Day 64: The beginning

All good things must continue forever... or something like that.

Today I did some documentation, I implemented the IMAP and mbox tutorials inside the wiki itself which required the uploading of screenshots. It turned out file uploading hadn't been implemented when the Wiki was set up, which was soon rectified via Steve and its now all done.

The wiki looks good.

Also troubleshooted some printing stuff with John Latham. And we noticed that when logging into your Unix account or logging in on My Manchester, it doesn't matter whether you use capitals or not in your password - it makes absolutely no difference. Very strange and somewhat worrying too, makes one wonder whether they are sending our password over the network as plain text... I've clearly spent too long with John.

My, what a summer this has been! From Monday I'm back to being just a regular student, one of gazillions coming to the Uni for Welcome Week. This is going to be a fun year, I can feel it!

I wrote a 300 word summary of my experiences for this vacation job, apparently to go on the school website. Here it is, I think it aptly describes how I have felt about the past 13 weeks:

Frankly, it's been a whole lot of fun! This experience has been the polar opposite of dull. There is new stuff coming up all the time that keeps every day unique, events and jobs of a huge variety to do alongside the core task which makes for a colourful, interesting, and exciting work experience. This place is massive, so much goes on it boggles the mind. I've done programming, documenting, porting, debugging, testing, blogging, cabling PC's, troubleshooting PC's, buying PC components, building PC's, upgrading PC's, swapping components about, formatting PC's, reinstalling OS's, managing email clients, IMAP, brushing up all manner of skills (.Net programming, networking, embedded development,  Python, shell scripting, Visual C#, XNA, OpenGL to name a few), manning demos at events, attending meetings to discuss and decide immensely important stuff, playing with the very best 3rd year projects of all time, moving 42" televisions and all manner of super high end computer hardware about, photography, modelling for photography, barbecuing that I didn't actually attend, and general tomfoolery when the occasion called for it. I’ve honestly enjoyed every moment of my time working this summer, one of the best ever. 

I would recommend it if you want a fun summer whilst earning. You get to interact with your lecturers, professors and people behind the scenes on a daily basis. Great opportunity to get to know the important academics especially if you are planning to do further study at the University later on (masters, PhD).

In addition all the work you do has an impact. Often in industrial internships the work you do is barely helpful, you aren’t important for the work you put in but for other reasons. Whereas working as a vacation student the whole reason you are here is first and foremost to complete a task that the department needs done (and a million other subtasks). You are important and the work you do is important - nothing is contrived or just to keep you busy, which really helps in motivation and enjoyment.

In short, it has been a tremendously positive experience.

I would like to thank Toby Howard for being a fantastic supervisor. I can't fault him in any way, him and his team (but mostly him) and everyone I've interacted with over the course of this work (included but not limited to Andy Wise, JTL, Graham Gough, Steve Pettifer, Tony Curran, of course Toby, Ruth Maddock, the hardware guy walking about, Gavin Brown, Rina Srabonian and a whole bunch more) have made this summer a real success in so many ways. Words fail me.

Goodbye.