Asidua

Andrew

I started studying towards my degree course, MEng in Computer Science, at Queens University Belfast in September 2008.

I have always been interested in computing and its capabilities.  Over the years, as technology has developed, so too has my interest in this field and this prompted me to pursue a career in Computer Science.  Having friends and relatives who work in this field also pushed me towards this choice… I would enjoy working with Computers as a career.

If you want to learn more about my experiences in Asidua, please read my regular blog updates below….

 

26th July 2010
With the second year out of the way, I was eager to get started at work again at Asidua so I took the earliest possible start date after my exams.  I am now part of the RED project at the company which involves JavaScipt testing for a product that Asidua are helping to produce.   There are a number of other placements in the project who are staying on despite their year placement having already finished so the signs are good that I’ll be in for a good year here and I’m looking forward to the experience.

 

15th March 2010
I’m now currently midway through my 2nd Semester, after having finished my first semester Exams which went well as I achieved a good result in all of my modules!This 2nd semester modules consists of studying Multimedia Systems, creating a Group Project (another game!) and studying Data Structures and Algorithms.  So far, this term seems to be a lot more of a hands on approach with a lot of practical continuous assessment which is a different approach to beforehand.  In fact one of my modules has already stopped having lectures at the midway point to allow more work on our project.

Some people still haven’t found a placement yet for next year which is rapidly approaching so I’m glad that once again I haven’t been burdened by having to chase after a placement and being able to focus on my course.  I see that Asidua have found the batch of scholars to continue the Scholarship programme and they will be reaping this benefit next year!

 

1st October 2009
While the other scholarship winners had a few weeks break after their placement, there was no rest period for me as it was straight into University work following my first day off.   The modules that I’ve been studying this semester are Database Systems, Games Programming and, the hardest of all, Computation Theory (which is as hard as the name suggests!).  I hope to post another blog update close to the summer break.

 

25th September 2009
In my final week at Asidua, I had to return to Queens again in order to talk about the Scholarship in front of the new first years, although I was nervous at the idea of speaking in front of over 100 people it wasn’t anywhere nearly as bad as I had convinced myself it would be.  I also designed several more Web Pages on the website using .Net, in order to allow for updating and deleting information from Detections/Repairs and the Area Managers using SQL queries and stored procedures.


18th September 2009
After having finished the NUnit Tests, I was given an assignment of creating a web Front end using Visual Studio.  This would mean that I would be using some of the features that I had learnt in the initial weeks in the tutorials.  In order to complete this I had to use Data binding in order to attach an SQL query that was created in order to query a larger database.  These results were then displayed on the Home Page of a website that was created for NI Water in order for them to view information about their Detections and Repairs in a more efficient way.  In order to do this I used C# code although it would have been possible to data bind by using features included in Visual Studio.


11th September 2009
The highlight of week 6 was going to Queens University in order to represent Asidua at the Queens Open Day.  Having previously been at these sort of fairs as a student it seemed strange taking part on the other side of the stalls!  It involved me talking to students about the amount of career opportunities and benefits that come from embarking on a career in IT.  While at Asidua I spent the time developing the NUnit Tests.


4th September 2009
Week 5 was a short week due to having the Bank Holiday on the Monday but was broken up even more so by a series of induction presentations with a number of other newcomers.  A previous placement student had rejoined the company on a permanent position so it showed me that there definitely was opportunities for me at Asidua if I put the effort in.  It was also in this week that I began writing NUnit tests on code that Asidua had previously developed.


28th August 2009
It was back to getting up again at 6.30 after my week off, I had actually began to adapt to the early starts near the end of the initial two weeks but the weeks holiday had thrown me off all over again!  During this week I was introduced to Microsoft CCF(Customer Care Framework) and was told that I would be beginning to look at Testing on some of the projects that had been designed.  This meant ensuring that the projects did what they were supposed to do and that they did not contain errors.  Whilst originally using a manual approach by checking the results off a database, it meant that near the end of the week that I had to begin looking at using NUnit which I had never used before in order to do the testing so this was something new for me.


21st August 2009
My third week was actually a week off for me,  over the 8 weeks we were allowed a certain number of holidays and as I was doing volunteer work back home in Portadown, Asidua was willing to let me take my full allowance during this week which I was thankful for.


14th August 2009
My second week at the company was also the last week of the other two scholarship students, Queens student Niall McAllister and a University of Ulster, Magee student Sean Carlin.  Because of only really having studied Java at Queens, I was wary of how I would be able to adapt to C# as well as the other software such as Visual Studio, however these initial weeks were full of tutorials that Asidua provides which helped to show me that there wasn’t much difference between this and what I learnt except for the fact that I probably preferred using Visual Studio rather than JCreator.


7th August 2009
After having had two months of summer, I was excited to finally begin my 8 weeks placement at Asidua.  As part of the scholarship meant that I had previously met members of Asidua’s staff, it helped to reduce the nerves that I was feeling as I didn’t feel as thrown into the deep end when it came to new faces.  I started on the same day as a Queens graduate who was beginning full time work at the company so the fact that he was there permanently made the idea of only 8 weeks work seem a lot easier of a task.  The first week was mainly about settling in to my work space and getting an idea of what would be expected from me during my weeks here.