nickchanger's blog - Archive: 2010

Been one-and-a-half month since my last entry...! Probably a good indication that I'm kind of busy :) . So here is an update of what I've done since then.

Last week I passed the 3 months limit at work, basically meaning they need a proper reason to fire me :) . It also means that they will pay for my internet and phone bills. The internet have been ordered but have not been set up yet. Together with the phone bill I could get a new smartphone real cheap so I did, and I have been playing with it for the last few days. It is an HTC Desire Z. This means two things: It has an unfoldable QWERTY keyboard which, of course makes it a bit thicker and heavier than most other phones, and it uses the Android OS. One of the first things I did was to login to Facebook using the HTC Sence app and bamm all of my Facebook friends where added to the phone with picture and everything o.0 . So far the phone is great, but still have a bit of trouble knowing exactly what I am going to use it for - and damn it sucks it battery dry in no time :( .

One cool thing about my new phone is that I can set it up as a Wi-Fi hotspot and then use the wireless network in my computer to connect to the internet through my phones 3G network. The stupid thing is that it is actually a hell of a lot faster than my crappy mobile internet I am currently using :o .

A few weeks ago my parents held a party with my family and friends to celebrate that I was done with school, have found an apartment and gotten a job. As a bit of surprise to me people brought gifts :o . Most of them had asked my mom what I needed which was a good choice as I have no clue what I need >_< . That meant several gift certificates for cloths and different more practical stuff. My friends got me a book on "How To Draw Manga", so now I have to draw more :P . Already have but have not setup my old computer with the scanner in the new apartment yet so cannot show you any :P .

Friday I was at my first non-family Christmas dinner with the people from work and their wifes/girlfriends (and one husband). It was quite fun, great food and lots to drink. We filled a restaurant for the whole evening and cleared their stock of Snaps - which is kind of scary as most of us hate it. I do not understand how several kinds of Snaps all can taste so awful and still be produced in such amounts. Sweet to see co-workers, project leaders and bosses getting wasted though!

In the last week amazon.co.uk have held a black Friday sale. I did not find any interesting stuff in the lightning deals (others from work did though), but I suddenly got inspired to search for anime DVD's and I found some. Two new in the Studio Ghibli collection: "Ocean Waves" and "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea". I also found two other films of interest: "Little Norse Prince" and "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time". The last of which might be my favourite anime film so far (so I got the collector's edition :P ). Hopefully they will arrive in the upcoming week.

Back in October I did something kind of insane (for me at least). I pre-ordered an anime figurine from Japan. First time I order something from outside Europe and North America, first time I order something that is supposed to just stand there doing nothing, and only the second time I pre-order something :o . When I placed my order it was set as an October release. When the 1st of November came it was changed to a November release. Mid-november they changed it to a December release, so now I'm not sure I'm even getting it this year :( . I considered pre-ordering another figurine as well that would be released in January, but they have changed the pre-order date from November 2nd to December 2nd, and now I am not quite so sure any more. If only there was a bigger market for such figurines in Europe and North America :P . Oh and for the curious the figurine I have ordered is of Hitagi Senjougahara from Bakemonogatari and the one I am considering is of Mio Akiyama from K-On!

It has been six weeks since my last blog entry, and apparently J0k3 could not wait much longer. I had a pretty good reason though, which can basically be summed up to "no internet". As of today that is no longer true so here I am! :P

A lot of things have happened since then though and I will here tell almost everything - in a very short way?

Since I were done with the school life I had to move out of my apartment. So the last weekend there my family came by to help pack up all of my things. Since I did not have a job yet, and therefore had no idea where in the world I would be living, I moved back to my parents house. Well actually they took all of my stuff back there as I had to deliver the keys to the apartment the following Monday.

My school mate Tuan called me during the weekend and told me that where he was working were desperately looking for more people so I should give it a shot. I wrote an application Sunday evening, and the following morning I received an email response asking if I could come in for an interview at 1 o'clock. I delivered my apartment keys at 12 and went straight to the interview. After only about 10-15 minutes they said something like "If you want too we have a job for you". I had some other stuff to check out so I did not accept right away, and instead I took the train home to my parents. The following day I did accept the job and they wanted me to start the following Monday. One problem though: It was 300 km away from where I was currently living.

The next Monday I borrowed my dad's car (they went on a trip to Stockholm and Saint Petersburg that week) and drove up for my first real work day ever. After it was done I drove even further north to some family I have there where I had been promised a bed and dinner! Sweet deal! :) Now the hunt for an apartment started.

Four days later (that is Thursday :P), I went to see an apartment. As I do not have any specific requirements I called the next morning and said I wanted it - and I got it. The following Wednesday, September 1st, I got the keys and moved in. It is only about 700 meters from where I work, and with three shops within acceptable walking distance. It has a living room, bedroom, kitchen and a not-so-big bathroom. The kitchen is almost brand new (3 months old). So basically nothing wrong with it ... except that it is on the 3rd floor (which is more like the 4th floor because of the way the building is). But that was only a big deal when I moved all of my boxes up, and my parents came and helped me move all of the furniture up. Damn that shit is heavy when moving it to the 3rd floor :/ .

My apartment is still quite empty as I only had enough furniture to fill a 1-roomed apartment :P . So over the next weeks (or months probably :P) I will fill it up with new furniture. But who cares, I have my bed and computer all set up and ready.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been using Internet on neighbouring unencrypted wireless networks. Damn they were quite unreliable :P . So finally today a SIM card arrived for my mobile internet and I am finally online on my own internet line! Why mobile you might ask? Well in three months the company were I work will pay for my internet connection so I did not see any reason to setup a lot of stuff just to change everything in three months.

And maybe one last thing. My employers is a web development company located in Aalborg called Net Image. I have been assigned to their webshop department were I code in PHP for several web shops (so far all danish though), including Bianco Footwear which have just gone online a week ago.

Yesterday I put my signature on a contract with my employers and I am now officially an employee.

A lot is going on in these days. To much for my taste actually.

Since I am done at the university I pretty much have to get a job somewhere. That has meant making my CV and different job applications. It also meant joining what is known as an A-kasse. Not sure what it is called in English but it is something that will pay me as long as I do not have a job, pretty sweet deal. Of course they demand that I am actually searching for a job, but who would want to sit at home everyday doing nothing anyway.... wait a minute.

I am currently also in the process of moving out of my apartment in Aalborg (in just a couple of weeks). But since I do not know where in the world I will get a job yet I have no apartment to move into. So to begin with I will be moving back home to my parents. Hopefully I will have a job soon so I can move out again :P .

I have been in the process of creating a framework for websites, and have for months now been working on using that framework for this site. At the moment I only need some administration stuff and I should be ready to release it. I did, however, feel like it needed a new design as well so that might come too. Of course it has already taken longer than I expected but I just have not had the time :( .

Riot Games (the creators of League of Legends) released the "Season 1" ladder stuff, which meant the log file changed. The log file we parse to get all the data for LoLBase.net. Since my partner were visiting his family in Vietnam and rarely had any time, and the fact that it was me who originally created the parser, I was forced to fix it so we could continue the parsing of the thousands of log files we receive every day. Of course season 1 was released right in the middle of a holiday trip I was on, where me and 8 other young people (I was actually the oldest :P ) went to a summer house on the west coast (of Denmark) to get drunk for seven days straight. Yes I was drunk most of the time there and it was actually quite fun. Well, except for the fact that one of the two girls who were there got a concussion the 2nd night at could not participate in most of what we were doing the rest of the week. Pictures on Facebook :P . Anyway, I finished the parser a few days ago and the parser is currently crunching through the more than 120000 log files that was in the queue (would take around 85 hours), and it is still going :P .

Riot have, however, done something really awesome. With the release of season 1 they also released a new website both in North America and in Europe. At the bottom of the front page is a small box with the title "Community Spotlight". On both sites there is only one thing inside this box: the banner for LoLBase.net! Fork yeah! I have made something that is used and known intonationally by thousands of people! Not sure, but I do not think Sands of War reached the same amount of users?

I have also finally started to actually play some LoL again. Sucks and owns randomly atm :P . I have also bought Arcanum on gog.com. My brother bought that game years ago but I never finished it - now I will! Then there are several tv-series that are about to start or have started and finally some anime. I told you, lots of stuff to do :P .

Shit this was long... I end it with Lilim...

That's right, I'm done!

19½ years of school (and half a year of nothing) is over and I can finally call my self: Master of Science in Software Engineering! ... or something like that.

I ended the final exam with a 10. The second highest grade on the new scale (equals B on the ECTS grading scale) and one grade higher than we (me and my group mate who also got 10) expected. So it all went well!

Our censor for the exam were Erik Frøkjær from University of Copenhagen, who is kind of an expert in the area our project were in (enough to have the media contact him for expert opinions). Apparently our report impressed him enough, because neither of us did an outstanding job at the actual exam :P .

... but who cares, it is over, I am done, no more university! Now there is only the future... damn :/

A quick update to let you know about the upcoming exams period. I have been way to busy to write anything clever here for a while.

We, me and my group m8 Tuan, hand in our project (report and product) on the 14th of June. Then we have our project exam (the only exam this time) on the 28th, and finally a ceremony where we are handed our diploma, or whatever, on the 30th. And then I have a candidate degree in Software (cand.polyt.)!

LoLBase.net have received surprisingly many (to me at least) donations and we have already bought a new server and put up a brand new design! Everything is awesome until yesterday where the main database suddenly disappeared ... wtf?! So we are currently reconstructing the data from backups and archives. With the move, the new design and the lost database we have been quite busy with that too.

Back to work...