A lot has happened since my last blog which was quite a while ago now. It is one of them things that I have been meaning to get round to but everything else always got in the way.
Firstly I finished University, three years of my life came to a close when I handed in my final project on the 1st of May. I stayed up in Hull for the a further two weeks to attend my final year degree show where everyone showcased their work and awards were given for some of the projects in each field (audio, web, video and multimedia). I was awarded 1st place for my final year project which involved building a stock driven e-commerce system from scratch using Object Oriented Programming with PHP5 and MySQL it was a challenging and risky project considering I had never attempted anything of the scale before but fortunately it paid off.
After finishing University I had a few weeks break, then shot went straight into the world of full time work with nzime. As they say no rest of the wicked!
Working life is very different to the University life I have become accustomed to over the three years I was studying. No more parties in the week or sleeping until 2 in the afternoon unless it's a weekend. Now I don't have any University work to be worrying about I am finally able to apply some of my spare time to developing a few projects I want to get built.
I'm not the first one and I won't be the last to write about this topic. It hits most of us especially those that
use the internet most of the time. I am with BT Internet on their max package and receive as they advertise UP TO 8MB... It's actually about 6Mb and I'm one of the lucky ones.
When you buy a product you expect to get what it says on the side of the tin. With broadband this is rarely the case.
Heres two examples:
+ Unlimited usage - subject to our fair usage terms
+ 8Mb Broadband - If your exchange can handle it and depending on how were feeling each day
I will put my argument forward by example: When you purchase a mobile phone contract you pay depending on your usage about the same as your internet package more or less. You are told how many minuites you receive and the amount of texts you are allowed within your monthly usage. I have never been with a phone company that has done different.
Now if you got your bill through the next month and had huge charges or your calls kept getting cut off and you phone up the operator says to you: "Sorry this month is a peak month we charged you extra" or "Sorry you were taking up our bandwidth we cut you off to allow other people to use the network".
This would be unacceptable and the company would be in court quicker than you can imagine. So tell me! How do internet service providers get away with traffic shaping and providing a service way below what it says on the side of the tin?
This problem is all too common and I am one of them consumers thats suffering. The networks should be resourced to be running at around 80% at peak time allowing for fluctuation. It worries me that film renting is going to be available soon and I already know of people being throttled whilst streaming movies off iTunes! The UK needs to get its act together enforce the laws which are currently being ignored and make the ISP's offer the service they are advertising.
Surly if you pay for something you should receive it? Apparently not with UK Broadband!
I am currently back in Nottingham sitting at my desk in front of the trusty iMac listening to Coldplays album X & Y. The seat I am sitting in has started to shape itself into the shape of my rear, due to the huge amounts of time I have been spending sitting here over the past few weeks.
I am at full speed heading towards the most important deadlines in my life to date. My dissertation is due in 10 days from now. As this is the case it's the one piece of work I have the least motivation to do. When it comes down to it I am a systems/web developer not an academic report writer. Where some people will get their greatest marks through their dissertation mine will be from my final showcase project. Well even that is marked via it's report. My aim is to get my dissertation finished by the end of this week which will allow me 6 days to treble check everything and get it printed/bound.
Meanwhile I need to keep development up on the new e-commerce system I am building for my final year project. I finally have the foundations of the system built in full OOPHP5 using many of the techniques I have absorbed over the past few months. Over the last week I have started to implement the functionality I have built into the display pages. For this project I have a deadline of the 1st May with the live date on the site being the 5th May.
Once all of the deadlines are out the way I will be glad to have a few days with nothing to worry about. Then move onto job hunting as an unemployed summer isn't an option I am willing to take this year. I also have had enough of the whole education process I will be glad to get into full time work.