This morning i woke at 8am, i stared at the wall for a good few minutes, ah the wall, my friend, always there when i need a hug… fucking bastard.

I rolled over and discovered the glory of the morning that told me i needed to empty my bladder.  The toilet, my love, always there when I need more than a hug… fucking bastard.

I walked a slow and unrhythmic dance back to my room, i collapse back onto my bed, i think about a stretch, get ready for the day.  The morning, always early for its appointment… fucking bastard.

But then not this morning, it’s a wednesday, hell the only thing on my time table is a Staff Student Meeting, having quit as Student Representative, i don’t need to go!  Well fuck it, i’m going to sleep again, i grab my iPhone, and instruct it to tell my computer to play the new Gorrilaz album, i stretch out and I go back to sleep, the laziness, always pushing me back, always making me fail, always leaving me single, the laziness,  fucking love you.

University students are given a time table, these timetables are very carefully organised at the start of the year, making sure classes don’t clash and meeting spaces are booked and assigned to the correct people.  But these time tables affect more than just room bookings, a clash can cause more than just the irritation of a few people trying to use the same room at the same time, ignorance of time tabled classes can cause anti-social behavior and even university IT system outage as we have seen today at the School of Computing, Dundee University.

Today is Thursday and as with every Thursday, the entire second year student body of the School’s flagship degree subject, Applied Computing, arrived in the ground floor labs of the Queen Mother Building ready to work on group projects for a client who has employed the help of the university for a new IT system for his business.  However today, they arrived to find Labs 1 & 2 both full, an unscheduled class had taken the use of the labs and all the computers contained in them, this left every member of the second year group crammed into Lab 0, the laptop lab.  Usually our labs have people working in their own time, these people were also find themselves with no where to sit and so they also were having to use Lab 0, so first, second and third years students were all crammed into one small room.

Now the work issued required everybody to work with code that could only be tested once uploaded to the Schools computers, being forced to use their own laptop computers, students were needing to huddle round tables, with not enough power points for everybody’s chargers, they then had to connect to the VPN, a system that hooks an their ordinary laptop computer into the School’s local network, however, this is not meant for primary use and can only take 24 connections at a time.

With the VPN rendered useless by the large amount of people requiring its usage, the work set out for today’s lab could not take place, frustrations running high, the noise levels of this cramped lab climbed, soon people neglected basic manners and started playing music and videos loudly and thus the people who were trying their best to hold group meetings couldn’t hear themselves think.

We book rooms for a reason, so that when someone else needs a meeting space, they can check and realise which places are available and which places are not.  It’s not just a nuisance when people are made to find other places to work, it can effect the infrastructure of the school, today it broke down the schools system so much that the primary goal of education was made impossible.  Students couldn’t even work from home because the VPN was brought down.

So please, check the availability of a space before deciding to host your events there.  Failure to do so is not just rude but can actually destroy the work of several other people.

I keep finding music and thinking, I could use that!  But then I keep wondering what video i’ll make to use said music on.  For instance, just discovered Ride of the Valkyries as Royalty Free on audiomicro.tv

They even have sound effects, why haven’t i used this site before?

Free Sound Effects
Download Free Sound Effects from AudioMicro.

hehe, and to top it off, i get 5 free credits for telling you about it too, love this site XD

It seems that we have become a rather nosy species, we always want to know how each others day was, what they got up to, where they went blah blah blah.  This has been escalated to the point of insanity with the dawning of twitter.  With twitter, a person may place online exactly what they are doing at any one time, a sort of reverse stalking, forcing public your own private life.  The problem we seem to have is what our conscripted stalkers will do when we leave out certain details.

This is shown more than anything in the School of Computing, (see, this is a student relevant blog).  Here at Dundee University’s School of Computing, most of us students are tweeters, and yes we realise that tweeting tweeters on twitter use some of the most insufferable jargon of any computer meme.  When all of us are packed together in labs and lectures, we know exactly what each other are doing and thanks to twitter, now we can get confirmation of that fact with each others “in the labs” tweets.  But now we know what each other are doing when we’re not in the class room.  One can sit and say “Hey, Josh is in a Japanese Lecture, he’s bored.”  We can say this because Josh tweeted so on twitter.  But what happens when we don’t say what we’re doing?

Well i have observed the phenomenon that is “twitter status withdrawal symptoms.”  I observe this when arriving to the labs and being demanded of my location and doings directly prior to arriving in the form of the question “where were you?!”

“Where were you?” has become one of my pet peeves.  People now rely on twitter for my current activities so much that they simply cannot abide to not know what i’m doing if i do not tweet it.  This peeve of mine resulted in a rather vulgar experiment today, what would happen if i did fill twitter in on the missing details?

The occasion that i hate being asked where i was the most is when i am returning from the lavatory.  Having only been away for say two minutes, people have been so addicted to my current location updates that they wish to know where i was for such a minuscule moment in time.  I threatened several times that i would start posting details of my bowel movements on twitter if they were so very interested.  Today i did it.

When i was upon the throne today, i posted details of where i was and what i was doing in the form of “Daily Bowel Movements on Twitter.”  Having been so sure that i was filling the final gap on twitter you wouldn’t believe the barrage of unwant i received in response to my tweets.  Suddenly it wasn’t “where were you?” but it was “why would you tell us where you were?!”

It would seem that followers on twitter don’t want to know everything, but they don’t know that until you tell them everything, but of course if you don’t tell them everything, they demand to know everything.  You see the dilemma?

Twitter seems to have turned us all into socially acceptable stalkers, but even then we don’t want to know everything about a person.  Even if we are making our private lives public, it’s important to know what parts should be kept public, if just for our collective sanity.  Unfortunately this does not solve the problem of the annoying question “Where were you?” but perhaps this rather nifty response of mine will:

“None of your business!”

I went to a party last night.  To be honest, I didn’t enjoy it very much, been going through a hard time recently, my estranged wife left the country with my daughter and I’ve been struggling to enjoy much at all, so having found it rather depressing I ended up going home while no one was looking.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with personal life, I’m just trying to prove a point.  You see there’s a common belief in a stereotype of student.  Students are young people, just out of school who want nothing more than to go out every night and get drunk and have sex.  Hell it seems obvious that all we do is sex, drugs and rock and roll.  Eugh, if only.

As student representative for my year, I’ve got to know all sorts of students and I’ll point out the definitive phrase there being ‘all sorts’.

It’s my belief that there is no such thing as a student stereotype.  From what I see, the only thing that makes these people similar to each other is that they’ve all come to study at university.  Student’s are from all age groups, countries, beliefs, attitudes and personalities.  It just wouldn’t fit that they’d all be party mad kids.  To facilitate so many different types of people, The University of Dundee has to be able to facilitate their needs, whether it be through activities, societies or support.  See, I am going somewhere with this.

For every student and for every need, there’s a service.  For the sporty student, there’s a club for every body punishing desire: fencing, swimming, athletics, canoeing… water polo?  Hey you can even join the rucksack club, a club that was named so long ago that its members now live in fear of suggesting a new name.

Sports not your thing?  Then how about the politics society?  Book club?  Perhaps you’d like to meet like-minded people of your religion, Christian?  Buddhist?  Muslim?  There’s even a society for atheists.

This week I discovered that support for your situation can be found anywhere.  My difficulties have been causing me to miss several lectures, I thought I’d better inform one of my lecturers why I hadn’t been attending and immediately I’d been invited to attend counselling on campus, an offer I must admit I refused out of my keen talent of stubbornness but it’s good to know that university services go beyond just activities, support for depression, financial issues and even your health exist right here on campus and all you need do is make contact.  So what ever your need, or what ever need you find crops up, it’s nice to know that who ever you are, there’s something there for you.

So there is no stereotype of student, there are many different types of people attending Dundee University but this is not a problem, because Dundee University can accommodate for us all.  Even boring anti-socialites like me.  Now doesn’t that bring a smile to your face.

Let me tell you about my day yesterday.  I woke up at nine and left for my morning lecture at ten.  I’m studying Applied Computing and I’m now in my second year.  I’m class rep for all second year students studying at the School of Computing.

After an hour in a lecture learning about polymorphism in C++ I’ve left feeling like I’ve not learnt a thing, this is the way of most of our lectures, we’re taught what they plan to teach us but the real learning is in practise, now knowing the starting knowledge of polymorphism it is my job to research it further and see how I can use it in my projects.  We’re warned by Michael, our C++ hating lecturer, at the start that we will not understand a word he says and really its something that we can only hope will just one day “click” in our brains several years down the line.  I still don’t fully understand what polymorphism is or why I should use it, but I’m sure I will use it on a day to day basis even if I don’t realise it.

I now have a two hour wait till my next lecture but this doesn’t mean I have a break.  For two hours I sit in the computer labs, along with several other computing students from various years, working on my coding assignment.  To make a program that simulates a cash machine in C++.  Although we’ve only been learning the language for a couple of weeks we’ve been thrown in the deep end.  Much of what we’ll write is from our own research, Google being our main aid of study.

This is a large assignment, which we’ve had three weeks to work on that is due on Monday.  It’s hard work but I’ll get there.

After an hour we decide to go for lunch, on our way in to town I’m told there’s a new Burger King just opened in the Overgate Centre.  I decide that rather than my normal McDonalds lunch I’ll give it a go, see if Burger King makes a hardy student meal.  At Burger King the new store looks good, well set out and cosy though this is not important as I’m here for take away.  After five or so minutes in a queue I’m at the front with a woman wandering around side to side in front of me.  A girl calls out “Next here!” I turn to the woman in front and ask if she’s in the queue, she attempts to tell me that she’s already ordered but before she can finish, the girl at the counter bellows “NEXT HERE NOW!”  A little shocked, I approach the counter, I ask for an Angus Meal with no tomatoes.  Noting that the prices are the same as at their retail park stores (expensive) I ask if they have any student discounts, “no!” she says sharply, almost sounding offended that I asked, “that’s £5.20” she says, still having not once said please.  I hand over my card and she darts her eyes at me and says “is this your card?!” A little shocked at this accusation I say yes and she informs me that I’ll need to sign for my purchase, it seems they still don’t have chip and pin after four years of the rest of the country being updated to the new secure technology.  I sign for my purchase and am informed that it’ll be a few minutes wait for my burger, this makes perfect sense seeing as I’ve asked for a custom made meal with no tomato.

After five minutes I finally get my meal, she shoves it toward me in a small bag, the burger box stuffed in on its side to make it fit.  “That’s yours,” she inputs, “NEXT HERE!”

I leave Burger King a little shaken, I go find a spot outside to sit and eat my meal.  After all that wait, I’ve received a standard meal complete with tomato, the bun is dry like it’s been sitting on their selves for several days.  Having worked two shifts in a McDonalds restaurant a few years ago, I know that all their ingredients are fresh and with a regular turn around, obviously the same doesn’t apply at Burger King, even if you are paying a good two pounds more for effectively the same meal.

Now 1pm it’s time for my Information Technology lecture, this is the final lecture before we give a presentation of what we’ve been working on for the IT brief, an alternative text input device for people who can’t use a keyboard.  This lecture goes well, although not the most exhilarating of lectures, it is interesting and though provoking.

Now my lectures are over but my day isn’t finished, you see, I’m also signed on as a student tutor so I now have four hours in the labs teaching first years web authoring, part of today’s lesson I have to take up informing the freshers that they require a class rep, a position that I held last year and so was informed I would be best to tell them about.  There is much reluctance among them for taking this role, which surprised me actually as it’s a role I enjoyed very much and frankly, it looks great on your CV.  After a few minutes of tedious avoiding the subject, several first years look to the back of the room at one guy.  Their nomination had been made, I spoke to him about it and he told me if no one else is interested, he may as well do it.  A few minutes later, after sitting with other students and explaining the role, I’ve had no further luck.  I go back to the lab where this guy is sitting and tell him, “Congratulations, you’re now the first year class rep.”  The reaction was not one that I expected, immediately there was ruckus as all the other freshers have stood up in standing ovation, wooting, whistling and cheering their new class rep.  Can’t say I was ever so celebrated.

At 6PM, my labs tutoring time ends.  I go back though to sit in the labs, my friends are done for the day and are packing up to leave, but I have to work on my code.  Thankfully, all computing students have 24 hour access to the labs so there’s no need for me to leave.

I sit and get on with my code, after an hour or two, I’m alone in the lab so I put on some music.  Whilst listening to spotify and drinking large doses of caffeine filled coca cola I code late into the night.  It’s ten to midnight and my left leg has fallen asleep so I take the hint, I pack up my things and I go home straight to bed.  This is a normal day for me, I will probably do it again today, and again tomorrow… but I won’t be going back to that Burger King.

Yesterday, while walking into town, a rather drunk man approached me with flowers, he handed me the flowers and told me in crudely put together words to give them to the first person I saw of whom I thought required them.

Now very conscious of the daffodils in my hand I continued down the road and reached a lady walking in the other direction who looked quite miserable.  It seemed quite obvious that she required something to cheer her up so I handed her the flowers and told her I had been told to give them to her.  She laughed, took them and continued down her path now with a smile on her face.

What a pleasant way of doing things.

Andy and I are in the computing labs off of the union green. Shalt we be seeing you soon as we’d so much like be meeting you. We find our selves quite unknowing of the status that is the presentation.  Please arrange a rendezvous before the third hour is upon us so we might arrange for crumpets and tea among enlightening conversations.

Spit spot,
Ross and your delighting writer, Andrew Paul Barratt.

I’ve been asked a few times these couple of days about my experience.  The obvious question is, how can a first year know the first thing about representing an entire school of students?  Well although this is my first year at Dundee University, it most certainly isn’t my first time in Student Politics.

Before I decided to start my career at our School of Computing, I’d actually attended three different higher education institutes, working in student representation at all of them.  If you have the time to read this, I’d like to go over a few key successes I’ve had in the past.

First I’d like to start at secondry School, not higher education I know but it is where I started in student politics.  My school was once the best in Scotland, however when I joined, a radical change in staff was taking place.  The chosen staff all shared a similar view on dicipline.  Detention was always something I felt was criminal treatment of children but our school went further, for us we had room 10.  This was in effect an isolation chamber.  When people were seen to misbehave, they could be kept in this room to get on with there work with no contact with friends for several days.  There was an incident where I shouted at my guidance teacher in tears that I didn’t know the name of the person who was punching me and would he please stop asking; I was put into this room for three days, for cheekiness of course.  After spending three days not being allowed the support of my friends, even given different lunch breaks to make sure I wouldn’t come into contact with them, I decided that the dicipline system of our school needed to be changed.  I campaigned for year representative and was voted in due to a poster campaign showing all the interviews I’d made showing what people actually wanted in the school.  I have to admit that I failed to have room 10 isolation stopped.  Meetings were always cut short with my agenda items always being pushed to the next week.  A poster campaign about freedom of speach by all ages was quickly torn down within hours of me putting it up, and I was being kept seperated from my friends more often than anyone else in the school.  However, I do know this, people voted me in because they knew I would work toward making a difference, they knew I did try and more importantly, when I left school at the age of 16 because I couldn’t stand being bullied by teachers anymore, I left a number of people who knew they could work toward making a difference.

After school, I went straight to Dumfries and Galloway College of Technology.  Here I studies a national qualification in Computing.  I was quickly chosen as class rep as I was the only person to volunteer.  Here I think my greatest success was with a guy in my class who was getting the lowest results.  Being to shy to ask, I asked on his behalf to arrange for private tuition, unfortunately I was informed that private tuition wasn’t in the budget and staff didn’t have time for it.  The result here was that I myself began teaching in class, anyone who had missed a lecture or had just struggled to understand would gather round a spare table I’d reserved and take notes and ask questions on demonstrations I gave.  Often as many as a dozen students who the college were failing would be gathered.

At 17, I went through an odd stage, I decided I didn’t like computing at all, I didn’t think that it was just I didn’t like the course because at that age I wasn’t thinking anything through properly.  I went to Cardonald College in Glasgow to study of all things, Television Production, after a few months, Class Reps were chosen and once again I was nominated.  I’d been chosen as I had the best relationship with staff and knew who to talk to about various issues.  Here our studio was on the ninth floor of the building, all our disabled students were continuelly late as the students who could easily use stairs, were using the lifts, actually pushing in front of wheel chair users because they knew they couldn’t move quick enough.  At college commitee meetings, where all the reps met each month, this was brought up, we decided that a ban on using the first two lifts unless you actually needed to was required.  The effect was instant, all disable students were able to get to class on time, and frankly a lot of people lost some weight.  I’d like to go into two other cases at Cardonald but they involve confidential details about students so I’m going to leave them.

I spent a year working after Cardonald before moving up to a quieter area, I decided to attend Perth College, at this point I’d realised that computing was my skill and I was desperate to pursue it.  I actually wanted to attend Dundee University but it was decided I’d need to top up my qualifications first.  At Perth College, I once again was nominated as class rep and after a few months, voted as head of IT in the Perth College Student Association.  This northern region of Scotland is generally a very pleasant one, everyone get’s along well.  In fact it is the only place I’ve ever lived where I’ve not had to listen to racist rants about my being English.  For this reason my greatest success at Perth College did not involve any unpleasantness, or malpractising teaching staff.  In fact the only big issue we ever had was that of equipment.  The two main computing labs were using old machines that just weren’t capable of doing the task required of them.  I conducted an experiment with four other colleagues that showed that the average start up time of the machines was over ten minutes.  With this data I compiled a report and submitted it to the ICT department, they were thrilled with the report as they were able to show it at a board meeting and have their annual budget for IT spending increased.  Although I didn’t stay to see them, I know that this years students are now enjoying fast computers which are more than capable of what they’re asked of.

With an HNC in computing done, I was able to attend Dundee University, which brings me to you now.  Just in the few months I’ve been with you, I have become class rep and worked hard to do as much for you as I can.  Last semester I wasn’t able to make it to staff student meetings due to clashes with classes but I’ve actually changed my modules this semester to such that I can be sure to attend all these meetings.  I’m learning alot about what the school wants because of this.  Already I’ve been helping students, when marking was late or inconsistant, it’s been brought up with lecturers.  When a member of a grouped pair was being violently bullied by their team mate, this was brought up and marking was taken into consideration under the exceptional circumstances.  I’ve helped organise the arduino competition which I have a great intrerest in.  And I’ll do more.

My fellow candidates have both pointed out things that need to be done, these are things that are obviously very important and I’ve added to my notes to be brought up.  If elected I want you and them to know that I plan to work closely with them, after all this is not an election for a man, it’s an election for representation of all of us.  I’d be an idiot to ignore the intellegence that both my fellow candidate obviously poses and I’m sure their input would help with decisions that’ll make great results in our school.

I’ll be coming into the labs soon and hope you can approach me if you’ve any issues you want raised.  I’ll give a reminder that at 4pm, there will be a Q&A session in the user centre and I look forward to meeting many people and seeing what people are looking to their president for.

Thanks for your time.

Andy Barratt
1st Year Class Rep.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Dogs, Goldfish, Reptiles and Cats (with or without pipes).  This Thursday and Friday the time it comes for you to vote, for your Student President of The Dundee School of Computing.

A simple and beautifully lazy method of voting this shall be, suited to us, computer scientists.  Elections will be online, and all we’ll have to do is logon to my dundee and click a button.  But who??? Who shall one vote for???  Well of course, I know who I think you should vote for.  Please, allow me to tell you about the candidate that is me, Andy Barratt.

Truth be told, I’m already doing this job.  As Year Rep for first year I’ve been approached on several occassions not just by first years, but by members of all years and staff.  Whether it be issues that have appeared, or even praise that has been wanted to be passed onto staff, I’ve devoted my time to doing this for you.

I don’t only attend staff student meetings, I try to keep a good relationship with all staff to be able to approach them at anytime.  Due to this I’ve been able to speak directly with staff about all sorts of topics.  From issues with grading inconsistancies, concerns about lack of space in labs and even, though unfortunately, issues with students being bullied by other students.

If you choose to vote for me as Student President, I’ll be able to attend School Board Meetings, work alot closer with DUSA (Dundee University Student Association) and therefore have a much better understanding of what’s happening throughout the School and University.  This will make helping you alot easier.

I guess what I’m saying is this.  I’m going to always strive to help at the School of Computing.  I’m always going to be available to talk to and I’m always going to work to make things better for you.  However, if you do choose to vote for me, Andy Barratt, this Thursday and Friday, my helping you will be made an awful lot easier.

Thanks for your time.

Andy Barratt

1st Year Class Rep

p.s.  Still not sure who Andy Barratt is?  Visit my website, it’s a portal to my twitter, facebook, blog and even me acting a fool with a wooden fish on youtube.  Delve into my life at www.andybarratt.co.uk

p.p.s. I’m open to all topic of questions, just shoot.