Hey there, everyone! It's been a while since I last posted here. Rest assured that I haven't abandoned this blog.

What I have been doing is adjusting to a new job! I haven't talked about it yet because this adjustment process takes time, and I needed space to do this process at my own pace. While I'm still adjusting and will be for some time, I'm now at a point where I feel comfortable to share with everyone what I've been up to.

My job title is Experimental Officer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hull - the same place as I've been doing my PhD (as is listed on the homepage of this site). I started this in January 2023.

This is an academic position, and it consists of academic teaching support (ie supporting lecturers in the delivery of their course content) combined with systems administration and managing the use of specialist equipment.

This role feels ideal for me at this time, as its a mix of academicy teaching support stuff and a technical role. It also has some teaching on the side, which is something I have very limited experience with, so it's a great chance to learn.

I'm doing this role part time at the moment while I finish my PhD.

In practical effects for this blog, it means that my posting frequency will be somewhat lower than it has been in times past, as you may have been noticing in the months leading up to my three month break. I'm going to personally aim for a blog post every 2 weeks, but it might be longer or shorter than that depending on how much energy I have to write posts and whether there's something I really want to talk about without waiting.

Given that I've been posting here since June 2014 (~9 years!), this blog is important to me, and so I thought it would be fitting to let you who read this blog know first about this news. I'll also continue to document my journey through the world of computer science into the future.

This will include a continuing to blog about my research post-PhD (no, I still haven't had enough of it :P) in some sort of sequel series to my PhD update blog posts that I've been writing. It will also include the random blog posts you've surely come to expect from me about neat things I've discovered and interesting things I've done.

Another milestone I am about to hit soon is my first published journal article! It has been accepted for publication, so I'm currently working through that process. The title will be "Real-time social media sentiment analysis for rapid impact assessment of floods", and will definitely be posting here as soon as it's published.

I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me in this journey so far up until this point. I really appreciate it!

I hope you'll continue to stick around here with me as I move forwards into this new era!

On the 25th January 2017, Adobe announced the end of Flash Player (and I blogged about it). A few days ago, it all officially ended. Although with everything else going on right now you might not have noticed it, but a crucial piece of the web's history has been shutdown.

For those not in the know, before web browsers were as capable as they are today (before we had the HTML5 Canvas and all the other modern apis), Adobe put together a browser plugin called Flash Player.

This plugin - at the time - revolutionised the way content was displayed in your browser. Far from static pages containing animated GIFs or a little bit of Javascript to add the odd effect, Flash allowed developers to deliver interactive content in a way that wasn't possible before - and all you had to do was install a simple browser plugin.

I'm quite sure that sites like Newgrounds, Orisinal, and Nitrome wouldn't have existed if it weren't for Flash.

It was recognised that an update to the HTML 4.01 standard (and associated standards, such as CSS and Javascript) were clearly needed. Fast forward a few years, and HTML5 was born (it was about this time that my programming journey started, and although I played with the Flex SDK and ActionScript 3 - the language flash player content was written in, I ultimately decided to learn Javascript instead).

With it, came all sorts of Javascript APIs such as WebGL and the HTML5 Canvas - and the beginning of the end for Flash. Suddenly, Flash didn't seem necessary any more - since browsers had become capable enough to do what flash does on their own, and libraries such as three.js and game engines such as Phaser were invented to take advantage of these new capabilities.

Naturally, Flash's demise was sure to follow. I agree that turning Flash off is the best thing to do. At the same time though I can't help but feel that there should have been more fanfare about it, and the legacy that Flash is leaving behind.

Thankfully, due to the amazing efforts of BlueMaxima's Flashpoint, over 70 thousand games have been preserved for all to see and play well into the future.

Goodbye, Flash. I'll miss you - you were the first chapter in a much longer tale.

I've recently come across contractfortheweb.org. It sounds obvious, but certain qualities of the web that we take for granted aren't, in fact, universal. Things like a lack of censorship (China & their great firewall; Cuba; Venezuela), consumer privacy (US Mobile Carriers; Google; Google/Android Antitrust), and fair pricing (AT&T; BT) are rather a problem in more places than is noticeable at first glance.

The Contract for the Web is a set of principles - backed by the famous Tim Berners-Lee - for a free, open, and fair Internet. The aim is to build a full contract based on these principles to guide the evolution of the web for year to come.

Personally, I first really started to use the web to learn how to program. By reading (lots) of tutorials freely available on the web, I learnt to build websites, write Javascript, and more!

Since then, I've used the web to share the things I've been learning on this blog, stay up-to-date with the latest technology news, research new ideas, and play games that deliver amazing experiences.

The web (and, by extension, the Internet - the web refers to just HTTP + HTTPS) for me represents freedom of information. Freedom to express (and learn about) new thoughts and ideas without fear of being censored. Freedom to communicate with anyone in the world - regardless of physical distances.

It is for this reason that I've signed the Contract for the Web. It's my hope that this effort will ensure that the Internet becomes more open and neutral going forwards, so that everyone can experience the benefits of the open web for a long time to come.

You're probably already aware that Adobe announced that they are ending support for flash at the end of 2020. You're browser has probably already disabled the plugin by default. This is good news for the web as a whole, but what about everything left behind?

What if I said that at the end of 2020 we'll lose an entire chapter of the Internet's history? I'm talking about the masses of content on the internet that's powered by flash. While the Internet Archive probably has a considerable portion of ti archived already, that's only the beginning of the issues at hand.

For example, much of the flash content of yore had what's called a site lock, which prevents it from working on any site other than specifically-approved domains. This was very useful in prevent thieves from taking off with valuable content, setting up a competing website, and earning tons of ad revenue from it, but it's a hindrance to archiving efforts.

The other problem at hand is that if Adobe end support for flash, it isn't going to stick around in our browsers for long after that - so we'll lose the ability to run all this flash content that makes up such a huge part of the Internet's history.

A scary thought, to be sure! Thankfully, all is not lost! Dedicated volunteers have set up a project called Flashpoint, which serves to not only archive all this content, but build a series fo programs that will allow people for generations to come to run said content - through the use of clever hacks such as an intelligent local proxy, and tools such as the standalone projector version of flash, Pale Moon, and other such software.

If you're interested in checking it out, I suggest heading over to Flashpoint's website and downloading the Infinity version - this downloads the content you wish to run dynamically - instead of all at once (totalling ~34GiB O.o). There's even a master list (also here) listing everything archived so far.

Hey! I've just realised that this was my 300th post. Wow! Thanks for all the support so far. Here's to the next 300 :D

I've just finish my degree at University this week. I'm still waiting on results, but I thought I'd make a post about it documenting my thoughts so far before I forget (also, happy 300th post! Wow, have I reached that already?). Note that this doesn't mean the end of this blog - far from it! I'll be doing a masters this next academic year.

It's been a great journey to have the chance to go on. I feel like I've improved in so many different ways having gone to University. Make no mistake: University isn't for everyone (if you're considering it, make sure you do your research about all your options!) - but I've found that it's been right for me.

I'm glad that Rob Miles' suggestion of starting a blog has been a great investment of my time. For one, I've been able to document the things that I've been learning so that I can come back to them later, and read a more personalised guide to the thing I blogged about. I've also learnt a ton about Linux server management too - as I manage the server that this blog runs on entirely through the terminal (sorry, hackers who want to get into my non-existent management web interface - I know you're out there - you leave pawprints all over my server logs!). All very valuable experiences - I highly suggest that you start one too (you won't regret it. I promise!).

I've also found that my eyes have been opened in more ways than one whilst doing my degree - both to new ways of approaching problems, and new ways of solving them - and many other things that would take too long to list here). I've blogged about some of my favourite modules in this regard before - particularly Virtual Reality and Languages and Compilers.

Thanks to all the amazing people I've met along the way, I've ended up in a much better place than when I started.

(The LoRaWAN Logo. Of course, this post isn't endorsed (or even read?) by them at all)

Hello again! I decided to write a quick post about the trio of talks I attended at C4DI yesterday. We had Rob Miles, Robin, and a very knowledgeable Paul from Norfolk come to us about all things LoRa.

Rob Miles started off with an introduction to how it all works, and how as a hobbyist we can get started with it and build an excellent cow tracking program :D

Robin took it further by showing us how he took his idea for a temperature graph from first principles to a working device, all the steps along the way, and solutions to the problems he encountered whilst building it.

Finally, Paul showed us what he has been doing with LoRa down in Norfolk, and went into further details as to how LoRa devices communicate with your application server. He also talked more about The Things Network, and how the people behind it are creating a public LoRa network that everyone can both use and contribute to by running a gateway. Apparently, soon even private commercial companies can deploy private LoRa infrastructure that is able to route public messages through to the things network - since they are picked up anyway due to the nature of radio!

All in all, it was an excellent set of talks - even if I didn't know very many people there, and had to leave a bit before the end to attend a meeting!

If any of these 3 talks sound interesting to you, Rob Miles should have the slides available on his blog soon. I've also got a recording of all 3 talks (minus the last bit of Paul's talk of course). If you'd like a copy of the recordings, get in touch (IRL if you know me, by email - check my homepage for the address, or by commenting below and I can pull your email address from the comment)!

Since I start my third year at university on Monday, I thought I'd make a quick post here about what you can expect to see on here in the future. If you're starting another (or your first!) year of university this year, I wish you good luck!

In the first semester, I've chosen a pair of modules about languages and their compilers and virtual reality. I thought the former sounded quite cool - I'm hoping that I'll end up understanding what goes on under the hood in the compilers that power the languages we use today. I haven't had much exposure to the latter - so I thought that it would be a good introduction to the subject to 'broaden my horizons', so to speak - that is to say I'm curious to investigate an area that I haven't touched before.

For the second semester, I've chosen a mobile development module and an advanced AI module. Personally I'm most excited about these two - The Prolog that I did (and posted about!) before was actually really rather fun and made sense in a strange sort of way, so I thought I'd try my hand at the next level. Mobile development is another area that I've been interested in experimenting with - I've been pondering writing an Android app for Pepperminty Wiki, my lightweight wiki engine that powers a personal project of mine.

With this in mind, you can expect to see a bunch of blog posts relating to these areas that I'll be exploring :D

(Above: My piano keyboard! It's an absolutely delightful Challen.)

I can recommend taking up a hobby. In my case, it's playing the piano. It's important to do something other than writing code. You might not think so now (I didn't a few years ago), but I can see the wisdom in those words now - I'm so glad that I didn't stop playing the piano (silent pianos get thrown away, after all! ¹).

It might be a musical instrument. Or playing board games with friends. Or woodworking. Anything that doesn't (normally) involve a computer! It's sometimes helpful to get away from that nasty problem you're trying to figure out a solution for and come back to it later. I quite often find that the solution comes much more easily :-)

What's your hobby? Post a comment below!

As you've probably noticed, posts around here have slowed down recently. There's a reason: I've been very busy doing a year in industry. Currently, my goal is to release one post a week. While my time has been rather fragmented and at times extremely limited, I've still been able to sit down for a little while here and there to write some blog posts and some code (If I can actually pull it off, I've got a seriously cool project I'm going to post about on here in the near-ish future!).

Due in part to the fact that I really don't want to exclusively write code at my industrial placement, I've been trying my hardest to keep programming and playing around with things in my free time. It's not as easy as you might think. Sometimes, the setup and teardown time eats all the time I allocated away so can't actually get anything done.

If this sounds a little bit like your time at the moment, fear not! I have developed a technique or two I wanted to share on here, just in case someone else finds it useful :-)

Planning what it is that you want to do is really important. You probably know this already, but it is especially so if you don't have a ton of time to throw at a project, because otherwise you can easily spend longer figuring out what you need to do next than actually doing it. I try to break my projects down into small, manageable bite-sized chunks that I can tackle one at a time. Only have 1/2 an hour at a time? Break it down into portions that will take you about 1/2 an hour complete. It might take a while, but breaking your project down can help it go a little bit faster.

Even with breaking my project down, I often find myself forgetting where I got to last time. To tackle this, I've discovered that leaving a comment in the file I was last editing explaining in a sentence or two what I need to do next helps me figure it out faster. It's also really useful that my editor (whichever one I'm using at the time) is configured to remember the files I had open last - letting me quickly pick up where I left off. Monodevelop, Visual Studio, and Atom do this automatically - if your editor doesn't, there's bound to be a setting or an extension that does it for you.

By planning what I need to do next, and leaving myself short comments explaining what I was about to do next, I can increase the amount of time I spend actually writing code instead of fumbling around working out what I wanted to do next. It's certainly not an ideal way to program, but with practice you can get quite proficient at it....

Found this helpful? Got any tips yourself? Comment down below!

I've been to several events of various natures now (like the Hardware Meetup), and at each one I've found that a 'business card' or two would be really handy to give to people so that they can remember the address of this website.

After fiddling with the design over about a week I (and Mythdael!) came up with the design you see above. Personally, I'm really pleased with them, so I decided to post here to show them off :-)

I'm finding that it's a rather good idea to promote and build your brand at these kind of events by showing people the cool things that you've created and learnt, and business cards seem to be just the thing that helps you do it.