Latest in archive for the ‘About Me’ Category
Achievement Awarded: Survive University
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 Posted in About Me, BAIMP, Uni Life, University
Damn, It has been a bit quiet around here hasn’t it…
Please excuse the long delay between this post and last, I have been a tad busy… Actually busy is a bit of an understatement. There is no words available in the English language that can describe the amount of work I have done this year for university, especially in the last couple of weeks.
I have been spending the last couple of months working on my dissertation as well as my major project for my third and final year at Bournemouth University. For those of you who are interested in new technologies (I am specifically talking about Augmented Reality here) then go check out my major project here. In summary, AR Battle Cards is an augmented reality version of the classic Top Trump statistic card game.
As of this evening, I have completed all of the requirements for my third and final year at university. All I have left to do is bind both printed copies of my Production Analysis and hand them in tomorrow. Then all that is left to do is set up my project at the exhibition (23rd-26th of May – Linky for details) and demonstrate the fruits of my labour. If you are in the Bournemouth area, it would be awesome if you could drop by for a couple of hours.
I won’t celebrate just yet but it is a great feeling to be able to sit back and know that everything has been done. No more deadlines, no more planning on what needs to be done, no more bugs to squash (except for the real ones that run across your desk when your trying to type FDHG&Y$Y^$%Y$%YSGFG – got the bugger…)
So… I can finally sit back, relax and download and play a game of Portal 2… (I have been good and resisted the urge to purchase it for fear of being completely absorbed in it)
At least I have been able to accomplish something in life… University… Check… just a thousand other things to do before I kick the bucket.
If you will excuse me… Portal 2 has finished downloading… See you in several days
Tags: BAIMP, exhibition, finished, flash, IMP, media, project, Uni Life, University, website
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Two years down – One to go
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 Posted in About Me, BAIMP, Uni Life, University
It must be a miracle – I have survived a second year at university!
As of Thursday 10th June I have been free of all university deadlines and requirements. Not having to worry about essays or projects is a bit of a relief because it means that I can tie up any loose ends that I always seem to acquire. So since Thursday I have been doing a mix of relaxing, finishing off client projects, and sorting out family affairs (of which there have been many). My to-do list is all but cleared up and I have managed to clean up my desk back to its original clutter free state. I dislike mess… the only place that is clean at the moment is my bedroom (the rest of the house is in a state as always, but I have little control over that).
So my plans for the summer now that Uni is over? The majority of the holiday will be filled with the need to work, both for the work placement and for various family members and other clients. In order for me to survive the final year, I am going to have to work for money. Hopefully I can get enough to at least take a chunk out of the loan that I am having to take out. Other than work, play will have to be squeezed in too. For play, I have recently found the wonders of Steam (I know your thinking its been out for ages – but I am not a huge gamer). But most likely I will be working on a personal project. What that involves exactly I am not sure, but it will hopefully consist of design and coding in some form (and hopefully video too). A website, unity game and video perhaps?? – Any ideas? Hopefully I could also engineer it so it will compliment minor and major projects in my 3rd year at uni… you know start early and all that….
Reflecting back, I believe this year of uni has been brilliant as I have learnt a huge amount. Whether I learnt more this year compared to last is debatable. If anything I have considerably improved my skills since then. In terms of coding, particularly in relation to the station project, I have been able to code fairly complicated (for me anyway) PHP scripts, with little help from tutorials and friends, which is a big plus. Infact, I have become one of the go-to guys when people need help (it can get a little annoying at times though when I spend a while assisting and I don’t get a thanks in return.)
So
work for money + play + move house (again) + personal project / Time = My summer
Tags: bedroom, over, personal, php, placement, play, project, summer, tidy, University, work, year
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Experience the world of work – or lack of
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 Posted in About Me, BAIMP, Uni Life, University
The time has arrived for me to find a placement.
As part of the second year for my university course, I have to find a placement with a media company for 6 weeks. My portfolio is now presentable and deemed worthy of employer consumption. Using a fantastic post from Meetdraw (linky) I collected a list of names of the various companies that work in the South East. After researching each company in depth I sent off personalised cover emails to each company along with a CV and links to this portfolio website.
Well after about two weeks of waiting after I sent a batch of emails off, I received only two replies… I thought this was a little disappointing, particularly as these are media companies that are supposed to be hot on customer interaction and gain most of their business through email. Whether they could not be bothered to reply, deleted the email or just never received it, I won’t know for sure, but I am to start calling around and following them up in the next few days and hopefully I will get a better response…
…Wish me luck, every extremity on my body is crossed
Tags: call, companies, email, job, Meetdraw, placement, portfolio, research, University, waiting
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Done, but not done… M Shield 2.0
Sunday, May 16th, 2010 Posted in About Me, Humour
Hey all! After a huge amount of time spent building this thing, it is now ready to be displayed to the public.
I can finally sit back and look at my portfolio page and say that it is ready for public consumption. I have completely rebuilt my website bringing it up to date. This is the result… So feel free to look around.
It started a couple of weeks ago. I decided that if I were to make a good impression to possible employers, I needed to improve my website. I first envisioned that I would simply add my latest work to my portfolio page and theme the blog to match the rest of the website. So one evening I sat down an looked into a number of tutorials to help me with the mighty task of creating a theme for my WordPress blog installation. I followed the fantastic “WordPress for Designers” screencast series by the talented Drew Douglass (Linky: Drew Douglass on Themeforest.net) to help me understand the basics of how to build a theme for WordPress. He starts getting into breaking down a .PSD file at around day 10, but for some reason he doesn’t finish it all. Not to worry, I then knew enough of the basics so I could theme the rest myself.
After watching a couple of days, I realised that I would be better if I simply rebuilt my entire website in WordPress. I decided to do this because I felt it would be easier to maintain, keep up to date and use all of the great features that it provides on the whole of my website, not just the blog. As I was looking at my .PSD file of my theme ready to break down I though, you know what, sod it… Lets redesign that too!
So a day later, and with a new improved, more web 2.0 looking theme I started to theme and build the entire website in WordPress.
Long story short, multiple hours and days passed with mistakes made and learnt, cursing and shouting at my laptop to work when I want it to, I have finished. At least for the moment. My main aim was to finish the website with similar amounts of work as available on my old website. Now that is completed I can send out my CVs to possible employers to try and find a work placement. The next steps over the coming month, is to organise my work collection, grouping together any other photography and artwork that is worthy to put on separate pages in my portfolio. This will add to my current collection of websites.
So… I, Matthew Shield, declare “M Shield 2.0 Online Portfolio”… Open!
Please be gentle with it, despite me checking every corner and hole for bugs and broken links, there’s bound to be one still left.
So for the moment I am done…. But I am no where near finished.
Old Website:
New Website:
Tags: 2.0, blog, bug, fresh, improved, new, open, organise, portfolio, public, rebuild, redesign, theme, themeforest, website, Wordpress
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