IT in Business – Ontology:

Photo's - amazing fiddler in Sauchiehall street; Jazz band in Sauchiehall street; Sam & I on her birthday Ice Bar; my new chair;

Well week 7 has come and gone – what happened this week – IT in Business kicked off; endorsed as class rep; Java project handed out & test delayed; Ontology seminar; started PHP; EA continues to interest . . .. well if you haven’t yet fallen asleep here goes . . . my chair arrives.

Well I lashed out and spent all of £30 for a chair - I spend hours in front of the PC and reading etc., - util this week I have been sitting on a plastic chair - garden furniture. I decided enough is enough I deserve, nay I need something better, so thanks to an email from Mr Oliver on the Friday and a deadline of midnight that night - managed to get the chair for £24.99 then VAT and postage and all the rest - am I satisfied - well impressed - thanks Tony.

Well we started a new subject on our course – IT in Business and I liked it from word go – quite different to all our other classes as it is probably less technical – but it raises all sorts of issues that we as in the IT industry need to be made aware of. Most of the class have not had
much exposure to work and industry so when we entered into class discussions – yours truly was making a lot of noise – well to be honest I usually make a noise anyway – but this time more so as when our lecturer Leslie asked for examples, illustrations – I was coming up
with them right left and centre . . .am I blowing my open trumpet too much here . . . .Anyway straight after the lecture I had ½ a dozen class mates around complaining and whinging that that wasn’t right – they don’t know the answers and how are they supposed to know these
things – she should teach it first then ask questions . . .I think half of it was linked to the workload – as

we kicked off with a group presentation for next week – an assignment and an interview with an entrepreneur which we have to undertake by early next year. But talk about moan – I told them now they know how I feel with programming when we get shown 2 lines of code and then just get given an exercise which we have to programme – we do not
get taught first it is down a road of discovery and that is what the
course is all about.

Internet Programming has started the PHP programming – this is what does all the work on a remote server i.e. you request something from a web page and before your request is dealt with a certain amount of processing (things) happen before the answer is returned to you. Looks interesting and starting to get a feel for the different languages - as confusing as it is there are similarities. This is all for our project – the restaurant guide for Glasgow. I have given it some thought and have a conceptual design in mind. As it is only due in January sometime it has a lower priority than Java at the moment.

I love Java – and I am going to keep telling myself this – I do really enjoy it – just gets too damn frustrating at times – Reuben told us – if you haven’t solved it in the last 20
minutes chances are your not going to solve it in the next 10 minutes – get some help – more or less mirrors what I was saying last week. We received our Java project – this will be what we work on for the next 5 weeks. It is a computer programme for a Pizza store – has some
employees, bakers & salespeople – some earn commission and then there are managers with their respective teams – etc., so need to look at how I am going to model the whole thing.
At the end of the day it is the real world that you are mirroring – so with any problem need to understand in plain English what the spec is and how things are meant / supposed to work. Really looking forward to the challenge and a relief that our test for Monday was pushed back so some of us have yet another chance of catching up, yep – that’s me.

We had a visit ing Prof from Finland – who came to lecture us on ontology – or the whole question of indexing reports / papers and in fact everything and anything and how this is to be done against a backdrop of ever increasing volumes of data being put on the web. Not just text anymore – now includes all types of media.

A brief Information Retrieval lab on Thursday after Java where we discussied our project again.

Friday always kicks off with Information Retrieval – and lo and behold what had the Metro had on its front page this morning – headlines read
Doctors encouraged to Google patients symptoms I kid you not . . . lol – read the article
yourself. Now this is really what IR is all about – so I couldn’t wait for Monica to arrive and when she was in place and about to start the class – I held up my Metro – she smiled and held up a copy as well – so she had seen it as well and shared it with the class. Then it was chocolates for the best group work that was handed in last week – which was my group – and guess who dropped his chocolate on the floor – let me tell you you do not want to eat something that has fallen on the university floor . . . - so I lost out.

Enterprise architecture was all about data storage – what a field it is becoming – Barclays 80 000 tapes as backup of their data and guess what we done a simple survey of who backs up their data – and I am guilty – don’t do it at all really . . .need to look into that . . .the group
that presented today on the whole were very nervous – felt a bit sorry
for them.

I presented my concept of our presentation for IT in Business for next week – Ratna, Matthias & Nicolette were very enthusiastic . . . . the Monatgue’s and the Capulet’s – but more about this next week – this will be 1^st thing Tuesday morning.

In closing I would just like to bid a sad farewell to Jean McCallum – who passed away suddenly on Thursday morning – we all touch each others lives and I was very shocked and saddened to hear of her passing. Jean was never one to hold her tongue – but you always knew exactly where you stood with her – there was no hidden agenda – a down to earth person.