. It’s nothing huge, but I got a real kick out of it. Not to mention the ribbing because of the “boy wonder” description.

Twitter
On Tuesday I was reminded, yet again, of the value of Twitter. It’s the quality people you can surround yourself with. I sent out a slightly mysterious Tweet about an idea I had and quickly had some conversations, through private messages, with some very helpful people. It’s great to know that movers and shakers are so close and helpful.

Lunch at Jimmy Chung’s
On Thursday a group of us from college went to Jimmy Chung’s on Eden Quay, beside the Laughter Lounge. How could I argue with a buffet Chinese lunch for €9.20? I had spring rolls, ribs, chicken wings, prawn crackers and satay chicken skewers for starters - they were all pretty good, but I found the wings and ribs quite salty. I had chicken and satay, rice, chips, chicken balls for the main and some vanilla ice-cream for dessert. €9.20 is a complete steal, to me, for nearly two hours in a nice place, with plenty of food and five good friends!

College and MyCandidate.ie
Friday was a fairly busy day - just how I like to be. First was a two-hour management science lecture by a remarkable lecturer I have talked about before, Arthur Hughes. I also filled out an application for internship at the MyCandidate.ie offices next to Trinity. I’m always looking to expand my experience and so a few hours a week might be very interesting. Hopefully my years of IT experience will serve me well.

Work, Dinner at Ely’s and Contrast BYOB
Robin was hot-desking in the Contrast office on Nassau Street, which is extremely handy for me coming from Trinity College. We worked on some new features coming soon in Decisions For Heroes, and I noticed some changes in the Contrast office. They’ve got some gorgeous new displays, the ceiling’s stopped raining and they’ve marked out a place on the wall (in Contrast yellow) for each of the guys to make their own. Des is collecting business cards, I’m not so sure about the others but it’s just another way Contrast celebrate identity and try to foster creativity.

We (Myself, Robin Blandford and Paul Campbell) headed out to catch some dinner before the meet-up at the Contrast office. Originally we were just getting something quick but we ended up in Ely’s on Baggott Street. We were downstairs in a cosy, warm, dimly-lit area and other than the slightly slow service it was a joy to be there. I had the sirloin steak with onion rings. At €30 it wasn’t cheap, but it felt worth it. It got right what many steak dishes get wrong: some great chips, not those thin spindly chips and the onion rings were fantastic. Paul had the duck with lentils and Robin had the casserole.

We headed back to the Contrast office where the BYOB (Bring Your Own Beer) was in full swing. I saw so many people I knew and got to talk with some really interesting people. Among many others were Matt Finucane, the ever-energised Paddy Liddy, Eamon Leonard, Iarfhlaith (who has a really impressive-sounding recycling-software solution),  Joseph Johnson, Michael Walsh, Jairo, Jason Roe, Alan O’Rourke, Romans from Agile and of course Robin Blandford, Eoghan McCabe and Paul Campbell. The Contrast (& Robin Blandford) BYOB is a must for anyone looking to connect and network with some interesting and motivating people in the web industry.

Posted on January 26th, 2009 by David
Filed under: college, personal | 1 Comment »

Yesterday was the first TeenCamp Ireland, organised by Enda Crowley and Alan Costello. Both of the guys really did a bang-up job.
I arrived at about half 12 I think and the guys (and Klara) were just setting up. I sat down to work on finishing off my presentation (which I’d been up until 3am doing) and I was eventually really happy with it.

At one stage I counted about 30 people, there were at least that many and more at some points which was great. The talk schedule board looked pretty sparse as it kicked off (and I didn’t add mine because I was seeing how it panned out) but the day turned out fairly packed. Tommy Collison started off with a funny and heartfelt talk about Twitter, technology and his family and Klara gave one about mange and anime (she has such passion for it).

Next I went up with my talk, which I finally titled “What I learned so you can too!” which was about everything from where/how to learn about the web and programming, how to keep up with trends, how to reach out to employers and the pitfalls (600 euro in one un-paid invoice!) of being a young, naive developer. I wasn’t sure about the reception as I was worried there was too much rhetoric in the talk (I know well I’ve years of experience to go) but the feedback has been good so I’m pretty happy.

Next up was ChrisD with an unconventional but entertaining talk about gaming. I never knew there were so many gamer types! Ingeniously, the guys “forced” everyone to stand on stage and talk about themselves for a bit, I’m sure for many it was daunting and for everyone it was enlightening. The questions fired at the speakers varied wildly and we all learned a lot about our Twitter friends. Lunch (pizza) could not have come fast enough - I was starving and I have no end of thanks for the guys for it. It also gave us a chance to chat and mingle, the most important part of any *camp.

Stephen Spillane and Darragh Doyle hosted an intimate and revealing discussion about how we blog and what blogs we read. It showed that many of us are torn between the feeling that we must be professional, we must keep our cards close to our chest and the feeling that without being personal the rapport with our readers will never be there.

Ben gave a ridiculously entertaining talk about “How tech hooks you up” which had us all in stitches. I am thankful every day that there are people far funnier than me - and willing to entertain. A video of his talk is available. I won a UCC scarf in the raffle, which I was really chuffed with! Finally, Cian gave a talk about podcasting and online media. I had to leave for a bus but from what I saw he was confident and commanding about his topic.

All in all, this was one of the most revealing and worthwhile meet-ups I’ve had. Thanks again go to Enda and Alan for making it possible and to everyone who came along.

Posted on January 18th, 2009 by David
Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

This is something I spent quite a lot of time on! I had the idea coming up to Christmas that it would be great to have some digital photographs in printed form. There’s over 6,500 photos on the computer from our various cameras over the years, and that’s a lot of events and memories. Once I got the idea, I set to work taking all the photos I thought should get printed and putting them in a folder. With digital camera we’ve become accustomed to taking every shot 5/6/7… times so there was a lot to go through, but in the end I had 360 photos from over the last 5 or 6 years.

I put the photos on a CD and went to the place recommended by DUPA the Trinity Photograph Society. Conn’s Cameras is on Chatham Street, just off Grafton Street as you turn at Brown Thomas. They were really helpful (and patient) taking all the photos off the CD and getting everything sorted. It took 48 hours to have them all printed and I couldn’t wait to collect them and have a look through them.

I wanted to put the photos into albums so I had to sort them out. I figured chronologically was the best way to do it. This was daunting - really daunting - but I love big projects and so I laid them all out and put them into bundles, grouped them, ordered them. In the end I had about 55 bundles (events) laid out chronologically.

Then I brought them all together into a nice stack.

I popped them all into a box for album-ifying.

Finally, I put them all into two nice photo albums I bought in Eason’s and marvelled at the result.

Printing and albums: €114, all the memories: priceless.

Posted on January 9th, 2009 by David
Filed under: personal | 3 Comments »

Christmas season is in full swing and I haven’t posted in a while - it was very busy leading up to the holidays. What with assignments, studying for exams (4 of them) and my work for Robin (Decisions For Heroes) I haven’t spent much time on iMSISS.

Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the Contrast Christmas party but I did get a true-to-form custom card, hand written, from the guys at Contrast. Then again it’s just what we’ve come to expect from the team who brought us Get Exceptional and Qwitter.

The guys at echolibre hosted a Christmas get together in South William Bar, South William Street on Thursday. The place was great for the event - it was warm (very warm) and private and there were lots of well known faces. I only stayed for a while as I was going on to a college Christmas party but big thanks must go to echolibre (Eamon and Dave) as the atmosphere was great!

At the echolibre party Robin - as I was leaving - told me there was a present in the post. He sent me the tracking number (as he knows I obsessively track parcels from factory to door) but I hadn’t a clue what it was. This morning, at around half 9, the UPS guy arrived and after a very broken digital signature I took it in and opened it up. Inside the brown box was an unmistakably-Apple package containing “Time Capsule”, a 500 gigabyte wireless hard-drive, Wi-Fi hub and generally magic Apple sharing box.

The unveiling process is nearly as slick as that of the MacBook (as you open the box the MacBook faces out, a single lift away from turning on). Here are some pictures:

Posted on December 20th, 2008 by David
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In software apps class we have a project (in our Dreamweaver module) to create a website about JF MSISS which is due for next Friday. The requirements are to use certain HTML features such as tables, links, images etc.. It’s a great project because I’ve so much freedom and opportunity to demonstrate my knowledge from the working world.

I’ve added a PDF of leaving certificate maths notes to iMSISS Labs. I created the 22-page summary of certain sections of the course while doing the Leaving Cert. It includes a large number of formulae and it is very comprehensive I believe. It may help students taking the Higher-Level maths exam who want to be certain they’ve covered all their bases.

Here are some screenshots from the notes:

Posted on November 29th, 2008 by David
Filed under: education | No Comments »