grey

Originally published at Grey/Matter. Please leave any comments there.

And so, on the balmy – if overcast – afternoon of July 9th, 2009, at 4:20pm (half an hour after college actually finished) I left the building and made my way home. For two full months, up until September 10th, I would be free from the confines of homework, coursework and general college workwork. Fun times there, eh folks?

Of course, now the question is what to do. Previous plans for the coming week had to be cancelled, and aside from a few days in the north of Scotland in just over a week, there’s nothing on my agenda at all.

I suppose I should go check out some university open days (particularly the ones I’ve looked into), but getting to them may be trouble for someone with as little funding as I.

I guess that life will have to continue as normal really, just sit around and wait for the unexpected to happen. Like I do every day.

Also, Andy Bailey owes me a sandwich.

Originally published at Grey/Matter. Please leave any comments there.

I’m kinda tired right about now, so it may be a good idea to keep things short and sweet.

It kind of occurred to me today that the furry fandom has become fairly mainstream stuff, at least in the UK. At the slightest mention of it in philosophy today both the teacher and various students chimed in their opinions and perceptions of it.

As one may expect from the media we receive from CSI to Entourage, many of these were negative.

It was while I was busy debating perceptions against actuality that it occurred to me that these normal people had actually heard of the fandom. I found this fairly weird, as a mere few years ago (when I first became active within the community) the idea that the general public knew of furries was considered taboo. Indeed, to some it still is seen as absurd that we could be in any way mainstream.

How times change!

Of course, this is not necessarily good. Discussions of the mainstream future of the fandom have not been overly positive, to the extent that it would evolve into a fad, collecting members without a meaningful premise for having them, leading to abandonment by the graymuzzles and the dedicated furs, possibly to a subsection of the existing fandom, if not a new one altogether.

This would be detrimental to the future of the fandom. With increasing popularity comes increasing attention and disillusionment of those who were there “before they were famous”.

Originally published at Grey/Matter. Please leave any comments there.

Erp… no blogging went on yesterday. I have an excuse for that, honest!

Well, the summer is almost afoot. Only two days of college remain until I’ve got a great deal of time in which to do nothing; aside from that ol’ summer homework, of course.

This year we begin our computing projects, and boy do we have a doozy! The incredibly wide-open scale of “code whatever you want in whatever programming language you want” – ya gotta love it! Seeing as my experience is in PHP, SQL and other such ilk, it would seem perfectly logical that I develop some sort of website.

However our project has two requirements: 1) it must have a target audience, and 2) it must be an application; thus it can’t just be a website – it needs to be a website that, well, does something. HTML isn’t going to cut it, this needs to be something big.

This is where Warhol comes in. Warhol is the name (at least for now) of my project. It may be somewhat obvious from the name, but it’s a browser-based online gallery system… perhaps just saying it’s a content management system would be easier. Or better still, it’s a web gallery.

Warhol isn’t exactly going to be groundbreaking, it probably won’t even leave a dent in it. However for me this is a serious step ahead. I have made CMS-type things before (such as the one FurteanTimes.com runs off), however nothing on such a grand scale as this. FT has a backend that was manually created from scratch, which would not work for Warhol, as it is a downloadable application with a semi-automated installation process (ala WordPress) – something that I, as of now, have no experience in doing whatsoever.

Well, ya live to learn, don’t ya?

Originally published at Grey/Matter. Please leave any comments there.

I can’t be arsed thinking up something to write about today, so have something I wrote way-back-when on May 5th, 2007.

Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s informed consent. It is a portmanteau of the words “malicious” and “software”. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

Earlier today I got struck by malware. Damn smart malware at that. It passed through my avast! virus scanner without as much as a squeak, then proceeded to attack my registry for a whole 10 minutes – causing Spybot S&D to spout out an error message every time the bug struck. What’s more the clever bugger actually deleted itself and left the registry attacker on somewhere in the nether regions of my PC.

That’s why people should all get a Mac.

After I just switched the computer off, just to see if the S&D errors stopped somehow, my computer then proceeded to stop working. A whole half hour of watching my faux Apple loading screen being followed by the black screen of death. I just screwed around with the BIOS settings and rebooted it until it could actually reach the login screen. Which it eventually did. But now, to be overly safe, I’ve abandoned that account. Luckily I had already set up another account for just such an occasion. So I can quite happily access all my files and programs from my malware-d username, without ever having to use it.

Oh happy days.

But seriously. What exactly is the point in malware? The people who make it don’t exactly earn anything off it (apart from adware and keyloggers, etc) but viruses and programs that are just made to stop your computer working – What are they for? All they ever do is inconvenience people. It’s just stupidly non-sensical.

*gets his gun*

Originally published at Grey/Matter. Please leave any comments there.

The matter of university is one that gets heavily pushed onto you when you’re at my age. Just a year ago everything was about GCSE results and college and such ilk, and now all of a sudden we’re onto your next life-changing decision – and unlike college, you won’t have as much help as you want, this is completely down to you now.

Open days, prospectuses, courses, gap years, accommodation… and university doesn’t even START for another year!

Myself, I wish to get a degree relating to website development, it’s effectively the only thing I am both good at and enjoy thoroughly, and can become a very well paying career. Courses specific in this subject are rare, the closest thing to it being a Bachelors degree in “Internet Computing”, which ironically enough doesn’t involve much website design and programming; instead focusing on the theory behind the practice.

So we have a course, now we need a university. Living to the south of Manchester, the obvious choices would be either the the University of Manchester, the highest rated local university, and the Manchester Met. Unfortunately for me my academic prowess isn’t amazing, and my exam results are probably lacklustre; effectively ruling out the UofM and it’s notoriously high entry requirements.

So out of local universities, MMU seems like an obvious choice, quality without the cost – well, kinda. However, if I am going to live away from home (which I plan to do) then why not go the whole hog and try for a university that’s much further afield? I chose six cities off the top of my head and checked out their universities.

The uni of the Welsh capital, Cardiff University, unlike UofM and MMU, does not have a course in Internet Computing, the closest being general Computer Science which instead includes Internet Computing as a module. It does however have entry requirements similar to that of UofM.

Edinburgh University, like Cardiff, substitutes Computer Science for Internet Computing and has lower entry requirements than any of the universities so far. However it requires either mathematics or a science for entry into the course, automatically ruling me out.

Next up is the University of Southampton, which is rated by the Times Good University Guide as the fourth best university in the country for Computer Sciences. Unfortunately I’m also immediately ruled out from here, as it has standards as high as UofM, as well as requiring mathematics.

A similar story to be found at the University of Sheffield, the closest of the universities chosen, as well as the University of Bath. At this point I’m practically thinking to myself “I’m screwed.” I didn’t take mathematics at A-Level, and this seems to be the one hurdle I trip over in every race.

Salvation, thy name is Lancaster University! Three B’s at A-Level and no required courses, easily attainable by myself. Awesome. Now I finally have an alternative to MMU, even if I now only have two potential options, which isn’t the greatest of choices really.

Time to call in some help. I gathered up a few friends and helped them track down some other potential candidates. One that especially came up was the University of Lincoln, which has the same entry requirements and attainment records as MMU without being so close to home.

Various Scottish universities also came up, with requirements ranging from CCD to ABB, which will be considered also. But for now, it’s either close to home with MMU, away up north with Lancaster, or to the east with Lincoln. Choices, choices…

Edit: I’ve now been pointed to the University of the West of England, which does the most holy website design course that is so rare elsewhere. And it’s so gracefully within my range. Delicious!