James Battersby

News

Christmas Season

Posted: 19th December 2009

Its that time of year again and this year is quite different for me. I'm currently in the middle of my two week jury duty (which so far has been a total waste of time as I am yet to be picked) and university finished yesterday (although I have plenty of things to be getting on with).

Since my last post I have handed in two more assignments: one was to build a scene using Lego meshes (which I had to build myself) and the other was an optimization exercise using x86 assembly. Both were challenging yet interesting. There is a video presentation of the final version of the Lego assignment on Youtube and there is also a development stage version. I will be uploading screenshots of my work very soon. In the optimization assignment I was able to speed up the program considerably before I had even re-written the entire program in assembly but I did prove (using Newton's quotient) that the assembly version was more efficient for larger datasets as its rate of change was lower than that of the pure C++ version.

However just because university has officially finished teaching for this semester does not mean I am short of work. I have another graphics assignment to hand in (this time it is to construct a realistic fireworks display using a particle system) and also need to continue working on our game prototype. Both assignments are in for the 25th of January but I am currently concentrating on the prototype as I seem to be one with the Unreal Editor at the moment. I am slightly kicking myself for not checking out other engines (Unity in particular) as I have found Unreal rather frustrating (the fact that the Unreal Editor and the UDK are entirely different animals for a start). It'll be worth it though and I might upload some work in progress shots.

The future looks exciting: I am skiing in Les Arcs 1800 at the end of January, university starts again and I'm hoping to go to GDC Europe next year as a lot of our proposed projects are based upon what has been presented there. I'm also shortlisted to learn how to lead climb as I become more confident and hopefully I'll be able to go on a trip this time round (I had to cancel my trip to Snowden at the last moment when I realised I had miscalculated the deadline for the Lego assignment).

Merry Christmas and see you in the next decade!

Busy. busy, busy...

Posted: 22nd November 2009

...is what I have been!

University work has hotted up considerably recently with 4 assignments due in roughly the same time (two for C++, one for Architecture and another for graphics and animation). Add this to the ever present Interaction Design module where we are creating a prototype of a game I am spending a lot of my time in the university library with a thermos full of tea and my laptop. However it has actually been quite fun and since I have completed a couple of the assignments already I am feeling more and more confident about my ability. Still lots to do but now it seems enjoyable (which is amazing given that one of the assignments requires optimization of a C++ compiler and assembly language - something I had learnt a long time ago and hoped I would never see again)! I may upload a couple of files soon as part of my portfolio.

In other news, I've pretty much given up on the athletics. I haven't been and can't find the time to go to training so my performance has decreased significantly. I still haven't made it to a skiing session but looking forward to the trip in January. I AM going to meet up with friends from my old workplace Renovo in Manchester next Friday and the week after I'm going to Snowdonia for some outdoor climbing, both of which I am very much looking forward to. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures of the latter (and maybe a picture of me to prove that I do actually climb). Other than my programming skills my climbing is improving - I've started to do 6As regularly and my bouldering has improved (I think I'm beginning to understand the issue of weight distribution now).

Other than that, not much to report except I tutored a first year student last week in software engineering. I hope I was able to help him in his studies.

Home Experiment

Posted: 24th October 2009

In our garden we have a very old wooden greenhouse. Its so old that one of the things that is currently supporting it (and ironically may be the cause of its inevitable demise) is a solitary grape vine. All the time we've been at this house it has anually produced tasty grapes although not much more than a few mouthfuls. Either way we have never given it any attention save a bit of pruning every so often.

However this year it produced a stupendous amount of grapes - they were just everywhere. As we admired its strange exuberence the thought popped up of trying to use its crop to make wine. My father had previously attempted this in the 70s with grape juice and reported that it tasted of chemicals. Suspecting that he had ignored some vital step at some point I decided to take on the challenge. 4 hours later I had picked over 5kg of grapes... and then I realised I had no idea or equipment for this kind of activity.

Whilst I researched on the internet they sat in a shed and were left alone until after a visit to a local brewing shop. After 4 hours of washing the grapes and removing them from their stems I crushed them, settled them and then started their fermentation process in our boiler room (much to my mother's annoyance). I subsequently kept a daily check on it, adding sugar syrup to up the end alcohol content.

Today they had reached a point where not much more fermentation will happen so I've removed all the must to be left with.....just under 10 litres of the early stages of wine! This has amazingly upped my prediciton of a few bottles to an entire crate! Its also starting to resemble the right colour of wine as well (last night it was bright pink, today its turned a sort of magenta). Tomorrow I will be putting it into its first demijohn and 10 days later into another.

As far as the future of it is concerned it won't be ready till November 2010 but I'm too thrilled and excited to care about that - if I can get just one bottle to produce something half decent I'll be over the moon. Unfortunately I can't sell the stuff (by law) but I'm sure I'll be able to think of a few events in which I could use it (Dad's birthday, Christmas, etc.)

In other news, university is still great (save for a few late night classes), the work is challenging but doable. I've been climbing a bit, taken part in a race (badly) but I've yet to go to a skiing session which I intend to remedy on Tuesday. I've also signed up for the skiing holiday.

University Update and New Site

Posted: 4th October 2009

Well, thats been a packed 2 weeks!

Its fantastic, strange, interesting, exciting and mind expanding being back at university. It has taken a while to get back into the mindset of being a student and adjusting to the sporadicity of the timetable combined with sports clubs, socials and assignments but I feel I have gotten the hang of it now. The course hasn't been too challenging so far as we are in the middle of a much needed C++ boot camp which will (whether I like it or not) be my toolkit for the future. Its certainly a shift from the Java mentality and a even bigger shift from standards compliant web development. However I am finding it interesting and everyone on the course is incredibly friendly. I'm certainly looking forward to the "proper" lectures i.e. ones with a specific focus on gaming which will be starting in just over a week's time.

I've also signed up to the climbing, skiing and athletics clubs in a bid to make more friends and get very fit. I've attended one climbing session so far and tried to keep up on a run with the distance team yesterday (unfortunately I've been ill recently so I was/still am a bit fatigued). I've even registered interest in racing for the ski team which will be new experience. I'm certainly looking forward to their trip to the Alps next year which I hope I can attend (ludicrously cheap deal)!

As you will have noticed too, the site has had a facelift. It took longer than expected as I started from scratch again which was disappointing as the previous site was done using this same system which allows modularisation. The problem was that soon after I constructed the last version the makers of CodeIgniter released a massive update and introduced a new form validation library which was too good to ignore but meant having to redo all the forms again. Since the entire content management system ran on the previous library I thought I could jusity the overhaul.

In terms of content some things have gone and others have had a more focused input. The tutorials have gone as they were the product of more bored/depressed times. They've not entirely disappeared as you can find them at HTML Forums. The gallery has had a significant update with a lot more photos and a better presentation style. The portfolio section (although with only one category so far) is now structured and will be filled with my work as I progress through this degree. The wishlist has gone because it wasn't particularly useful and the links have gone too because they didn't have a good exchange rate (nor did they add to/enrich the content of the site). Comments have also been removed - they just provided an avenue for horrible messages.

I hope you like the new site - please feel free to leave comments and/or criticisms via the contact page.

1 week to go

Posted: 12th September 2009

Only one week to go and I can barely contain myself!

I suspect its going to be strange being out of employment for a year but that will be overcome by the excitement I have for this course. Apparently it is clearly visible that I start bouncing up and down whenever I start talking about it.

Work has been eventful as I helped conduct several interviews for my replacement (I led the technical part) and it was surprising to say the least. A lot of the candidates did not seem to have the technical nouse to cope with questions which, had I been asked, I would have jumped for joy. They were certainly not difficult and I found myself in disbelief that people in the South Yorkshire area are not adept at web development. Eventually however we did find someone and I am encouraged by his determination and technical mind. Perhaps a little inexperienced but definitely one to look out for in the future.

In the meantime I have launched two new sites: the Sheffield Business Awards 2009 site and a revamped site for Spectrum Leisure Training both of which feature my first uses of JQuery which I have to say is an exceptionally good toolkit. It really seems that web development is really maturing as a bona fide software development practice and not a bunch of script kiddies hacking bits of code together.

I also took part in the Great Yorkshire Run in Sheffield which features (in my opinion) a quite gruelling course, including a 200m finish up a 30 degree hill. I managed to clock in at 45 minutes dead which I was pleased with given the total lack of training save about 6 sessions on a treadmill using a Nike+ workout.

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