There has been an incredible amount of progression made in technology over the past few years and the output of this can be seen just about everywhere: the cars we drive; the music we listen to. As there’s far too many to list here, I wanted to focus on some of the breakthroughs that have affected me most in the past few years.
Perhaps one of the most important inventions made is something we’ve all grown to love, something many businesses are now built upon (including my own)…
The internet
Whilst it might not be seen as that recent, it has been pinnacle to most of the technology I now revolve my life around. Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist at CERN, created the first proposal for the World Wide Web in 1989. His idea was to make it easier for physicists around the world to communicate with each other and soon led development of software which could communicate with CERN’s Internet system. It’s this ‘web’ that we can reach websites through today, all built on the proprietary World Wide Web system, accessible via the Internet.
Image: Tim Berners-Lee – best known for inventing the Internet. Source:All About Jazz
Whilst I have been providing hosting to clients for a number of years, management has always been manually completed through telephone calls and emails. It therefore made sense to set up an automated system so clients could manage their own accounts.
Enter Cloud Hug, a not-so-standard hosting solution. Whilst continuing to offer the personal support clients have always benefitted from, all accounts are on UK based cloud servers providing unrivalled reliability and speed, as well as cPanel and Softaculous script installer as standard.
Image: Website design for Cloud Hug
If you have any questions please let me know and I’ll answer them the best that I can!
It’s been a few months since Lectures App was released in the Engineering department and it now has over 650 users. As with any project like this though, there have been some issues with it since which do need to be ironed out at some point. Anyway, one area I have always felt the project had a lot of potential was through mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad – where lecture resources would be instantly available through your mobile device.
One of our recent projects involved producing a geotechnical interpretative report for a fictitious client. We learnt a lot through this exercise, namely through the difference of approach involved with creating a professional report to that of a laboratory report.
One of the main parts consisted of producing stereographic views of discontinuities in the rock mass. This tied into a site visit to Wales where we were taught how to measure discontinuities (with slope directions and true dip angles), and then the process of finding which slopes would be susceptible to planar, wedge and toppling failure.
So the Summer is once again approaching and a lot of people will be wondering which festivals they should be going to. I should start out by clarifying that there’s no one answer for everyone – it very much depends what you’re looking for. Instead of saying one festival that’s simply great, I’m going to break them down into ‘types’. I’m going to leave it down to you to work out which type you are and therefore which ones you should attend. If you’re wondering why Glasto has been omitted it’s because there isn’t going to be one this year, but it’s definitely one to try and get tickets for in later years.
Despite the high levels of coursework and material I have to learn at the moment, I’ve been lucky enough to have some great things to look forward to in the upcoming future. The first of these is a trip to Geneva, Switzerland to visit the CERN project (large hadron collider) - one of the most expensive scientific projects of all time. It’s being organised by the Warwick Physics Society (PhySoc) and we’ll be treated to a tour (of part of the site – due to it’s size we won’t be able to see it all) and will spend the rest of the time seeing Geneva, a country I’ve never been to before.
Admittedly a bit of self-promotion! I was recently asked to be filmed for a series of videos aiming to give prospective undergraduates an insight to the different departments at University of Warwick.
Their final video (from the UoW Youtube channel) is below…
I’ve been working as a freelance designer for almost four years, and it’s come to a point where I will be stopping indefinitely. This is because I am training to be a civil engineer, and as such must concentrate my efforts in this area instead.
I have enjoyed the past few years working for a range of wonderful clients and hope to stay in contact with them all in the upcoming future.
For anyone who is wondering what civil engineering actually is (I get asked this a lot), here’s a little video that should explain it a little clearer.
Okay, so I have decided to make my first open-source e-commerce theme. I was originally going to sell it but simply decided: hey, I may as well give it away! Well… something like that anyway.
It’s basically a clean, easy-to-use and highly adaptable theme that can be used for just about any kind of online store. Installation instructions are included in the ZIP.
It’s designed for the latest version of Magento (1.5), which is available to download for free at www.magentocommerce.com.
I would kindly ask that if you like it, please do put a link back to my site in the copyright area!
Before you say it, I know, that sentence has been said quite a bit as of late. This time, however, I really think there is a new contender in the realms of streaming. It’s name? Bloom.fm.
A product made in the labs at mflow, it’s their new application through which they’re hoping to win some of the market. They’ve turned their efforts away from their original browser-based offering, which I think is a good decision. Spotify has always won here as it’s got a brilliant interface, is highly reliable and works outside of the browser. This, coupled with the offline mode available by upgrading, has always been one of Spotify’s greatest perks.
With revenue at just $3.8 bn, the valuation does seem pretty ridiculous compared to other similarly valued companies http://t.co/DNQD6MN0 - 16 hours ago
Just three more weeks to go, then I'm free! ... and no longer a student :( - 22 hours ago
Before you say it, I know, that sentence has been said quite a bit as of late. This time, however, I really think there is a new contender in the realms of streaming. It’s name?