Up until recently I have never owned a gaming console, either hand-held or otherwise. The little gaming I have done has been limited to PC Games, The Sims and Age of Empires (2 & 3).

However my life has now been completely taken over by “Animal Crossing : Wild World” for the Nintendo DS. It’s amazing, Matt and I both play and discuss strategies regularly. It has even taken over my study breaks, I don’t even tend to watch Neighbours at lunch time anymore….

It is a truly amazing game though, the picures below show me and Matt in Matt’s town (unsurprisingly called “Aceville”) in his house.

and again at a different angle….

The sunglasses and hat Matt is wearing are presents from me, although I never suggested he wore them at the same time, as that just looks plain stupid And yes even coming from me with pink hair I think that is fair.

It’s amazing how obsessed we have both become with this game in such a short period of time! Unfortunately this new craze had to begin the week before my first final exam (3/5/2006 – Enterprise Computing – arrgh)!

Till next time,

Lauren (from CuteTown) xxx

On other updates, I have finished my fourth year project. The Dynamic Graphing System is called LDG (Lauren’s Dynamic Graphing System) because it was the placeholder name used in the report, and I never got round to changing it.

I have been offered some summer work at the University, depending on funding, to try and fix the (minor) bugs in LDG so it can be released for research purposes, maybe I’ll change the name to something more interesting then.

Apart from that I have no other firm updates to make, apart from the fact that you can tell it is now officially exam time, as the sun is shining in Glasgow – bloody typical!!

Laurenxxx

At the moment I am calling Lauren’s Dynamic Graphing System, but I really need a good name, a well worded acronym would be cool but I just can’t come up with anything.

So if you’ve got any good ideas they would be very much appreciated, in comments please.

Lauren xxx

Happy New Year! I had a fairly good holiday spending a week and a half in Dumfries, which was great, got to catch up with friends, go out to the infamous Jumpin’ Jaks and spend my New Years Eve the same way i have for the past 4 years (God is it really that long??) in my local pub. Fantastic.

Anyway the real reason for this post is to come up with some interesting new things for Compsoc todo. Recently we’ve been getting a little stick for not having different types of events, especially ones that don’t involve alcohol (?!). We’ve come up with the basic ideas Bowling, Laser Quest and well thats about it…

We need ideas to get everyone who does computing to get involved, nothing overly geeky, or overly expensive, but any ideas would be much appreciated.

Have fun,

Lauren xxx

Deciding that there are more important things than class of degree, I am aiming to work and make myself a more employable person – I know I have the skills, I just don’t tend to market them.

So when the post came up in this years Compsoc of President, I realised I had everything I needed to do the role, but I hung back. Why?

Because I decided someone better suited would take this role, but thing was the only thing that would put someone else above me was their confidence in themselves, as I was the only person in 4th year with past Compsoc experience. That settled it for me, I had to at least try!

So here I am Lauren, President of Compsoc, and I am extremely proud of my new post. So here is to more confidence filled days, and a cracking new Compsoc board!!!

Lauren

I wouldn’t say it was controversial but it certainly did get some of my class mates wondering who I was talking about (and even more people complaining about bringing my boyfriend into the third year lab )

This follow up post is NOT going to name and shame those involved, because I’m not that sort of person, this post is just to say I have since realised (like many said) that it really isn’t like that in the real world.

For the past two and half months I have been working at IBM in Greenock. Which has been a new and extremely useful experience to me. I have gained confidence in many ways not only in Computing Science but also in just being a girl and being in this subject.

I guess I am always a little down on my “abilities” cause I am not so interested in learning stuff in my own spare time. However through this new experience I have learned in HTML, jsp, CSS, Javascript, JDBC and DB2 none of which, before this summer, I had done anything with (believe it or not) and it has shown me that I can learn anything if I want to.

But on the follow up, I have never once felt from any of the employees of IBM or any of the other students, that they believed I was ‘inferior’ to them and I haven’t been treated any different. I have always felt comfortable in the working environment, so for that, thanks to all the people I work with.

The whole experience has given me the new opportunity that I may actually follow my degree in to a suitable career. In the past I never wanted to for a mixture of reasons, now I believe that there is a chance that maybe this is what I am supposed to do.

Now all I have to worry about on returning to University is project, modules, assignments, modules, exams, fourth year………

Lauren xx

I’ll admit I’m not the most confident programmer. I felt I had only really just got Ada pinned before I had to learn Java and not to mention the horrors of C. I ask people when I have problems, if I don’t quite understand a problem I’ll talk to someone else and try and understand it with them. Isn’t that what everyone does? It’s a necessary part of learning any subject, but even more, we are lead to believe, within a Computing (Programming) background.

I know everyone does it, cause I’ve seen you. Yet I try and become part of these conversations and suddenly I am a hanger-on, cause the “guys” believe I have no useful information to give.

I’m always the last person someone asks if they need help, people look shocked if I even try to answer a question, most of the time they just ignore my input anyway.

This isn’t the best feeling, for those of us which work hard and do well, it’s a harsh blow to be continually knocked down. Thing is there are many ways I can solve this, just continue to grin and bear it and ask for help when I need it, but why should I have to?

I could say “screw you” and not ask for help, but “hey if you do ever get desperate enough to need my help then you know where you can go”. I’ve tried this and shock horror it made no difference to anyone but me. I like helping people, the teaching gene (unfortunately) is in my DNA and I can’t avoid it, plus I don’t get a satisfaction out of proving my point in this way.

I don’t mean to go on a feminist rant here, because that isn’t what this is about for me. I don’t want this to be about my sex, my hair colour or anything else of that kind, this for me is purely about being recognised as someone who has a worthwhile point of view and all I want is to give it.

Lauren