About Me
I’m Ruben Arakelyan, a 20 year old Armenian student and joinee studying BSc Applied Computer Science at the University of Reading while maintaining this and other sites.
I was born in Wimbledon and now live in North London outside term-time, and Reading during term-time.
At the moment, I’m busy doing my second year exams, so things may be a little slow here.
From July, I will be working at Microsoft in the Microsoft Technology Centre (MTC) helping to prepare for demonstrations to large clients.
You can have a look at my photos on Flickr, use some of my online tools and scripts or contact me if you want to.
Once upon a time, I ran for head boy at my sixth form. All the campaign materials are still up. I was a Faculty of Science Education Rep and also ran to be one of three Student Trustees for the Students’ Union in 2008.
My photo is on the right. You can click on it to get the bigger picture if you want (thanks to Simon for the picture).
(Not quite) 20 questions
A random selection of questions and answers which will hopefully tell you more about me…
- What types of music do you like? I’m not too difficult to please, but my real favourites are pop, rock, and most of all, dance. Oh, and I’m not an indie whore like it seems to be cool to be these days, although I do like a select few songs from that genre. I dislike drum and bass, R&B and garage music.
- So what are you listening to right now then? Here’s a list of the last 10 tracks I listened to on iTunes:
- Therese – Put 'Em High
- Keira Green – All Out Of Love
- Bimbo Jones – Come And Fly With Me (Flip & Fill Remix)
- Neo Cortex – Elements
- Slinkee Minx – Summer Rain (Alex K Mix)
- Ultrabeat – Megamix
- XTM & DJ Chucky presents Annia – Fly on the Wings of Love
- Rezonance Q – Someday
- Love Inc. – You're a Superstar
- Interactive – Forever Young
- How come most of the tracks listed above are the same? I have this thing about wanting to listen to a newly discovered track many times over. That’s all!
- What are your favourite programming languages? Well, my programming life pretty much started with BASIC but I moved on quite quickly. At the moment, I tend to mostly use PHP for web applications although I’ve experimented with ASP and Ruby. As for desktop programming, I started off with C and C++ but now prefer to use C# and Java.
- Do you have any recommendations for where to go out where you live? Well, I have to say that the best places are in Reading where I am during term-time. There are quite a few Wetherspoons pubs around if that’s what you like, or if you’re more of a clubbing person, The Fez, Po Na Na, Bar Risa and Q Bar are quite good. Reflex is always a laugh when you want to remember the ’80s. Other than that, shop around and you’ll find some really great hidden places!
- What’s your favourite drink? I love apple juice and have started to like orange juice. Of course, cola is still a favourite luxury, and as for alcohol, lager is my first preference with vodka and coke coming a close second.
- What’s your favourite food? Ooh, that’s a toughie! I’m easy to please, but I love all kinds of Armenian food (go research it!) and a good authentic curry.
- What’s your favourite colour? I like dark colours (although I’m not a goth or anything like that). Black is my all-time favourite followed by dark red.
Around the web
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Q: I love you and your site so much - what can I get you for your birthday/Christmas?
A: Excellent question! Try having a look here or asking me.
Q: What does your desktop look like?
A: If you’re talking about my computer desktop, then I have a screenshot. It’s running Windows Vista Ultimate at the moment. I’ve also got a screenshot of my laptop and a picture of my desk in halls. I need to update the laptop desktop and add a lovely piccy of my desk in my new home (for this year at least)!
Q: What exactly is Applied Computer Science?
A: If I had a penny for every person who asked me this question, I’d be a millionaire! It’s basically the technical cousin of ICT. While ICT is all about using computers in business, Computer Science is all about building, maintaining and programming those computers. The “applied” means that I take a year off in my third year to work in a computer science-related business, to gain knowledge which will help me both in my final year and afterwards - businesses love work experience!
About the site
I started this site at the end of 2003. At the time, some of my friends at school had websites where they would post articles, blogs, and anything else worth posting. I was feeling a little left out, but the fact that nearly all web hosts only accepted credit card payments held me back a lot. Finally, I found Purple Cloud, who accepted the Splash Plastic top-up card. Finally I was able to claim my presence online! I didn’t hesitate.
In February 2005, I moved my hosting to (mt) Media Temple after starting to exceed my bandwidth limits, and I continued to blog daily on the matters that concerned me.
In August 2005, I decided that the blogging life was just not for me. I completely obliterated most of the content on this site and decided to start over again.
In December 2005, I decided that I had to restart blogging (it just wasn’t the same without it). Therefore, I started off the Metablog, which is still going strong!
In May 2006, I successfully participated in my first May 1st Reboot. wackomenace version 6 was revealed to the world. It took another three weeks for the design to be tweaked and played with until I was happy.
In November 2006, I migrated my sites over to (mt) Media Temple’s new (gs) Grid-Service system which gives me a lot of room to expand in the future. Ever since, I’ve been subtly tweaking the design now-and-then to keep it up-to-date.
In April 2007, I updated the site with a search facility, smaller page footprint and lots of new content, especially tools.
In January 2008, I decided that I’d outgrown my shared hosting and that I needed somewhere where I’d be able to install and test custom software. I moved from Media Temple to a Slicehost virtual private server, where I can install anything I like.
Q: How did you set up the site, and what did you need to do it?
A: That’s something that’ll take too long to explain here! However, I’ve written a series of webguides on this very subject, although they’re a little out-of-date now. Take a look anyway!
Q: How do you maintain the site?
A: I use the excellent Movable Type, which I’ve modified to be able to use both static pages and a blog. I maintain the static pages using raw XHTML in order to get maximum control over layout and content.
Q: Can I have a look at/steal/borrow some of your source code/HTML?
A: Sure! Feel free to browse around and take anything you want from the site source code, its stylesheets or scripts. In fact, this is how I learnt much of what I know about web programming. However, please don’t copy the entire site or whole chunks of the style. That’s just not cool.
Q: What about your images?
A: Sorry, that’s one part you can’t normally use. Most of my images are either made by me (in which case I want them to stay on my site only) or used from other sources under fair use (in which case I can’t give others permission to use them). Images that you can use will be marked as such.
Q: How do you get your text to look so silky smooth in Windows Vista?
A: A while ago, Christian Montoya wrote about adding Windows Vista fonts to website style sheets. I’ve just implemented what he said with a few tweaks, so if you’re viewing this site in Windows Vista or any other operating system where you’ve installed the Vista fonts, you’ll get to see the new fonts in all their glory.
Q: I’ve seen something I like on your site. Can you tell me how you did it?
A: Many of the things on the site that are a little different from what you see elsewhere have tutorials in the writings section. If there’s something that doesn’t, tell me.
Q: There was something I really liked on the site but now it’s not there. Where did it go?
A: Try looking in the defunct pages section or searching for it. If it’s not there, then your guess is as good as mine!
Credits
- Slicehost for providing an excellent virtual private server to host this site (and others of mine!)
- 123-reg for registering the domain name.
- Six Apart’s Movable Type for making managing the site easy.
- Dan Cederholm for the Stockholm icons used liberally on this site.
- Accessify for the general menu structure.
- Adobe Fireworks for the images on this site.
- Numerous other sites and people who have inspired many of the pages, content and tools on this site.
Disclaimer
All the posts in this blog are my personal views and not the views of my employer or institution.