Ramblings of a Coder

Monitor Problems

Sunday 25 July 2010 at 6:18 pm

So, my third monitor has started to fail. It seems the back light on it starting to give out. Usual clues, Colours starting to fade/merge and just general brightness going.

Normally I’d either try to replace/repair the backlight myself, or just replace the monitor. But with the impending possible house move soon I really don’t want to be spending any extra cash. So i guessed my only solution i had at the moment was to post to my blog in frustration, which i have now done

Naa the monitor has served me well actually. had it for around 7 years now myself, and before that it was in a Workshop for god knows how long, so i really can’t complain. I’ll just continue to use it until it becomes completely unusable or if the move goes ahead before it dies completely I’ll repair it. Or maybe even replace, I think i could be doing with a new one.. or two..

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

Team Work… sorta

Monday 12 July 2010 at 01:48 am

So, I’ve been actively doing another course lately. That's basically a remote team based course, and well its not went too well until the last week or so when because of the impending deadline for our first markable team submission people have actually began to communicate and read the communications from others.

Anyway, hopefully this keeps up because it will make the rest of the course a shit load easier and i really don’t want to be slogging through it at the pace we were. And i really want to get a head start on the next course, Which i can’t do with tasks from this one resting on my mind uncompleted. Get a breather for a day though, as I’ve submitted this paper earlier today and the new stuff won’t be available till midnight tomorrow.

I’ve been keeping a project log for this course, which has sorta stopped me blogged as most of the stuff I'd typically blog about have been going into my project log. I shall strive to stop this though, I have lots to say afterall!

In other news, We’ve basically reached our saving goal for moving home again. So the hunt is again active, finger crossed for this attempt for us?  

Beyond that not a lot else been going on, Its the summer holidays and G is loving every moment of it, it seems. He’s spent a few days Kiting, and we’ve just purchased him a new Buzz Lightyear figure which he loves. He got a few new 360 games too, But he’s still on a Transformers fix at the moment with Transformers War for Cybertron. I myself picked up a few new titles, the one that's most surprised me for enjoyment though is Alan Wake, i wasn’t expecting it to be as fun as it actually is. We also picked up Naughty Bear, Strange title but fun at the same time. Not something you can sit and play all day though. I should probably just make a games section on my site as i seem to buy to many and always end up just talking about them in a footnote on an entry like this. Something to ponder once i finally finish redoing this.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education, Random, Gaming | 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

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

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.

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.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education, Electronics, Random, Coding | One comment

The EBook Reader Debate.

Friday 27 February 2009 at 8:17 pm

Been reading up on this, and of course a quick discussion with morduun too. For those who have missed it, the publishing business is all up in arms about the fact the Kindle2 does Text To Speech. And quite simply i think that this whole debate could have been 100% absolutely avoided if the advertising people behind the Kindle2 had a clue. If they'd just advertised it as a accessibility feature for the partially blind/blind people then no one wouldn't even looked twice at it.  But nope instead they advertised it as a text to speech system on a ebooker reader. What can i say beyond "Idiots"

Anyway, in Course land another Computing and a Maths assessment turned in. Don't have the results back for the computing one yet. But on the maths i lost a few points because of not using "Mathematical English"

They were looking for something like:

The is a triangle, so has the area = 1/2 of base x height

                                              = 1/2 x 10m x 12m

                                              = 60m squared

and i wrote something like

10 x 12 = 120

120 / 2 = 60

So the area of the triangle is 60m squared

Stupidity loosing marks for that, but meh if I'd had my coursework BEFORE I'd done the assessment I'd have know how they'd wanted it.

Either way, i only actually lost 3 marks out of the entire assessment for it, just grating that absolutely none of them where for my actual maths solutions.

The above is purely an example btw, i way to lazy to type out a real one!

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

Education Software

Tuesday 16 December 2008 at 9:48 pm

Few people have asked me recently what software i use while working my course, so i thought i'd make a quick entry about it. Save me being asked again.

First off, while working on my coursework i boot into my Linux install. Why? because i find that when im on windows i have WAY to many distractions like Warcrack and numerous other things i have installed over on that one. And while i also have all the same distractions working on Linux i tend not to use them so much. I'm currently using Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE 4.1 because.. No reason really i felt like a change from Gentoo for a bit. 

I use the FirstClass 9.10 beta Linux Client to deal with the Community parts of the coursework. even though the discussion sections are pretty much dead in the water. Combined with good old Vim for the "Coding" stuff that I've had todo so far, which isnt very much at all. The supplied software though is Notepad++ or something nothing fancy.

I use the standard Eluminate Live V9 on linux for the Virtual Classroom stuff, of which I've only attended one so far. Mostly because i constantly forget about them due to them being on a Sunday early evening.Had a lot of problems setting up the Microphone with this one, took a long time to get it working and have to repeat the same process every time i change distro's which is quite a pain in the arse. Mostly because i completely forget that just because you set the volume of your Mic and Mic boost in linux doesnt mean you've actually set it to capture the sound from your Mic, you need todo this manually.

I'm supposed to use Mathcad 2001i Pro for the mathematical stuff obviously. but I've had to use it a grand total of ZERO times so far. Which im very glad of cos the last time i tried to load it in Wine it did nothing but crash on me. *And a quick test shows, it still does nothing but crash*

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

Slow Writings

Tuesday 11 November 2008 at 6:47 pm

Haven't really said much on here in a while, It's not that I haven't had much to say and more that I just couldn't be bothered to say it.

Still having the problems with my throat and still going to ENT appointments for it. Its not going away but the effect it has on my day to day life is reducing, to be honest really its just that I'm becoming more accustomed to the problems and learning to just ignore them. Next appointment is in a few weeks see how that goes for me, Probably the same as always another type of medication and back in a month or so.

Course work is going well, cant really talk about it though as I'm not actually allowed to mention the assignments till after the fact. but lets just say some of the questions are downright simple.

Thinking of Getting a Sony EBook reader, they look good and flexible. I'd really prefer to get one of the Amazon Kindle things but they aren't for sale in the UK yet. shame, But on purchases I have gotten a few new games for the Xbox360. Managed to pickup GTA4, wish I never had. its crap, controls suck and the story is so transparent not to mention having to listen to those really bad Russian type accents the whole time. For how far I played in the game I ended up just skipping all the cut scene's so I didn't have to listen to it. Then you get to try and drive the car, With what is IMO the worst driving controls and reactions ever. Game doesn't even compare to GTA3:SA, they should've just stopped back then when the game was fun. Also picked up Lego Batman and Starwars Force Unleashed, Force unleashed is great. Amazing game and lots of fun. But its pretty short. Haven't really played Lego batman much myself, but my other half and Garion seem to love it! so its all good.

Looking to get hold of Tombraider and Fable 2 in the very near future along with a few others.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Random, Gaming, Education | One comment

Mathematics Course

Friday 15 August 2008 at 7:05 pm

I actually sat down today and started my first Preparation test for my maths course, and OMG its amazing how much I've actually forgotten since doing any sort of maths related formal education. Brief moment of panic later and a quick look at the next few revision chapters and i could breath easily as they cover everything in the test again. Its ironic though that I have a shit load of Engineering qualifications that revolve around a firm base in maths, but some of these simple things threw me.

But on the flip side it, Its actually what I was hoping for. some real work required on my part to study and actually learn before taking exams, Unlike nearly all the last sets of qualifications I did where I goofed off and messed around. Did absolutely no study and walked in and passed the exams. Ah well I have 8 preparation modules to do before the official start of my course, which means I need to-do 2 a week right now roughly.   Which will be all fine and dandy come Monday when Garion starts his Formal Education. Will have to wait and see how this goes as we've already hit a stumbling block yesterday with the school wanting G to start 30minutes after all the other kids on his first day because of his "Disability", I hit that nail on the head right off the bat. Garion will not be discriminated against on someone's half baked notion of what his disability is or how he may or may not react. The school didn't seem pleased when they heard that Garion will start at the same time as all the other kids and that's it. He's never had a problem with First days noise and stress for the past three years at nursery. And kids starting nursery for the first time get as upset as kids on there first day of school. But if the school had bothered to ask that instead of just making an assumption on there own about Garion they would have got a perfectly clear answer.  Least now I've also made my position perfectly clear, I spent the last year fighting against the education board getting him into main stream school. I wont roll over and let them segregate him from the "Mainstream" kids because of his disability unless its absolutely warranted.

So yea, as you can probably guess. With all the above going on. Plus trying to finalize our move to Skye (Which should happen in October) and a few other major things like minor surgery for myself, Life is a bit crazy and hectic for me right now. Hence why my usual online presence is rather diminished and probably will be till at the least after the move.

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