Week 2 - make it so . . . the work starts

Well its week two - how goes things with you?

I'm up to my ears with AI; Loads of work and feel a bit let down by fellow team members for DUS and SC proves frustrating . . . need to start the ole Java fingers a going again . . . . IT in Business marks . .

Came across this series of photos by a Dutch lady on web shots which Judi pointed me to - which I thought were really interesting - enjoyed the B&W format as well. The rest of my photos have a Transport theme as we were asked to build up our portfolio for Designing Usable Systems (DUS) All photo's taken in Glasgow, Queen Street, Central, Buchanan Street Bus & Tube stations. And of course John Martyn right at top of page.

On Monday evening - went to watch a long standing musical icon for me - Judi had given me tickets as a Christmas present - he has been going for many years - He was great he performed the Solid Air album - hence the title of his current tour - this album was recorded all fo 25 years ago - and in my opinion has stood the test of time . . . thoroughly enjoyed it . . . could help wonder what he must have been like 10 years ago.

Well as far as studies go - we ease into the week with Artificial Intelligence and I was impressed with Maria's example - Portia and the 3 caskets - each with a slogan and the suitor has to decide which one has the portrait - made it more concrete realistic for me as an example until I tried to formulate the Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) out of the whole story - what we did know was that there were 3 messages of which only one could be true - so that was 3 caskets gold, silver and lead each with a message inscribed on it - gold said - 'the portrait is inside' - silver said 'the portrait is not in here' and lead said 'the portrait is not in the gold casket' - Domain: Boolean (True / False); Casket (gold, silver, lead) - - variables: (message - G,S & L [Boolean] and Portrait casket) - have to determine the constraints and then look at Arc consistency and by now you'll be saying enough already - I am - even considered switching subjects - but I am hanging in there and praying that it all starts to make more sense as we go along. Wednesday we looked a the classic 8 queens on a chess board - no queen is allowed to be on same row, column or diagonal - how many variations do you think there are - well actually well over 3m.

Tuesday was designing usable systems - looking at MCSS - a Glasgow based transport information services company which makes travel information available via mobile devices. We are split up into groups - I have Murv; Nicole and David in my group - we spent quite a bit of time discussing things in class but bottom line I left with not too much information but volunteered to collate our information and submit it on Friday - Murv suggested we make use of collaborative Google document - i.e. we could all work on it as we are all in the same group - just means instead of multiple copies of the same file being emailed all over the place - we have a single instance of the document and as long as you have Internet access you can edit the document - it was thought this would save time . . . except very little input was made by the rest of my team members - Murv was on the ball with his scenario; Nicole had not yet purchased the text book so had not prepared anything; David was supposed to upload his scenario but by 23h59 on Thursday evening had still done nothing . . .and I had said I needed to email at about that time - bottom line I ended up writing 4 of the 5 scenario's - creating and copying photo's from the web - even spent quite some time browsing on my mobile phone to see what type of information you could access . . . I emailed our so-called group documentation @ about 02h30 Friday morning and was not impressed - as I say . . . I am enjoying the work though and have to interview a number of people this weekend about their travel habits / preferences etc., - so careful if you bump into me you may have to answer some questions . . . . lol

Other than this Lord Linlithgow gives us Software Construction (my nickname for him) gave us a lecture on Thursday . . . I timed him it took him all of 50 minutes before he started in on the work we were supposed to cover - he spent approximately 35 minutes discussing the lab we might be in and the fact that we would be using Unix machines and he proceeded to go through every Unix command (all command line stuff) he could think of - I had used the lab earlier in the week for Artificial Intelligence so I was aware that it uses a KDE interface which is actually very similar to Windows - intuitively anyway - you didn't need to use commands at all . . . so we got about 10 minutes out of Thursday's lecture - Friday morning was the lab and its amazing how much Java I have forgotten since last year (so long ago - December, when I handed my project in . .) - and also I am no longer allowed to use BlueJ - book and software we were informed to purchase in 1st semester - I was told to migrate to another development tool - we are now using Eclipse - so played around with that just to get the feel and then wrote (borrowed) part of a programme to get a users integer input . . . so plenty to be done / revised here. Straight after this we had a theory class - so once again with his lordship - can't even get the overhead projector to display properly - half the text is on the wall half on the screen . . .this of course, I am convinced, is to use up some of the time - as an inordinate amount of time is spent lining everything up - instead of just moving the table forward so that everything that goes on the overhead projector is on the screen - he never fails to bring at least 2 boxes of slides and goes through an elaborate process of using some from each - today he needed a third box - but that was in his office so he left the class to fetch them - some more time - how much time was actually spent on material - he wanted to cover well I estimate it to be no more than 1/2 an hour . . . an improvement on Thursday and the week before - bearing in mind he has told us that we should be finished the theory by the 6th week - well guess what that is two weeks down and I doubt we have done more than 1 period out of 4 of actual work. All the material covered in class is taken from 2 different courses and different chapters at that . . . . even some special reading for me being an ex-BlueJ user . . .

What else happened this week - IT in Business marks - I somehow managed to get 80% . . .very pleased - Started the ball rolling on Wednesday - formed the Graduate Informatics Society . . .we need 20 members - I have signed about 11 myself thus far - this will enable us to access funds from the university to host various activities - career; alumni; business involvement etc., and some social events . . . Attended a careers session Thursday morning except no one turned up to present it to us . . .lol - organised - who had arranged it the head of our overall course ???? Even had a double booking for the lecture room . . . Oh and I joined the local gym here in Dumbarton - Leisure centre - Judi has encouraged me and I am keen with studies and all to get myself fitter - for better balance and health reasons . . .

That is about it folks . . . more adventures from Strathclyde land next week . . . lol - Haste ye back!






Black and White world