OU - Dip Comp!

Hmm, well its not quite the BSc(Hons) that I’m going after but getting the Diploma is a welcome step. And I do seem to have gone the long way around to get it – out of the seven courses that I have completed, only three of them have counted towards this qualification. Actually, if it hadn’t been for the fact that M206 ceases to be countable towards the Diploma from 31st December this year, then I may well have taken even longer to achieve it!

It was only when reviewing all my courses at the beginning of this year that I realised that the clock was ticking – and M206 would have been an expensive 60pts to lose.

Anyway, that’s the Certificate and the Diploma out of the way – now all I need is another 130 pts to reach my goal.

 

Incidentally, I bumped into one of my friends in Canterbury Cathedral the other evening (hows that for a location for the kids school carol service!) and he mentioned that he achieved his Degree last year and was now studying for his Masters. I asked how he managed a full time job and to get all that studying done – he replied that he only needs three hours sleep each night! I’m sure that it was him that I heard snoring during “Hark the Herald Angels”! (Only kidding Nick). To be honest I don’t know how he does it – perhaps in his spare hours he plays the part of Clark Kent.

And my other chum, Ian, is awaiting the result of his M450 project, I am way behind!

So, as the end of the year fast approaches and I contemplate cracking open another bottle of port (okay, that must be why the studying takes so damn long), ambling over the fields to Bishopsbourne (excellent village pub there), and generally feeling that I must take the next set of New Year resolutions more seriously than hitherto, I am thinking about wishing everyone a Happy Christmas.

OU - Distinctly Good

Well, not been thinking much about studying and the OU for the past few weeks - to much else to do. But today is Results Day So I'll cut straight to the chase:

Two exams...Two Distinctions. Well I'll be damned!

I'm running around hollering right now (you'll just have to take my word for that - its not a pleasant sight I can tell you).

Actually, as nearly always, there's a curious side to this: on one of the courses only 4% of students who sat that exam got a Distinction, on the other course it was 27% - that is a marked and surprising difference. I wonder what the explanation is.

OU – Send me your TMA’s !!

Ok, this isn’t really a request for anyone to send me their TMA’s – and if anyone did then they would be deleted.

But over the weekend I received an email from an OU student telling me that they had recently failed a course and that they were going to sit it again – and that they had seen that I had also done the same course so could I send them all my TMA’s because it would help them! Huh?

The answer was an emphatic NO. Two reasons – the first because these TMA’s were all hand-written and not in electronic form, so I couldn’t send them anyway. The second reason being that I don’t show my TMA’s to anyone. And that is a hard and fast rule.

I tried to be helpful and suggest that they should speak to their tutor if they are having problems – and if that didn’t help then talk to their OU Regional Office. Asking other students for their TMA’s isn’t really the right way to go about it.

OU – There’s always someone worse of than you!

Having now got over my petty gripes about exam questions being wrong, I came across the following statement in one of the OU FirstClass conferences yesterday:

Jenny Bull, the Head of Exams and Assessment, writes:

U216 Examination on 10 October 2008
Following the examination on Friday it has been reported that some students who attended the September Day School were provided with a revision question paper which turned out to be the actual examination question paper set for the examination.

All of a sudden I’m not feeling so hard done by. But I feel really sorry for those students who have studied U216 so hard during the year. This is a 60pt 2nd Level course on the Environment – I really hope that they don’t end up voiding the exam and having to do a resit. I can’t help wondering how on earth that situation arose. Questions will be asked.

OU - T224

Just a follow-up to my assertion that there was an error in the exam paper. It turns out that many other students thought the same thing - and it was reassuring to see a post from the Chair of the T224 Exam Board confirming that there was indeed an error - and that the marking scheme will be amended accordingly so that no students are disadvantaged by it. The problem with errors in exams is not just restricted to the fact that the question is wrong - but its the amount of time spent during the exam trying to answer a question that is either obviously wrong (in which case you answer what you can and make a comment to the side), or just much more complex than it was intended to be (because of incorrect maths). This particular error fell into the first category.

But a while later there was another post from the Chair of the T224 Exam Board saying that in fact there was an error in another question too (which quite a few of us had thought was probably an error). The trouble with this one was that the maths made for a more complex question - so finding the answer took a lot longer. Again, the marking scheme is being amended.

But it does beg the question - "How do these errors get through?". And I guess the obvious answer is insufficient testing! I know that if I write some software, I will test it. But a much better approach is get someone else to test it. The reason is that if you test your own code you are likely to make the same error in testing that you did in writing. Get someone else to do it and the chances are that they will find the error. I wonder if it is the same with exam writing. The Course Team write the exam, but someone else should then test the exam by actually doing it (and I'm not talking about proof-reading, I mean actually sitting the exam and then having it marked).

And as with all these things, its the border line results that will be affected most - and I'm sure the OU will take that into account.

Well, how about that

Just visited my OU homepage - and there on the left is a link to a 'Personal Blog' what wonderful timing!

OU – Thats all folks!

Well, two days and two exams…and now a chance to unwind.

Kicked off with the MT262 exam yesterday afternoon and quite enjoyed it – made a flying start and was about 45 minutes ahead of my schedule by the end of Part 1…and just as well because I found my memory and thought processes failing midway through Part 2. In the end I finished with just 5 minutes to spare. I know that I made a few mistakes, fluffed a bit here and there, but that’s okay and pretty much what I expect.

Today it was a chance to have a bash at T224. Another 3 hour exam – and it kicked off with something that I should know – should have known for years in fact – hadn’t revised it and it completely threw me – not bad for question one. Anyway I gave it my best shot and progressed – feeling rather unsure of myself after that shocking start. But it got better. Question involved  completing a flow-chart, so no problems there…except I am convinced that there was an error in the question (not the first OU exam I have done that had an error). Anyway, a quick check on FirstClass a while ago showed that several other students had made the same observation.

I recall one question that I thought was quite interesting (about BlueTooth – Hopping Channels, Frequencies, Hop rate and the like) and I wrote what I thought was a good half page on the details – and then discovered that it was only worth 2-points – so probably all they wanted was a brief one-liner. Oh well, that’s life.

So, to the future. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I am putting my OU studies on hold for at least a year, but do intend to return and complete my degree (still need another 100 points or so). This means that my entries in this blog are almost done for now – although I will update the details when the results come through before Christmas.

And here is a chance for me to reflect on this blogging stuff. My main thought is how much I have enjoyed rambling on. But what I have really enjoyed is the contacts that I have made with other students – this has been really valuable – as well as providing me with a number of other blogs to read regularly (thanks guys!) – I’ll keep reading so please keep posting.

What’s in a name

Yet again I have managed to find another displacement activity – just when I thought I was finally concentrating properly on revision. The thing that has got me interested this time is Blogging. Ah ha! you might think – blogging about blogging (meta-blogging) – what an interesting way to while away these precious hours.

In fact its a good deal more mundane than that. I realised the other day that my entries on this blog are going to be diminishing soon. I’m taking a year or so out from studying with the OU and so my contributions to my OU blog are bound to be few and infrequent.

But I do quite like blogging so I thought I would set up a new blog to write about programming, programming paradigms, tools, techniques, and so on. [Ed: yawn…if you must]. So I came up with a list of what I thought were good names for a blog – and for each one I found that the name was already in use. But here’s the rub, I thought I would visit each of these blogs to see what they were like, and every one of them, except one, had been registered 6 to 8 years ago and hardly ever used since. One of them, created by a Professor at a notable US university, stated in its introduction all the good and useful things that he was going to write about – and then wrote nothing, not one single entry. I’m sure he’s forgotten all about it. But he still has the name registered. Another one that I found had been created in 2000. The blogger had helpfully added in his first entry that he was too tired to be bothered to write anything and was going to bed. I can only assume that he never woke up.

So, many of the good blog names have been taken and that’s it. Of course, if I was really intelligent I should put my mind to good use by being creative and inventive and coming up with some even better alternative names, but really, I’m too tired and I’m going to bed.

MT262 and T224 Revision

At last I seem to be getting my act together and doing some reasonably serious revision. I find it so easy to be distracted – and even easier to find things to distract myself with. Crazy. But the deadline of exams looming over the horizon called ‘nextweek’ has finally shocked my weary brain into some kind of frenzied activity.

It also helps if I don’t revise late at night – generally works out to be wasted time – anything I read just seems to evaporate. The problem is that its only late at night that I usually get the chance to study. So what to do.

This weekend just past, I revised for three hours late afternoon on both Saturday and Sunday – and it was time well spent – productive and reassuring. Next weekend the plan is to do similar. And then Monday shall be a day of rest [Ed: no it won’t – you’ll be working, you fool].

Hmm. Time passes.

Test of Live Writer.

Tony Roberts wrote about Microsoft Live Writer on his blog today – and since I’m in desperate need of some displacement activity I have decided to download and try it out. It has to be said that this is less productive than the revision that I should be doing…but is more fun.

It might just be me, but I have always had difficulty in adding pictures to my blog. Always seemed very convoluted and the result was rarely satisfactory.  So just to see how easy it is in Live Writer I have decided to add in a picture of the cover of the book that I am currently reading:

Well, that was easy!

I could grow to like Live Writer.

{Incidentally, the book is thoroughly researched – as you would expect from William Dalrymple - and very, very readable}

Google Chrome - the saga continues.

I had another dalliance with Google Chrome today. Having fallen head-over-heals out-of-love with it the other day I thought that perhaps I ought to try and make up (and Tony Roberts sort of prompted me to give it another go). But in a kind of 'your place, or mine?' scenario I decided that there was no way that Google Chrome was going to get its silk gloves on my machine. So I knocked up a XP Virtual Machine and downloaded GC (thats amusing - it usually refers to Garbage Collection in OO languages) zipped through the installation and bingo - it works - and its actually quite good.

Now, do I risk trying to reinstall it on my top-level machine? Nope. Not with exams coming up.

OU - Only use what they teach you!

I learned a useful lesson today. I received back my marked TMA04 for MT262 - I'd been expecting this for a few days - I already knew that my mark was going to be low on account of the fact that I had only answered one question. I decided before doing the TMA that I would rather spend time revising for the exam than spend time on the TMA and I was in the fortunate position of having done well enough on the previous three that I didn't need to do TMA04 at all. But I'm a sucker for punishment but also enjoy reading the comments that my tutor makes about my work [Ed: are you sure thats not the same thing?] - so it was a trade off! I'm rambling now, but I got 46 marks out of a possible 50. Thats good enough for me.

Anyway, thats not the point of this post - and nothing to do with what the lesson was. It turns out that I had used some bitwise operators in my C++ code (nothing wrong on that normally). The problem was that we haven't been taught about bitwise operators so must not use them. Oh, thats a shame - I use things like that a lot in my day-to-day work. I lost 2 marks for that oversight. I seem to manage to do something like that on every course I do.

How to Program

I was at an T224 Tutorial yesterday when one of my fellow students explained that he had already completed M150 ("Data, Information, and Computers" - or something akin to that) but he said that he found the programming aspects very difficult and realised that he wasn't a programmer. He asked what advice any of us would give him to help him get to grips with programming.

Various bits of advice were contributed. One student, who had been annoyingly vocal during the tutorial and had advice for everyone on every topic, said simply that he should learn Java - but that there was no point in learning how to program because all the programming jobs were going overseas. So, two bit of bad advice in one breath I thought. Another student recommended learning learning Visual Basic "because it what most databases use" (Good grief - where did he get that idea from?).

When I was able to get a word in I explained that, in my opinion, there were two aspects to this. One was 'How do I learn to program in language xyz" and the other is "how do I learn to think like a programmer" (at which point the eyes of the chap who posed the question lit up). I said that I thought the best way to learn how to think like a programmer was to: A) Don't read books on a specific language, but find some generic books on programming - books that talk about ideas, or the general approach that programmers take. B) Read code written by experienced programmers, talk to them about it, get them to explain why they do something in a particular way. When you 'think' programming' then solutions evolve which are not language specific but can be implemented in a number of languages. Once you are comfortable with the ideas of Arrays, or Hashes, or different types of iteration, of functions, and so on then learning a specific language seems to make much more sence.

In the end the questioner said that he wished he hadn't asked the question! - Oh! I didn't mean to put him off - I'm dead keen on people learning to program and I wish that I knew more people who did.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome - oh how interesting you sounded at first hearing, how attracted I was to the lure of your promises; your elegance, the way you would deftly deliver web pages to my screen. I was smitten and acted on impulse without thought and threw my cares to the wind.

So imagine my bleeding surprise when I downloaded you and installed you on my XP box and Blue Screen after Blue Screen. System Restore after System Restore.

Playing hard to get I thought, so I pursued you and found myself still intoxicated by your promises, still desiring your presence here on my desktop.

So imagine my bleeding surprise as we cavorted around the Blue Screen again, as we serenaded each other around the System Restore, as the milk turned to cheese, and the garden wilted without my care as I rebuilt my system, as I laboured long into the night, as a wrestled with you until at last I was free of you, free from your grabbing, free from your damage.

Oh, Google Chrome, how foolish I have been.

Its fixed Jim, but not as we know it.

The blog entry below this (If it ain't broke...don't fix it) now appears meaningless because the horrendous (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) style that I had applied to it is now history. I never did find the exact backup of the original style, but a bit more looking around produced this rather black style - and I'm happy with that.

Perhaps its in keeping with my mood right now, perhaps thats the effect of exams looming over the horizon (which reminds me - I'm supposed to be revising right now. How easily distracted I am). Perhaps is a reaction to the strands of silver hair I found, contrasted against my otherwise black tonsorial attire (ok, ok, I'm lying - its brown - and mostly gone).

If it ain't broke...don't fix it

If only.

I had a play around with styles for this blog - and have ended up with one I don't particularly care for! How?...Why?...who knows. Of course, I have been careful and saved a backup of the previous style haven't I. Yup, its just here......., no, wait a minute....ah yes, its over there..... I know, silly me, I've put in the......no, that can't be right. Umm. Err...

The eyes have it!

This is a non-OU post but comes as way of explanation. You may have noticed that the picture of me in my profile isn't really me [Ed; you're kidding surely!]. In fact it is a composite picture - the main face is a large metal construction that sits outside the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury (Incidentally, the Marlowe Theatre is named after Christopher Marlowe, tragic contemporary fellow playwright of one William Shakespeare. Marlowe was born in Canterbury but left it. Geoffrey Chaucer, on the other-hand, was born in London and, rather famously, wrote about Canterbury. But we don't have a Chaucer Theatre - just Chaucer Hotel).

But the eyes are real - but not mine. In fact they are taken from a photo that I took of my daughter a few years ago - thats kind of spooky I know - and I haven't yet owned up to her about that!

Its not too dissimilar from how I really look - although I don't have the crinkly top to my head [Ed: have you looked at your self in the mirror recently?].

One day, when the world is ready for it, I might put a picture of the real me there instead. You have been warned!

Dono Treply

I was reading an article in 'Computer Weekly' this week about Somerset County Council that has entered into partnership with IBM to provide all sorts of useful services. One of the targets that has been set - and that IBM must meet - is to reduce the amount of acronyms that they use. That really is rather telling I think. We all know that the world of IT is full of acronyms - and they do have their use as a form of shorthand for those in the know. Its not just IT of course - my wife is a nurse and her work is full of acronyms and specialist words - we can sometimes have conversations in which neither of us knows what the other is talking about [Ed: doesn't that also apply to normal everyday conversations that you two have?].

Today, I was showing my son (13 years old and car-mad) an email that I had just received confirming that I had bought two tickets for the MPH Show in London - which includes a Live Top Gear show. The email had a return address of donotreply@seezz3.com. My son said to me 'Look dad, its come from someone called Dono Treply). I looked puzzled and then realised what he meant. And a quick google shows that he's not the only one to have made that mistake.

MT262 - TMA03

Really getting into the swing of this course, and quite enjoying it. Results for TMA03 are back and I got a rather cool 97% - not bad for an uncool-nerd such as me. Now, regular readers (all two of you - you know who you are!) may remember that I prattled on a while back about how to lose marks - well, 'consistency' is my middle name [Ed: what foolish parents you must have] ..... two of the three marks I lost because the TMA said 'create a button and and put "Cancel" on it' (or words to that effect)...so what did I do...I put the word "Quit" on them instead. What a stupid, half-numbskulledvomitprovoking mistake to make. My tutor, quite correctly, docked me a point for each error.

But how did I manage to do that? It was there in black-and-white no-thinking-required [Ed: perhaps thats the problem Simon, no-thinking-required...no-thinking-performed].

TMA04 is underway is a great fun already!

MT262 - TMA02, Going well

Just the filip I needed - 94% for TMA02. The funny thing is that it is so long since I did the actual TMA that I couldn't recall what any of the questions were. Anyway, things are going in the right direction on this course.
Right now I am whizzing through Block 3 so that I can get back to T224 (which requires more time and concentration because the subject matter is one that I am not quite so familiar with). But Block 3 of MT262 has us writing software that produces plots of data-values that have been collected by a thermometer (not a real thermometer, but a simulated one). And its great fun.
And already paying dividends - I was asked at work yesterday if it was possible to write some software that will check the availability of a database on a networked server. The method simply involves connecting to the database over the network (it could be SQL/Server, Oracle, MySQL etc) and then performing an SQL select for a known number of rows and logging the duration.
As soon as I was given the request the phrase 'simulated thermometer' popped into my head [Ed; you lead a sad life Simon]. So now, a few hours later, I have an application that monitors a remote database and logs the transaction time - it writes it to a log files and plots the data on a graph in real time.

All I have to do now is to persuade my employers to contribute financially to my OU studies [Ed; the words 'pigs' and 'flying' come to mind].

T224 - How to lose point - part 254.

Just received back my marked TMA02. 89% so I'm happy with that but, you know what.....it could have been higher. Could have been, that is, if I hadn't made a couple of elementary mistakes!

Mistake number 1 - Only answered part of a question. I manage to do this on almost every course that I do - just completely miss a subquestion. When I saw my tutors comments ( "Simon, I think you must have missed the question...") I thought, "No, there is a mistake, there was no part of the question like that.....", and then, just to make sure, I re-read the TMA paper. And there it was, as plain as the nose on my face. And the bit that I missed out was so easy to implement - it would have been two minutes work. How daft is that.

Mistake number 2 - only using 12 bits for a memory address instead of 16. Now this is just so obvious, and I really can't believe that I wrote what I did. At least I was consistent about it - and my tutor did pick me up on it (although didn't penalise me for it). This is what it is about: Suppose that some data is written to memory location F02. When writing that down one should really write 0F02 (ie, use a leading zero). Its pernickety, but it is correct....and its something I have always done in the past. So why didn't I do that it the TMA?

Mistake number 3 - Now this is the one that I am really going to learn from - when a TMA question uses the word 'find' it means show the workings out and write down the answer. All I did was write down the answer (which I did get correct). The question was to do with ANDing and ORing hex values. I do these in my head and just write the answers down - I've done it this way for years - and it never occurred to me to show the workings. I did raise this with my tutor and he explained that there had been some debate about this - but that the course team are insisting that this is what it means and that is how it should be done. Well, I can live with that. His advice is to always show the workings out.

But now I am wondering whether there are other 'code words' that have specific meanings when used in questions - there must be a list somewhere. If I find out what they are I will place them in a new blog entry - I'm sure I'll not be the only person caught out by these.

Well, thats it. I should get the TMA for MT262 back soon.

Nerd?

Just for fun (either that or I'm just a sad person.....) I followed a link to a website that asks a few questions and then comes up with a Nerd Score. Here is mine:



So, depending on your definition of Nerd, I'm either a dull person with almost no social skills, or I'm a person that would rather study than party [ed: I think that sums you up quite well], or that I show a pronounced interest in subjects which others find dull or complex and difficult to comprehend - particularly in areas of science, mathematics and technology [ed: are you sure this relates to you?].

Well, any or all of the above may be true. But what I want to know is how to they come up with that score with so few questions? Its not enough I tell you. And, of course, the test is self selecting - only people who think they are nerds will actually take the test...and they then hope that they get a good Nerd Score. So I am now going to go away and redo the test - but this time answer in such a way that I should (I think) get a low Nerd Score. Here goes.....

Time passes....




Well, thats interesting - I had thought that it was biased towards giving high nerd scores - but perhaps it isn't.

So now I want to know what is the minimum number of questions required to determine whether someone is a nerd or not - and what those questions are - and clearly these are determined by how the questioner defines the term 'nerd'.

I have my own ideas......any suggestions?

ps: And who cares anyway?[Ed: not me, thats for sure].

MT262 - TMA01

My marked TMA01 received back a couple of days ago. I had almost forgotten what it covered having completed it in early February and submitted it in early March. So reading it again was interesting. A couple of errors that I had allowed through - which is annoying considering that I wasn't exactly short of time. But a 90% score is above the 85% that I set myself as targets so I'm happy with that. And this time I have no issue with the marking scheme (see T224).

I completed TMA02 in late March but won't be submitting it until mid-May. Which is just as well - because I decided to have a final read through of it this weekend and found some much simpler ways of writing some of the C++ code (and I like to keep my code clean and simple). And one question where I hadn't read the descriptions of one of the functions correctly. So tonight I must finish going through TMA02 and the set it aside ready for submission.

Meanwhile I am progressing through Block 3. Slight problem here because the OU are not shipping the Block 3 books until May (actually, according to the Material Dispatch page for MT262 there are no Blocks 3 and 4 - but thats wrong). But hoorah for pdf's - so I can make headway by printing out what I need - and printing 2-up double-sided means that I get 4 pages on one sheet of A4 - so not quite as environmentally disastrous as it might have been.

T224 - Must be clear!

Good news! Got my first TMA back for T224. Grumpy news - lost points for not being clear. Well, when I say 'not being clear' what I really mean is that 'it was not clear enough for the OU marking scheme'. See what you make of this - and if you think it isn't clear then please tell me. The question told us that we had a display panel with three 7-segment LED's on board. We had to write out the bit pattern that would be held in the 3 bytes that represent the pattern that will be displayed on the LED's. The pattern we were asked to use was '-05'. Note: This is not asking for the binary representation of -05, but for the representation that causes the correct segments in a 7-segment display to light up to display -05.

So in my answer I put: 00010000 11101110 11010110

Now, as it happens, that is the correct answer (hoorah!) ... so you may be wondering why I lost marks...Well, believe it or not, its because I did not make it clear which of those bit patterns was the first byte, which was the second, and which was the third. I lost a mark for each.

The moral of this story is that its not good enough just to get the answer technically correct, you actually have to make it very, very clear.

Its easy to forget that Universities are not real life and that this kind of thing is a requirement. In my professional life I have written countless lines of assembler code, and have had to work with colleagues doing the same - and I can guarantee that every one of those people would have understood that the first 8 bits referred to the first byte, the second 8 bits to the second byte, and the third 8 bits to the third byte.

If I am wrong, then you can call me Aunt Madge.

Bits, Bytes, Megabytes and the rest

An interesting thread appeared on one of the T224 OUSA conferences today. The question came up about how many bits there are in a byte, and how many bytes make a word. Now, you might look at that and think '...thats easy, everyone knows how many...' but do they?

Curiously, only last night night I was think about a dialogue I had with some technical people at IBM around 1990. In that discussion I had queried their (IBM) term for MBytes. They were using the value of 10 to the 6th (1,000,000) and I had always used 2 to the 20th (1048576). The problem that I had was that there documentation said that I should format the paging areas (this is on an IBM Mainframe) in 1MB blocks - but they were using the wrong definition of a megabyte! Anyway, I argued my case and they agreed (IBM's phrase for such things used to be 'A non documented restriction' - in other words: 'oh right yeah, we didn't know it worked that way - and we haven't documented it - but thats how we say it works from now on....').

So, back to T224: The word from the OU is that there are always 8 bits in a byte. They didn't qualify that statement in any way. Now, I know for a fact that on some systems (1970's) there were 6 bits in a byte - I know that because I had to write some conversion software for them - so its NOT TRUE to say that there are always 8 bits in a byte. Mind you I can't imagine anyone now designing a processor that did't use 8 bits per byte - so its pretty unlikely that anyone need worry about that (unless, perhaps, you work at the Science Museum and are involved in conserving such machines).

Then the question went to how many bits there are in a word. Now, this is more complicated - because it all depends on the architecture of the processor, the bus size etc. On an 8-bit processor then word size would be 8-bits, on a 16-bit processor the word size would be 16 bits, 32 bits on a 32-bit processor, and so on. And even then its not so straight forwards. I seem to recall that on the Zilog Z80 chip (anyone remember CP/M?) you had an 8-bit processor with a 16-bit address bus - and, if I remember correctly, a 16-bit word size.

Anyone know what the word-size is on the 64-bit processors?

OU - M366 Intelligence

One of the courses that I like the idea of doing (perhaps next year) is M366 (Natural and Artificial Intelligence). It is currently part way through its first presentation and yesterday I exchanged a couple of emails with some who is presently a student on that course. I wanted to know from them what the course was like, what it covered, did it live up to expectations etc.

The answer is that...its quite hard, many people have dropped out because of the programming, but that it is interesting. The programming environment is NetLogo - a new name to me - which is a modelling/simulation environment that can be programmed in what looks like a version of Logo (in much the same way that Scheme is a descendant of Lisp, I guess). This environment allows you to simulate all sorts of dynamic systems - from groups of people interacting at a party and their levels of group happiness, to biological systems, physical systems (moelecules interacting) etc.

Really sounds like a lot of fun and very interesting.

OU - T224 -

The Student website for T224 opened yesterday and this is a great relief - at last I have some idea of the flavour of the course. According to my Student Homepage, the printed materials for the course have still not yet been sent.

But, from what I can see, we kick off gently with an introduction to number base systems, what a processor is (and not just the PC on your desk, but the 100 processors in a BMW 7-Series - and I don't know many academics who have been anywhere near a 7-Series!, processors in kitchen scales (not the old type!), washing machines, and so on), what IO-Systems are (and, of course, some are just I, and some are just O, and some are both).

A quick run around binary and hexadecimal (an old favourite of mine) and why/how it is easy to convert from one to the other (and yes, it is easy). Years ago I used to play darts in our local with a few colleagues. Just for the fun of it we would play 501 but do the scoring in hex instead of decimal - and somewhere I know that I have a photo from those days to prove it. How mad is that?

Lectures

Simon McClive has a posting on his blog about iTunesU (or uTunes as I keep thinking of it). If you want to download and listen to some lectures on all kinds of academic subjects (Computer Science, Psychology, Art, and many more) then visit Simon's blog and follow his links. Its a wonderful resource - and its free.

OU - MT262 - Progress so far

It might seem odd to be posting a progress report before a course has even started, but I find that I have just finished Unit 3 of Block 1. Unit 4 claims to be 6 hours work, which if its anything like the previous 3 units means that I will complete it in about 90 minutes. No kidding.

Why started already and why so quickly? Two questions, two answers. First off, I want to get as much done before I start on T224 (materials haven't arrived yet anyway), and the reason that I am making good headway is that it appears to assume no previous programming experience so spends some time telling us what an Integer is; what a String is; this is how you repeat blocks of code, etc. etc.

So all I have to do is to note down the terminology that they use (because I'll be expected to use it in TMA answers) and then do the practical work which, so far, requires very little thought.

Still, the more I get ahead the more time I will have when it gets challenging!

Smart Toys?

On BBC1 this morning there was an interview with some trade exhibitors at the Consumer (don't you just detest that word?) Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Every electronic gadget you can think of, and some you would never have thought of, are 'on show' - which really means that the hyped-up sales-people are full of hype and convinced that they can persuade you that their's is best.

But what really caught my attention was a throw-away comment by one of the traders spokespeople. Talking about toys, they claimed, and probably rightly so, that toys are getting smarter. I'm sure they are (although its probably a loose definition of 'smart' - I'm not sure that there is much intelligence involved, not yet anyway). But is that a good thing?

My kids have had all sorts of toys, some of the 'smart' kind, and some not. But what I have noticed, with the obvious exception of games consoles, is that they generally prefer the non-smart toys. It seems to me that the smart toys may have instant appeal and grab the attention of the kids (who are as much susceptible to instant-gratification as the rest of us) but after the novelty factor has worn off there is very little left to hold their interest. But give the kids a simple toy (and by that I mean anything that requires a bit of imagination and input) and they happily play for hours.

Now, it might be that I'm just too old and curmudgeonly, or that a grew up in a rural Kentish area where our toys where the fields, trees, and streams, an old bicycle, and our mates down the lane. I don't know. But I have seen the benefits of technology and used them for years so its not that I am technophobic (otherwise I would be blogless amongst other things!).

My daughter is 11 years old. Give her a book of blank paper and some pencils and she is happy for hours, drawing, writing, whatever. But give her something that will do the drawing for her - initial amazement then not interested.

But I'm not sure that this is a modern phenomena. I remember being given a spirograph one Christmas. Brilliant, I could make shapes and patterns. And then boredom - very quickly. It was a clever idea (and pretty low-tech to boot), but pointless. There was very little imagination required.

So, 'smart toys': as toys, I'm not convinced. As ways exploring and advancing technology then yes, this is probably their place.

OU - Blog Readers!

I have received a few emails recently from other OU students who have stumbled (or googled, if I can turn a noun into a verb - a process called 'verbing' I understand , which is pleasantly self-referential!) upon this blog.

I must say that it is always a thrill to receive these emails, firstly it proves to me that this is not just a 'write only' blog (cathartic though that may be) but is a 'read/write' blog. Secondly, its great to hear from people studying the same, or similar, courses and being able to share experiences etc.

I had one email from someone working and studying in Malta - no chance of tutorials and very little chance even meeting up with other students. I think that this must take great motivation and dedication, so I doff my hat to all students studying in such circumstances. To cap it all, the course fees are much higher for overseas students.

I might even start to create a map showing the spread of readers (whoa, getting a bit ahead of myself there!) - more of a personal challenge really but I have a GoogleMaps API key, so might incorporate that into a Rails app at some point.

That reminds me of the time when, as kids, we set off gas-filled balloons at the village fete. The balloons had a label attached and there was a prize for who ever had the balloon that went furthest and was returned. Some of my friends had balloons that travelled to continental Europe, my brother once had a balloon that ended up in Germany. His prize was an orange (okay, it was a small village with no money!). My balloons generally ended up in the nearest tree although one did make it as far as Tonbridge (a distance of some 7 miles) before being dashed to the ground. I consoled myself with the thought that I didn't have to have an orange!

OU - MT262

Subtitled "Putting computers to work" this course covers the art of writing computer software in C++. I have been looking forwards to this course for some while. Not because I want to find out how to make computers do some work (I've been doing that for more years than I care to think about) but because I love writing software and want to get to grips with C++.

The official start date of the course is late January, but I thought I would make a head start and am currently up to Unit 3 of Block 1. So far, it has to be said, its been a stroll in the park - just covering some basic syntax and clearly aimed at people who have very little programming experience. I am assured that as the course progresses it does become more challenging. Well, lets hope so!

I have another course running in parallel with this and am still waiting for the course material to turn up. I only registered on 1st January and the start date is not until February 2nd, so plenty of time to get further ahead with MT262.