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Dissertation Presentation

May 07, 2011

Yesterday i had my presentation for my Dissertation. As i said in previous posts, i was not really looking forward to it. I was anxious, but i always am. Thursday night i was in a rush, i was just in from work and had to prepare my entire presentation for Friday morning, i should have done it earlier, but that’s just how i get things done. Pressure seems to be a good motivator for me!

I managed to get the presentation and my word for word speech all typed up and into PowerPoint by about 1am. I then went off to get a bit of sleep before i got up Friday morning at 8am so i could memorise the speech i had come up with. I was still adding in extra bits as i read through it. I had originally thought i would only be talking for 10 minutes, but after saying it from start to finish it took me about 25 minutes and then i knew i was going to have to do my demonstration on top of that.

I was glad i went through it before i went into the presentation, it gave me time to re-work some words i felt wouldn’t work. That’s how i like to prepare, i always have everything i want to say completely written out. That way i won’t have to look at the slides and determine what exactly i should be saying at any particular time.

The Presentation

So the actual presentation went really smoothly. I was really relaxed once i woke up Friday morning (surprisingly), and once i was in the presentation room, it just went perfectly. I came across as a person who knew what they were talking about and also that i had prepared well for it. Exactly what is expected from us. The dress code was a lot different than the usual presentation; the norm would be to simply wear a pair of jeans and a top, not for your Dissertation though! Smart clothing was required, that means suit and tie!

I met them half way! I wore no suit jacket, just a shirt, shoes and trousers. During the presentation i was asked questions now and again, we were told previously that they Q&A would be at the end, but i suspected that they would want to question as i went along. I felt confident answering the questions asked, i had prepared for lots of questions on security, since my dissertation supervisor loves that topic and was present at the presentation.

For the demonstration i presented two things, i demonstrated a cloud application called MobileMe, i am sure many people are familiar with that. The second demonstration was of a cloud operating system called Jolicloud! Both spectators of the presentation were interested in the demonstrations; i feel that it breaks up the presentation for them!

In the end i was told that they were really happy with how i presented the Dissertation and that they found it interesting and i was also told that the Dissertation itself was enjoyable to read! I was delighted to hear that. I am not sure if i get a result for the dissertation before the final official results later this summer. Either way, it should not be too long before i get all my results as my exams begin this coming Monday!

presentation progress

May 04, 2011

I have still yet to fully put together my presentation which i will be using this Friday for my Dissertation meeting. I have a few titles here and there of what i will be talking about but nothing as of yet in terms of talk-able content.

Image by e_monk via Flickr

To make the presentation i needed to have a full read through of my Dissertation, this is something, up until tonight, i had not yet done! Even though i have had it bounded and sent off, i never read it from cover to cover! I read through each part as i wrote it and if my supervisor thought it was okay then i was happy. After reading it tonight i think it actually reads fairly well there are one or two spelling mistakes i had missed but nothing worth worrying over.

Now that i have read through from start to finish i have a better picture as to what i will discuss in my presentation. Tomorrow i will be getting up early to hammer out the presentation to free up the rest of the day for practicing it and also to fit in a bit of studying for my exams next week.

new garden centre site

April 27, 2011

Last Thursday i finally finished up with a site i had been working on for about a month. The timing for getting this job couldn’t of being worse, i had a lot on my plate with work and other personal matters, and this resulted with me having to delay the start of the site for a while.

My initial plan was to have the site ready for Easter week, for a while it didn’t look like i would reach the deadline, but i just about managed after having no internet access for the two days coming up to the deadline, so i had to stay up late to get the site completed.

This site was a new challenge for me in a few ways. The biggest challenge was with a shopping cart feature that was requested. I had never up to this point incorporated a cart on such a large scale. I used a bit of PayPal integration with a previous site, but this was all new to me for this project.

The site i was building was for a garden centre. The garden centre didn’t have a website previously and they wanted the site to be easily managed by themselves for updating the content along with the future ability of having the full site using the shopping cart. For the initial launch the only thing users are allowed to purchase are gift certificates, anything else on the site will not be purchasable online until the client wishes for it too.

It is always difficult to begin a site, i was unsure if i should go with a small piece of green or just go all out, i decided on the latter. It was difficult to get the right blend of greens, but after a day or so in Photoshop i got the colour and design nailed down.

I decided, as i always do to use WordPress as the CMS, simply because i am really familiar with how it works and it provided useful plugin support along with great SEO functionality. Another feature, which was requested, was a custom email address; this is easy to set up thanks to Google.

I am extremely happy with how the site has turned out. Last Friday i went out to the garden centre to show my client how the site works, and how to update the catalogue, which at the moment is blank, but in future the owner will add in everything they offer!

The garden centre is called: Finnegan’s Nursery & Garden Centre, and you can take a look at it here: https://www.finnegansnursery.com/

January, February…. March?

April 04, 2011

Last month there was no activity at all here on this blog from me. This used to be a common occurrence for me, but for over the past year I haven’t missed a month without adding at least one blog post. A lot has happened over the last month including having a lot of work to get though both for college and personal work for clients.

The main thing I have been working on over the last month or so was my Dissertation, at this stage I am completely sick of looking at anything related to my Dissertation title, which is Cloud Computing. Last Friday I submitted my second draft, this week I should get back feedback from my supervisor and with a bit of luck the changes will be minimal and the next step will be to get it leather bound!

Other than my Dissertation, I have been doing a bit of work for clients. A site I am working on at the moment is a large task, it incorporates an online shop and when I am finished it will make a great addition to my portfolio.

I only have a few weeks left in college until I finish up for Easter, but I will be busy over my Easter holidays with studying for my last ever exams in college and putting together a presentation for my dissertation.

Until my exams are over in May my blog will be fairly quiet, whenever I get some time to sit down and put together a post I will. I have a few posts I want to get published and I will be starting an interesting project this summer with some fellow classmates from college.

Toshiba Satellite Pro L300 Screen Issue

February 27, 2011

As I said in a post a while back, I want to help out others by providing information that I found out which might be of benefit to others. So this is one of those posts which hopefully might help one or two.

I was working on two laptops which have multiple things wrong with them, they are both the exact same Toshiba Satellite Pro L300, this was great since I could swaps parts between the two to narrow down what might be wrong.

In this case, one of the laptops happened to have an issue with the video showing up on the screen, when I powered on the laptop the screen would flash then remain black, I then connected the VGA port to my monitor to test if there was video being sent and there was, so that was one issue sorted, there is video there.

Next I thought it must be the screen which has broken, the person who owns the laptop told be she hit the laptop off something, so naturally you would assume the screen was in need of replacement, this is where having the two same laptops came in handy.

I took both laptops apart and took the screens out too, then the screen which would show any picture, I put this into the laptop which would show video and the screen worked no problem, so that was another possible problem I thought it could have been, busted.

Next I started to check the cables connecting to the monitor and they all seemed fine, good and secure. So the next set of cables I wanted to check was under the keyboard, these are the cables that connect from the motherboard / graphics card to the screen. To get to these, simply remove the grey strip, which is shown in the picture below.

Next remove the two screws then gently push the tab in the middle to release the keyboard.

Gently lift the keyboard up as to not break the cable that is connected underneath. You should now see a cable which runs from the screen to the board under the keyboard, check to make sure this is pushed in fully.

In my case, this was loose, so I simply pushed it back in, then put everything back together and powered on the laptop and it worked perfectly, no issues, the black screen was gone and I could see the video on screen again.

This was a simple solution, one I should have checked before taking the screens out, but it was also a case of process of elimination, and it paid off!

Hopefully this post helps someone who expierenced this problem too.