Placements
Stranded
I’ve been at home in England for the last couple of weeks. I was supposed to be flying back tonight but given the volcanic ash cloud that has covered Europe; my flight has been cancelled. I suppose I’ll have to take a couple of extra days of work next week but with no signs of the volcano stopping it could be far longer.
I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. There isn’t a lot you can do about a volcano erupting.
Back in Germany
On Saturday we got back to our flat in sunny Munich. The weather reports I have seen were vastly overrated. At best, it is the same as we are getting in Britain. There is some snow, it’s cold but nothing overly extreme about it. Seems that it has been a lot worse further north though.
I would add a photograph of the snow here but I don’t have one so I’ll add one of it from before we left a month ago. It doesn’t look a lot different now.
I’m back at work today. There wasn’t really much happened while I was gone but then most other people were off as well. I made a release just before I left, was about the last thing I did on the last day. Although I rushed it out to fix a lot of bugs that people were struggling with I was dreading that it might have made loads more and I would be inundated with emails when I got back but no, there a couple of minor things but that is it. On the whole, it seems that everything works.
Home tomorrow
It’s been quite a while since I last posted on here, but then I haven’t really had anything to write about. Following up from my last post on Windows 7 I am still using it and haven’t had any problems with it so far. I have installed Power Pack 3 on my Windows Home Server now and this had improved Windows 7 support, I can now add shared folders to my libraries without having to make them available offline. It has also fixed a few issues with running backups.
Today is my last day of work before Christmas. Tomorrow I will be flying back to England and leaving the cold and snow behind me until after the new year. It has been snowing this afternoon and is forecast to continue long all weekend. I have been quite busy for a while now at work, we recently made a beta release of my program and so I have been fixing bugs and getting it ready for the final release. There are so many different configurations and environments that it runs in there was no way that I could test them all prior to a release. Just this week I have fixed over a dozen bugs and added a couple of new features.
While at home I may start to look at my FYP properly and start to do some research. I have considering getting myself an e-reader for Christmas as this will help with all the reading I plan to do. I am currently torn between writing it in C# or C++. I have already done a lot of the simple reusable code in C++ for previous assignments so I would be tempted to use that and build on it rather than rewriting it all in C#. It would make it easier to use OpenGL as well rather than having to rely on a third party library. I have plenty of time to decide anyway.
I have downloaded Windows Live Writer, I heard about it yesterday and thought that I would try it out. I’m writing this with it now. It seems to be quite good. It recognises that this is a WordPress blog and downloaded my theme so that I can edit it in a window that looks like it will when it is on the site. It isn’t perfect but close enough.
Munich
We’ve been here for just over 2 weeks now and things are going well. We have had no Internet up until today but besides that it hasn’t been too bad. The language barrier can be awkward at times but a lot of people speak English and I am starting to pick up odd bits of German.
Getting an Internet connection has been a nightmare though. We went into the store to sign up 2 weeks ago yesterday and were told that it would take about a week. Not a problem we thought, anyway the paper work starts to arrive (all in German) and it seemed that we wouldn’t be activated until the 28th, 2 weeks after we first went in. We discovered that Burger King has free wi-fi for customers so we went there a few times and then found out there was an Internet cafe across the street so have also been there. So then the router arrives, we set it up hoping maybe we were activated early but no joy. So the 28th came and went, still no connection. Seems there is a fault that won’t be fixed until next Tuesday so in the meantime we have bought a mobile data stick from Vodafone. €30 for the stick and €10 for 7 days connection. €40 for a week of Internet might seem like a lot but we may decide the scrap Telekom and keep it because it is twice the speed of the DSL line we should have by now.
The weather here only really has 3 states. We have seen 2 of them so far, will be a few months for the third. There is endless blue skies, 30C+. And torrential rain. There isn’t really any middle ground on them for long, we have gone from 1 to the other and back again in about an hour. The third is 3 feet of snow but that is 5-6 months away yet. Fortunately a lot more places have air conditioning here so inside it isn’t too bad. Even when it is raining it is still warm.
Mid way through my second week of work at Eurocopter, I’m finding the work to be good, I would like to move onto some different areas throughout the year so I hope that will be possible. Flexi time is a great invention, we can go in and leave whenever we want as long as we get the hours in at some point. I am trying to build up some now so I can get a few extra days off. Or have a lie in once in a while. German laws prevent us from doing more than 10 hours a day though and we have to do 8, but if we keep it up we get an extra day off every 4 days so it only takes a month to get a week off. This does mean getting up early though every day. We are usually trying to get in on the first bus which means leaving the flat at 5:40am to get to work for 6:25am the buses don’t run as often at that time of day so we have a 15 minute wait at the station. We can get the second bus and leave here at 6:10 to get there for 6:40 like we did this morning. This also means if you don’t feel like working you can go home at 3.
We haven’t really had much time to go and explore Munich, although now we have travel passes they wouldn’t give us circle 1 so we still have to pay to go to the centre which is annoying. I hope that we will also get some time this year to get out of Munich and go to the surrounding areas. Maybe go to the Alps one day or something. If we do, I’ll be sure to get some photos. Before that though, here’s the view from my window.
Packed and ready to go
All packed
Car scrapped
Ahead of going to Germany next week I have scrapped my car. I thought about selling it but I really don’t think that it would be worth it, it is 15 years old, nearly 119,000 miles on it and it would have failed it’s MOT in September very badly. I got more than I thought I would, £88. I can also get a refund on the tax for it which has 4 months left.
It’s only just over a week now until I go to Germany then I will have to buy a new car when I get back. I think I should get one with a little more power than a 1.1l and maybe even some leg room.
Back in Newark
I’ve now moved out of Stafford, need to go back this weekend to get the last of my things but that will be it then. As Tom mentioned in his blog we are all starting our placements soon. He is moving back across the country tomorrow to start on Monday, we don’t start for just over 3 weeks and moving to Munich in 2. It’s strange to think that we won’t be back at uni for a year. I’m still not spending my time doing anything constructive really, I probably should but I don’t really know what to do. I need to complete some games so I might do that, although I am needed to help build some steps in the garden so that might fill a few days.
A while ago I posted about Project Euler, I haven’t done any of the problems on there since about then so I might do that to get me back into a programming mind set before I start work. I haven’t really done any programming at all since we finished our assignments just after Easter, that’s nearly 2 months ago now.
I still intend to get myself a camera and take plenty of pictures while in Munich so some might find their way on here.
2nd Year Done
My second year of university is now finished. AI was my last exam and after that there is nothing left. Since I am going on placement next year then it will be September 2010 before I am back in lectures for my final year. I am anxious to get some results from this semester now but it will be at least 6 weeks before I get anything. I’m not worried about what I will get I just want to know.
I don’t really have anything planned for the next 2 months before I start my placement at Eurocopter so I don’t really know what I will get up to. While I am glad that the year is over, it is strange that the last 18 months of my life has been about university and it is nearly another 18 months before I will be going back there, I don’t know what to do as since I started at uni there has always been something that I had to do. Part of me wants to keep learning. That is why I am at uni in the first place, I enjoy learning new things but another part of me wants a break from it.
There has been no new games out recently that can keep me busy. Another game that I can really get into like Fallout 3 would be good. That filled this space after the first semester exams were over as I played it solidly for nearly 2 weeks. The only problem with that was that I played it to completion. I did everything that the game has to offer in a single play-through. I only missed being an evil or neutral person and one achievement for speech successes. I didn’t really have a very high skill in that. I would be tempted to play it again although I don’t think that I would enjoy it as much, maybe doing everything in one play-through wasn’t the best idea.
I have just been looking at the top sellers list on play.com and the only games on there that would interest me are ones I already have.
I am considering making a fully fledged game engine over the next couple of years. I may start some work on the designs or plans for that. I would like to make an engine from scratch that could handle graphics, physics, networking, possibly AI and have a complete tool set for as well. I am think that it may be a little too ambitious for me to do on my own so I may need to scale back a little.
There may be a few changes to this blog over the coming months once I start my placement, this is of course, if I get round to changing it. I was thinking of adding a photo gallery for picture I take in, this will also mean that I’ll have to get a camera.
Placement
I’ve been accepted for a placement at Eurocopter for next year so I’ll be off to Germany in the summer for the whole year 
. Now just to get these assignments finished…
Midweek update
This time next week I will have finished and handed in my AI assignment. I need to get some more work done on it although I think that I am quite close to completing the program. It is really just the user interface and then bringing it all together. I still have to write the report though, I tried it last night but realised that I was waffling about rubbish and there is an 800 word limit on it so I can’t have that.
I got the results for my math test from last week though, 100%. It was a multiple choice and I guessed on one of them but that doesn’t matter. Full marks in the next test should make life easier for me in the final exam, I will only need 54% in that to get a grade-point 15.
My C# assignment, the airport simulation, is coming on well though, I keep on working on it when I should be doing AI, since it isn’t due until after Easter I have plenty of time to do it but I have done all of the check boxes except for other so I don’t really know what to do for that. I should probably leave it alone for a while and get on with Physics and AI but I have no motivation to do it. I was hoping that the assignment would be open and we could do anything really as long as it ticked the boxes, but instead we have to do a very specific system and I don’t really want to. I will have to at some point but I would like to get the AI out of the first.
I had another placement interview this morning, I think that it went well and hope that I get offered the job, it looks like very interesting work. I have another interview in Liverpool tomorrow as well though, I am driving up there for that.
No new games at the moment though, there isn’t really anything coming out in the near future that I am looking forward towards either. I still want to play some more Halo Wars, I want to play the campaign again at some point and do some multi-player. It realised the other day that I never really played any multiplayer on Red Alert 3 so I might do that as well. I want a new game like Halo where I can pick it up at anytime and play it for a while without having to think too much. Looking at my game shelf there is a few that I never completed but I don’t really want to, it seems like too much hard work. I thought about getting Empire Total War but I played the demo and didn’t really like it, I’d much prefer an RTS that is a bit faster. I might have another look at it next week.
I’ve been finding myself very bored in the evenings lately, I don’t really know what to do, it is one of the reasons that I made this blog although posting once every few days doesn’t really keep me occupied for long. I need some kind of project that I can work on when I have nothing else to do but I can’t really think of anything now.