Random Concepts By A Random Guy

Well I received my results for both of these assignments – M256 I scored 86% which I was relatively pleased with considering I hadn’t really studied any UML before. In M359 I scored 76%, which was the lowest mark I’ve received for a TMA to date. This was due to the fact that I skipped an entire question (doh), and a couple of questions I got small details wrong. I felt my assignment marker was slightly ‘anal’ and marked me down for things which were irrelevant to my ability to complete tasks. I’m finding the concepts of relational theory a little difficult to grasp, as they are very abstract and there isn’t much visualization to put them into context. On the positive side I completed TMA02 of M359 this week and didn’t find it too difficult as there was a lot more SQL in this paper. Hopefully my mark will be slightly better in this assignment because I double and triple checked that I had answered all questions before submitting the paper.

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks outside of University. In work I’ve been alone, as one member of staff has transferred and needs replacing, whilst the other is off ill with a bug that’s going round. In effect I’m doing the work of 3 people all by myself – well maybe I’ve had a little help. Towards the end of March I travelled to Amsterdam for my brother 30^th birthday, we took the ferry from Hull and got stupidly drunk on the way. As a result, the second day ended up being a complete write off – I won’t be doing that again. Amsterdam is a crazy city – drugs and whores everywhere, I’m not sure I would go again, but it’s certainly an experience.

Last week was my girlfriends birthday so I took her up to Scotland. We stayed around Loch Long at a hotel called Knockderry Country House Hotel. The hotel was very pleasant and was in a quiet area. The food was good and the rooms were spacious. We spent a considerable amount of time in the bar area, where we spotted a submarine in the Loch (pictured below) – the views from the hotel were fantastic. The only minor niggle was the DVD player in the room didn’t work properly and kept skipping. During our visit we travelled to Loch Lomond, had our breakfast in Cafe Zest (best English breakfast ever), visited the Aquarium, then caught a boat ride around the Loch, where we spotted several nice hotels and golf courses.

Well I’ve made some progress with my Open University studies since I last posted. I’ve completed the first 2 blocks of M359 without many problems so far. Most of the stuff has merely been refreshing my memory with previously learned database theory, with additional parts of relational algebra and a few new terms to memorize. I just completed my first assignment (TMA01) this week and it wasn’t too difficult. There was a slightly ambiguous question which I pointed out in my answer, but other than that it was pretty straightforward.

M256 has been a walk in the park. I guess my experience with java and programming has made it relatively easy to create object interaction sequence diagrams in UML. I’m finding the lack of programming / practical work a little hard going as the theory bores me to tears. I just completed the first part of my first assignment tonight and that was also relatively straightforward.

I’ve been toying with the idea of purchasing myself a new car. Well not exactly new but new in comparison to the car I currently have. I like the idea of purchasing something a little more prestigious and keeping hold of it for the next 5 years. I’m going to wait a couple of months until the new plates have had chance to populate the roads this should bring a slight drop in prices for second hand vehicles.

I’m still training 6 times a week and my diet has been slightly better. This week I weighed myself and I’d lost 6 lbs. I’m guessing this partly due to the drop in carbohydrates within my diet, but hopefully most of it is fat. My deadlift is getting to the stage where it used to be when I used to train hardcore. Last week I managed 160 kg by 3 reps – this was  a phenomenal feat considering my lacklustre effort the previous week.

Anyway I better crack on with my UNI work – hopefully get part 2 of M256 TMA01 complete.

Well I recently had this weird issue where my secondary hard drive kept experiencing intermittent pauses causing severe mouse lag, sound distortion, and making my computer slow as s**t. The hard drive in question was running on the 3gb/s SATA controller on my P8P67. Intuition told me it was a motherboard issue as swapping my secondary hard drive for an older one didn’t resolve the problem. After some googling I stumbled upton this thread. [Problem] Intel SATA Recall, Asus plans for P8P67 boards? Yes it turns out that there was a recall on my model of motherboard due to degradation of SATA controller over time – Well that sucks. I managed to resolve the issue temporarily and salvage the data on my hard disk by connecting it to the marvell SATA controller until I can replace the board.

So after christmas I felt like I needed a boot up the back side as I’ve been living like a sloth for too long. This stems from eating far too much food, drinking too much beer, and not spending enough time engaging my studies. My motivation at work has stagnated slightly, the word which best describes how I feel with regards to this is ‘restricted’. I used to think a lot about my future – where was I going and when would I be there. As of late, I’ve been very much in the present and not really focused on anything apart from here and now. I’ve set myself several goals for 2012 which include:

• Lose 2 stone aka 12.6kg’s aka 28 lbs

This will be a difficult task but necessary. I will be cutting back on sugary/starchy carbs, eating higher quality foods, and training harder and more frequently.

• Increase my level of study

I have 90 points remaining with the OU to complete my BSc with Honours – 60 of these will be complete this year. Since I’m coming to the end of my degree it makes sense that I should be putting in more effort as the grades in my remaining courses hold greater weight in relation to my final class of honours. Therefore, I will be studying for a minimum of 16 hours each week.

• Contribute towards a deposit on a house

I’m far too old to be living at home. I know the economy is screwed but that doesn’t make it impossible to buy a house, just extremely difficult.

• Read more books

I don’t think I read enough and in a desperate attempt to keep my brain fertilized I purchased a book about economics. I really enjoy learning new things so I have chosen a completely random topic which I’d like to know more about.

and lastly….

• Finish the articles on my blog

I remember how difficult I found it to locate the resources required to build a fully functional database application in Java. I read several books and scoured the web for artices. However nothing seemed complete. It’s only fair that I make it easier for others by sharing what I learned in the process. My methodologies have changed in relation to the back end so I might have to backtrack a tad. Maybe I’ll just write the database aspect again and give the reader a choice of path to take.

Well I finally received my M362 results today over a week early and was moderately pleased with a comfortable Grade 2 Pass. My OCAS was at distinction level (92%) but the exam was pretty tough. Of all the people on the course, only 6% managed to achieve a distinction and 10% achieved a Grade 2 pass. That places me in the top 16% of students. I currently have 260 points towards my degree and I’m starting 2 x 30 point courses in Jan/Feb 2012. Once I’ve completed those I should have a degree (without honours), then the following year I will be topping it up to a BSc (Hons).

Howdy,

I’ve not posted for a while, been really busy playing Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3. I was pretty disappointed with MW3, the only feeling I can relate this to is the disappointment I experienced when I switched from playing Quake 2 to Quake 3 back in 1999 (the good old days of ICQ and Netbus lol). It looks as though the PC version has been gimped to tailor for the console players, the graphics aren’t great on ‘extra’, the guns don’t feel real when they fire, the sounds are strange. I have been really enjoying Battlefield 3 though, this is a great game.

I’m currently in between courses with the Open University, so I’m finding myself actually able to do some things I enjoy such as the aforementioned gaming. I completed my examination for M362 in October this year, and I’m due to receive my results on December 16th (perfect date for a celebration as this is my Xmas do). I’ve also just completed my assignment for T155 (Linux) – that had to be the easiest course I’ve ever studied. It probably took me around 5 hours in total (the entire course). I’ve started reading up on database theory to prepare myself for M359 which I start in Jan, and I also start M256 next year too – it’s going to be a very busy year. I’ve spent a few hours this week learning C. It seems like a relatively straightforward language to learn, it’s just the pointers and structures which are a little different than Java. I keep meaning to get round to finishing my articles on building a java database application, but I need to find the time and motivation to complete the task from somewhere. I recently programmed a new database application in Java for tracking customer complaints. It’s pretty simple, but it could be easily made into an extremely useful complaint tracking app. Maybe I will do this when I get some spare time – who knows.

For the next 2 months, I’m going to take it easy. Christmas is creeping up and I’ve worked really hard this year so deserve it. Keeping my fingers crossed for a distinction in M362 – that would be some achievement to celebrate.

Yesterday I received my result for the final course in the Certificate In Web Applications and I passed with distinction. I was quite shocked with the result as I expected a Grade 2 pass like the other 2 level 3 courses, and only 8 people on the course managed a distinction. My complete results were as follows:

• TT280 – Web Basics: Design, Development & Management (Distinction)
• TT281 – The Client Side Of Application Development (Distinction)
• TT282 – The Server Side Of Application Development (Distinction)
• TT380 – Databases Within Website Design (Grade 2 Pass)
• TT381 – Open Source Development Tools (Grade 2 Pass)
• TT382 – Web Server Management, Performance & Tuning (Distinction)

I’m not going to claim the certificate which allows initials after my name just yet, as I’m not sure whether I can use the level 3 points to count towards my degree aswell. In the meantime I’ve been revising for my M362 examination which is on the 10th October. It’s certainly been a challenging course, but I’ve learned an awful lot about concurrency in Java, and Java EE (enterprise applications). I’m looking forward to studying M359 and M264 next year.

Hola,

I managed to get my TT382 EMA finished and submitted last night, it was quite a challenging assignment. I remember thinking jeez how the hell am I going to do this in 3 weeks? Especially since it had no programming aspect. I found the course quite poor in terms of keeping you engaged, most of the papers we had to study were arduous and reminded me of eating dry oats in warm water for breakfast – tasteless, dull and boring. Most of the information in the study guides seemed dated, irrelevant, and jumped from topic to topic with no real structure or flow. I’m extremely happy that I’ve finished the final course of my web development certificate, which means I will be able to claim the qualification some time in October.

I also got my results back from TT381 on June 24th and was pleased that I managed another Grade 2 pass. Although this was the lowest mark I’ve received as of yet, I’m still confident that I will be able to achieve a 1st Class with Honours. I’ve mapped out the final courses of my Open Degree, I’ll be studying a Level 1 10 pointer this year, followed by M359 (Level 3) and M256 (Level 2) early next year, then another Level 1 10 pointer in October 2012, and finally M363 (Level 3) to complete my degree. I’ve most certainly done most of the difficult tasks now, which means I’ll be able to apply more effort into the courses I’ve got remaining and hopefully get some more distinctions.

The doctor asks if the couple would like to try a new machine that transfers some of the mother’s pain to the father of the child. The husband immediately responds “Yes, I would do anything for my darling wife.” As labor begins, the doctor sets the machine to transfer 10% of the mother’s pain, and the husband feels nothing! “Turn it up higher, doctor.” the devoted husband demands. The doctor then turns the machine up to transfer 30%, 50% and eventually 100% of the mother’s pain as the husband insists that he feels nothing. The baby is born with no pain induced upon either of them! At last the happy couple brings their healthy new baby home, and as they walk up to the house, they find the milkman dead on the doorstep.

That’s how I feel right now. I went on holiday last week to Playa Blanca in Lanzarote and had such a great time. Every night was just chilling out beer drinking and eating dirty food. Now I’m back though I’m struggling to get motivated with my studies. I’m currently doing TT382 and M362. TT382 is the problem, it’s sapping the life out of me. It’s so boring and dull like eating card board with water for breakfast. It has no real logical structure, it just skips from topic to topic and doesn’t really relate the concepts whatsoever. To make matters worse, the EMA is due in 21 days and it’s an absolute monster. The OU have just released a new Level 2 course called TT284 Web Technologies, I think this is probably worth doing but sadly I have no points to allocate to it. If I could turn back time I wouldn’t have bothered with the Certificate Of Web Applications courses as they have significantly slowed my degree progression and I’ve learned naff all useful.

On a positive note, I received the result from TT381 – Open Source Development Tools and achieved a Grade 2 Pass. I have kept my standards high so far not letting slip past a B grade. I planned out the remainder of my studies last night and I should have completed my degree by the end of summer 2013. This is the only way I can do it whilst studying the courses I want to study. I also signed up for my next course – M359 – Relational Databases Theory and Practise which starts in January next year.