User Experience

This is a video that explains why the user experience is so important to Websites or potentially any other project that you can do. This is a topic I need to learn more about to improve my web design skills and continuously strive to improve upon

Personal Statement

My name is Robert Holland and I am currently a multimedia designer.  I’m highly motivated and passionate about what I enjoy. I’m very determined to succeed in everything I do. I can work very well in a team and can often help in the team with complicated problems that the rest of the team may not understand.

I have always had an interest in why certain objects we use look like they do, and even more of an interest in how the software used in computers, the internet, phones and tablets work and how they are made with particular reference to the coding and science elements contained in the back end rather than the front end.

I am applying for this course because I would like to enhance my current knowledge of computer programming and the science that is contained within the back end such as physics in video games.  I also would like to gain knowledge

 in algorithms that may one day help me when I create my own websites and programmes in the future.

The subject that I am studying at Coleg Gwent, City of Newport Campus has a brief relation to the course I have chosen via the scripting of different programs

for different media.  As my intended career path relates to the course I have chosen I continually strive to improve my knowledge and skill base in these areas.

I already have a small amount of experience in programming as I have been involved in a group project to program a basic social network website plus I have designed and developed my own website which I plan to use as the start up website for when my own business launches. I would like to further develop these skills that I have attained with a better practical approach with I can achieve by studying this course.

My hobbies outside of computers involve gaming, martial arts, running and cycling among many other things. I participate in these sports because they can give you a lot of alone time that leaves you free to generate new ideas and think of things in a different perspective than you normally would. I have also taken part in the 2011 Cardiff Half Marathon and finished with a time of 1:45:00. I also used to participate in martial arts in which I achieved a brown belt.

In the future I wish to become a freelance web designer for a while. Then start up my own companies including my own online shop, a personal software development company and my own social network.

The people that inspire me include Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs among others.  The reason being is that they revolutionised technology and how we use it in our everyday lives and without their innovative thinking this would still be a dream and not a reality.

Solution

Finally solved the problem I was having with my site. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to make a category and subcategory system so I'm kind of cheating in a way. I decided I'm going to use the URL to help me using the 'GET' method in PHP. Only thing is though SQL injections are possible so I'll have to find a way to fix that. Maybe an if statement like:
if($cat == necklace || $cat == bracelet){
do code;
}
I'll think of something I suppose. It's all falling together slowly should be done in a few weeks.

Interactive Web History Piece

My idea for the interactive web history piece is not to have a time line per say but make the piece like a website. It'll have maybe a Facebook layout and where the news feed should be about uploads, status updates etc. I want to have all the history of the Worldwide Web. I'll post all my workings here when I work on it.

Another idea that I came up with is having a spiral effect timeline maybe like the picture below. I will put prominent points on the spiral of the timeline, then when someone has put the mouse over the point it will show the year and a little box of information about what happened. You can also click on the box to take you to a new page to read more information. Image Location

PayPal For My Website

It's 2:20am and I have college in about 6 and a half hours and I should probably sleep but ehhh, I'll live. Well anyway tonight I've been looking at different payment methods that I can have for my website. At first I was thinking about storing users bank details in one of my databases and then taking the money out manually but then I realised how risky that would be. I may know how to develop a system like that but no-where near to the security standards that would I'd need.

So I decided I would use PayPal to sort out all my problems only I didn't realise how complicated it actually is to set the functionality up on my site. Well saying that all the functionality will be there when I have to add it anyway so it'll just fit into place. But tonight I've been learning how I would set up the IPN payment method and I'm quite looking forward to it. It's going to be a challenge. In a few weeks I get to go and get my business bank account and then I'll be able to set up PayPal.

The good thing about PayPal is that when I create a business account it will automatically set up a book system which will measure all my incomings and outgoings which can make things a lot easier.

Architectual Design

The world is full of people who think outside the box. If it wasn't for these people we would probably still be sat in caves without any technology. Probably not even fire. This is what makes us humans different from many other animals.

Amazing examples of this is some of the architecture that humans come up with. Click Here. In my opinion these buildings are some of the best buildings in the world for what they are. Yet unfortunately they're not very suitable for the population this planet has. If every building looked like one of these building the ammount of time and effort we would have to spend on these buildings would be just too much although then we would be astonished by what we have at the moment as we wouldn't see it much.

My favourite building on this list is the Soundforms shell in London Docklands. The building looks truly amazing and so much time, effort and money has gone into it for the function of enhances classical and orchestral performances.

Game Development

I have been researching how a video game is developed and found this video about how it's all done. This video that I have found shows the theory of what a video game actually is and how to create a game from scratch. It doesn't exactly show the initial ideas of how a game is thought up of but it shows the process of what you can do after you have the initial idea, concept arts, music etc.