Share Tip – Sound Oil

Make some black gold noise…

On their journey to mid-cap status, Sound Oil PLC (LSE:SOU.L) are an AIM listed small cap with a pure Italian play of operations. On the discussion forums of the ii and lse, investors are currently awaiting news of rig arrival and impending production post June/July at Nervesa.

Earlier this month first gas was delivered at Rapagnano with a production rate of 14,600m cubic metres daily. However analyst Fox Davies are expressing caution with regards to Rapagnanos concessional downgrade in the recent weeks.

7.5p – 8p has been a significant holding region for the last few months and analyst have a rating of around 24p short term.

Graph credit – Interactive Investor

Sound have also been tweeting some sporadic messages, that include photos of progress – nice to see a company using social media to interact with potential and current investors. Their LinkedIn account currently shows the unloading of trucks at site!

They think its all over, it is now!

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Wow! A year almost gone!

newport

Been a whirlwind of almost another year since last post! Finally finished my MSc IT Management at Newport Uni, which has merged to the new South Wales University and carried out Dissertation on SME’s Business Continuity and IT Alignment, finalising on around 18K words. Seems like such a slog, but at the same time well worth the effort.

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Also, developed some cycling designs with Dozzina.cc, plus an instagram feed of actual gear we have designed in the last year. Winter Jersey’s, Coffee Cups and Italian Race bags. We have a small following, so it is good to see some like-minded cyclists in the region buying local quality goods from small independents.

Mon Wheelers Club Kit

The Monwheelers have also been very active, recruiting around 35 members and taking part in our local Wiggle Wye Valley Sportive. Our FB group has grown pretty well and there is plenty of banter, usual jibes and crazy photos. If you are in South Wales and fancy some social riding get in touch here or here !

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Currently at AlphabyteIT where I have been wearing many, many hats over the year – Learnt some further Sharepoint, SQL, C#, WordPress and technical skills for the portfolio. A spot of Business Developing with Management System and some Business Analyst projects. Updated my LinkedIN profile to reflect my experience in the last year.

It has been a while….

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…since I last posted!

Been a bit busy with family life, the boy and Uni so I have not managed to post anything for a long while. Since my redundancy back in December 2011, I have also been cycling like an idiot* to ward off depressing moments and to get my fitness back.

But, in haste of catching up with my usual projects I have also managed to move into a new position as Business Development Analyst for AlphabyteIT in Cardiff earlier this week. Yay!

18 months ago I decided to embark on a MSc IT Management course at my local University to improve my future prospects and gain employment in the IT sector. Notoriously competitive for junior roles and sparse local recruitment I decided that a MSc would benefit me rather than sit around moaning about lack of choices in the area.

The course at UWCN has been enjoyable, interesting and I have met some new people who had a great deal of experience. I was also elected course representative which gave me some leadership and diplomacy (!) skills!

I covered a range of modules including:

Accounting & Financial Control
Information Systems Development
Managing Projects & Programmes
Enterprise Infrastructure Management
Legislative & Professional Issues
Strategic Planning for Technology Management

All that is now left is my Dissertation!

Note: *1,800miles, 114,000ft climbing….

Business Intelligence (BI)

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Recent redundancy has given me a chance to hone my skills in areas of interest – One of these areas is Business Intelligence Development which enables businesses to perform analysis from vast and complex data. I have obtained the 70-448 BIS development and maintenance training kit and jumped into the deep end of BI SQL!

For my Masters dissertation I will need to perform an analysis of data and present my findings. The theory was that I would develop a relational database, an application to analyse my data and use the graphs to present my results.

But before that, there’s Developing SSIS Packages, Developing SSAS Cubes and SSRS Reporting to get around plus some Data wharehousing principles and theory.

Handy that I have the time!

Shares….The Miners!

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It has been a while since I posted anything concerning the shares – This year has proven to be an absolute nightmare for any private investor with the markets showing a loss right across the board.

The AIM market has been hit particularly hard, most of the shares I was holding lost at least 60 – 70% of their value in the course of 6 months and to date have not recovered.

An article published 15/12/11 on the iii by Sarah Modlock and Fiona Bond covering the mining sector covers a few choice penny stocks in this area which are tipped for bigger things.

Granted, good value amongst these stocks, but where is Central Rand Gold (CRND.L) in this article? 4p a share earlier this year in January, tumbled to its lowest around 0.22p when their mining rights were revoked in September. Good news has since flowed and mining rights have been granted allowing operations to continue.

Obviously this is a risky investment, but rights granted and a 2 year forecast back to 4p you can be sure to put a small punt in an ISA for tax free profits.

CRND is currently trading at 0.7p @ market close on the 16th December.

Soapy soapy

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I have delved into the world of homemade soap making. Hot oils, fats and some caustic soda litter my shed, alongside a vast selection of essential oils and recipes.

When I have a few hours to spare, a trip to the shed to escape the noise and conjure up some man soaps for friends and family. This weekend I made some charcoal soap which turned out as black as the Sunday news of Speed’s tragic passing and some poppy seed mix that looks interestingly speckled.

With 4 weeks till fully cured, a bit of patience is needed to prevent mischievous hands from using the bars early.

Candidate Database

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Improving current business process for candidate information management.

Project Requirements: Enable searching of candidate records through a common user interface using legacy Access DB. Filter of out standing candidates for records. Report of performance statistics.

Resources: no current server resource, existing Access DB without normalisation, relationships and queries.

Ideal Solution: Front End GUI, Back End DB, Queries, Reports and all on Server for multi user access. Ideal starting point for Oracle or SQL server project.

Result: MS Access DB with three User types, Relationships, SQL Queries and some Reporting & Statistics integration. Process for sequential DB useage and future exportation of data.

Dashboard GUI has live search strings & integers across a range of candidate data available in normalised tables
Clicking of search result pulls up record in association
Query of pending / out standing candidate qualifications
Reporting – Graphical representation of current monthly, period and yearly performance targets