A man of Distinction!

Forgot to say what the result was: Distinction!

So you see, all that self-doubt was wrong, all that hard work paid off.

The problem now is what to do next. I had enrolled for M359, a top level course in Relational Database Design and Use (or whatever the correct title is), but then pulled out. I needed some time to myself, to catch up on family life, to catch up on a few good books (and if you are into travel books then I highly recommend William Dalrymple as a writer. I read his first book "In Xanadu" when it was first published - 1989 I think, and only got around to reading another of his books this year - "White Mughals". I was so enchanted and thrilled by this book that I then read "City of Djinns" and already have "From the Holy Mountain" lined up to read. Of course its wrong to think of Dalrymple as a 'travel writer' - though thats the bookshop section he usually ends up in - what he writes is more about people, culture, history, and place..and has the most fantastic eye and ear for wit, detail, smell, and colour).

I digress. What I was meaning to say is that I enrolled and then un-enrolled from M359 and decided to wait for the result of M254. I figured that if I got a Grade 2 then I would postpone further study for the year - just to take a well-earned break. But I also figured that if I gained a Distinction then I might plough ahead to jump into M359 and get it out of the way before the end of next year. I'll then be one step nearer my Diploma in Computing and another step nearer my BSc.

So watch this space!

M254 - Exams

Well, some while since the last posting! In fact, just after my previous ramblings I sat a 3 -Hour exam for the M254 course (October 11th 2006) and have been waiting until December 15th for the results to be posted. So today is December 14th but the results are now available. I was very confident that I had passed the course but not too sure how well I had fared in the exam. I really needed to achive at least 85% in the exam to get the Distinction that I really wanted, but had figured that a Grade 2 was the more likely outcome. Course work had been fine - a couple of 98% and a couple of 89% gave me a comfortable 94% overall on the marked course work. But the exam - well thats another matter altogether, no notes allowed, no reference sheets, no nothing, just a head full of half-remembered facts. I'm alright recalling concepts, knowing how things work, how things fit together (so to speak), but details and isolated facts present a problem sometimes. And that, I was sure, would be my Achilles Heel in the 3 hour chamber of hell.
I managed to complete all the questions in the given time and actually had 15 minutes spare in which to ponder and prevaricate over some answers I had given. One small flash of inspiration during that period help make a better answer for one of the questions. And that was it.
Finished, complete, consigned to history.

M254 - Tic-Tac-Toe

Well, long overdue for an update. And the reason for my silence, I hear you wondering, is that I had my head burried deep in TMA04 for M254. The task given was to create a client/server system that could be used for playing board games. Specifically, we were asked to write one for playing "Noughts and Crosses" (or "Tic-Tac-Toe" if you're American, which I'm not). There was no game logic required because this wasn't a case of man versus machine (at least, not in the game playing sence - although it felt like it times in the programming sence!). All that was required was that a game-server would be able to manage concurrent games being played by pairs of players who were connect over TCP from their client machines. The server would have to maintain the state of the each game, announce whose turn it was, and advise of interesting situations - like winning or drawing. The client side code had to create a game interface and send messages to, and receive messages from, the server.

Nothing too challenging or strenuous really. Once the server was working for managing a single game between two players, it had to be extended to handle multiple concurrent games - ie by using threads.

Good news - I wrote it all in time - and it worked. Not perfect code - even I could see that but a score of 89%, although my lowest of the course, is still satisfactory and means that, depending on how I do in the exam (!), I could still get a Distinction for this course.

We'll see.

M254 - Not quite 100, but not out yet.

After the panic last week in trying to get my M254 TMA03 ready (and being convinced that I would have to miss some questions), I had put the thought of it to the back of my mind and not expected anything back from my tutor for a couple of weeks. I figure it would take that long because he has a sudden glut of TMA's arriving at the same time.

So imagine my surprise when an auto-generated email arrive in my inbox on 24th June (just less than two whole days after submission) telling me that my work had been marked and returned. I downloaded the returned documents and opened them with some trepidation - had I fluffed some of the hurried answers? Had I picked up the wrong end of the stick and mis-understood what some of the programming requirements were? I knew that my code worked - but was the quality of the code good enough? Could I have made the code more concise? Had I made some almighty screw-up?
OK, do I look at my overall score or do I read through each question along with my tutor's comments? Oh heck, I can't wait - lets just look at the final score and then disect where I have gone wrong...

Ah, it says 98%. Perhaps I misread that - I'll double check - no, it does say 98%. So my code is OK, I had interpretted the requirements correctly and I hadn't made screw-up. There is hope for me yet.

Of course, deep-down inside, I am really satisfied with that score, and so is my tutor - but he has set me a challenge I think. He pointed out that it was still not quite 100% - how can I resist? I'll just have to try harder next time!

M254 - Not resting but not fretting either.

M254 TMA03 - Submitted!

I had to race a bit to get this one ready in time and for quite a while I thought I was going to end up leaving some questions unanswered - and then I suddendly had inspiration and knew how to answer the remaining questions - and that was quite a relief. And the funny thing is that I wasn't even working on the TMA when these ideas came to me. A few hurried scribbles on the back of an envelope (very traditional you know!) was enough to backup my intermittent memory. Soon had the lot commited to paper and software writing.

So thats it for now. Just have to wait the results of this one.

But, no rest allowed. I am still about one month behind schedule and am about to start Unit 6 when really I should be starting Unit 7. But at least there is no Maths course to be fretting about anymore!

OU - Just rambling really.

I am partway through my studies with the Open University here i the UK. I am working towards a degree in Computing, which I figure is well overdue having spent the last 30 years working in the industry programming (Fortran, IBM Assembler, REXX) with the last 25 years spent as a Senior Systems Programmer supporting IBM's VM Operating System.

But, alas, my mainframe days are over.

But to Uni - Last year I studued Object Oriented Programming and Design (M206) which I thoroughly enjoyed (so much so, that I managed to get a Distinction). This course was a real eye-opener, all the talk of O-O that I had heard previously was all fairly dismissive and the people that I had spoken to about it (all non O-O practitioners) considered it to be nothing more that the flavour of the month (albeit, a very LONG month!). But studying O-O seriously showed me just how useful and fully formed O-O really is.

Of course, not all O-O languages are fully Object Oriented (Java, for instance), but the language that we used for studying purposes was Smalltalk (which is fully O-O as far as I can tell - even numbers are objects (whereas is Java they are not)).

Anyway, this year I decided that I ought to get my maths up to speed and so studied MU120 which is really an introduction to maths and is worth 30 points - but I had to work much harder to get 30 points from this first level course (I'm tempting fate here - although I have finished the course, I don't actually have my results yet - perhaps I have failed!), than I did to get 60 points from M206!.
Suffice to say that I found MU120 a real slog and have really learned that maths is not really my thing - I also couldn't believe just how much writing there was to do!

Buts thats all behind me now.

My current course is M254 (Java). I'm about half way through and really enjoying it (I really do mean 'really'!). Its a funny thing, but I get a real kick out of writing software - always have and find it quite a natural sort of thing to do. Anyway, managed a 98% on my last TMA submission (TMA02) and am currently working on TMA03. In fact I am several weeks behind on this couse due to the amount of time I had to spend on MU120, but I seem to be making up for lost time quite quickly - which I what I figured would happen anyway.

This course finished in October 2006 and then I shall tae a break from studying until Jan 2007 when I think I will enroll for M359 (Relational Database - Theory and Practice) which sounds fairly interesting and useful. And then I will switch to doing a Science module for 60 points - probably S104 - just because I have an interest in science - and it will count towards my Computing degree.

More updates later...