Confessions of an aspirant code borrower . . .: Week 4 and counting . . .

I thought this is nonsense - I am interested in photography - I have some photo's of Glasgow - instead of going onto various web sites and (as my weblog title suggests) borrowing their pictures - I thought this gives me the opportunity to post my photo's as well. So starting from this blog - I will attempt to capture something about myself with words and now with pictures as well. It may just act as an impetus for me to take some more photo's - between you and I - I normally don't need an excuse anyway - I am shutter happy - and digital affords you that luxury. I use a Konica Minolta Dimage Z2 digital camera - I am very happy with it.
So a quick index of the photo's before I start with my weeks experiences - the first 3 are taken in July - on the Clyde (see the sun does shine here in Scotland) - there is a river-bus - which runs from near enough central Glasgow to Braehead shopping centre - which is technically in Renfrew (not Glasgow.) You will see 2 photo's of the new bridge (4 lanes of traffic) which has now been completed for use and another one which has someone (a marine) abseiling down from one of the old cranes which is a throw back to the time that Glasgow was a port of note. Also a big centre for ship building. The next set of photo's are at a complex called Xscape - you can have a look at their website. I'm sure you'll be able to work out the following 1) the ski slope 2) the centre itself 3) a climbing activity they have for kids - looks dangerous (but they are in a harness setup) - its right above a Starbucks / Costa Coffee type place.

I have survived another week at university - met my personal tutor; struggled with Java again; got into a bit Javascript; taking part in some research; had our 1st Enterprise Architecture lecture; gave a presentation as part of group; got to thinking about how group I met on day 1 induction has stuck together. Whew! Let’s get the show on the road.
Monday, at the moment is a free day still - which is great but what it does is makes me slack off on the weekend - I'll do it on Monday - which isn't necessarily a bad thing - but it can be dangerous . . . so once again with the best of intentions didn't get all that much done over the weekend. I have told myself though that balance is important. This Monday coming I have a dentists appointment - 2 sessions at least with teh oral hygienist. I'll tell you about that next week - but I have just changed dentists and I am much hppier - the guy I went to recently - had about 30+ people in his chair in the 15 minutes that I filled in some forms to register with him - its all about whether or not you have to come back etc., - after I had sat down, in his chair, within 2 minutes (if that) he told me I needed some fillings - when I eventually came back to see him - the 1st thing he done was to x-ray my crown and then he seemed dissapointed that it did not need any work done to it - that was the last staw for me - Oh yes, and when Is aid that I wouldn't be paying for dentistry in the future, he wanted to know why not? and I told him I was a full-time student and he said it depended on when the treatment started - well that was me out the door - he struck me as someone who was only interested in how much money he could fleece you for - friendly enough but I tend to sum people up fairly quickly - rightly or wrongly - hey I'm still alive to tell the tale so I can't be all wrong.

Back to university - Tuesday kicks off with Internet Programming - we had looked at and finished discussing forms & cascading style sheets last week. If your wondering what in earth's name is he talking about, well a form would be anything along the lines of username & password that you might have to type in on a web page, or in some cases a lot more information. The style sheets do just that - help to make your web page look the way it does (i.e. style) and the beauty of it is that if implemented properly you can change the look and feel of your web site by changing these sheets - here I have to confess that I am cheating with this blog as it has templates that I am just plugging into (using) - I should be doing the entire thing by hand, coding it (writing / starting it from scratch) - but hey! there are only 24 hours in a day - I may play around with it more in the future. So we played around with this and then on the Tuesday the next day we started with Javascript – this is a programming language that allows you to do a lot of fancy things on your website – from a course perspective we will be using it to validate the forms. You will have seen examples of this – when you type something in that is incorrect or leave a column blank it will take you back to that entry and so please complete the form etc., So looking forward to that – will only actually start using it in earnest next week in our lab.

Well Wednesday’s always kicks off with a 2 hour Java lab. We are given exercises and have the time allocated – where we can work on this and there are 3 instructors floating around assisting people – once again I balked at the exercise – seems I don’t know where to start get confused – don’t read the question properly – seem to go into panic – just want to code without first drawing a diagram and theorising about what is required. Anyway – I know I still have a lot of work to do here – took me the full 2 hours to do the first part of the exercise – with help from all 3 tutors. I had a meeting with Reuben (remember Columbo) who is my personal tutor. We ahd a chat about Java – I shared with him where I was – that I had decided to start a Java study group – that a lot of us were struggling and just a good heart to heart. Result being that he will now give an additional tutorial every week – straight after our lab – where we will be able to generally discuss the exercises – without him giving us the solutions . . .but giving us enough – to enable to go away again and try by ourselves. I am quite pleased with this as I think it will add a lot more value. He also, in the following days lecture, did not go any further and went over some of the earlier material which was also much appreciated.

Wednesday afternoon saw us attending a compulsory seminar on assignments and plagiarism acknowledging sources etc., - all the usual stuff anyway. Wednesday also saw our group – working on Grid computing – have its first dry run with the presentation . . . which went well but over-ran slightly – everyone went away to make changes – refinements etc., There was even an article in the Metro on Wednesday about this very subject – some of you may have seen it about a student in Plymouth that solved a problem that NASA has been having for the last 40 years – he done this by hooking up the 1500 computers at the university and having them all work on the problem – super computing – which is what our subject is all about. So many slight adjustments were made.

Friday was the big day – we had split the work up so that everyone had a section to concentrate on – I thought we had a fairly good presentation – could have been better. What did the lecturer think – he said “a lot of work and effort went into this and that in his opinion it was the best presentation he has seen by a Masters group. So we were first and according to him it will be up to the rest of the groups to try and equal our standard – needless to say we were all pretty chuffed with this feedback. Its all pretty anti-climatic – you put everything into it and then its over.

I must say I found the Enterprise Architecture very interesting – he has done a lot of consultancy work for large corporate company’s like Royal Bank of Scotland – 5^th largest bank in the world etc., makes a world of difference – an authority on the subject. His lecture preceded ours – turns out he has had pneumonia – that’s why this was the first class. There was no Information Retrieval class – she was away – attending a conference.

Went for lunch with a couple of the guys from our group. As I was saying at the beginning – 4 of us that by chance (is there such a thing) sat next to each other Christopher, Rory, Stephen & myself – we seem to naturally gravitate towards each other and have formed a bond – strange. I realised today that this is a whole new side to me now – new acquaintances / friends / colleagues – a new chapter has started.

Oops – research one of our lecturers asked all of us to assist with some research that he is doing – seems I am the only person who has signed up and is doing so. It is just recording any email searches I might be doing. Also signed up to help someone in Information Retrieval, not sure when that starts – no doubt be informed in due course.