Kategorie: Allgemein

Accomodation

Yeah, I know it’s very late to talk about this. But in the past some much more interesting happened. However now I have time. Our apartment is located near the Queen’s University Belfast. We living in the 4th floor and have access to an elevator – very comfortable if we’re shopping and have a lot of heavy bags. The flat is for 6 persons big enough. The furniture is modern and comfortable. So we have e.g. an automatic dishwasher, a microwave and a medium-sized TV. We also have access to the internet over WLAN with good bandwith.

The kitchen

 

I share my bedroom with Benny with two single beds. This room isn’t big as the other rooms but it’s enough to sleep. The parlour is perfect to relax, watch TV or work with the laptop. The facility of the open kitchen is perfect for cooking. Besides you have a great view over the city up to the mountains.

Belfast@Night

The mountain – Divis

Hi guys,

the third week is now also done and the weekend was very adventurous.
We climbed on Saturday on the mountain with the name “Divis”, he is 478m tall and is the highest mountain of the “Belfast Hills”.
We have cancelled the climb at 280m, because we was very exhausted and we didn’t know how the weather will be, when we further climb.

„The mountain – Divis“ weiterlesen

New Tasks, New Toys (Follow-Up)

As you can read in an earlier post, I had to set up a testing environment for Cisco Smart Install, which is now up and running.

The Smart Install director (the device which manages iOS and configuration deployment to the Smart Install clients) acts as a DHCP server and configures new switches coming factory settings with an IP address, default gateway and a TFTP server address (DHCP option 150). Right now the director deploys images and configuration files only to devices with specific MAC addresses, as I only want to configure my test client at the moment. It is also possible to filter deployment based on device model and type or IP address (if already configured).

Cisco Smart Install console output on client
Cisco Smart Install console output on client

After being upgraded and/or reconfigured by Cisco Smart install the switch is ready to be used in the corporate network without the need to be configured manually. This feature is also called zero-touch deployment. The Smart Install director console output shows the successful image and config upgrade process:

Cisco Smart Install Director console output
Cisco Smart Install Director console output

Saturday.. Road trip to the Gaints Causeway…

Well, we have an amazing travel by a bus tour to the Gaints Causeway… It was pretty nice to see a lot of landscapes in nothern irland, so we are started at 9.00 am and began the travel with a booked bus tour to a very nice castle with a little harbour near the ocean… I doesn’t how it’s called, i forgot the name… Well, while we traveled to our destination the Gaints Causeway and some little and very beautiful stops, we have saw a lot of great landscapes and my roommates take a lot of nice pictures, but i will show only some of my top 4 ranked pictures and post a link to the completely list of the gallery. The weather was sometimes very changeable with some sunshine times and with little showers, but we wasn’t to be licked, so we used the chance the variety of the landscapes and i have got the chance to meet a very crazy frenchman. By the way, on the stop at a nice scene of a bridge over the ocean, we met a man from Germany and asked him to take a pricture of us and the coast behind us… That was crazy to see a human from Germany. Well, we have continued our trip to our destination and saw the Gaints Causeway, but we was amazed that this was little bit smaler than our imagination about the Gaints Causeway… But i must say that this travel was very funny and a very nice chance to see more about nothern irland… Yeah!!! Now, i will you show my four pictures and here the link to the full list (uploading is in process): pics.xvlancom09.de

Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...
Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...

Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...
Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...
Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...
Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...

Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...
Just a road trip to the Gaints Causeway...

The Hills and Party

Another weekend here in Belfast. This is the third and we decided to make a trip. But not so far away, only the proximity of Belfast. Northern Ireland is famous for his hills, which can be climed. Our selected hill is located in the west of Belfast and approximately 400 m high. But I hiked and climed only to 280 metres. The view from this point is phenomenal. You can see the whole city of Belfast and much more.

My roommate and me
In the evening I fade away in good club. But this club called Lush is located in Portrush at the north coast. I found a bus shuttle service they drove me directly to the club and return. For trance fans a famous DJ named Gareth Emery played there. Irish people know how to rock the house. The atmosphere was hilarious and the music was great. But at 2 am the party was over and I drove back home.

I got sand in my shoes

Yesterday I and 4 people from the FSZ03 were on the way to Malahide because we wanted to see the Castle. As we arrived at the bus station in Lower Abbey Street we noticed that we missed our bus by 1 minute and the next to Malahide would come in 30 minutes so we decided to take the bus to Portmarnock. When we arrived there we saw that awesome long beach called Velvet Strand.

Velvet Strand

In the first moment we thought that we were in Miami because of all the palm around the mainsons. We went into the water ofcause without shoes and socks. Too bad that we had to take care of our stuff so we went back to the higher places. After we put on our shoes and socks we went to Malahide. That was just a 4km walk. Later we ate in an typical Irish Pub called „Gibney’s Pub“. Very delicous food and a pretty ambience. Later we went to the Castle but too bad it was closed so we decided to go back to Dublin.

Good times at Empire

We found a really great pub here in Belfast. It’s called “The Empire” and it calls itself a music hall. The name is as good as one’s word. It has a really beautiful interior accessories. But let us put the focus on the music. There are nearly every day live music bands Playing, stand up comedians and they are great. But sometimes, the sound is.. let us say.. horrible to loud and the PA sound system is a bit misconfigured. So sometimes  listen to the music is not that much fun as it could be. But I discovered a new proclivity for me, listen to live bands in pubs. Great! I will try hard to take this new proclivity with me and I hope I am able to indulge in this new proclivity. It is another brilliant thing I learned from this wonderful culture.

Stage at "The Empire"

My birthday in Belfast

This Friday was my birthday. On Thursday night, we waited for midnight to come and had a birthday beer. Tim and Oli surprised me with a very nerdy T-Shirt and a voucher for a dinner and a drink at a location I can choose.  On Friday, Tim, Tobias, Oli and me had lunch at the Kitten Bar and just watched a film. We all were a bit tired so we decided to go out on Saturday. There was a live act at „The Empire„, a cover band of the Foo Fighters, the Four Fighters. Unfortunately, except of the volume, there was nothing knocking our socks off! So we decided to go after half an hour and got some food from KFC, to put oil in troubled waters.

Back in our apartment we listened to some music and relaxed. It was a strange feeling, celebrating my birthday so far away from my girlfriend and my family but Tim und Oli made a great job, so I had a really nice birthday.

Network Documentation

As most of you employed in IT may know, there are always some projects you do „by the way“ (e. g. Oliver, René and Mateusz should know what I mean). 😉

I also got (another) „by the way“ project: document the whole Translink corporate network from core to access layer and from OSI layer 1 to 3. This includes all networking devices as well as every cable that connects two devices.

I think I will use a top down approach and start with the network core and WAN links between the sites and then care about the inhouse network site after site. Probably I will also have to develop a hostname scheme as not all devices in the network have unique hostnames yet.

I’ll tell you what I make out of it in later posts.

Have a nice weekend!

The third week will ending…

Hey guys, every week will ending and this one, too. It was really nice the last working days of this week, we have a little meeting about the fine tuning of the design and layout of the new Sharepoint and which kind of features we have to added. But until this time, it was just like a drag and drop and some CSS coding, so i hope and will be better with the next steps to customize the current design and getting a new layout with some user-friendly features. The second project which i working on and which running parallel by my supervisor is a little bit more hard coding and it will be coding via Visual Basic and C#, so this one will be more amazing to working on, i hope…. But it’s very amazing atmosphere in my work placement and i have asked Kevin to do something together on the next weekend and learn more about him, but he hasn’t answered until yet. Well, i hope, i can hold this contact, because he is a very nice guy… I have him to thank for crossing the line with my community and going international, maybe he want to join this one, he really liking our background and our projects… Just take a look of our blog: click here (ready to use, style & layout are in process…)