Ramblings of a Coder

Three O

Wednesday 01 September 2010 at 01:58 am

So, during the recent celebration of my birth and the stark fact that I have begun my journey into my thirties. Someone asked i think jokingly “So what are you going to-do now that your no longer a kid.” I laughed it off, here i thought i stopped being a kid years and years ago… At the very latest at least when my own son was born, but it seems nope.

But the question seemed to stick in my head, I’m not exactly sure why. But i don’t really have that many things going on in my life, and in all honesty I’m actually pretty happy with it. I don’t work as much as “Normal” people do, but that's through choice because i don’t have any interest in working that amount. I’m classed as “Lazy” which i feel is unfair over, sure I’m not your most active person (understatement) but if i have something to-do. I do it. Just the whole concept of “Normal” working outs irks me, i have no interest in it. Give me some room and let me provide for my own family myself, Don’t expect me to sit somewhere for 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week. It doesn’t work for me, i can’t live like that.  Throw in living and dealing with a child with a disability, and neighbours who can spend 4 or 5 days a week fighting from 10pm right through to 5am, then ask that person to try and work a normal job. See how long it takes for them to snap

Either way, I’m happy with my life and once we move house. Which we will be very very soon, I’m sure it will only get better

These were all initial thoughts of mines to the original question, and yes i internally answered it with the above. But really it doesn’t come over as an answer, it comes over as a bunch of excuses. Why am i making excuses? So the stark and honest answer to this is:

“I’m going to continue my life the way i have been, I’m going to finish my degree’s and then I’ll probably continue on exactly as i am. Why? Because i enjoy it, I’d be a liar if i said that i wouldn’t like a bit more work or to be working on some sort of lasting legacy. But the work will come when it comes, and i already have my legacy”

If they’d asked what i wanted to do in the next 10 years, I’d have been an easier answer

• Finish Degree/Degree’s
• Move out of Central Belt
• Start providing family with our own food/energy
• Actually finish this blog design
• Get married finally

Just some basic things I will have done, maybe kick about the idea of having more children

Hopefully this gives an insight into me from this view, but if its not been glaringly obvious. Money or wealth holds absolutely no interest to me. Just about every one of my happiest memories in life happened when i was living below or on the poverty line.

and to finish it even though the post is after my birthday, “Happy birthday sis”

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Random | Two comments

New Milestone

Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 9:31 pm

The Second milestone for my course M253 was finally released on Tuesday, Its looking like its going to be a fun few weeks working through this one. Quite a lot of work involved right from the onset, Really going to have to get stuck in as a team. We also have to pair off in 2’s, and each person has to be in 2 groups. But not grouped with the same person, So i was bored waiting on the delayed meetings and wrote a little JavaScript program that does exactly that. It seemed to go down well when i shared it with the team, at least it released some of the tension that had been building over the course of our latest IM meeting anyway,

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Coding, Education, M253 | No comments

Blitzcoder won’t rest.

Saturday 19 June 2010 at 10:49 pm

So i stumbled across a thread on Blitzbasic.com the other eve when i was bored and thought I'd look in on the blitz community and see what was happening.

Now, i dunno why but at least twice a year this topic appears in some form to me, either via email or some other method. For either a Blitzcoder revival or me making some archive out of the backup i have, I’m not really sure why.  Yes i remember the blitzcoder years fondly, it was a great laugh at the time and introduced me to some really amazing people, a few of whom i still keep in regular contact with too. But i have absolutely no intentions of going back to those days in any form, And certainly no interest in making some sort of searchable archive of the old site. Yes, i could pass my backups along and someone else could do it. But i won’t. Not because I’m selfish, but because that would require me to actually do some work on the backups to remove stuff, etc, etc. Can’t just pass people’s personal information onto any old person out there, Even though that information is now years out of date.

Actually quite a few people made it perfectly clear that they didn’t want there information passed on when the site died to and became codersworkshop or whatever came after. And i will maintain that promise to not pass on that information.

So please, PLEASE, just stop asking for it. It’s never going to happen, well i wouldn’t say never but I’m never going to-do it. One of the other people who had access to backing up the site may, Though i don’t know if anyone else actually did.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Random | One comment

Final Week Inc

Tuesday 08 June 2010 at 9:30 pm

Well next week is my Exam, Am i prepared for it?
Probably not.
Do i feel confident of getting a passing grade?
Course

I have 5 more mock exam papers at the ready and plan on using them wisely, I also have a very large stack of study materials which I’m slowly chipping away at. Still floundering about with the courses “Formal Language” but long as i can bullshit my way past the exam for it, I’ve never seen it used anywhere else in my life so am really not to concerned about it.

My other course is going well, Just had our first real-time meeting with 4 of the 5 others on the course and it seemed to go smoothly.  Here’s hoping our planned weekly meetings like this help us Gel together as a team for the milestones ahead. I find myself floundering on how vague the documents are, and how loose the terminology is within them. But mostly the fact is that the scenario we’ve been set i read and immediately went to the Solution and I’m finding it really hard to go back and do it in baby steps like the course is expecting of me. But i shall get past that.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education | One comment

Progress

Wednesday 05 May 2010 at 04:41 am

So, I went a bit quiet again. My own fault, I finally got my car back YAY. Only took like 4 weeks or so to replace the clutch. Studying away for my exam in June, That’s going ok. But the final assignment for the course has a deadline of 20th of May, So its kind of annoying me that i have that and its distracting from the final exam, but i have the past 5 or so years test papers and once the assignment is completely and handed in I’m going to sit down and do those and see what bits i really need to brush up on. Overall i feel confident that I’ll pass though, so that’s a bonus.

Next course has already started, thought it is in my opinion a fluff course. Team work in a distributed environment, FLUFF. See how it goes when i finally get to meet and get in contact with my team.

Slipped back into the bad habit of WoW though in the past few weeks… I know, I know… can we just leave that at that? I have absolutely no intentions of letting it take over again (Famous last words?) And have mostly just been PVPing so after 30mins/hour of getting soundly thrashed i usually turn it off anyway. Also ran through Halo 3 : ODST before the Halo Reach beta, and finished it on Legendary mode Co-Op with Twobits. Fun game on co-op, Multiplayer still feels a lot like Unreal to me, and i quickly loose interest. Halo Reach is mostly the same Multiplayer wise, not as twitchy though. And kind of evens the ground between pro/noobs so you don’t constantly feel like your dying with no revenge. Overall for me, fun to pickup and kill a few minutes with then go back to whatever you were doing before hand. Hoping the single player campaign is as good as the previous titles though and that they don’t pull a Call of Duty and just stick on flimsy excuse for a storyline to the multiplayer game.

We picked up G a Nintendo DSi too, which he LOVES for the moment. Got to watch him though because he’ll be off to “Bed” and then you’ll hear the Mario theme or Sonic and Sega’s All Star Racing theme playing from behind his covers or door.

Anyway, that's basically it. Study, Game, Study, Give G some attention, Study, Sleep.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education, Gaming | Two comments

Build Blocks Course nearing end

Wednesday 21 April 2010 at 4:14 pm

So, Latest course is coming to an end finally. One more TMA to go and then the final Exam, which they have kindly agreed i can sit at home. Then that’s it

TMA due on 20th May, Final exam 7th of June. So plenty of time for both, especially as I've already started the TMA and have all the old exam papers for the final exam to study with.
I didn’t quite get the courses explanations and expectations of Boolean Algebra and its use in Proving X function works. But i got around that easily by quietly ditching the course materials and purchasing both Boolean Algebra and Schaum's Outline of Boolean Algebra and Switching Circuits Both of which combined covered the subject much better than my course materials but also explained things that my course material just seemed to assume that you knew.

I know that my course material was coming at it from a programming view, but they just missed so much out and explained the parts they did explain in such a lazy manner that it actually made the subject more confusing. Worst part was it undermined my own confidence in doing Algebra in any form, which i felt i didn’t have a problem with from my Mathematics courses. But after the materials given that confidence was gone. Not just that though they expected you to grasp the subject from a small explanation and one or two simple examples. Then in the assessments throw you right into more complex problems. Definitely and over-sight in there somewhere! I’ve never really felt that it was bad course materials to this point, Before just bad idea’s or bad implementations. Like making part of your grade dependant on posting X number of points in a group Online discussion.. When maybe 2 people would contribute then the day the paper was due everyone else would showup leaving ZERO time for the group discussions that was intended. This IMO was certainly just a bad idea for a distance learning medium.

Ahh well onwards anyway, Start my next course on May 8th, which should be… well boring to be honest, Its a “compulsory” course which I HAVE to take for my degree. It’s only 12 weeks and is completely online and group based, Can’t say I’m looking forward to it but it will be a change of pace between this course and my next one which is slipping back into 100% mathematics again but at least lets me get back to using one of the Mathematical software packages, Hopefully this time it will be something that runs without having to cludge it in Windows 7, like the last one i did that needed tweaking to get it to work on Vista. Kind of looking forward to getting stuck into a pure programming course again, even if It is Java based.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education | Three comments

ASS-essments

Wednesday 31 March 2010 at 12:38 pm

Turned in my Third assessment for my current course on Monday, I knew turning it in that it wasn’t going to be to par with the rest. With everything else going on as mentioned in previous entries i just couldn’t focus on devote the time on it that i wanted to originally.  And i was correct the results weren’t to par and throw in that somehow all my symbols didn’t showup in it either didn’t help anything.

Ahh well not going to stress about it to much though, It covered Boolean Algebra. Which well honestly the course materials didn’t cover very well. So to get around this I’ve purchased a book on the subject and I’ll just make time to learn it from that instead.

Onwards anyway, no time to dwell. Final Assessment is due in may and this time I really am not going to leave it like the last one. Starting it NOW!

Got the exam in June too, so need to pencil in revising sessions for that too.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education | No comments

Tech Work

Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 5:18 pm

Been repairing a LOT of laptop’s recently, Mostly Virus/Spyware related breakage. To which i do the only sane thing, and flatten it and reinstall. Unless I’m told specifically that they need X and Y off it, then i pull out the ole trusty USB->IDE cable with my spare 80Gb laptop HDD, and the ole 16Gb USB key with my linux install on it.  Really can’t go wrong with that, fire it up grab all the files and then proceed with flattening.

People ask why i don’t just remove the offending software, I never really have a straight answer. Mostly for me is because it just saves time. I don’t really want to spend a whole day removing virus’s and spyware from someone else’s computer when i can spend 5 minutes starting a fresh install. Plus well I don’t repair computers for a living, so when I’m doing it its as quick and painless as possible for me. Mix in the fact i never really trust a install that's been compromised anyway. Occasionally i will just do a quick repair, but its has to be for very specific reasons. Mostly like i don’t have the install CD’s required with me >:D

So if your looking for me to repair a laptop take note of these points

If you have something you want kept SAY SO, don’t just assume i will.
If you need X software reinstalled after too, please tell me when giving me the laptop. I can’t read minds… yet.

That's basically all i like to know.

Plus one last note on the subject, if i say i don’t want anything for fixing your laptop/computer. I really don’t want anything.  If i think the repair was worthy of getting paid for. I’ll freely say how much you owe me.

The attached image i thought was fitting, G’s Buzz Lightyear’s “Laser” stopped working. and it was me doing a quick switch for a new LED. Seemed fitting somehow.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Electronics | One comment

System update for Client

Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:36 am

Over the past week I’ve been updating a system that i wrong in late 2007, At that time they wanted the “Cart” system to only be available for a single login session, and not to be saved. So that’s exactly what was supplied. Now they want it updated to to be available at any point in the future and have the ability to be saved.

Normally this would be simple, but the entire system has been modified in gradual stages so much that’s an absolute nightmare. First I tried to just modify the code to get the required behaviour, but that failed. So now I was left with the choice of continuing to hack away at it in the hopes of getting it to work as required finally. Or rewrite the whole subsection from scratch.

I choose the latter, and that's been mostly all that I've been doing. Its been a nightmare but I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and its allowed me to future proof the subsystem for the changes I can already foresee in the future.

Downside of it all is I’ve forced myself not to touch any other system within the base system, even though the desire to change quite a bit just to make it easier has been HUGE. But what can i do? I know myself if I started that then I wouldn’t be happy until it was a full re-write and i have neither the time or the patience for that.

Also have a assessment due this month, Not even looked at it yet. Behind on the coursework for it too, mostly theory based coursework and its so dry to read that every time I've attempted to I've fallen asleep. Great for those long nights, bad for assessment time!

Also got a strange project to-do with G for School. Something to-do with a snowman, we really don’t know what's expected though as the school neglected to tell us anything about it. And well G doesn’t seem to know anything about it. We’ve just got some previous entries in this snowman book to go from. Ahh well I've had some ideas and if we can get G to-do them tomorrow then I think his project will be finishable to turn in on Monday. If we’ve got the right idea about it anyway.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Coding, Education | No comments

What now?

Friday 26 February 2010 at 9:45 pm

Well, the update seemed to go rather well. If i don’t mind saying so myself. Only thing is the comment spam, I noticed a LOT of comment spam appearing in the older entries. So much that i had to enabled the Spam Quiz, Which i have enabled on entries over 14 days old. That seems *fingers crossed* to have cut it down to zero.. for the moment.

Still fighting away with the VS 2010 SDK trying to make the PicKit 2 available directly within the IDE itself. Actually  connecting to the hardware is in, Does that. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to work out various other things. I love that they’ve given a SDK, but i hate that finding information on actually using it is an exercise in pulling teeth solo. I’m sure I'll struggle through and suss it though.

For tonight though i think I’m done, Got a choice of movies to pick from tonight, Funny People or Seven Pounds. Which will be after True blood. I was planning on finishing off Halo 3 : ODST, but i accidentally finished it earlier today. So it’ll have to be movies and TV programs, then if I’m still awake maybe some more work on the project or finish off Prototype. Undecided.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Coding, Gaming | No comments