How time flies

Well here we are. Just about 5 year later, and having forgotten all about this blog, it's time to reflect on the past and the k about the future.

I still believe college was difficult in the final year, but I wouldn't have changed any of it. Would I go back? Perhaps, but not for computers. I have seemed to have got it into this head of mine that art is one of my callings. If I was thinking less about career and money, and more on what I truly enjoyed, I think I would have ended up in animation of some sorts. But hey, no regrets.....  Right?

So let's talk about where we are at now. Well, we are progressing, but I'm not exactly sure it's the way I thought it would, but it's all moving, so it's all good. I've got my game plan coming together, and if it does, which I'm thinking it will, would mean that it's two promotions in one year. Awesome right? I'm on a mission, you better not be in my way!

So what does the future hold? Nothing is set in stone, but perhaps there are sunnier pastures on the horizon. Florida. No, not another holiday to the theme parks, cocktails and scorching sunshine. But this time it could be somewhat of a permanent move with B moving up the career ladder himself. Luckily for me there are options in my work which may result in a bit of geological flexibility. :-D It may take some time to unfold, a year perhaps, but the thoughts of it is empowering :-P

Well thats a wrap

So exams are done and dusted, project handed up and I have now vacated the country for a while. lol. Chicago rocks !!! I love it here. Final results have come back and I am so happy to announce *drum roll please* I have achieved a 2.1 degree in computer science.

College was one of the most challenging endevers I have ever took on and I am proud of myself for getting through it. But I wouldn't have been able to tackle it on my own. Without my friends and family I would not have been able to see it through. Without Martin Murphy I probably would have given up in first year so thank you Martin for going through it with me and encouraging me to push on.

Katie, Edel, Dani, Jon, Neil C, Neil G and Donal, what would i have done without you guys. You are the most brilliant group of people I have ever met. Throughout the four years, we have been through the good and bad times together, supporting and there for eachother through it all.

Jon, you I think had a significant affect on me through college. There were times after Martin dropped out that I felt a bit out of place and I felt that I didn't belong. But when you came into the class all that changed. Thank you Jon for bringing cheer into college every day :)

My family were there for me every step of the way. The drive to make them proud kept me from trailing away from what I wanted to achieve with the studies on my life. Thank you for being supportive, understanding and for being there for me.

Brian, you gave me inspiration, support, a warm bed :) , guidence and for that I could not thank you enough. But most of all, Brian gave me a warm, loving and caring heart. He gave me currage to be strong and a shoulder to cry on when it would all go wrong. I love you Brian. You are the most wonderful person ever to have come into my life and I could never let you go. You mean the world to me.

So thats it. No more lectures in DIT. I have survived computer science in DIT. We should not only get a degree certificate, we shuld be getting a friggin medal.

Congrats to all the gang :) I love you guys and you are the bestest friends anyone could ask for.

Cher has competition!

take out the claws cher, you'll have to claw onto your number 1 spot or these guys will take it!

Sleeping beauty

Cher catches some z's after a night on the town. Her B.ball friends have turned her into a party animal. Ha

Cher stuck for words.

The lab had enough of her catchy music and lyrics and had to restrain her from further performances!

Boggers and Bloggers

One of the best weekends away I have ever had. Damien Mulley, you are a legend !! Who would of thought that an event held in Cork (a place of which I had usually disliked in the past) would change my perspective. The Irish Blog Awards 2009 rocked!

To all the bloggers and friends and friends of friends of damien, I would like go give ya's a big thanks for making the night so much fun. You guys are awesome. Oh and Charles, get well soon. hahahahaa

ps. I still think the Cork accents are hilarious !!

college work update

WOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!! I PASSED MY EXAMS !!! And done a good job of it too :) Since the exams I have been working hard on the coding part of my assignment. I started by implementing my database design into MySQL and creating all the tables etc. MySQL was installed on my laptop and so was ApacheTomcat and then classpath to all the necessary directories was set up in the environment variables.

I started coding the project in servlets and that was going fine only that it was taking a while to get the pages to the screen. Because if this I looked into other ways I could do this and was then informed about jps. I picked up a few books from the library and went through tutorials online and now I am planning to use servlets and jsp. That way my web pages can be mostly done in jsp which should be a bit faster to develop and with the use of servlets I will be able to add more functionality.

During the coding of the jsp I needed to connect with the mySQL database that I had setup only to realise that the database is completely wrong and had to be redesigned correctly. This took some time and effort but now it is at a point where I am fully satisfied with it. Originally I was not able to create users and supervisor because of constraints that had been created due to the wrong implementation of relationships and attributes, but now this has been rectified.

So up to now the coding I have achieved is:

• database can be populated with users
• students and supervisor details can be inserted
• a functional sign in page with error checking
• access to database for users existence
• access and displays students details on a jsp
• jsp can see what type of user they are and direct them to either the studentPage or supervisorPage

I think that’s it up to now. The most frustrating part of it all was the database as it took a couple of days to finalise. Even trying to get a GUI to enable me to control the database tables etc was an annoyance as most of them failed to deliver a proper service. But I am now using SQLyog Enterprise which I am happy to say that I haven't had any problems with yet :D