Matthew Consterdine's

After months of planning procrastination, I have finally created a blog for this site of mine. I have used Jekyll site builder and Liquid templates to adapt this theme and add a blog. Hosting is provided by GitHub pages and I’ve bought a cheap .uk domain name.

London Fireworks 2018 LIVE - New Years Eve Fireworks: 2017 / 2018 - BBC One

In the coming days, weeks, whenever I will get around to adding new pages and backfilling old. But now with the technology in place, creating new pages is as simple as typing out markdown in Sublime Text, committing and refreshing the page. You can even subscribe to updates via RSS! Hope to see you soon!

Diving into Net Neutrality, this report will examine why it is so controversial. It will outline the social, economic, and technical arguments both for and against. Finishing with a discussion.

• CCS Concepts: Social and Professional Topics → Net Neutrality.
• General Terms: Networks, History, Politics.
• Keywords: Net Neutrality, Free Speech, Internet, World Wide Web.

Introduction

We live in the information age. Today people can effortlessly research, create, and communicate with anyone on earth in a fraction of a second. But where did it begin?

We came, we saw, we lost. Image courtesy Dorota Filipczuk.

So this year, I started playing Quidditch as part of Southampton QC. After a bit over a month of training, our club entered two teams into the Southern Cup where SQC1 won the upper bracket, and SQC2 (My team!) came second out of the lower bracket. It was a an amazing experience. I figured I should share some photos courtesy of Enrica Biasi.

As a chaser, I wear a white headband. Chasers focus on the quaffle, passing between themselves, aiming to score a goal. Defending our hoops from an enemy chaser. Charlie, our keeper, is wrapping them.

On the offensive, we push as a team, trying to score a goal.

Dodging out the the way of the bludger. If it touches any part of me or my broom, I ‘fall’ off my broom and need to return to the hoops! Lining up before our finals. The teams are united.

A team huddle, to prepare for the match to come! Our keeper Charlie, driving the quaffle down the pitch and scoring. It was a close match, with both teams in SWIM (Snitch When It Matters) for last few minutes. We were up, but if either team caught the snitch (30 points) they would win the game. Minutes after the snitch entered, it was caught, by the Falmouth Falcons winning them the game 70* - 60.

Then it was time for SQC1s final vs Werewolves. Everyone there was watching. It was a good game, both teams played amazingly. SPOILERS: SQC1 win 140* - 90. View the full Southern 2017 Brackets.

It was an amazing experience, I’m so happy that I could compete in a semi-national tournament a month into training. Since then, I have stuck with the team, and am excited for whichever tournament comes next. Looking back, I really needed a haircut!

The Southampton Code Dojo is a monthly event where keen computer science students meet, eat pizza, group up, and make things for a bit over an hour. At the start of the session ideas are proposed and voted on. Then, teams form typically on programming language choice, and everyone gets too work. At the end of the session, each team demonstrates. I have been attending for a while now, I love it. Hope to see you there!

Below is a list of some of the previous things I have worked on:

• Let it Burn! - Using your flamethrower, wrack up points and burn the forest down.
• Firework Simulator - Light up the sky with a fireworks display by dragging your finger or cursor across the screen.
• Tetris - A quick and simple game of Tetris.
• Colours - Enter a colour code, get a nice name.

This summer I had a remote internship with Winchester Innovation. It was focused on web technologies such as Bootstrap, Silex PHP, Python, RESTful APIs, and JavaScript (ES6 and jQuery). I developed full-stack Raspberry Pi applications and automated deployment using bash. It involved minor Android development.

I really enjoyed it, and it was certainly good experience. Participating in work before graduating helps you understand what you want to do after leaving university, and helps to give some perspective on your course. I’m looking forward to what the future holds.

With bash it is trivially easy to produce nice, colourful console output with the code below. Simply paste it into the top of your script, and then you can colour your text by just printing the variables.

For example, if you want bold yellow text with a red background use echo "${BOLD}${YELLOW}${BRED}Critical Warning!${CLEAR}". Additionally, you can ${ITALIC}, ${UNDERLINE}, ${INVERT}, or ${STRIKE} text as you see fit. Once you are done with formatted text, use ${CLEAR} to clear all formatting.

Lastly, ${RESET} and ${RULE} to reset the screen and create a horizontal rule. Vertical rules are left as an exercise for the reader.

#!/bin/bash

CLEAR="\033[0m"; BOLD="\033[1m"; ITALIC="\033[3m"; UNDERLINE="\033[4m"; INVERT="\033[7m"; STRIKE="\033[9m
RED="\033[31m"; GREEN="\033[32m"; YELLOW="\033[33m"; BLUE="\033[34m"; PINK="\033[35m"; CYAN="\033[36m"; WHITE="\033[37m"
BRED="\033[41m"; BGREEN="\033[42m"; BYELLOW="\033[43m"; BBLUE="\033[44m"; BPINK="\033[45m"; BCYAN="\033[46m"; BWHITE="\033[47m"

alias RESET='printf "\033c"'
alias RULE='printf %"$COLUMNS"s | tr " " "-"'

# Use $LINES and $COLUMNS to query console dimensions

Magnifique!

███ is a great game. ███ demands that you play it. ███ can be played with any deck of cards from any game, assuming it has suits and values. For example, ███ works well when played with Star Realms cards, and ███ could work well with Magic, or even scraps of paper.

Rules

• Deal out a number of cards to each player, the number doesn’t really matter in ███.
• Players take turns placing down a card in the centre that is either higher or lower value and of the same suite, or the same value and any suite. This pleases ███.
• If a player cannot play they must pick up. They have failed ███.
• Shuffle the deck when it runs out. ███ must continue.
• When a players hand empties, it is their turn to think of a new simple, secret rule. Contradictions please ███.
• Do not explain this rule.
• Enforce the rule viciously.
• Do not mention the great ███.
• Do not criticise ███.
• Do not explain ███.
• Do not argue about ███.
• Do not make a mistake playing ███.
• Do not fail ███.

Any mistake while playing ███ requires punishment, that player must pick up an extra card.

It’s done, it’s over! Months in the making, my dissertation is finished an available from lect.me. My advice for future students, is to start early. Projects like these always take longer then you expect.

Last The Night is a procedurally generated first person survival game in which the player fights for their life after having crash landed on a mysterious, unknown planet. Armed with only a pistol, the player must fight off the various monsters inhabiting the planet, and only once the sun rises will they be safe.

With seed based world generation, there are literally millions of planets to explore with no two being the same, and with the addition of Easy, Medium and Hard difficulties, advanced players can challenge themselves whilst beginners can get a feel for the game. Last The Night features 17 different types of monsters, keeping the player guessing at all times.

A student game created at the University of Southampton by Matthew Consterdine and Ed Baker. Do you think you’re brave enough to last the night?

Using your flame-thrower, wrack up points and burn the forest down. Single player, play with a mouse/keyboard or Xbox 360 controller. A student game created at the University of Southampton during the Southampton Code Dojo. Burn down everything!.

A fully narrated re-telling of the fairy tale classic. Single player, play with a mouse/keyboard or Xbox 360 controller. A student game created at the University of Southampton by Matthew Consterdine and Jeff Tomband. Download and play.

Having previously created games in my spare time and in competitions, I chose to team up with three different partners to create games focusing on gameplay, narrative experiences, and innovative technology using Unity. It was hard, took a lot of work, but in the end it was one of the most satisfying modules I ever took at University. Shout out to Rikki Prince, Dave Millard, and Tom for running such and excellent module.

A fast paced, Quake inspired, local multi-player, little planet deathmatch infinite arena shooter. Hone your skills, then compete against your friends to see who can dominate the playing field. Supports up to 4 player split-screen, bring an Xbox controller. A student game created at the University of Southampton by Matthew Consterdine and Ollie Steptoe.

Featuring a number of classic weapons:

• Shotgun: The short to medium range wild card, capable of one shotting your target, or missing entirely.
• Launcher: Fires explosive rockets, knocking back all the enemies in your way. Just be careful not to get caught in the blast.
• Pistol: Are your opponents not on fire? Well, that’s where the pistol comes in, it fires incendiary rounds igniting targets.
• Axe: A visceral weapon that can end your opponent in a couple of hits.

Well, what are you waiting for? Play today!

A Paper’s-Please style telephony simulation created at the Southampton Game Jam. Play here.

I’ve put together a HTML5 recreation of several classic games. Play online.