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...