Jazz and Blues society are going to be huge is the word from the committee! Basically we took close to 100 sign-ups over the course of the last two days at the re-freshers fair and by normal freshers fair standards the turnouts were rather poor. This means that come September when we will have a massive turnout at the fair we may well have a big society by LUU standards.

We are all looking forward to our first social which will be at Hi-Fi club on Sunday for lunch. Considering the number of people who might go I’m going to have to make sure I call up the club and let them know we are coming!

I’ve found out that our exam results are to be released on Monday from our tutors so I’m now waiting with somewhat baited breath to see how I’ve done. Its that annoying time when its been long enough since the exams to have forgotten how you thought you did and not close enough to results day to allow you to decide if you are optimistic or pessimistic about the outcome. Still hopefully all will be well and I can get on with enjoying work for the second semester modules.

On Sunday I finally did it - I bought myself an amazing digital SLR camera, the Cannon EOS 400D to be precise. You can read a review here. Put simply it is amazing. The freedom it gives compared to a conventional digital camera (or at least my old one anyway) is akin to releasing a caged animal into an area the size of which cannot physically be covered by the creature.

While I haven’t been able to explore all the features and indeed I’m still not entirely sure what some of them do, I have been able to practice with the different settings by taking pictures in and around the house and noting the flexibility and versatility of the options available. I can definitely see myself being able to take some superb pictures with this piece of kit.

The ability to change the ISO settings and manually focus are just two functions which make me excitied. While a film camera will allow you to focus to your hearts content its not something available on conventional digital cameras and changing the ISO with a normal SLR was reserved for film change time, and then you had to take a whole 24 or 36 shots at that ISO. Now I can chop and change at will and its fantastic - great for those low light level shots. I have high hopes for my sunset pictures in the future.

I hope to get out and about with the camera this weekend and if I get any good shots I will be sure to post them up here for all to see.

It really felt like social events had got started for the term when we all met up for an evening of drinking, fun and merriment at the Old Bar on Saturday night. Apart from the fact that the band at the far end were quite possibly the most awful I’d ever heard (hence why we were as far away from them as possible) and George was working behind the bar instead of sitting with the group it was really good fun. We caught up on group goings on and were soon knocking back the drinks. A load of random people joined us who a fraction of the group appeared to know but the rest of us just continued as if they hadn’t arrived, lol I left just before the others, but I didn’t miss hardly anything and it was great to see everyone in the one place. Long may these type of social gatherings continue!

In other news it was also a momentous night for Sarann, who after months of saying she wasn’t a geek and being flatly told she was, finally was awarded a reprieve to the status of non-geek. The reason was quite simply that she didn’t know who Tux was. If you don’t know who Tux is, you’re not a geek either, or certainly not enough of one to merit geek status at any rate. I must say I found it remarkable that any computing student wouldn’t know about Tux, but then I am rather fanatical in the field of Linux

Today I recieved a prize, donated by Microsoft, to the tune of £50 for my efforts in the analysis and programming coursework in my SE20 module work last semester. Third place it might have been, and £50 may not be much but out of the whole year taking the module its still something to be rather proud of.

I will be meeting a representative from Microsoft in a few weeks time along with the other two winners (congratulations to Matt and Mai - especially Matt for such an outstanding set of marks) so it should be interesting to get their views on modern software development and the rise of the open source movement, in particular my own open source project work over on RouterTech. If anyone has anything they think I should be discussing with a representative from Microsoft then feel free to contact me and I’ll try and make sure it gets mentioned in the course of my meeting with them, time permitting of course.