Like an empty room

It's that 'Project 2' time of year again, and we started it off by visiting the target for a brand-new network, the Purley cross centre. The room isn't as big as I was hoping for, and alot of the difficulty is gonna be figuring out a table layout which fits 5 or 6 people, but allows room for wheelchairs between.

The main room

I've done some research on the machines we could use, and it's immediately obvious that desktops are the way to go - they're cheaper, easier to upgrade, more robust, more powerful, and, well, harder to steal. Within that, there's two ways we could go: ready-to-go PCs, something like a Dell, or build-your-own.

Building PCs might sound ambitious, but buying parts for 5 or 6 entry-level computers isn't a difficult task, and gives us more control over the exact spec of the machines. It's also likely to be significantly cheaper. Something like a Dell would do fine, but will probably be more expensive, unless we can get some kind of bulk deal.

As for the network, I don't know a massive amount, but from what I gather we're gonna have a central, internet-connected server in an adjacent room (see pic below), where all the software will be installed, and which will hold all the user accounts. That'd then be wired to a switch in the main room, which will in turn wire up to all the PCs and a wireless access point, which will have WPA encryption to fulfil the security requirements (unless there's a better alternative...?). I think the server should have a total capacity of about a terabyte, simply because big HDDs are cheaper these days, and you can never have to much - basically, no need to upgrade for a long time.

Server room

Now I can get down to planning it all; that is, I would, if I had the measurements for the room. I helped out with the tape measure, so I have no idea why I don't have a copy... oh well. There's always Friday.

Small changes

I don't have loads of time to write this, so I'll be brief. I've squished the flyer down to A5, which unfortunately means a bit of text on the back is cut out. To counter this, I've started making some inside pages, to turn this into a leaflet, but those pages aren't ready for release yet. Here's the outside, anyway:

Also note the changed pictures on the back, and the fact Trevor and the Eggheads have been moved into the main picture frame on the front (it all seems to fit quite well with the hotel as a background)

I probably need to change the application form at some point, but I'm thinking of moving it inside the leaflet (if I get the go-ahead to make the change)

The battle is lost:

But the war has just begun.

I kid, of course. Congrats to team 'Archten', their great presentation to Trevor and Lucy, and their victory mugs. I reckon if we'd had a bit more (i.e. any) rehearsal, we would've done much better - I was sorta expecting Tevin and Geewai to butt in at some point, because to be honest, I couldn't remember which bits they were supposed to do. And it would've been a bit weird if I'd just stopped talking halfway through.

That aside, it's flyer time, again, and again I've been messing with colours and general design. I've bumped up the contrast in my main design (the background is now more 'black' than 'grey'), which I reckon should look great on some glossy paper. I've also added a pencil, in accordance with the client's wishes; unfortunately, it doesn't fit in very well. This seems to be a problem with my designs in general: they look great when I first make them, but as soon as I need to add something unexpected, they're ruined.
Well, anyway, here's a couple of new options, in ultra-black, and a blue version I don't like so much:

Somehow, blue doesn't seem to work - which is strange, because it's how the design started out.  Trevor and the Eggheads don't fit in just sitting up there floating next to the title, and I'd rather give them some proper rectangular picture frames on the back, although I apparently don't have much choice in the matter. If it's really, really that important, I could re-do the layout on the front completely, but there's no way I'll end up with something better looking than the original.

I also have a quick one I made to get the pencil to fit in better. Looks terrible though:

And the pencil's missing ;)

Overall, I think it's best to go with black, and try to add colour with pictures. I'm also wondering if it should be a leaflet. But it seems these things are out of my control.

Flyer & Stuff

My Flyer is now almost completely finished - and almost completely different to the draft I posted. It's now on A4, with two sides, a new and more stylish design, more info, more pictures and a return slip:

The images are squished for some reason, but trust me, it's A4. I'm very happy with the back, but I'm still not sure about the front. The old, poorly cut-out images are gone, because they looked tacky and unprofessional, but I'm not convinced that replacing them with a pic of the hotel was the right move. But I'm proud to call it my own work :D

Anyway, I'm trying to do a test print now, but the Manual Duplex thingy seems to be upsetting the printer. Whatever it churns out at the end, I'll bring with me tomorrow.

Now for the "stuff". So long as we don't add anything else, my budget is done, and my presentation just needs a little more text and the images of the team's flyers. I was thinking a little about the idea of auctioning off the Eggheads to teams, and I reckon we could make a pile of cash from that. Let's say we auctioned them off for £200 a piece - that'd push our overall profit estimate from under £4300 to well over £5600. And I think we could get alot more than £200 a piece...

Budget

As a team we've been doing alot of 'discussion' about the little things (ticket prices, how the raffle should be set up... what items to auction and what to put in the raffle...), but we're pretty sure of our overall plan.

Since that's the case, the time has come for spreadsheets. Hooray. Here's my ticket price modelling sheet, which came into our ticket price argument quite alot.

It's all quite complicated (I'm not totally clear on what should go where, or how we're supposed to pump out an 'absolute' profit value with all these variables), but I've simplified it as much as I can and tried to present useful information. And for the record, I think it looks the best.

That aside, I've set to work on finishing my presentation and flyer. I'll post those once I have something reasonable to show for it :)

Odd week

After putting alot of work into a moonfruit website for the Purley Lights project - the design was basically finilised, I'd created backgrounds in photoshop, decided on the color scheme, and started adding text to sub-pages - we've suddenly found out that we've been replaced by a supermarket. I guess Tesco can give more cash than we'll ever come up with, but the fact all that work was for nothing is... aggrivating.

Well, anyway, I've started to convert the website to a new colour scheme/design/layout (the name actually still fits, which is lucky, I guess). I'll post pics when it's slightly more "done".

The Quiz project is going slightly better though. No more progress on the flyer, but we're coming up with a decent plan and I've got my budget modelling spreadsheet looking good. I think the idea to auction off driving experiences in supercars is very nice - we can start bidding above the price we'd pay, and only buy the package ourselves once the sale is made, to avoid a great big negative if no-one wants the thing. Holding this and a raffle at the event, plus the actual ticket sales could be pretty profitable. It's almost a shame it's going to charity :D

We've found out a little more about the current main project, creating flyers in our teams. Because this is a course, we've each got to make one individually (not collaborate on one as a group) so it can count as coursework. Here's my Extremely rough draft of my flyer:

The logo is of poor quality because cutting it out from the background properly will be extremely time-consuming, and this being a draft, that'd be counter-productive. Page plus's image cutout tool will do for now, as will the feather crop on the Eggheads themselves. I've also had difficulty finding a good picture of Trevor that can be easily cut out, but hopefully you get the gist of what I'm going for...

First Day

Hello, world!

My name's Alistair, and I've just started Sixth form and Archbishop Tenison's C of E. I'm taking the Advanced Diploma in IT, which is a new qualification, and this blog is a part of it. Friday was my first real day of lessons, and went pretty well - we basically just got to know a little about the courses we're on. The maths lessons were a little slow, but it's early days.

The range of stuff we'll be doing in the Diploma surprised me. I had no idea it was so business-oriented, but that's no problem - and trying to persuade corporations to attend a charity quiz should be, well, interesting. We're a very small group, about seven of us, which actually makes a nice change after 11 years of classes of 30. I'm looking forward to seeing what else the course has to offer, and I'll post updates/pics/whatever on this blog as it happens.