Summer 2008 saw the conclusion of my undergraduate Masters degree in Computer Science, four years of both challenging and interesting work, and a result I am proud of every time it crosses my mind.

Over the summer I undertook another internship with the ALADDIN project; blending HTML, CSS, Java, Javascript and a drop or two of PHP I converted the desktop application I built the previous summer into a cross platform web application. Situational Awareness visualises publicly available weather sensor data in real-time, and is available online.

Come October I started a PhD on Trust and the Semantic Web, supervised by Nicholas Gibbins. So far it’s been very interesting, and also in hindsight a very wise decision, given the current economic climate. I’m starting to see where my research is going now and how it fits into the wider picture of the Semantic Web and I’m due to start writing my 9 month progress report soon, which should help crystallise my ideas further.

In my spare time I’ve joined the Southampton Open Wireless Network society (SOWN) who lend out custom Wireless Access points to students around Southampton, allowing students to share their Wifi with members of the community. It’s been a lot of fun, a lot to learn and also a great outlet for any coding urges that I might have.

SOWN have some big news in the pipeline, and it’s exciting to see it coming together. We hope to have some media coverage of it closer to the time, so if you’re in the Southampton area you probably won’t miss it!