While a very useful site for Leeds School of Computing students when I was engaged there, SoC Gossip has now fallen into a state where it is no longer updated and thus is of little or no use to current or even past students.

I and others enjoyed blogging about our time in the school on a dedicated site, especially the academic postings from our final year projects but now that we have left and are no longer actively contributing and no others have stepped up and asked if they can do so, I think the time has come to close the site to the public.

I of course extend my thanks to those who have contributed to the site in the past and would also like to offer any current student of the school the opportunity to take over the site if they wish to maintain a SoC blog - please get in touch with me.

If no one steps up to the plate in the next couple of weeks however, I will be closing the site and allowing the domain to lapse. This will prevent new students from finding the site and thinking it’s something that will be updated while they are studying at the school.

I collected my final year project result today. The project was based on the reading and recognition of roadsigns, for those of you who have forgotten (apologies for the lack of updates on the roadsigns blog).

I’m pleased to announce that I got a grade of 71 which equates to a first.

Obviously I’m very pleased with this result and it really has made the hard work worthwhile. It was far from a trivial project and presented some interesting challenges and learning experiences, but I feel the work will stand me in good stead for the future.

All this means that I’m now a mere two weeks away from getting my final degree grade and completing my time as a student of Leeds University School of Computing. Time certainly does fly.

It was Nick’s last lecture, it was the last SY32 lecture, it was our last lecture. We had to do something to make the event memorable and fun. We plotted and schemed a little bit and decided that we would Rickroll Nick during the lecture. Chris and I arrived 30 minutes early and setup a laptop computer and speakers under the lectern and concealed them with an old poster we found lying about. We had previously configured a scheduled task on the laptop that we configured to play “Never Going to Give You Up” at half past the hour.

Once everything was setup and the lecture theatre once again appeared normal we left, went to grabbed a coffee for 10 minutes and then came to the lecture like normal. Everything was going as it always does and then blam, 30 minutes in, the song started playing. Stunned silence for all of about 2 seconds, then a surprised look from Nick and hugh peals of laughter from the audience. It was priceless.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Nick for being a great lecturer and personal tutor throughout my time at the School of Computing and say that quite simply, life wouldn’t have been the same in the school without him. He will doubtless be greatly missed by all students who are staying on.

Nick wrote about what it was like to be Rickrolled on his blog

As I was browsing my news feeds this morning I stumbled accross a blog post that someone had linked to. Its a rather amusing article about which programming language gets you the most sex. If you’re a programmer I’m sure this will make you chuckle.