A break from Java coding for some logo designing!

Finally, something I enjoyed in college! Our group project required a logo to be designed so I immediately put myself forward as the person to do it. Yay! Here it is, what I've come up with. Basic, yes, but I've a lot more important stuff to be doing so the other group members wouldn't have been too happy if I spend too much time on it. I decided to incorporate the Ericsson logo with our group number (Seven!).

Voila!

Cannibalism, Cancer and Chemotherapy (Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute)

I went to a talk last night in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute. The title was "Cannibalism, Cancer and Chemotherapy". This was quite a misleading title- And the speaker admitted to this first thing, it was a catchy  headline in an attempt to get a larger audience to attend. 

It was quite in-depth and some of it went over my head. It was hard, for example, to keep track of all the oncogenes he was mention (I have a degree in Biology but the only cancers I ever studied was breast cancer so I wasn't familiar with most of the genes he was working on). It was so  nice for once to sit in a lecture where I was actually interested and learning something.

It really made me miss doing science in college. I'm currently not really enjoying my Msc in software technology. It's above my ability level and the I don't find the lectures consuming whatsoever. I'm also slightly clashing with one of my lecturers so I'm admittedly not enjoying myself.

I'm crossing off the days until I finish my course. After today I have two weeks of lectures for mid-term and once I'm back I have four academic weeks left. That's 16 days of lectures. The sooner its over the better.  

On y more positive note: It's Thursday which can mean only one thing- Three hours of 2 for 1 cocktails in Capitol Bar!

Web Information Processing

Lately in college I've come to realise exactly how much time and effort goes into developing a website. I always assumed that the design and layout of the pages would be the hardest part- How wrong could I have been.

I am currently involved in a group project where we are developing a community portal website ("CommunityYOUnity"- Great name, right, guess who came up with it ?!). Having spent multiple weeks designing the layout of our website I was pretty happy with our progress and thought we were getting along great and making good time. How wrong could I have been...

The next step in the development is to make sure that every page is editable. The way the site will work is that guests can register as members. The members can then edit their 'profile page' with their details, a small bio and a picture. These guests can then create a profile page for their organisation (They then become 'super-users' in regards to that page) which is editable in the same way as profile pages, or they can browse the organisations and choose which ones to volunteer for. Each organisation's page will have a large 'VOLUNTEER!' button where the registered user can become a member of this organisation's group and receive updates and also have access to a mailing list.

Unfortunately, no one in my group (including me!) have any clue as to how to start this process. Up until now we have been coding in HTML and CSS (I have used my exquisite HTML skills to format this post: See how my image is the full width of the page?!). The next step in the development will require the implementation of PHP and the use of databases with SQL commands. Today, as a first look at PHP I have edited the homepage so it now prints to-days date when you arrive on it (Except I can't get it to work!!).

This week will be spent trying to create databases for the site and to integrate these with PHP used in the coding of the pages. I also have a solo project due in three weeks which will similarly require this knowledge. Any ideas as to what I should base my solo web development project on are greatly appreciated!

If you wish to view the website while under development it is currently hosted at this address:
http://webcourse.cs.nuim.ie/20112012/CS230/CS230groupA2012/
Although you may need an NUIM username and password to access it, sorry!