As part of my masters degree in University College Dublin, we undertook a group project which focused on building a technology product. I’m very proud about how we ran the project, so I’d like to give an overview of it here! The product is a technology news application, which personalised your news feed based on your interests. I like to think of it as Facebook meets Techmeme meets your favourite RSS news feeds!
As part of my undergradute thesis, I found a template (for LyX) to ease the pain of formatting a thesis in LaTeX. Making it look just right to me was very important. If your are writing a thesis, perhaps you feel the same way? If so, read on…
While doing my first undergraduate thesis in Computer Science, I found a template used for a Computer Science thesis in NUI Maynooth (a university in Ireland). What attracted me was simple: it was battle tested and easily customisable. That was 2011 and since then I’d pretty much forgotten about it.
I’ve recently decided to further my education by applying for a Masters in Computer Science at University College Dublin. It’s very different from a traditional masters course in that it is very much focused on industry, the term the University uses is “Negotiated Learning”. It was a colleague of mine that introduced me to it, I was not even aware that there was what I would call ’non-strict masters’ (that is not a set-in-stone syllabus/research direction).
It has been a whirlwind four years, but this day marks the cessation of my full-time education for my honours degree. It is an overwhelming feeling of relief, joy, sadness and all of the emotions you feel when leaving an institution that has been a huge part of my life, if only for four short years.
The best part of my course has been without doubt, the friends for life I have made. I include everyone in my class in this, but some friends have been truly the best anyone could wish for. I dedicate this post to wishing all my classmates the very best in whatever they chose to do and hopefully we’ll all keep in touch!
For my final year project, I have done a web application on the concept of
replacing traditional web applications. I picked an area I was deeply interested
in, smart phones. I am an avid iPhone user and I have bought Android phones
also, they are great devices I can’t imagine not having now that they are here.
As part of my thesis I touched on the old way to develop apps, using Symbian C++
or J2ME and we’ve come a long, long way since then.
For those
interested, I will publish copy of my thesis after November 2011. I won’t
publish it here just yet, as the examiners have yet to pour over the contents
and grade it.
Wow… what a weird feeling, I have a degree under my belt. Three years, many friends and a lot of hard work later! The degree itself was based on my father’s business Grogan Burner Services, and trying to solve a real world problem of using Excel spreadsheets. We used Python, Google App Engine and a lot of Javascript to create a modern, sleek Customer Relationship Management system. All the code is open source, under GPLv3. Our thesis, including code is available below for those interested. We got top honours for the submission in ITB.
This is a 3rd Graphics project we presented as a group for Computer Science. I’d like to thank Mark and James, my team members, for all their hard work! The subject of Bauhaus was previously discussed in my graphical representation of a 3D chess set. The music is courtesy of Jamendo, and is free ;) Enjoy it the video!
Update: Also noticed Mark has a nice post on it also
One of our projects this semester is to make a Bauhaus Chess set in a program called 3DS Max (created by Autodesk). 3DS Max is a modeling and animation tool built specifically for creating 3D representations and models. Being a lover of Open Source, when we we’re told although Blender was considered, it fell a bit short for some reason, so we had to use 3DS Max.
3DS Max is not bad to use, some of the tools are nice if your not an arty type (like me) and prefer more technical and structured things. Some of the effects (like glass and water) give a really nice effect to add to the model your designing. Also as part of the project we had to have an accompanying website, which you can view at bark4mark.com/bauhaus
Some people make new years resolutions about eating healthier, exercising more etc. I find that boring, who doesn’t want to be healthier? So I am making a list of technology resolutions:
That should keep me busy besides college and working! I didn’t include any security stuff, as we’re doing best practice for my honours degree next year. If anyone has any of their own, I’d love to see, or any resources to help me complete my list ^-^ Happy 2010!
As part of Computer Science you do a couple of general modules which are general in nature about computing; but I think that just reflects the broad use of IT in every part of society today. As things go digital or are created digitally; understanding of this concept is vital; that is where Web Multimedia comes in. For my first project of this second year; I had to do a movie made of stills with custom sound effects. Restrictions on sources of images and sounds (very high percentage had to be self made). Here it is:
I
have got a place in a 4 year
Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computing,
or more commonly known as Computer Science (or comp sci as I am lazy and like to
abbreviate). This means I might be blogging slightly less sometimes, but it
should be a hell of a lot more interesting and I promise to keep my posts not
too technical as I have up to this point.
I would like to thank you all for subscribing and I hope you’ll enjoy what is to come in the future!!
Just
a quick post on Google Sketch UP for Mac (also available for Windows), it is a
very nice application. I drew my Engineering project (Leaving Certificate) on
it, to see if it was easy enough for a novice (Read: Me) to mess around and get
something functional out of it. Most people have heard of Computer Aided Design,
but usually the applications are expensive to say the least. Not so with Google
Sketchup, it is totally free and can import some of the most popular 3D drawing
formats. It is easy to use, but difficult to master is how I would best describe
this product. The video tutorials Google provides on their website is a huge
help, and got me off to a good start. They represented what every tutorial
should be: short, snappy and to the point. The User Interface should be designed
a little better and be a little clearer, but for a free product, it does exactly
what it says on the tin. So I got down to business, and I present my very first
drawing in Google
Sketchup:
I have ordered and I am expecting delivery of my brand new Apple MacBook (or BlackBook as some call it)! It will be a Black, 2Ghz Core Duo, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB HDD (5400 RPM) MacBook, complete with a remote, Bluetooth 2 and Wifi functionality. Not mention cool applications such as iSight built in Camera, Front Row ( a media center) and Spotlight search technology. It cost me close to €2.000, so hopefully it will be worth it ;-)