A la buses.

Three pieces of coursework turn up at once. Amazing. Nothing for weeks then this happens? Not to worry though, they’re not even mind numbingly dull. One — for Internet Software Development — is basically “here’s an XML datasheet, filled with information, make a few Java server pages to manipulate the data”. My work partner and I have pretty much knocked that up in three days. Tomorrow’s the last day I think we’re spending on it, which is to create a DTD for it. I’m not too worried.

Second piece is a database ERD which turned out to be more complicated than I expected. That’s not a bad thing, it was sort of fun realising how we’d made a mistake in reading the scenario and how much one tiny sentence changes the entire diagram. Just have to make a list of assumptions about the scenario that we’ve decided on and that should be done.

Another piece is for OO Software Design. Make a Java class and document it, mostly. Pretty simple and likely boring, so I’m going to pick a ridiculously hard, functional scenario (rather than something ridiculous like a “person” class that does nothing). I don’t think that has to be in for a while, so I think I’ll get the above two pieces of coursework out of the way first.

There might be Agile coursework, but really, who cares.

First day back

Last year I wrote about my classes, and although it probably wasn’t, I felt I talked about the tutors in a negative light to start with. Mostly because I think I was being moody. But either way, it turned out Matthew Dean — my old course leader — found my blog, and then I felt somewhat awkward. I’ve decided though that if he read the feedback then he could use it. There’s nothing wrong with it. With that in mind, I had my first classes of the year today.

First class was software design and development. Which is a weird way of saying Java. I’ve not used Java, but I’m pretty sure it’s as easy to pick up as every other language. I’m trying to stay enthusiastic about learning more about it, but looking through the list of topics for this module there’s only one or two things I don’t already know about. I’m worried this is going to be another module where we spend a year learning something that should be taught in a week’s worth of lessons.

Really; learning a language once you already know how to program isn’t hard. They don’t change much.

Second lesson was database design and implementation. Which I’m really worried is the exact same module as the database one last year. In fact, I have the course book which I’ll look though later.

Anyway, it’s still nice to have classes to go to now, I guess.

Making an impact

Today marks a time in my life where I can do even less work that I’ve been doing so far; the Easter holidays. In fact, it’s more like breaking up for the year. The only reasons I have to return to university are two exams in May, after that I’m free to be where I like until October.

I’m not going to set out aims because I never reach them, and I look like someone that sucks at keeping to lists. Instead, I’m just gonna say somethings that it’d be cool to get done.

First thing is making an actual web app that actually does something and release it. My problem here is I always have ideas and then typically seconds later I read on Techcrunch that a start up has had an amazingly innovative idea that’s shockingly like mine. So, I’ll at least try and make a cool bookmarklet over the holidays. It’ll do something cool, honest.

I totally want to make my Tumblr the top search for shamess. It pretty much has everything to do with me; my tweets, my shared RSS stories, even this blog. It’s pretty damn nifty. I don’t know many people that use it though. Tumblr was actually an idea of mine too, which I guess I had an age too late. I was thinking of making an extension for Firefox that’d let me grab a piece of text/image/video and stick it on another site for later viewing. Then I found that’s exactly what Tumblr did, so I started out there.

Another idea I had a while ago was what start.io is doing. In fact, I already have that system on my localhost page, but I think I’ll likely switch to start.io now. Anything I don’t like about it I can just change using a Greasemonkey script (like showing the links in a different order depending on what time it is).

I picked up WoW again today, in all it’s lowest graphical settings, OpenGL glory. I played a hefty amount of hours before I wasn’t having fun. Maybe I should just limit myself to an hour or two playing? That’s the height of fun before I get bored and leave the game thinking “I can’t believe I just spent so long playing this dumb game.” That’s just a downer. It’s just so damn easy to forget that you’re supposed to be having fun.

Same as Tribal Wars, really. My tribe is proper hardcore playing, and up annoyed at me for lagging behind. To be honest, I have been trying, I’ve no idea what has caused me to fall behind so much. But either way they’re acting like I’m a bad person because I’m not up in the tens of thousands of points and have three villages. Really? I play the game till it stops being fun each day, if that’s before I reach optimum pointage, then that’s the way it is.

Pseudo-FAT in a database

I’m creating a pseudo-file system for my game, using a MySQL database as the FAT. I thought it would be fairly simple at first, but as I was about to program it, I realised that my method I planned on using is hugely expensive. Since it’s a call that’ll be used hundreds of times each time the player plays for a short period I really can’t do with it being a resource intensive feature.

ER model of directory table (I'll change this to a prettier one when I have the energy and time to play around in GIMP)

Basically, it’s just navigating directories. Here’s how they’re stored in the database, according to the ER model to the right:

harddrive_directories (directoryID, directoryName, parent)

The foreign key inside the same table with the primary key through me for a second, but I understand that now.

My problem is when a user gives me a string like “/foo/bar/alien/”, and I then have to find the ID for the directory labeled “alien”. I obviously can’t just search for directories called “alien” because there could be a “/foo/alien/” or any other combination. (Though to cut out any needless directory traversing, it would be faster to do that; see if there are any directories called “alien”, if there’s only one work backwards, which is much easier to check if it’s what I’m looking for, if there’s more than one, we don’t have much choice.)

So, I look for a root directory called “foo”. There can only be one, so that’s fairly simple. Now I have foo’s ID, I can look up all of the directories called “bar” whose parent is fooID. And so on, untill I get to a directory called “alien”.

Now I’ve said it outloud, there’s really only n lookups (where n is the number of directories in the path), which isn’t so bad. Is there a better way of doing this though?

Read it, disregard it, drive into walls.

You know what? stfu, valleywag. I know you’re the Internet’s answer to The Sun, so I’m just going to disregard everything you just said in that article. I mean really? Alex is “forgettable”? Please, Alex is far more interesting than Kevin. If I had to pick one of them to go out and grab something to eat with it’d definitely be Alex.

If it’s true about Alex wanting to leave Diggnation, then Diggnation is dead. No really. Just Kevin sitting on a couch, with Glen and Prager? That’s not interesting. Alex’s retorts and spontaneous jokes (which sometimes are so spontaneous they don’t make sense) are what make that show interesting. They can’t get another co-host, because they just can’t afford to. They’d have to come from in house, and I’m not sitting thrugh 40 minutes of Martin Sargent.

Anyway, whilst I’m here. My ‘Freelance’ label in my gmail has never been more active. It’s quite intimidating. Priorities say I have to finish that website assignment first though. Well, first food, then website. I’ve decided on just using CC and GPL content to fill the pages. Perfectly legal, if a little lazy.

Last minute coursework again…

Now I’ve finished that freelance gig I was given (well, almost finished, I just need to convert the guy’s old pages to new ones) I can actually start on my coursework. Which is due in Friday.

It’s basically a website. So long as it’s valid XHTML and CSS, and has form pages, I’ve been told anything can pass. I’m actually not going to be putting much effort into content due to that. I just want to make sure that I have it finished. Maybe later, when I have more time I’ll add better content.

It’s basically a website about Leicester from the prospective of a fresher – someone how just needs some information about Leicester and where to go and what to do.

I’ve already done the actual template. I just need to add content. Laura and Chris have already taken photos, which we need to include in our website, so I’ll just use some of theirs. They certainly took enough.

Harvard's a pretty cool guy, he releases his content and don't afraid of anything.

I was stumbling around the Internet (productively, not just randomly) when I found a blog post directing me to Academic Earth, and my mind has been blown.

Work hard, play hard.

Lets make a productivity list for tomorrow, because the last ones all worked so well…

• Go take photos for my website assignment! I’m gonna take my laptop too, due to the small card capacity. I decided this should be a group activity.
• Write a tutorial on how to add a button to TinyMCE in WordPress.
• Read another chapter of Twilight. Must read this, and the next book before the next film comes out. Granted, I probably have a year, but I’d rather get the entire saga out the way.
• Look through Monday’s class notes, and maybe write a few help sheets. I’ll be working as a classroom assistant, so I should probably be more prepared.
• Wash up. Really, Shane, you have no plates left.
• Get the systems analysis work from Blackboard. I really want to ace this presentation. This is looking to be the only module I might actually fail because of stupid things, like lack of motivation for it.

Busy day tomorrow. Carnage bar crawl is in the night too.

It's not redundant, just plain stupid.

I just decided to pop in here to have a tiny rant about something that’s bugging me about my Database Design class.

I just got my assignment. We’re basically to design and set up a database, create forms, use VBA, general piss easy stuff. I’m a little annoyed to read the specification for this work to find that we’ve actually been told most of the table names, and attributes that need to be there. Thanks for taking away my creativity.

What I’m most annoyed though is this:

Finally ‘status’ is set to ‘current’ and ‘end date’ is left null. When a customer wishes to end a contract the end date is set for the last day of the current month and the status is changed to ‘ended’.

It’s not just me that finds this stupid, right? I can’t even really explain why this annoys me.

Company’s don’t do this. They have minimum term contracts. They’d just have a StartDate (when the customer wants the contract to start) and and EndDate (when it’s to end). In fact, a better design would be ContractLength.

Leaving the empty EndDate seems dumb to me. And having to have some sort of batch process which checks for an EndDate and then updates Status seems like a lot of extra work. Why does Status even sodding exist? In that stupid system, if there’s no EndDate then it’s obviously “current”, else “ended”.

Stupid course is stupid.

I’m actually feeling productive today, and I’m fairly certain I have a multitude of work to do.

I woke up with the intent of creating this database we need for Database Design Concepts. Well, I say need, but it turns out we might not actually have to hand it in. Because I thought it was integral to my learning, I sat through it and slowly knocked up a few tables following the instructions letter by letter.

When it started explaining, in great detail, how to change the freaking font of a label I gave in. Not only was it offending me, but flicking through the book I can’t see anywhere where it’s telling me to hand the finished database in. Even if it did, what would be the point?  You can’t vary from the obnoxious instructions; even if one person created the database and then gave a copy to everyone in the class the person marking it would never know. They’re all identical.

So, I gave in with that. I’m pretty sure there’s more work to be done, so I asked Laura. Apparently we have a Systems Analysis assignment that we’ve not been told about yet.

The final assignment we have is from Computer Tech, to create a website. I’m not sure why I can’t just give him the URL to one of the many websites I’ve designed and coded to prove my work, but meh. I have to create a guide about Leicester for freshers of DMU, which I’m okay with actually. I might even be able to make some money from it. Even if I do feel slightly underestimated.

Why can’t university be as hard as I actually expected? Why do people walk into a degree with zero knowledge of the course? There are people that have blatantly never even used a computer before on my course; wtf? Just make A Level Computing a requirement of the course entry, and teach with that as a foundation. Don’t freaking teach it me again! Grr.

I’d switch to Computer Science if I wasn’t so worried my math would let me down.