Posts Tagged showcase
And introducing: “uninot.es” as “My Final Year Project”
Posted by George Nixon in Projects on 6 October, 2011
Hurray, I successfully registered a Spanish domain name, which as it turns out is no mean feat. It used to be only Spanish people were allowed to at all, so I guess I should be grateful. But George, you don’t know any Spanish! Que pasa? Well, calm down and I’ll explain.
My new site is http://uninot.es. That’s “uni” as in university, “notes” as in things that you write down, and that last part, “.es”, is short for España, a.k.a. Spain, thus taking the place of the more run-of-the-mill “.co.uk” or “.com”. But that’s not important right now.
Uninot.es will be the web address for my new final year project, which forms a major part of my undergraduate degree programme. I plan to make a site that curates online collaboration sessions, probably taking advantage Google Docs’ existing capabilities, which will be based around university curricula. It will help you connect and share knowledge with your fellow academics, and will help you find the right channels using the places and people you know (read: geo-location and social network integration).
Anyway, check back for more as things progress. Mostly this post is a flag so that Google and co. will pick up the existence of the new site, and work out what it’s about. By the time I get some working stuff up there, search engines should have an idea already of my site and it’ll be easier to gain traction in search results. This is what us nerds like to call Search Engine Optimization. So now you know.
Announcing Student Veggie – my new food microblog
Posted by George Nixon in Projects on 27 May, 2010
Today I’m launching a new microblog hosted by Tumblr but found at food.georgenixon.co.uk. As a student I don’t have much time to cook or many fancy ingredients in my cupboard. I’m a vegetarian and I know how easy it is to get stuck eating the same old things when your local shops don’t offer a great variety of meatless foodstuffs (love that word! food + stuff = foodstuff??).
This microblog will basically be photos of things I’ve knocked up in the kitchen, so it’ll be simple, quick tasty and occasionally nutritious food, and a little blurb about why the dish is good and how to make it. If you make a wickedly simple yet delectable dish, send me a quick email or comment and I’ll have a go, and post the results! But please, no meat! Fake meat, such as Fake Bacon, or Facon as I call it, is fine.
Java Demo – Twitter App
Posted by George Nixon in Projects on 21 April, 2010
Since I use this blog to show off some of the things I’ve been working on at well as post useful tidbits occasionally, I got permission to put one of my recent pieces of coursework on here.
We were asked to create a desktop Twitter application in Java. It’s not fully featured due to time constraints, so I wouldn’t recommend using it in place of your usual Digsby or Tweetdeck clients, but it lets me demonstrate my coding style etc and maybe it’ll be useful to anyone planning a similar project. If you are, I recommend the Twitter4J library, which does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
I’ve uploaded it in both source and distribution (just unzip and run the .jar – requires JRE) versions, as well as the report I prepared highlighting some of the features I was proud to have completed.
Update 28/4/10: Not to blow my own trumpet too much here, but I’m proud to say that I got my marks for this coursework back today, and I was astonished to find I’d been awarded 100%! Out of 60 or so other students, the next best grades were 92% and 90%. FYI, I’m still hunting for a 12-month work placement to do as a sandwich year, if any prospective employers are reading! Draig Technologies will now be benefiting from my immense talents
Update 24/6/10: Twitter say they won’t be supporting basic login requests from the end of the month, and as far as I can remember, this is how my application works. Enabling OAuth would be a quick and easy fix if you do use this code, but I’m not personally supporting the app in any shape or form. It’s provided As Is!
Button Hero – Can YOU press a button?!
Posted by George Nixon in Projects on 23 December, 2009
Button Hero was a strangely fun little thing I made quite a while ago that got me a small amount of internet attention. I noticed it’s had a few visits lately for whatever reason, and I thought I’d move it from its old home at 110mb.com, a free hosting site, to this one. Two reasons, one it might help with the old SEO for this site, you never know, and two I think some people found they couldn’t access it at 110mb as that site is sometimes blacklisted as a haven for naughty internet practices like phishing.
Anyway, to make up for any inconvenience, I swapped out the now-defunct Last.fm player for a Grooveshark widget playing some songs I like and thought would fit. Grooveshark is a site I heartily recommend, particularly if like some of my friends, you can’t find a Spotify invite. Let me know if you’ve got one to spare and I’ll pass it on with much thanks
Announcing Mister Mckees
Posted by George Nixon in Projects on 3 April, 2009
Just a quick post to help Google index a new site more quickly – Mister Mckees is a project of mine for a shoe repair company in Hull. I will do a full post on this when I have time.
Update: Mister Mckees is now up and doing business, and I’ve added it to my new Showcase page listing various sites on which I’ve worked. My thanks to Alan Mckee, my first paying customer!


