Bakie.net » Bakies Life

Started Placement at Croda

Robert — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:12:49 +0000

As part of my Chemical Engineering I do a placement year during my third year where I spend 12 months working for a company as a Student Engineer (This is for me to get my DIS with my degree). I will be starting at Croda on the 2nd September.

I was supposed to start work at Artenius one the 1st Sept but unfortunately they went bust 2 weeks before I was supposed to start work. I fortunately managed to get a new placement at Croda, which seems to be a better placement. And they give me the first 4 weeks of accomindation free of charge which will keep my costs down nicely.

Will keep you updated.

1st Year Results

Robert — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:11:14 +0000

I just got my first year results and I managed to get a 72.5% average which I like to round upto 73% .
It was what I was aiming for but was only expecting to get around 60 – 65% because the exams were not easy but I guess they went better than I though they had have gone.

So now I just have to keep this up for the next 4 years

Update on my Uni Course

Robert — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:54:21 +0000

Just though that Ill give a quick update on my life at Uni. So far exam wise I have had 3 exams with an average of around 70% which I am quite happy with and 2 bits of coursework with an average of around 80%. The main thing that I cannot wait for now is the Easter break which is in 2 weeks and will last an entire month and ill only have 1 bit of coursework to do and I have almost already finished it so ill probably be doing a lot of work on all of my websites, trying to improve where possible.

One of my mates at Huddersfield Uni is studying Game Design and he has not had a single exam so far so has only had coursework and even that coursework sounds like fun because he has to do research into games like Half life 1 and World of Warcraft etc. I was really tempted to study Game design at uni but I would have probably gone to America because there are more game companies over there than over here in England. I would have probably gone to http://www.iadtvegas.com/ because I have heard good things about it.

So to summarise I am quite happy on my course “Chemical Engineering with Management”, and even though there are other courses out there that might have been more fun and less work, I would still stay on my course.

Finally, the Christmas holidays…

Robert — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:04:21 +0000

I have been waiting for this moment for quite some time now and now it is here, the Christmas holidays… I ahve been waiting for this holiday for quite some time because my University don’t have half term like Sixth Form/High School so we only have 2 breaks, Christmas and Easter. The only bonus is that they are both a month long so that’s quite nice apart from that fact that when I return Ill probably have forgotten everything that I have learnt that semester and get chucked straight into exams. But who cares, its a whole month off

Ok I better stop with the boring bit to do with my life and get back onto what this blog is about. Over Christmas I am hoping to get some work done with the new design of SpudMud , I have already gotton a designer to do me a new design and now that that is finnished and coded (by me) I am slowely brining it to life. You can have a look at how the development is going over at beta.spudmud.com. I have still got a lot of work to do i.e. finishing off the games, video and pictures sections as well as trying to make all of the code valid (not sure why I want it to be XHTML valid but I just do).

I better write a bit about the designer now that you have seen the great job he did with the design. I found Ed’s site over at the DP forums and immediately contacted him to ask for a quote after seeing his great portfolio. The quote he gave my shocked me at first, it just seemed to low (I wont mention any values), but I shouldn’t complain should I. His work was done in about 1 and a half weeks which I was quite happy with considering it was 5 pages fully custom designed. He was great at communicating and always kept me updated. The thing that I was really amazed about was the way he could understand what I wanted because as you probably can see from this blog, I am not the best at getting things across.

I am hoping to get the new design up and running by Christmas but I think that that’s very unlikely because I’m simply too lazy at the moment due to Uni taking everything out of me and I have coursework and exams to revise for.

Innoix

Robert — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:59:07 +0000

Innoix.com is my latest project. Currently its still in the planning stages so am not releasing any more information but expect an update within the next dew days.

If all goes well it is going to be a very long term project that will span many years. Sorry about not releasing much about it but I dont like people stealing my ideas etc

One Holiday Down…

Robert — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:50:00 +0000

Well I’ve just finished my 1 week holiday to Tenneriefe which was great fun, got a nice tan etc, so im quite happy. Might post some pics later.
I did decide to after my exams start on SpudMud.com but that didnt quite work as planned because I was a bit too lazy but now that ive been lazy for 2 weeks I better get started. I have decided to add the following features:

Pictures section
Animations section
Changing the layouts so they flow more
Adding more features behind the scenes to the admin panel
Possibly changing the entire layout round a bit

The only problem is in a few weeks im going to Switzerland for a week so I better get started soon because there is quite a lot of work to do still and I better get it done while im young

My Holiday Plans

Robert — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:55:33 +0000

Well currently I have my A Level exams which are the last of the high-school/college exams so that is why I haven’t posted for so long. So, on the 25th June I am finished with High School for the rest of my life, sound great doesnt it . And the even better thing is that after the exams I have 4 months of nothing until University (if I get the grades). So I can do whatever I want for that time.

My plans for the holidays are:

Work more on my current main project www.SpudMud.com and finish it properly and see how much I can get out of it
Go up to the lake district for a week or so and go camping/hiking etc with a few friends
Maybe start a new web project, I have quite a few ideas so I might just give them a go considering im gonna have all this time
Earn some money working at the Pool (Life-Guarding) for university and for marketing my sites more.

Google PageRank Update 27/04/07 Has Begun

Robert — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:03:49 +0000

Finally the Google PageRank Update have begun! Only about 12 days after everyone was expecting.

I quite pleased with this sites jump. I started this blog just over a month ago and its already now a PR4!

Evdence if you dont believe me:

Check for yourself!

My other sites have all had their own jumps:

www.pichostonline.com went from 2 to 3 Check

www.spudmud.com went from 0 to 3 Check

www.rankandlinks.com went from 0 to 1 Check

What Idiot Invented a MMORPG?

Robert — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:14:43 +0000

I haven’t updated the blog in ages due to too much time being spent on Eve Online, yes im hooked… Its quite sad actually, because my final exams start in 2 months and here I am playing Eve all the time which I should be spending revising because I know that once the exams are over I have 3 months of holiday until University.

I haven’t spent much time on my sites as I should which is kinda annoying, Im thinking of selling PicHostOnline.com after the holidays so I really need to get some proper marketing started so that I can get a good price for it. At the current rate that im going im gonna get my $150 back in under a year which Im quite pleased with but I know that I can do a lot more if I just don’t waste my time on this stupid MMORPG.

Luckily my subscription for Eve is expiring on the 6th May, just after a 30 hour EVE LAN party (sad I know…) , So I should be able to get back on track with my revision and web-mastering soon after that.

SpudMud.com – Current Project

Robert — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:57:07 +0000

The name SpudMud was thought of by my little brother while we were talking about plans the entertainment site that I was going to make for my computing project. The name started off my be thinking out aloud while driving and for some reason I said Spud and then my brother said SpudMud, it stuck from then on …

I decided to do an entertainment site for my computing project because me and my brother had thought of doing to for a hobby a long time ago but I didn’t have the motivation to get it done. But when I was asked what am I going to do for my project for my second year of Computing I decided to finally get started on the site because it seemed like a “fun” project not a boring one like some of the other people in my class.

Currently the site, SpudMud.com , is still heavily under development with new features coming out almost daily. At the moment of this post the site is in full working order with no bugs but there are quite a few features that are still needed to be added to get a finished product that will get a good mark. i.e. :

A category system because currently its all just one list
A more advanced admin panel
Get the site XHTML valid
Tidy up my PHP code and add comments
Possibly start on the pictures section unless it takes too long

My plans are to add a few of the games to Digg, Stumble and other community sites like that because its a good way to get quality traffic to my site because my brother submitted one game to Stumble and it site went from getting about 10 visits a day to over 100 unique visits a day.

A few games and videos that I recommend: