Hope everyone has a good new year. I’m looking forward to classes beginning and taking part in Global Game Jam again in the near future.

I got a new camera for Christmas and have a Flickr account so feel free to add me if that is a thing that you do.

• University – I am now studying MSc Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, which so far has been really exciting, and of course a lot of work. It’s great to be able to back up a lot of the practical work I did as an undergrad with some further theory and maths. Presently I am working to choose a topic for my literature review, which might go on to be the topic for my project.
   
• Internship – Over the summer I was based at Tag Games, working on porting an existing project of theirs to a new platform. It was a great experience to work with everyone there and I think I’m now in a far better position to contribute to an eventual employer.
   
• NEON – I’m planning to attend NEON in Dundee this November (in fact I just bought my ticket). Unfortunately I missed it last year, but given the reasonable student rates and the attendance of Ken Perlin this year, I couldn’t resist.

Anyway, here’s a brief update just to list a few things I’ve been up to since I last posted:

• I graduated from Abertay! With first class honours! Wooh!
• I came second in Aardvark Swift’s Search for a Star competition, following a day trip to Brighton. From Dundee. By Train. The competition was a really great learning experience (the three rounds involved a programming test, modifying and expanding upon an existing game with a few added bugs and then an interview) even if the travelling itself wasn’t so much fun.
• I’m currently an intern at Tag Games over the summer, which hopefully explains both how I’ve coped without my laptop and why I haven’t had much time to blog.

So, there you have it. Expect more posts, but not necessarily right away.

1. As I mentioned in my previous posts, I’m currently trying to settle on a topic for my honours project. Updates to my (at least weekly, as it’s a requirement of the module) blog on that subject will be found here.
    
2. http://killercodingninjabunny.com now redirects to http://hazelmckendrick.com rather than the other way around. Hopefully all previous links should still work, but please let me know if there’s a problem.
    
3. There are now 350 approved comments on the site – thanks to everyone who has left feedback or advice! It is greatly appreciated.
    
4. Finally, videos of YinYangYou are available on my youtube channel. Here’s a sample:

So, thanks again to everyone who has contributed or helped me along the way. This is by far the longest I’ve managed to keep a blog for and I feel I’m really improving in terms of writing posts which benefit me as a programmer.

Image thanks to Dave Morris.

Look, glass. I'm practically a Mac user already.

Also, you may note the bunny logo in the title. It took over six-billion hours in MS paint, or, you know, an hour or so in Inkscape and Photoshop. This is the reason I will never be an artist.

Oh yes. That is a brand new theme you see before you. Thoughts? Opinions?

It’s a bit minimalistic (read: boring) and relies more heavily on the default Kubrick theme than I would like, but it shows up and seems to work – what more could you ask for? Hopefully being plain and simple means I won’t get sick of it as soon as I have with other themes, and it’s as simple as can be – no magazine style front pages to fiddle with and waste time on.

If you want any of the source code, drop me an email and I’ll fire it off to you. I don’t think there’s anything particularly complicated or inspiring in there, but if you’re curious let me know.

PS. Did I mention I *HATE* web coding?

Linking To Me

On this note, I’ve also pointed http://hazelmckendrick.com at my about me page (which still hasn’t been updated unhappyface), as you can hopefully see from the different banner I’m using there. If you’re linking to me in any sort of professional or academic capacity, I’d appretiate if you could use that link instead. Blogging people – feel free to stick with kcnb. Cheers

Portfolios

A few of my friends have now got their portfolios online (or will do in the near future) – please go check them out on my links page.

Ever so professional, right?

I guess I’ll probably just get it pointing to the About Me page when I update that. Which will be soon. Honestly.

On a related note, this means the site will probably be down for a couple of hours at some point, so I can get some things transfered and sorted out with my host.

As you can see, for the first time I’m using a theme which I did not create myself. I have plans for how I’d like the site to look in future, but given my lack of time for web programming and my hatred of PHP, I suspect KCNB’s appearance may not change for some time. I do intend to keep updating the site, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for regular posts. I’ll write when I have something to say.

However, I have found something which was working well for me: Tumblr. I guess most of those posts wont mean a lot to anyone but myself, but I found it a great way to keep my thoughts organised during a project and stay on top of links and sources I’ve used.

This in itself is not really enough: I’d like to have a space to maintain my portfolio of projects and games. So my intention is to cut things back here, have space for my work and use it more as a personal homepage, and incorportate a micro-blog into the site. This means I can easily share what’s going on in a way that is useful to both myself and hopefully to others facing similar problems, with a system I might actually use, and also have the space to make longer, more thought out posts if the need arrises.