Rambling of a Coder

Brainfarts of an Idle Mind

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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,

 
 
 
 

Farewell VS

Friday 23 April 2010 at 9:44 pm

Farewell Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2!

Hello Visual Studio 2010 Professional!

Long arsed uninstall on that beta.. took FOREVER then i had to also remove the Visual Studio 2010 SDK too before it would let me install the Final edition.. what a pain in the arse. And I’m just leaving the installer running for the Final, If its anything like the Beta 2 installer it’ll be done by the time I’ve watched True Blood and Fringe, and probably fallen asleep for a few hours too.

So now that I’m no longer running the beta.. what to finish first? So many projects! So little Time!

 
 
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More Tweaks Incoming.

Friday 09 April 2010 at 8:03 pm

Got some more Blog tweak’s incoming, Got them working on my test version but not quite ready to deploy them to hear yet.

Mostly its just visual things, Fixing the page layout so it works on smaller browser windows. and removing the large list of previous entries. Replaced this with a Slideshow type entry that just switches between them, Just less vertical space which i think looks better.

Also tweaking the graphic’s, which really takes time because i absolutely suck at doing graphical work. Gimmie code anyday. Feet from under matress

And most importantly, finally adding in my project pages. Really need to-do this one, Thinking though that I’ll start afresh with this part and only add in projects as/when/if I’ve worked on them from this point forward. Saves having to locate the older stuff and then write about them.

I do have other idea’s for additions, but I’ll leave those so i things to post about in the future. In the meantime,  laugh with me at a picture i took today.

 
 
 
 

Struggling.

Friday 26 March 2010 at 5:33 pm

Time since the last entry has been tough, We had a weekend of hell with the neighbours.  Thankfully by Sunday it had calmed down but still by Sunday i was exhausted and also coming down with a bout of Man-Flu. So yea it continued like that till… well till yesterday when i finally got a full night’s sleep.

Been considering starting to actually just post here when the neighbours start up, Public announcement and all that. Not that anyone local needs that, the noise level from them does it just fine. But it’ll let me keep note, Don’t know yet, watch this space!

Anyway, I’ve had this assessment sitting on my desk for weeks and did plan on using this week to start and finish it. But i just can’t seem to focus on it and its due on Monday. So I’ll have to be forcing myself into it over the weekend, praying that the neighbours actually give us a quiet weekend this week. But for today I’m just going to relax with some mindless and pointless programming, No goals just start up VS and see what occurs. Hopefully energise me enough to get stuck into the assessment… hopefully.

 
 
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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.

 
 
 
 

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 pickit2toolcomment 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.

 
 
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Update complete!

Wednesday 24 February 2010 at 9:25 pm

Finally, I got round to finishing this update. Well semi finished, Its finished enough to be live now. But i'm sure over the coming week's I'll tweak it ever more.

Parts to tweak are certainly the sidebar, Need to tweak the archives section a bit to a slightly different useage. And fix the links section, Get my friends back in there.

And of course post more! So i'll be creating a nice little projects section. And i DO have some stuff to post in that already. But i'll leave that for another day. For now i'm just going to sit and relax and pray it stops snowing and maybe starts raining so there is no snow left tomorrow morning.

I've recently starting cycling again (Read that as Once so far) but with the snow last night i couldn't get out today, so really hoping its all gone tomorrow morning so i can get back out.

 
 
 
 

Well that month passed

Wednesday 13 May 2009 at 02:21 am

Previous month passed by rather quickly, I never did get to the point of releasing any of the stuff I'd programmed. Mostly because i haven't been playing any subscription games at all lately. Its been refreshing actually. I finished both assessments, One of them i was finishing off with hours to go before the submittal deadline. Purely my own fault too, i just kept putting it off and putting it off. And suddenly the deadline was upon me. But they're done and both passed. Got 2 assessments left on the computing course and that's it done for the year. Basically finished one of them just need to cleanup the written parts and format the code. Other is a multiple choice paper, which I'll do in the coming days. Then its 100% focus educationally on the mathematics course till October when i start the next computing course.

 

IMGP0153 I did make some changes to the cramped computer room, I added some shelving. Trying to work out a way of adding more actual desk space without cramping my movement room to much, but i have some ideas. I'll get round to it, The shelves alone gave me plenty of room to move, and they're well out the way of the two smaller people i live with. So its not so much of an issue right now as it was at the time of the last post. Still haven't built G a computer area yet, but i really want to take a decent amount of time on that and do it 100% correctly and make sure it'll last as long as the ones I've built for myself at least.

 

On the project side, I've been making some headway. Collected a metric ton of research materials and schematics, started slowly building up my parts inventory too, Checking over my current equipment and see what needs replacing/updating before i really get started in earnest. Nothing worse than starting something and having to stop to wait on a part or something to be delivered. There was a lot more to learn though than I'd actually considered, So it may take a bit longer than I've estimated to myself but that's not going to stop me! Its just a matter if finding a good starting point, or even several starting points. Once i get those i'll rush onwards.

 

On the coding side for the above mentioned project, I do love C#, but when it comes down to it I'm still i Delphi man, and its hard hard work to not switch back just due to how easy i find good ole Pascal to use, especially when it comes to breaking completely new ground for myself. But i think I'll soldier onwards with C# anyway.. or maybe a bit of both depending on how it all goes. Getting ahead of myself here anyway.

 

Anyway, its damn late as i write this, so i think I'll finish up right here.