P.s. I renewed my domain earlier this week so I should be sticking around a bit and I know I haven’t exactly stuck to my new years resolutions, lets hope that can change over the summer

As 2008 closed I felt, not neccessarily sad, but certainly that sometihng was ending (which it was obviously). It had been a brilliant year, finishing high school, a really enjoyable holiday at Nana Beach which I still look back on with fond memories, and then starting college. I went into 2009 feeling that I couldn’t really have a much better year. And time showed that was the case as 2009 unfolded in front of us. Nana passed away in May as mum began her radio therapy treatment. Nan’s passing then put us all under quite a bit of emotional tension which, as Poppa spent more and more weekends here, bubbled under the surface for a few months but just out of the reach of talking about it. It came to a head last christmas Eve and I forget the exact events but Dad flipped and I such a way that me and Katy both remarked that we didn’t fancy spending a considerable amount of time in each others company in the planned holiday in 2010. Soon after christmas, before new year, while sat round the dinner table Katy and I brought up the events of Christmas Eve and our feelings as to the state of our family. Feelings that don’t need to be discussed here but I feel going in to 2010 we were in a better position with them being out in the open.

And 2010 happened and I feel exactly the same as I did at the end of 2008.

The year started on New Years Eve which was a fantastic night spent in the company of really good friends. The majority of the first part of the year was still the same old life at college which was fun all the same. Days off in the snow were memorable, making massive snowmen and sledging down the hill at the back of wayfarer’s drive. March brought a road trip to Warwick Uni to attend the Warwick TEDx conference which was extremely interesting and the drive there and back was thoroughly enjoyable. Aware of the impending A-Level exams, work and preparation became the main focus of life from easter time right up to my last exam at the end of June. Amongst this backdrop of revision we had our college leavers ball and said goodbye to a good number of friends made during time at college.

July brought an amazing holiday in the USA, to which Mum and Dad cannot be thanked enough. Starting in Las Vegas, we saw the Grand Canyon which is simply breathtaking and took in the sights around Vegas however the oppressive heat, even at 10pm, meant that we couldn’t spend that much time outside and darted from hotel to hotel to stay in the cool of air conditioining. We did however manage to meet up and go to the Stratosphere Towers with our neighbours who moved away a few years ago, by coincidence they were doing the same trip but in the opposite direction and we were both in Vegas at the same time. From Vegas, we drove up through death Valley and spent a night in a small town called Independence (it still reminds me of the club in wigan) and the day after carried on our drive north and passing over the Sierra Nevada mountains via the spectacular Tioga Pass. We spent 4 nights in a log cabin on the banks of Bass Lake, about 30 miles south of Yosemite National park. The first couple of days we were there we spent relaxing on the lake and the areas surrounding the cabin and then the last full day we venture back up the Wowona Highway (of which a 17 mile stretch was dug up for roadworks) and spent a day touring Yosemite National Park via the Glacier Point coach tour. This was thoroughly enjoyable and the driver leading the tour was superb and very knowledgeable.

From Yosemite we then drove through California to spend our last 5 nights in San Francisco which was fantastic. The city is very nice to be in and has an incredible micro-climate hence temperatures of around 10-15C which was very nice compared to the 50C the car was measuring in Death Valley. The city is like no other and me and katy both remarked how nice it would be to live here or take a gap year here. We spent the last week of the holiday with relatives in Knoxville, TN which finished off an amazing trip.

Arriving back home, the waiting game began with results day looming. Yet time passes and the two weeks passed quickly and results day dawned. Not wanting to check UCAS beforehand, I headed to college to collect my results. A*AAB in maths, further maths, geography and physics respectively meant that I was going to Sheffield to study Civil Engineering. I Spent the following weekend in a field listening to some fantastic music at V Festival at Weston Park. The weekend was fantastic having watch Madness, Kasabian, Florence and the Machine, David Guetta and many many more. I then returned home to find myself with a job for 3 weeks before I went to university and then I left and life hasn’t really been the same since.

I have met some fantastic people at uni an shared some brilliant moments with them. In a house of 13 there is never really a quiet moment and certain nights will always be remembered. Not all of uni life is drinking and nights out and work is still being done and with exams looming revision will yet again be rearing its head. That said, civil engineering is really interesting (and yes I include concrete in that). Between us, we have our favourite modules but I am certainly in the minority of those who enjoy sustainable engineering. Having lived away from home for a considerable length of time now, family life is very different to university and a lack of banter is never really very good. I look forward to getting back to uni and many coming nights out this semester.

Generally, a lot of things have still  been fairly constant this year. I still love driving and as always I still keep up to date in the movements of the tech industry, specifically Android and phones. However other tastes have changed throughout the year and I have started listening to some brilliant artists this year notably Deadmau5, The Temper Trap and Ronny K. It is often remarked as to how varied my music tastes are and this leads me on to this years music playlist which I hope everyone can enjoy some songs in it even if trance is not to your tastes.

Many tracks here remind me of many different place, a lot of memories of V Fest, holiday and uni. There is also a spotify playlist available here my2010

I hope 2011 will be just as good a year that 2010 has been and I have a few resolutions I hope to keep. One is to read more and I hope with my kindle this is possible. I also hope to write more on here and the last one  is to take more pictures, hopefully lots of pictures with my DSLR but also of people and nights out. I hope this year has been just as good for other people and see you in the new year.

I started winstanley college in the September of 2008 and in the past 2 years I have cemented old friendships and made many more. There have been bad times what with exams and also arguments between friends. But they have been far outweighedby the good times, far too numerous to mention.

Tomorrow is the leavers do which I and many others are looking forward to and then to times beyond that.

A new chapter begins in September when I hopefully start university. But I go in the hope of keeping in contact with the many friends I have made at winstanley.

So what does the future hold? Who knows but while 2009 was a hard year for all of us we have emerged from it stronger and closer together. We go to California on holiday in the summer and then to relatives in Tennessee. I will hopefully begin a new chapter of my life at uni and Katy will also hopefully start college

Now the only rules of the playlist is that you have to start listening to it that year. It doesn’t have to have come out that year but you have to have started listening it to in that year. And as a result it can’t then be in any playlists in years to come. The final rule is that the playlist can be no more than 30 tracks long

So we have my 2008 playlist

And this is my 2009 Playlist. The links on the titles are to youtube videos for those that don’t know the songs

So what does this prove. I have a shit taste in music but as someone once said to me “quality of music is how the listener judges it” and that is why I think these tracks are awesome and I hope you like them as well.

I packed last friday night (Bloody Hell, almost a week ago) and then left saturday morning. In the end I ended up going a night earlier as Dad had tickets for The Eagles gig at the MEN on sunday night and couldn’t take me. Anyway going off topic. We left saturday and got down in a couple of hours and first visited my grandparents and had tea there. Around 7:30 parents left and then my uncle came and picked me up around 9 o’clock. I slept on saturday night and then my uncle dropped me off at halls at around 3 on sunday afternoon.

I registered and got my key and went up to my room and started to unpack then went back downstairs outside as people started to congregate and introduce each other. It was then a 20 minute walk to go and get tea at Shackleton hall which was quite nice but I was at the back of the queue so must have been waiting for close on an hour to get food. The food wasn’t bad though and the chicken was nice and tender however it meant that all the bones kept falling off and I kept eating them. With dinner finished we headed back to the civil engineering.
That evening we had a design and build competion. We had to build a bridge that spanned 1.2m and could hold at least 5N 350mm above the height of the table, made out of only paper. The only problem was that the bridge had to fail at 50N and so we set about designing a truss bridge. Our main idea was a truss bridge made of triangles and to raise it up high enough we planned a second layer of triangles. That was the plan and tbh it didn’t really work. With making it out of paper it meant that the holes for the bolts weren’t at exactly the same length each time which left some members a few milimeters too short and it pulled in all the members. When designing it we also forgot to think how we were going to attach both trusses together and in the end we just sort of put a few members on the bottom and added other ones to weak parts of the structure that need it. In the end though the bridge held 11N and we weren’t last. We then went back to halls and quite a few watched Jackass in S5 common room. Then bed and the end of a good day.

Monday morning we started work with a lab session. The first one I was in was looking at velocity of water and hydraulic radius trying to find manning’s constant, n, in the formula Q = (A/n)(R^2/3)(?Sf). You can look here if you are interested. The afternoon was then used to start putting together concepts for our main bridge. The brief was for a pair of bridges that would help move visitors between stratford international station and the main stadium. They had to be 50m wide which would reduce to 6m after the games and span 45 and 30m over 2 rivers with a bit of land in between. We started throwing a few concepts around and came up with a bridge that would have a central 6m bit which would be used by cyclists and then there would be an extra 22m either side that would be used by pedestrians.

Monday night we went bowling which was really funny. I won’t recall a lot of it to save embarassment for people but I will say that I was shockingly poor the first game and was quite good the second game, managed 2 strikes in a row and got 4 strikes total, I was quite happy.

Tuesday started off with more lab work looking at structures and how beams are made in I shape. It is to do with the axis of bending.

The x axis/plane runs down the centre of the beam through your eyes and in the other direction and this is known as the axis of bending. Then the I shape is used to provide strength. The shape arised out of using a rectangular beam with a shorter x axis and longer y axis however it is found that it is only the extremities on the y axis that provide the most strength so materials are removed round the parts where it is not effective and just adding weigh round the centre near the axis of bending.

The final lab work was looking at the height of the water above the weir. By using the height of the weir and the velocity of the water the height of the water above the weir can be calculated. This was needed as the bridge was not allowed to flood in a 1 in 100 year flood of 200m^3/sec.

With the lab work done we set about looking at the concepts and deciding what was feasible to design and then eventually to build. Lots of designs were put forward and in the end we settled on a design with 2 steel sprung arches supporting a central 6m walkway that during the games would be used as a cycle way. There would also be 22m spans eitherside supported by suspension/cable stay sort of thing, these would then be used as walkways during the games and could easily dismantled after the games like the brief specified.

On Wednesday morning we went on a site visit and the group I was in went to ronald mcdonald’s childrens house. The building was being built for families to stay in who’s children were in the childrens hospital over the road. The visit was really eye opening and you can look at some pictures here.

As the week progressed we built up our designs on sketchup and in the end, culminated in doing a presentation to the client on the Thursday. This is when it sort of started falling apart. Earlier in the week we were told that the lecture theature had google sketchup and so were planning on doing out presentation then showing the client round our design using sketchup however when we got into the theature we found that we didn’t have google sketchup and another thing I’d that we had sort of done both designs of the bridge, the one of the sprung arches and the one of the suspension detachable sides in random and didn’t have one overall dewing thatincluded both of them. As a result our presentation wasn’t that slick and we left the client confused as to what our bridge would look like.

Even so it was a very good week and I made lots of friends. Lessons were learnt and I would do quite a few things differently if I was to do it again but it was still good all the same and confirms that I want to do civil engineering at university.

I took some photos today as well and really like this one

[flickr]3675801945[/flickr]

And I have just remembered that I forgot to ask people to bring their sponsorship money from when I broke the world record. Crap