Asidua

Sean

I’m currently studying towards a BSc in Computer Science degree in University of Ulster Magee Campus, which commenced in September 2008.

I chose this degree because I enjoy working with computers and enjoy computer programming. I have a genuine keen interest in computing and I believe I have the skills and the drive to maximize the benefits from the Scholarship programme with Asidua. I am a logical and problem solving minded individual. I also enjoy working in a team and socializing.

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

 26th July 2010
I have just finished the first week of my placement and it feels good to be back here at Asidua, seen a lot of familiar faces in my building unit. I had to complete the Asidua induction meetings I attended last year again, but I enjoyed meeting the new graduate and placement students at the meetings as well as catching up with the people I have already met from last year. I have been assigned my project which is eSchools and I have met the members of my team and they filled me in with a project overview. The project is quite large, complex and database oriented, but I am sure I will get to know the finer details of the system over time. Overall I really enjoyed my first week, meeting everyone, getting back into my working routine and even blogging again. Hope you enjoyed the blog update and I plan to update the blog again soon.

 

12th March 2010
I am currently half way through my 2nd semester at Magee.  It is the most difficult semester yet but I have also been having a lot of fun so it has balanced out. I have recently been one of the speakers at Magee’s open night presentation which went very well. My modules this semester include algorithms and data structures, human computer interaction and networks and data communications. I am finding the networks the most interesting module, part of one of our assessments was to create a website and maintain a blog. I decided to code my own blog from scratch using PHP and MySQL which turned out very nice and then I integrated it into my new website which is currently online.

On a more technical update I have decided to try out some Linux distributions I have installed Ubuntu for home use and use Open Suse in the university labs. I have been learning a few Linux terminal commands and exploring the many open source tools available on the operating system. I am really looking forward to the summer and starting my full year placement with Asidua I have already got my accommodation sorted out so all that is left is to finish up my exams in May. I am sure that I will be posting up more blog updates soon and throughout my placement period.

 

22nd November 2009
I am near the end of my 1st semester of second year at Magee and it has been a fairly enjoyable experience so far, also looking back at the summer placement I really enjoyed the working atmosphere and experience which I received. In second year there seems to be a lot more assessments and projects which is a bit frustrating as there are a lot of deadlines. I am glad that I have my placement already organised with Asidua because I have started to see everyone applying and competing for placements and it is a weight of my shoulders not having to worry about getting a placement. Currently I am learning C++ in my algorithmic programming classes which is quite fun. I have noticed that I have grasped a lot of concepts quite easily because of my experience with ASP.NET and C# in the summer. I have decided to learn more about ASP.NET 3.5 and SQL server 2008 outside of university as well.

Recently I attended a prize giving by the university and received two prizes for the best first year student in computer science which has given me more motivation to try hard for the January exams coming up. I am enjoying second year even though it is a lot more challenging than first year and I am looking forward to seeing what the second semester brings and of course, my placement.

 

14th August 2009
This was my last week of my summer placement and I spent this week going through the feedback left about the site template, thankfully there were only minor changes and implementing these changes to the templates did not take very long.

7th August 2009
By mid-week I had completed the customer-facing site’s template and my manager sent my work away for review to the managers and customers. I would wait for feedback and I would make changes to the site template according to the feedback that I received.

31st July 2009
My objective this week was to capture the customer external facing SharePoint site’s initial requirements, to do this we organised a meeting with the customer and discussed what SharePoint can do for them. After collecting the information to develop the customer facing site, the rest of the week I had to develop the template.

24th July 2009
I started on the account management template in SharePoint, which was to be designed so Asidua could manage all their projects from one master site/portal. I really enjoyed this week because I got to use all the knowledge of SharePoint’s functionalities that I had gained from the previous week and use it in a real life situation. By the end of this week I had completed the account management facing site.

17th July 2009
This week my line manager introduced me to the project that I would be working on. I would be creating templates for SharePoint sites, both at the account management and customer level. The rest of this week I spent getting up to speed with SharePoint and all of its functionalities. I found some useful books in Asidua’s library about SharePoint that explained and clarified a lot of my questions.

10th July 2009
During this I learned the basics of ASP.NET and started using SQL server 2008. I learned how to create web forms in ASP and submit the data to an SQL database. The SQL was easy as I had previous experience with SQL and getting to grips with ASP was not hard after what I had learned in week 2.

3rd July 2009
Before I started my summer work placement with Asidua, I had knowledge of using java, php and mysql. So this week I started familiarizing myself with some technologies that Asidua use. I started using Visual Studio 2008 and learning the basics of C#. Surprisingly I found that C# was incredibly similar to Java, I actually thought that using visual studio 2008 combined with coding in C# was easier than coding in Java.

26th June 2009
On my first week I was really excited to be part of Asidua and to start my summer work placement with them. During this week Niall (another scholarship student) and I basically had an introduction to the company. The Introduction included meeting executives, managers, learning Asidua’s procedures and getting a guided tour of the buildings (Unit 10 and 15). We quickly got settled into are work spaces and I was glad that the other scholarship student was not too far away from me.