SIGHT SEEING IN BRIGHTON

I visited few important places in Brighton. The Royal Pavilion is situated in the heart of Brighton city. This was a pleasure Palace built for Prince of Wales - George III and George IV. Queen Victoria stayed here for some time and sold this palace to the town of Brighton. This is 200 years old and now known for art work, furniture and objects. The long Gallery is richly decorated with a mixture of real and imitation bamboo. The elaborate Banqueting Room is magnificent and it is known for the most magnificent interiors in the Royal Pavilion. The central Chandelier in this room is very huge. It is nine meters in height and weighs one ton. The Great Kitchen is innovative and modern at that time. The copper vessels and other utensils used at that time still have been maintained well. The Music Room and Gallery are very well decorated which reflects George IV’s great passion for music, dance and concerts.

During World War I the Royal Pavilion was used as a hospital for Indian soldiers.

There are admission charges to see the Royal Pavilion and audio guides are free with admission which provides fascinating background and factual information as we walk inside the Royal Pavilion. 

Photography or any recording is prohibited inside the Royal Pavilion.


                                             Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

     The is located within the Royal Pavilion estate. It houses-

1. 20th Century Decorative Art & Design gallery
2. Mr Willett's Popular Pottery gallery
3. Brighton’s rich and colourful history in the Images of Brighton gallery and the Exploring Brighton gallery are the local history galleries. The galleries should be viewed in association with each other as they represent two very different sides of the city.
4. The Fashion and Style gallery explores fashion through the ages from Regency to modern day.
5. The Performance gallery brings the celebrations from around the world with puppets, masks, and costume and musical instruments.

                                             Brighton Sea Life Centre

The Brighton Sea Life Centre is located close to the Brighton Pier. There are over 150 species in 57 separate displays covering all the aspects of marine life. This is the world’s oldest aquarium. The Sea Life Centre has an amazing Tropical Reef home to two giant sea turtles, black-tipped reef sharks and its own shipwreck. The spectacular views we get when we walk through underwater glass tunnel.    Artificial Amazonia Jungle  is full of deadly creatures which forms another interesting feature of this centre. 

Christmas Day at Brighton

Saturday, 25 th December 2010 was Christmas Day. As usual I came out of my flat at Brunswick Square, Hove, Brighton at 10.00 am and I was surprised to see everything was quiet. When I was walking on the main road -'Western Road' I was shocked to see the entire stretch was open and blank which is otherwise normally one of the busiest roads in Brighton. There was no public transport running. Brighton-Hove Bus Company runs city busses every day. But today, they had stopped operating and as a result Taxis on hire made a very good business.

I visited three churches viz. St. John's Church, St. Patrick's Church and St. Peter's Church. All these churches are on the main roads and are located in residential area. All these churches had displayed printed coloured paper announcing the Christmas eve midnight mass at 11.45pm and Christmas Mass at 10.30 am. I reached St. Patrick's Church at 10.15 am. The Church bell rang for fifteen minutes. A person from the church was waiting for the people near the main door.  Only one person from that residential area entered the church for silent prayer. At 10.30 am the main door of the church was closed and then the prayer must have started. Then I proceeded further. All shops, bars, cafes, shopping centres, super markets and cinema theatres were closed. At 11.30 am I reached the St. Peter's Church. At that moment I saw a few people coming out of the church after the mass. I wanted to interact with the Priest of the church but he closed and locked the door from inside.

However, in the evening I saw few people on the beach who had come for walk. But the number was comparatively less than the usual week end days or holidays. I was wondering how people must have enjoyed Christmas. On the Christmas day the weather was comparatively good though it was very cold (temperature was around freezing). It was sunny, bright, sky was blue and clear. But the cost of the Christmas tree was ranging from 30 pounds and above. People purchased and decorated the Christmas tree inside their houses. May be the weather conditions and architectural design of the houses and buildings do not permit them to do lighting and decorate their houses from outside. There was no sight of the Christmas Crib; instead there were boards outside the houses saying "Stop Santa here". I feel that everybody must be enjoying pre and post Christmas parties at their places with relatives and friends.

Next day Sunday, 26th December is a "Boxing Day". I was curious to know the significance of this day. So I asked one shop keeper about it. I learnt that in the past on the next day of Christmas,  all the  shop keepers were bringing down the prices of goods at rock bottom and as a result people used to enter the shops  in large number and used to fight (boxing) to grab the discounted goods. But now it is seen that a few shops are closed. A few shopkeepers have opened their shops and reduced the prices of the goods to 50%.   

                                                        St. John's Church

                                                          St. Patrick's Church

                                                           St. Peter's Church

                                                             En exception

                                                               Sea Front

                                                            Skating on Ice Rink

SUSSEX DURING CHRISTMAS VACATION

After the completion of ten weeks autumn term, the students and faculty of the University of Sussex have four weeks Christmas vacation starting from 11^th December 2010 to 3^rd January 2011. The holiday (closure days) for other staff is from 24^th December 2010 to 3^rd January 2011. During this period the administrative offices, Schools and Departments, library, IT Services, all shops, Cafes and bars will remain closed. The Union Store at York House which sells fresh fruits & vegetables, fresh meat & poultry, chilled & frozen meals etc. will remain open from 9.30 am to 2.00 pm during this break except on 25-27^th December 2010 and 1^st January 2011. The Clubs and Societies of Sussex will not conduct any programmes during this period in the campus.I have decided to go visit Brighton and London.

I wish you MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011.

      

OPEN COURSES IN MODERN LANGUAGES AT SUSSEX

The University of Sussex offers courses in the following languages: Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swahili. Classes for these courses run once a week for 20 weeks. Classes for more intensive courses in French and Spanish are held twice a week. Students receive a University of Sussex Certificate of Completion at the end of the course.

The courses, are open to everyone i.e. staff, students and general public. Courses are taught by fully qualified tutors, mostly native speakers, including some who teach undergraduate programmes. All courses give the opportunity to progress language skills and learn about the country and customs concerned. Limited Grammar is included but no class is based entirely on grammar. The main aim is to help to learn how to communicate in the chosen language, making the learning experience as beneficial and enjoyable as possible.

Weekly courses are offered at lunchtimes from 12.15 pm to 1.45pm. or in the evening from 6.30 pm to 8.00pm. and each course meeting lasts for an hour and a half. Classes take place at the University campus and usually run for two terms autumn and spring (twenty weeks).

Fees: £ 200 for two terms.  

The course may continue into the summer term for a further six weeks if there is sufficient interest. In this case, an additional fee is charged.

IT SERVICES AT SUSSEX

This is the continuation of my previous post on IT Services at Sussex.

The IT Services Department is one of the main service departments within the University and it provides service for many of the academic and non-academic activities of the University. Its mission - “To provide those high-quality computing, networking and support services that are necessary to enable the University to fulfill its corporate mission and academic departments to meet their objectives”. ITS has set its goals and objectives and these are linked with the objectives and goals of the University.

IT Services staff work in the following groups:

Client Services who provide information, support and training to the staff and students who use IT Services. The staff in this group also support office computers for academic and professional services staff, the PCs and printers in cluster rooms and audiovisual equipment in general teaching space.

Corporate Information Systems comprises the Business Applications team (formerly BIS) who support the University's information and administrative procedures, and the databases that underpin these, the Projects & Business Analysis team who provide support and management to IT Services across its portfolio of projects and services, and the Learning Systems team who provide the virtual learning environment for the University and develop the audiovisual technology.

Infrastructure Services who are responsible for the design, development and day to day operation of the campus network, central data storage and related services, the design and deployment of staff and student workstations and the provision of external connectivity.

The IT policies of Sussex are:

a)      University Policies: University of Sussex Ordinances & Regulations, Information Security Policy, Regulations for the use of Information & communication Technology, Information Security Website.

b)     IT Services Policies: Policy on file space, Policy on Connection of personally-owned desktop computers to the Campus network, Policy on Communication.

IT surveys: IT Services invites all first year undergraduates to complete an online survey to get feedback on their first experiences of using IT at Sussex. Based on the feedback the decisions and actions are taken.

Problems: For any IT related problems/requests, user can contact by email- support@its.sussex.ac.uk or phone or visit ITS in person. Once it is reported to ITS, it automatically enters a job queuing and processing system called Request Tracker (RT). In such circumstances an automatic email will be sent acknowledging the request and showing  a ticket reference - a unique reference to the request - in the Subject line of the email. The ticket reference looks like this:[sussex.ac.uk #nnnnn] where nnnnn is a number.

One can book a helpdesk appointment for any trouble with personally-owned computer; helpdesk advisors are available at IT Services. It is a 30 minute appointment with an IT Services Advisor and is free of charge. However if one fails to attend then s/he will be charged a ‘non attendance’ fee of £ 5.00, and person will not be eligible to receive any further support for personally owned equipment, nor will be able to attend any IT services training courses until this fee is paid. Appointments can be cancelled in advance either in person or by phone.

ITS News:  “ITS News” is published in every term. It’s a 4 page (A4 size) news letter. Through this, information on new software, developments at ITS, programmes, feedback reports and staff news are communicated.

Training:

Information Technology (IT) training is available at Sussex to develop basic computing skills Courses are available for both students and staff and range from introductions for users with very little experience to more advanced topics. The courses are conducted at three different levels:

• Level 1 indicates an introductory course
• Level 2 indicates an intermediate/follow on course
• Level 3 indicates an advanced/follow on course

Courses for staff:

Basic training in the use of audiovisual technology in the teaching rooms at Sussex.

Online resources:

There are a number of resources and online training courses which are useful for building knowledge in specialised areas.

Book a course: one can book for courses through Sussex Direct. Many courses are only run on demand. One's name is added to the waiting list and ITS will contact him/her when the course is scheduled.

IT SERVICES AT SUSSEX

Once we are at Sussex, we have access to a wide range of computing resources and services. The University has the website: sussex.ac.uk/its/welcome which is especially dedicated to provide information on IT Services at Sussex. In addition to this, the ITS of Sussex has published a booklet which gives the information on services that are provided by them to the staff, students and visitors. Earlier this information was given through CD and now it is given through the booklet. During the Fresher’s week ITS induction programmes are held for the information of new students. Those who missed this opportunity information is available for them through You Tube channel and videos on the website of ITS.   As soon as the students register, they are given an IT Services username and password as part of the online registration process. The username is usually made up of initials of user, followed by a number, such as: rvg20. After logged in for the first time the user is required to change the password and with this one can log into the webmail of Sussex, Study Direct (online learning management system if student has registered for the course), Sussex Direct and Library. The students get a gigabyte (1GB) of space to store emails. The students can use Sussex Direct for their results and feedback from tutors, finance and housing information, credit of printing account, Library loans and resources, additional skills training, submission deadlines, online registration, study timetable and FAQs and more.

The IT Services are open from Monday to Friday, from 9.00 am to 9.00 pm during term time and 9.00 am to 5.30pm during vacation. There are over 450 computers available on the campus for students to use. There are computer rooms also called cluster rooms and Kiosks at 14 different locations on the campus. Some are available for 24 X 7. Kiosk terminals are designed to allow students and staff quick access to the Sussex web pages without the need for logging in. In addition, by logging in with  IT Services username and password one can also access: Sussex email using webmail, Sussex Direct, The Electronic Library.The students can print from all IT Services computers. There is a charge for printing.  B&W (A4) single sided 5 pence; both sided 8 pence. and  Colour (A4) 20 pence single sided; both sided 36 pence; Transparency (A4) 60 pence; Colour (A3) 40 pence.

The students can top up the printing account by using their credit / debit card or using coins.

The study rooms of students staying on the University campus  are connected to the internet using ‘ResNet’. The ‘eduroam’ network is used as the single campus wireless network.

Once the staff and students are registered, then they have access to a wide range of software to download and install on their computer. Software available are Mulberry, Meeting marker, True Crypt, Stuff It, Open office, Filezilla, Kaspersky (anti-virus), Malware bytes, Spy bot, web drive, win SCP, PuTTY, Arachnophilia, Adobe Reader, Cute PDF, Notepad++, Abiword, 7-zip, Fetch, Clam XAV and so on. The programmes can be downloaded from IT Services, borrowed from the Library or purchased at special academic discounts from the suppliers.

Email - currently use Cyrus mail store for the central email systems. They are planning to introduce Microsoft Exchange (2010) for staff in the New Year. The students will continue to use Cyrus which is generally accessed using webmail (they use the open source web-based program Roundcube).

Study Direct - the virtual learning environment at Sussex is based on Moodle (currently they are using version 1.9) but it is customised for use at Sussex by a small team within IT Services.

Web sites - Apache web servers and PHP scripting (version 5).

Links for open source software in use at Sussex:

Cyrus http://www.cyrusimap.org/

RoundCube http://roundcube.net/

Moodle http://moodle.org/

Apache http://httpd.apache.org/

PHP http://php.net/

Disk space - Both the staff and students have 1GB of file storage when they join the University. This is in addition to 1GB of email storage. It is quite common for staff that the additional storage space will be given on request.

For more information please visit my next blog.

Students’ life on Sussex campus during autumn term

The campus of the University of Sussex is spread over nearly 200 acres of land. On campus, there are academic blocks, library, students’ residences, sports complexes, shops, bars, bank, ATM, Post office, Dentist, Pharmacy, laundry and Security office. The total enrolment of students is around 10,000 including 3000 postgraduate students.  The University receives students from 120 countries and around 20% of the students are non-UK. The total number of staff is 2,200 including 550 teaching and 280 research faculty. The teaching faculty is from 50 countries.

The autumn term begins with fresher’s week. This was held from 25^th September to 1^st October 2010 and the actual academic term started from 4^th October 2010 to 10^th December 2010.

The academic activities including examinations were conducted as per the schedule announced on Study Direct of the University. Other activities like students’ union election, strike against fee hike, sports and annual general body meeting of students’ union did not affect the teaching. Throughout the autumn term, students were seen busy with studies, sports and other social activities.  Nearly 3500 first year students are accommodated on the University campus in seven residential houses viz. Swanborough, Brighthelm, East slope, Stanmer Court, Lewes court, Park houses and Park village. The Residential advisors are the second and third year students who live within the residences and have the responsibility for a group of first year students.

The library is open for 24 hours during the term days. The sports facilities are located at two sites-the Sport Centre and Falmer Sports Complex. The Sports  facilities  available to the staff and  students include  multipurpose sports halls, a fitness room, indoor cricket nets, squash courts, a dance and martial arts studio, a therapy room and a sports injury clinic, hard tennis courts, a floodlit artificial turf pitch (full-size for hockey and football), grass sport pitches (for cricket, football, rugby etc), and outdoor cricket nets. The students participate actively in sports including practice sessions. There is more than one team for hockey and football. Every Wednesday afternoon the University of Sussex plays with other university teams.

The John Smith Bookshop in the library which core texts and general interest books, cards, stationery, computer consumables and other related products. There are three shops viz. Martin McColl, Union News and Union Shop which sell wide range of products like snacks, sweets, drinks - including alcohol, cigarettes, discounted bus tickets, co-op food products, sandwiches/bagels, souvenirs, clothes, mobile-top ups, stationery, confectionery, doughnuts, news papers and magazines. Fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meat & poultry, chilled & frozen meals are also sold from these shops.

The Union Store at York House is an on-campus supermarket. Alongside an impressive range of Co-operative groceries, including ready meals, pizzas and laundry powder,  a variety of local produce including fresh milk from the Sussex Downs, fruit and vegetables from a local farmer and handmade bagels from 'Bagelman' are available here.

There are two bars on the campus viz, East slope bar and Falmer bar. East Slope provides a delicious menu from noon till late. On the menu are mouth-watering sandwiches such as 'peppered roast beef', 'hummus and roasted sweet peppers' and 'grilled jerk chicken’, along with homemade burgers. With a huge range of drinks. The Falmer bar serves breakfast lunch/snacks/dinner menu with a huge range of dishes from panini's, to burgers, enchiladas, kedgeree, salads and curry. The students who live on the campus enjoy all different kind of food and drinks available on the campus.

The University takes students’ safety very seriously and security officers patrol the campus 24 hours. All security staff are qualified first aiders and can respond quickly to emergencies.