So yet again its been an inordinate amount of time since my last blog post; why am I so bad at this? Nevermind. Maybe now that I am on holiday I can update a bit more.

I have now completed my final year at Warwick and will be graduating tomorrow with an MEng in Computer Science with First class honours- assuming I don't get arrested in the next 24 hours and have my degree revoked- not that I think this will happen!
I received my exam results a couple of weeks ago. This year went very well for me and was probably my most consistent year- the standard deviation of my marks per module was lowest this year. I received the award for the "Best overall graduating MEng student in Computer Science for 2008", which I am very pleased about. And now it is all over, culminating in my formal graduation ceremony tomorrow in the Butterworth Hall at the Warwick Arts Center.

I feel extremely fortunate to have gone to such a fine institution and studied in a great department with wonderful people. This last year has been extremely enjoyable- despite also being the most demanding year of my life, with a lot of very late nights and all-nighters. I hope to write about some of the results of the 4th year group project I took part in, which was probably the most enjoyable part of the year for me (academically).
Besides academic enjoyment I treasure everything about my Warwick experience: the friends I've made, the fun we had, growing in my faith as a Christian- in my church and in the Christian Union, parties, making music with friends, dancing, late night chats, early starts, crazy trips to Tescos late at night, shared meals, morning saunas, Monday fried breakfasts. Everything. I've met some of the most wonderful people at university, and for that I am ever thankful!

There is far too much to say about how this year has been for me, so perhaps I will leave some of it for another time. However, I will say that over this last academic year I have begun to dip my toe into the pool of academic research. During the Autumn of 2007 I wrote a paper detailing my work on the integration of object-oriented programming and the dataflow paradigm, specifically my language Lucian, and the notion of intensional objects [more on this later]. The process of writing the paper was extremely valuable. I was able to crystallise my ideas, as well as get a taste of academic writing. My 3rd year supervisor Steve Matthews co-authored the paper- contributing many ideas to the research, spending large amounts of time with me chatting about ideas, scribbling on white boards, and reading through many drafts and revisions. Sara Kalvala was also extremely kind, reading through drafts and giving me advice on writing. The paper went through the first round of reviews and got accepted on the proviso I made some revisions and clarifications. This process was also extremely beneficial. By this point I had learnt a lot more about writing, and had crystallised some ideas even further- and so was able to rework the paper and improve its clarity.
These were all valuable experiences.

Back in February I attended Fun in the Afternoon which I thoroughly enjoyed and which gave me a further view into the Functional programming research community.

During this year there has been an unofficial "language club" in our department, where a group of programming language enthusiasts in the department- staff and students- have been getting together weekly to discuss papers, and give informal presentations. The "language club" was birthed to fill the hole left by the (current) lack of a programming languages research group at Warwick. It is a great idea and has provided a nice forum for chatting about programming language research.

And then finally I spent a lot of time during the second term thinking about PhD proposals, reading a lot of papers, having ideas, and eventually writing a couple of proposals to submit with PhD applications. My applications were successful thus in September I am going to be starting my PhD at Cambridge University, as a member of Jesus College. I am very excited!

I'm glad I stayed at Warwick for another year, not only did I have a lot of fun, and learn a lot, but it provided me with a lot more opportunities to get into the 'research' mindset, and gave me time to get PhD applications and proposals together- which was not an easy process.

Currently I am on holiday till September when I move to Cambridge. Tomorrow is my graduation from Warwick. I will post some photos up soon after I get back from visiting friends around England and my friend's wedding.

The Elements Of Style (illustrated) Strunk, White, Kalman A great book that plainly and concisely explains the basic principles of English and how to apply them in writing.

Image from Amazon.co.uk

Just to say I hope everyone had a great Christmas and that they have a Happy New year! :)