Congratulations to all Award Nominees and Award Winners at the UWTSD Student led Teaching Awards held yesterday at the Life Design Studio. Congratulations and Well done to Yr2 BIT Student ‘Reham Al-Shaibani‘ for Winning a Student Representative Award and Dean of Faculty / Head of the School of Applied Computing Dr. Stephen Hole for a Special Recognition Award.
We very much enjoyed the partial Solar Eclipse here at the School of Applied Computing.
Sue our secretary set up a pinhole viewer in the School office, John Young projected his telescope on to the floor of the Electronics lab, Kevin Palmer used a mailing tube for projection and some of the staff went to join Swansea Astronomical Society at the Waterfront Museum. Hope you enjoyed the eclipse wherever you saw it from!
Kevin’s mailing tube projector
Sue’s pinhole projector
Sue’s pinhole projector
Gaynor’s photo through a solar telescope
It was an early start with the coach leaving the university at 06:00 for the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The plan was to stop for a break about half way and to arrive by about 10:00, which would give us time to tour Station X in the morning for historical context, have lunch, then see the rest of the museum.
Things didn’t quite turn out as planned! We left just after 06:00, collected a student at Magor services and headed along the M4 to our planned break at Leigh Delaware services. But as we left the services and started to accelerate up to motorway speeds the coach refused to go into high gear. Oops! What turned out later to be a blown solenoid in the automatic transmission system left us all standing on the motorway embankment for an hour while we waited for a local coach to arrive to transport us to the next service station, where we would be met by another bus to take us on to our destination.
Oh dear we have broken down!
The whole crew of 36 on an embankment on the M4!
But we got there in the end, arriving at the National Museum of Computing at about 13:30, and headed straight into the second half of the planned day starting with the Colossus and Tunny galleries. The museum is housed in a cold and sometimes damp hut that is a listed building by virtue of it being the first purpose-built computing centre (for 10 Colossus machines during WW2).
Colossus – the first semi-programmable computer
From there it was on to look at the rebuilt Harwell Dekatron (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harwell_computer) Then it was on for a whistle-stop tour of everything else.
The Harwell Dekatron Computer
Unsurprisingly we were a bit rushed to get through the galleries, but nevertheless, managed to get a good sense of the old computing technology, and the rich heritage contained within the museum. Students particularly enjoyed playing retro games! We all got a sense of how far computing has come in 70 years, and how much it might change even during our working lives.
Going retro!
Some of the staff remembered lots of machines from the 1970s/1980s – and remembered programming machines that are now on display in a museum. Staff were able to relive their younger days with the BBC Micros from the 1980s and the Cray 1 from the 1970s with its built-in sofa (and computing power comparable to the iPad 2!).
BBC Micros from the 1980s
Sue reliving her youth
Afterwards we got back onto coach (the fourth one we had been on that day!) for the trip home and learned that the M4 was closed at Chippenham with diversions and delays all round. We weren’t even out of it once we got off the motorway, as even late at night it took us almost an hour to get through the roadworks along Fabian Way and into the city centre. Despite this, the students took it all very well and didn’t complain. In fact, laughing and joking was the order of the day, even after hours in a traffic jam. A great time was had by all and we think it’s going to be one of those trips that sticks in the memory for some time! Thanks to everyone who came and Carlene for organising the trip! 🙂
Tom, Ryan, Angelo, James and Caleb (Electronics Year 2) on the bus
Overview: Simon Bevan will talk about his experience of working at Google 2005-2014. Topics will include:
Date/time: Tuesday 17th March at 4 – 5.30pm with Simon Bevan.
Venue: LifeDesign Studio, located above the Library on Mount pleasant campus.
Applied Computing Postgraduate student and part-time tutor Archie Watt will also be talking about his visit to Google for the TC Summit in California and the Top Contributor (TC) programme.
We hope you can make it ;-).
For more information please click-here: A Day With Project Ara, Google’s Crazy Modular Phone.
Checkout Swansea’s School of Applied Computing New YouTube Channel for Graduate interviews hints tips and more:
Q. What was your HE course?
I completed the BSc (Hons) Computer Games Development.
Q. What is your job title and role?
Currently I am a Software Developer at Quicklink. I work on updating software, and new projects. A lot of it has been for Mac and iPhone.
Q. Could you briefly describe the organization you work for?
Quicklink deals with providing broadcast solutions for people out in the field, such as reporters and television companies who require live streaming from remote locations.
Q. Which skills learned at University are helpful to you in your job?
A few of the key skills include:
– Adapting to different programming languages
– multi-threading
– software development
– networking.
Q. What aspects of your job do you enjoy most?
I haven’t found a task I like the most within the company, at least not as much as my previous position as a project assistant at the University. If I had to choose something I would say working on our software on the iphone.
Q. Do you have any advice for students who would like to start a Career?
The only advice I would give is work hard in all your subject areas. My overall grade was not brilliant because I didnt focus on subjects I was weaker in. Apply for everything! Even if you think there is no way you could get the job based on your final grades. It seems like people want programmers badly!
Happy New Year to all students, staff and friends of the School of Applied Computing! We hope you have had a pleasant festive season.
To kick off the New Year, here is a new graduate profile of Graham Rees-Evans who graduated in 2009. Find out what he’s doing now here.
Here’s a little post to introduce you to your magical, mischievous, ever-so-helpful, elf-like subject librarian ;-). Our resident librarian on the Mount Pleasant Campus Owen Library is Suzanne Taylor (below middle). Computing students, please get in touch with Suzanne if you need any help in finding or accessing library resources.
Q. Favourite Christmas movie:
‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ as it shows the positive impact one person can have upon so many lives or ‘The Holiday’ because I would love to spend Christmas in Kate Winslet’s country cottage.
Q. Favourite Christmas book:
It would probably have to be A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Q. Favourite Christmas food:
A roast turkey or chicken dinner with all the trimmings, – minus the sprouts :-).
Q. One of the best things about Christmas:
There’s something very special about driving to see family early on a frosty Christmas morning when the roads are empty. Also walking my dog on a beach on Boxing Day and seeing him chase the ball along the tide’s edge.
UWTSD Applied Computing Blog 
Written by jameswilliams
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