Farewell

Yesterday it was the time to say goodbye to my colleagues at Translink. To be honest I was a bit sad I have to leave now. I really enjoyed working on all these interesting projects with the nice people at Translink.

On my last day I finished some paperwork (documentations, trainings records etc.) and handed over the running projects to my colleagues.

I also had lunch with my supervisor and two colleagues at Gallopers, a sandwich and coffee bar, where I had a traditional Ulster Fry.

Finally I tidied up my desk – well, at least I tried to – so that the next placement student from OSZ IMT, who is starting on Tuesday, finds a clean and neat desk on his arrival … but I didn’t succeed. 😛

Farewell

Belfast, I leave you! I hope you will miss me. I will and I will always remember the good Times you brought me, the stunning music you played for me and the fantastic places you showed me. Hopefully I never will forget the sounds I heard played by Ken Heddock, thank you Ken! And also the sounds played by Mark Graham at Filthy MacNastys, Thank you very much Mark. It will always be a pleasure to me to watch the videos I made from your gigs and to show the wonderful photos I made from you Belfast. I also will never forget what you taught me and how you changed my view at things. I really enjoyed the stay hopefully I will come back and make again such good experience with you. So good bye and cheers!

Last day at IMEC

Today was my last day at IMEC. Vincent had some problems with his laptop again which made me laugh. I repaired a Psion Teklogix 7535 which had a broken scanner engine. All in all I had a lot of fun with the colleagues. There was so many things to do that I was really busy in some days. All people in there were really cool and relaxed. The way to the company took me about 1,25 hours with the Luas and the Dublin Bus. Too bad that Jason is in his holiday at the moment else we would had gone into a pub for lunch this day.

Last Day at ECIT Institute

Today is my last day at ECIT. I’ am a bit sad about this fact, but I’m really looking forward to go home. Yesterday I brought a few cakes and brought it in. Richard Ruddock (IT-Manager) was very happy about it. We had a few good conversations and we were talking about my future. So Today I finish my projects, got the last signatures for the europass and the last signature for training certificate. I had a really brilliant time here at ECIT Institute and I felt overwhelmed by the hospitality of this Institute. I can’t tell you how often I laugh oneself to tears because Richard was making one of his jokes or told us something about his kids! Everyone had so much patience with me and was so helpful! I learned so much and I could improve myself more as I had expected. At the end of it all the only thing I can say is THANK YOU!

Last day at work

Finally, the last day at work is done. I just managed to get the paperwork signed and made some more tests with my testing environment. Unfortunately, we couldn’t manage to set up the SCCM in the live system (NIPACS). Today, we went out for lunch and had a last talk about my time at Steria. Afterwards, I got the rest of this day off.

Go karting

Yesterday, I went with Matt, Barry and some other guys to a indoor go-kart track. Matt organized this event some days ago and said, that they are doing this once a year. So I was in luck to be here during this event. It’s just the same procedure as in Germany..You have to watch a film, telling you what to do an what not to do, afterwards, a guy tells you the whole story again and finally you get your helmet and your gloves. Unfortunately I only made the second last position but nontheless, I had a lot of fun. A power assisted steering would have been great, that kart felt like a tank on the track. After the race, we got our racing analysis and got rid of the helmets and gloves.

 

Last Days at Work

The last week at work started and I’ve only few days in Belfast. At work I’m still working on the project „Sensors and Connected Health“. As I told in my previous post, we installed the outdoor WLAN – Unfortunately not successful. But last week we got a new access point (AP). So I plunged into work and configured the AP and then I connected the big outdoor antenna (fluoroscent lamp) with the AP-plug. Yeah, it works. We boosted the transmit power and radiated the whole room with WLAN-signals. But this isn’t the purpose. So we went outside and tested the signal strength. Overall the signal was very good and much better as the internal or small antenna. There are only little problems with the vertical angle, which is very small and therefore dependent of the height, and little obstacles like a bush or humans.

Another point is the Aingeal device from Intelesens. This little device needs a internet connection to transmit the data up to the cloud. Either over WLAN or MiFi. To establish a connection between the Aingeal and the WLAN/WiFi is very simple. But there are a few problems: The connection to the server is lost after a few minutes, it can’t establish a connection to the MiFi, the MiFi has no internet connection, the configuration of the Aingeal device is wrong and it beeps the whole time… Yannik and myself are troubleshooting a long time, but we don’t know what is the problem. Maybe we’re never going to know. We’re still writing a documentation and protocols, made photos and videos.

We have also got some touch devices. At first we got a touchscreen display with 17 inch. Unfortunately we couldn’t try this with the PC from work, because Windows 7 Enterprise doesn’t support touch options. But my coworker Jannik had his laptop at work and we used it. For example we used Paint.net to test the touch surface with a image editing program. This works very good but Windows 7 isn’t very comfortable to work with a touch screen. So we tested it with Windows 8, which is optimized for touch screens. And it works, only with a few problems, very smooth. The second device was a 10 inch Tablet-PC with Windows 7. This tablet is very slow and has only a harddrive with 10 Mb! free space. But we found a way, how we can improve the speed: Android. This operating system is optimized for touch screen devices and is also used in smartphones. The operability was amazing and much better as Windows 7. Currently we used it for monitoring the vital signs from the Aingeal and troubleshooting for the WLAN and MiFi.

Solving the last problems on my volnow projects and enjoy the last days…

Hi everybody,
it’s not so much happened at the late afternoon after any working day on this week, so hasn’t so much to tell about any event. I only still working on my last project while solving the last problems and bugs at Volunteer Now, but my supervisor got a new dog which he brought on monday to the office and the most of us looked and talked about the new dog…^^ While Kevin used his free days to breed his dog, I used the days to work on my community projects where one of them is based on ASP.Net. But I still have to wait for Kevin, because I had some problems where I had to ask him. Now, I look hopefully forward to the last days of this week, because Kevin have invited me and Diego to watch the football game between Spain and the Republic of Irland and on friday I will spend the last time with Kevin at his home before I have to pack my suitcases to depart Irland on sunday. Well, I have really enjoyed this spending time at Belfast and to get a new contacts like Kevin.

Another weekend ?!

Hi guys,

yes, I write also about my weekend. It was the last usable weekend in North-Ireland.

On Saturday, I was with Martin in the Lagan Valley LeisurePlex, a big leisure pool in Lisburn (in the south of Belfast). There we have done many things. In my opinion was the best in the LisurePlex, a slide, which ended in a big funnel. In the slide, you come very fast in the funnel and you don’t know, where you are. It was a lot of fun.

After them, we have enjoyed a big all-you-can-eat meal in a Chinese restaurant. It was very good, but I guess not good for the figure.

On Sunday, was the big first German football game: Germany versus Portugal.  We was for this game in the „Botanic Inn„. There was a good atmosphere and it was very funny.

This was the last weekend and it is slowly time to say goodbye.

Best regards from Belfast
Benjamin

Euro 2012

After finishing things at work, I hurried up to get home and watch the football match. England and France competed and the match ended with a result of 1:1. I definetly supported England, due to my English roots. It was a really great match, both teams gave their best and and it was exciting from the first to the last minute. Unfortunately, I could give the match just half of my attention, because I cooked the dinner, pasta bake.

To be honest, usually I don’t watch football, but in some cases, e.g. European Championshiop or World Championshiop I make an exception.