Tom Fotherby
GBA Mod (July 2002)
The Afterburner is a do it yourself kit that lets you install a transparent lighted plate over the GBA’s LCD screen. Installation is pretty scary, you have to do some modification to the shell of the GBA itself and some soldering onto the GBA circuit board. It’s quite easy except for applying an adhesive strip […]
I Graduated – Now a “Master” of Engineering! (1st/August/2002)
Final mark: 2:1 (67%) MEng ACGI Uni Year 4 – 2001/2002: 67.5% Uni Year 3 – 2000/2001: 72.6% Uni Year 2 – 1999/2000: 67.4% Uni Year 1 – 1998/1999: 53% (see details)
Diablo
PC,RPG-Hack&Slash,10/10 – June 2002 Diablo I: This game was the first to introduce me to both character development and inventory management. Completing quests and killing enemies both increases experience and allows you plunder the spoils of your adventures to enable you to become more powerful and better equipped. But the game also manages to immerse […]
Dungeon Siege
PC,RPG,8/10 – June 2002 This game must have impacted my 4th year exams, it is one of those games that eats your time because it’s so playable. It’s fun to explore the rich fantasy world which is made gorgeous to look at by things such as large numbers of trees and ground-plants with convincing leaves, […]
My 4th year University Project (2002)
For my final year project I wrote a piece of software that I called VISSIM (Visual Traffic Simulator). It was a tool to try to model and visualise urban road traffic. I proposed the project myself because I was interested in the problems of congestion in London. Although I worked really hard on it and […]
“Cassandra”. 26th June 2002 – 1st March 2004
I mistakenly bought Cassandra with a serious problem that I didn’t spot in the test drive. She couldn’t carry passengers without bottoming out and making horrible scraping noises. Throughout the 2 years I owned her, she became less and less reliable. She started not starting and cutting out mid-journey. She met her end in a […]
Fire Breathing
Kix got me a fire staff for my 22nd birthday. You soak each end in parafin and light it. I learnt some staff tricks but only to a basic level. The strange thing about a fire staff is that it spins more slowly when it’s alight. It makes a glorious noise as the burning ends […]
Nintendo Gameboy Advance – 2001, Christmas present from Grandpa
The Gameboy Advance is a marvellous little toy from Nintendo, housing a 32-bit RISC CPU and an 8-bit CISC CPU which gives me the capability to re-play all the NES games I grew up with in addition to excellent new ones such as “Tony Hawks Pro Skater” and “Advance Wars”. I modded my GBA using […]
Backwards Clock – 2001, Christmas present from Kix
All three hands travel anti-clockwise, and the layout of the numerals is somewhat unconventional. Whenever this clock is in a promenent place in the house I get so used to reading it that normal clocks confuse me instead.
My own www Domain – Christmas present from my Aunt
My Aunt gave me the “www.tomfotherby.com” domain for Christmas. There is actually another “tom fotherby” so I’m glad I got the domain early before personal homepages and blogs took off.
My speech at Dads funeral (9th/Aug/01)
This was the speech that I made at Dads funeral in Stoke Row church. I wanted to say a few words to re-live some memories with dad and to tell you a bit about how he spent his time. If you don’t really know someone then you can learn a lot by their actions. My […]
My University Group Project (Summer Term 2001)
The Andipa Art Gallery Project The project aimed to enable a virtual art gallery to be built, decorated and then browsed online. We built a floorplan designer than could be used to add rooms and doors to a virtual art gallery. We build a tool for putting pictures on the gallery walls and to provide […]
Douglas Adams
It’s a sad day because my favourite author, Douglas Adams has died. These are some of my favour quotes from his writings: “What do you mean my birth certificate expired?” Only one thing in life is certain. You won’t get out of it alive. “I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be […]
My own PC – 2001, 21st birthday present from Dad
This was my very first computer. She was so top of the range and expensive (£1700) that I felt slightly inferior when I first sat down in front of her. I chose her myself and although, as a student I was moving places quite frequently, I got a 21 inch monitor that weights a tonne […]
Fresher year relationship web
My group of 1st year friends was a little incestuous. Me, Tam and Yue-sun were sharing a room but Al moved in when Tam left Uni because he had just got engaged to my X (Sarah) after she swapped boyfriends with Fran who had been going out with the guy who Sarah originally dumped me […]
