1. Complain less and remain positive
   I think it is a very British thing to do to complain and be negative, but I think if you live your life complaining all the time, your just looking for bad things in life. Speak positive and you will be happy, at least that is the idea.
2. Don’t hold Grudge
   Much like the first resolutions, it is a matter of remain positive and happy. Holding onto angry is not good for your soul.
3. Get up earlier in the morning and have breakfast
4. Go to Orange Wednesday every week
5. Visit all of my friends at university
6. Go on Holiday
7. Start the process of learning to drive
8. Don’t buy anymore games until I complete all the games I have
9. Go swimming once a week
10. Drink less caffeine
11. Redesign all of the sites that I run.

What are your new years resolutions? What would add to this list?

Hyperlinking is an issue for many websites, as most refuse to do it. The BBC news website for example does not embed any links to external sources. The reason for this is two fold. Firstly when a writer puts a hyperlink within a post to an external site, their content is then link to the content of a third party’s site, which they do not control. This lack of control is a problem as if the third party, changes the content on the linked page to something different or inappropriate, the author may become libel. Secondly, if the linked site decides to take the post/page down, change their URL structure or the entire site goes down, this would therefore brake the hyperlink. Hyperlinking on a BBC’s news site would be complex, as it would add overhead, as a team would have to be created to check each linked site is still up and content on the linked page is the same. Then is there really a place for hyperlinking on news sites and the web in general?

I think that hyperlinking is extremely inportant if you understand how to do it correctly. Sites such as Lifehacker have the best way of crediting stories. I think what Lifehacker and others like Gizmodo,  understand that news is disposable. By this I mean that most news/blog posts are read within a week of posting and are rarely read again. It is perfectly reasonable to post hyperlinks within a page as the problem of broken links is not an issue as content on an external site is unlikely to change in a week. As most of the blogosphere is an echo chamber these days, I feel that many don’t wish to hyperlink as it only proves that their job is not one of a reporter but a reposter.  If you are going to repost a story with little more than rewriting the facts in it, the least you can do is give complete credit to the original post.

The most important use of linking is the ability to recap someone new to long running stories such as the recent E.coli infection at petting farms. This is an on going story, but what if you didn’t see the first story if you were away from a tv/pc? Would you be able to understand later posts on this subject? Would you be able to come in to a story half way through and make sense of it? Personally, I have had this problem a number of times and found it extremely hard to catch-up to a story from the start as, when I search on google news, I only get the latest updates on the story. If for example, BBC news put a link to the original story in the first line of the post, this might make the process of getting up to speed a lot easier.

The biggest thing that is pushing linking forward is social networking sites. The first site that started social link sharing was digg. Instead of having a blog that you post links to pages that interest you, you can “digg” a story, increasing it’s ranking and likelihood it is on the homepage. Where digg started, Twitter has now replaced social linking. With URL shorting services such as bit.ly, the micro blog service has become an internet giant, simply by being able to posts links to their followers. Not only can links to pages be shared, people can even be referenced as a hyperlink, which can be seen  by the biggest social networking site Facebook which have recently added the Twitter‘s @symbol linking system.

Linking is important for any post or site, it helps people get a more rounded understanding of the subject that is being discussed. It also shows that the writer doesn’t live in a bubble and that they understand that the internet is a fluid and social media. That information can be linked so easily together is amazing in the first place, in books, if the author wishes to reference another text, they would have to give the book name and page number. On the internet it is so easy and so useful, there is no reason not to do it.

1. Past my third year of University
2. Get a full time job.
3. Try to swear less.
4. Find a place for important object, such as keys and wallet.
5. Make sure my phone is always charged and on me
6. Write a free application, either online or for your computer or phone that will aid the general public
7. Go on holiday
8. Closely monitor the amount of time that I spend on computers
9. Use my time more efficiently
10. Try and go out for a date-night once every two weeks.
11. Make sure the people around me know how important they are to me!

For those reading this, what are your resolutions? What is missing from my list?

1. Get an up to date Calendar, putting all coursework dates, birthdays and everything else.
   This really has been a massive success and I couldn’t been happier with how it turned out. It really was interesting to look at different was to do this. In the end I started using google calender, that can sync with both Outlook and iCal. This wasn’t very good as it was only one way, you couldn’t write to the online from these programmes. But then google introducted Caldev. This allows you to sync both ways, which is perfect. The final piece of the puzzle getting an Ipod Touch, which syncs on up iCal, meaning that I had on calender in my pocket.
2. Do more cooking
   Now that I finally have a house that I spend anytime in, this year and the cost of living going up, I had to learn how to cook. I am still not have good, but at least I am not eating out every other day. I will improve on this one.
3. See friends from home more
   It depends who you ask about this one, I have stayed close to some friends and lost touch with others. It is can be hard to keep in touch. I know that many of my friends who didn’t hear from me in a while, check this blog. Those of my friends who are reading this, your legends!
4. Stay in contact with my family
   If you ask my mother, she will say that day to day, she doesn’t know if I am alive when I am at university. I find it hard to focus on things for off, but I will try harder on this one.
   
5. Eat less sweets, crisps and chocolates
   I have got have done extremely well on this one. I simply got sick of eating all that rubbish all the time. Having said this I do currently have a draw full of crisps in my room, this is only because it is cheaper to buy 24 packs. This is my story and I am sticking to it!
6. Pass my second year of University
   This was extremely hard but I did do it with a 2-1. There are some example of some of the work I have done over the year on the web, the doctor surgery,  Java servlets and java network tool.
7. Find time to find new music
   I have pretty good at this one. I think that I should have done the resolution to go to gig and find a place for music in my life. I went to lots of gigs this year, including the future heads and the 46664 Nelson Mandela gig where I got to see Will Smith play live. The best way of finding new music was creating an account on Last FM, which installs a plugin on your music player and counts the number of time you play songs and who by. It also advices you bands you may like comparing it to music collection. You can also see what your friends are listening to. Through this I found a band called WolfMother, which I am still listening to. The best bit if that you can even stream full songs on the site or install the Ipod Touch/Iphone App.
8. Be earlier with getting form, coursework and other important things in.
   Rubbish at this, physically can not do it.
9. Get a summer job.
   I managed this, I did some temp work, which turned out to be pretty fun time. Having some money for a change was really nice too!
10. Have weekend away with Bex Terry
    Now I must admit this is one of the biggest regret of the year that I didn’t have an money to go away with my lady friend this year. We did do a day trip to the isle of white and I did spend many weeks with her over the summer, but it is not the same. I will have to take her somewhere in the new year.

All in all, I think I did extremely well this year, I set myself reachable targets and they came off extremely well. I could always do better but that is always the case. I thought it might be interesting to look back on 2007 Resoltions but I need to write next years.

1. Get an up to date Calendar, putting all coursework dates, birthdays and everything else.
   I am thinking about using Google Calendar and Ical.
2. Do more cooking
   This means that I should stay away from things that involve using Microwaves. When I do cook things, I must not over cook things. By cooking more myself I should be of better health.
3. See friends from home more
   Get people at uni and get them to come to Portsmouth.
4. Stay in contact with my family
5. Eat less sweets, crisps and chocolates
6. Pass my second year of University
7. Find time to find new music
8. Be earlier with getting form, coursework and other important things in.
9. Get a summer job.
10. Have weekend away with Bex Terry

I think unlike last year, I set some real goals. Now I think I can set to doing them!

Right so, lets go through the list and see how well I did!

1. I did indeed complete Computingcorner and if I say so myself, it is pretty good looking site. I haven’t really had a chance to write anything on it since I created it, which really is bad of me, but I am sure that at some point I will get back to it. I have lots of scripts and bits that I have created to upload but I simply haven’t had a chance.
2. As I have discussed I am a massive fan of Facebook. I also bought my parents a new web cam. I have also set my xbox to auto sign me on Windows live messenger when I turn it on. This way I can talk to friends and play games at the same time.
3. I did indeed pass my first year of uni and second year is going well.
4. Well I found out that I don’t really like the physically act of reading, but I do like a good book. I wrote a post about a website called Librivox. It is free audiobooks of out of copyright books. There are some real classics on there and I have found some wonderful books on there. My personally loved The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
5. This didn’t happened simply because I am extremely lazy.
6. I don’t have the money to learn to drive, so that didn’t happen either.
7. I have been extremely daring, I now have a wonderful girlfriend and traveled all around England.
8. Meet lots of new people and meet some wonderful people. I completely changed the people I was hanging around with from last year.
9. Well I have traveled and been places to see people at uni so this kind of happened.
10. I am not living in halls anymore so I really had to learn how to cook. I need to learn more through.
11. This didn’t happen simply because I lost my saved game and couldn’t be bothered to start the game again. I did however, complete Halo 3, Lego Star Wars 2 and a few other games.
12. I have been sleeping the best in my life, however I don’t get much sleep in exams and coursework time.
13. I don’t really eat much chocolate or sweets anymore. I am bad about getting popcorn when I go to the movies through.
14. Well now that I have more guests and people coming out of my room, I have to keep it clean. I could do better about being clean more in general. One to work on.
15. Finally, I have been playing around with my hair all year, I was really short for a while then I went long. I am still playing with it. Please liked the long hair, but I personally hated it.

I think I did really well, there were simply some things that I couldn’t be done because of the life style I lead but for the most part I did wonderfully. I did some much with my year, I am shocked that it all only happened in 365 days. I will need another New years resolutions for this year soon.

HOME
a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household.

As a young man, I know that I am not really going to have a stable home. It is a case of changing my state of mind. Instead of thinking that home is where all my stuff is, it is where I lay my head. With this new state of mind, it comes a feeling on home sickness. Not having a true home means that your home sick even when your in your house. It is all just weird…

• That it didn’t matter how late my first lecture was, I’d still sleep through it.
• That I could change so much and barely realize it.
• That you can love a lot of people in a lot of different ways.
• No matter how ‘cool’ you were in school, no one here cares.
• That if you wear polyester everyone will ask why you are so dressed up.
• That every clock on campus shows a different time.
• That if you got good a-levels, so what? It doesn’t matter here.
• That I would go to a party the night before an exam or essay due-date.
• That you can know everything and fail a test or know nothing and ace a test.
• That I could get used to almost anything found out about my friends.
• That most of my education would be obtained outside of lectures.
• That friendship is more than getting drunk together.
• That Sunday is a figment of the world’s imagination.
• That Psychology is really Biology, that Biology is really Chemistry, that Chemistry is really Physics and that Physics is really Maths.
• That it’s possible to be alone even when you are surrounded by friends.

What is the most useful material in the world? There are many answers to that question. Some may say, gold, other may say silcon and so on. The real answer is duct tape As a first year uni student in halls without a job I am extremely poor. So when going off to uni I had to think of things that I needed and would be useful. I got lots of things, but the most useful has turned out to be duct tape. It is amazing the place that this stuff can be used. It seems like I am using it every other day now.

Examples of where I have used it

• To cover the glass window above my door to stop the light keeping me awake.
• To patch up the hole in the material in my chair.
• Patch up the leak in the bottom of my bin.
• Used as a bandage.
• Keeping my tv aerial in the right place.
• Fixing a lamp that broke into two big pieces
• Reinforce the inside of a pair of jeans.
• Applied to face it makes a wonderful joke beard

The last one of the list, really did happen and on the image is somewhere on the internet.

If I were to give anyone a piece of advice when going off to uni, make sure you have duct tape. I would be lost without it.