Openlog - A Uni Blog

REFLECTION


Something ...


a) learned
Well, I learned the accurate method of determining the reliability of a resource. Although usually similar steps are taken to ensure that a source seems reliable, often there are steps missed, such a checking the date perhaps, and simplifications of steps, such as merely checking that an author seems to have credentials, or that a resource from the web is from an educational institution rather than checking both of these and considering if there would have been an editing/checking process to it's publication. I felt this was good so that I realised what I was doing wrong/was not doing, and could use this process to better determine if the resources I'd collected could be trusted (and not mislead me!).


b) found useful.
Determining reliability? Useful for determining if a text we select can be trusted, and therefore also useful in terms of gathering resources for our assignment(s). (What I mentioned previously as well) My dad also mentioned to me previously about the slide thing, that you only had to have enough data in a presentation to guide your presentation, but the information is coming from you yourself. I actually asked him though, since I was looking over his should at a presentation he was working on, and noticed the presentation was quite simplistic. This is a point which has stuck with me (although I haven't really used it before)... However, I agreed completely that this is a highly effective way of presenting, and I'm certain the class will see this as useful too.


c) found difficult.
Merely some of the sample text assessments, where it asked 'Completeness' and we could only reply with a 'assumedly'/'apparently' as we're not experts on the subject, and would not really know if anything was omitted or not. However assumedly if the source was an unbiased one, it would be complete... Otherwise the lesson was good, and having a look at the TED video was good. My father visits the website and downloads videos and we watch the talks on new innovations and so on. There was nothing particularly difficult about the lesson itself however.


How was your participation in today's class? Give yourself a score out of 5. Write your reasons for that score.
4? I did not keep quiet in class, even though I am more of the shy type, unless I'm around people I'm quite familiar with (is 4 weeks enough?). I talked with the group, gave my ideas, worked together with everyone, so I believe I acted like a good team member. However, I could have gotten more courage and volunteered to get up and present, perhaps. However, Alex volunteered. Although I gave her my booklet to bring up to the projector....

(I took some pictures of the pages we completed in the booklet for Su to see what we did that day, as she was sick)

And... since I am here...

Kirishima Ayama = 霧島綾真

霧 = Kiri (mist)
島 = Shima (island)
綾 = Aya (figure/design/twill weave)
真 = Ma (just, right, pure, genuine)
Ayama is styled on my last name, which in Kanji is 謝, and read as Ayama in some ways. (also read Shya)


EDIT: Email by Friday? ARGH I'm so very sorry. >_< I wrote down the questions, so I didn't read the email properly. D:

To show just how lax I've been over the past week, I have not written on any of the days. Argh. Well, this means I better get to it now, of course. ... Before next week comes along and I still haven't done it. But this is only going to be a short summary ...

Monday = CITP

Looking at sources and seeing if they are reliable, unreliable. We started off talking about what makes a document reliable. And afterwards we moved on to.. an example, I suppose you could call it, in the lecture notes booklet. At first I was wondering if I was doing the right thing there in the table which was given.

We were meant to work as a group, but I ended up just kind of working with Julie again. xD The width of the tables (as in, a physical table in this sense) made it a little hard to talk with the people opposite, I suppose, although it seemed alright later on when we were deciding a team charter. Perhaps we just needed time to warm up....

Er, after the example, we did a whole LOT of other samples, which we then had to present. Thanks to my perfectionist trait, my booklet got hauled up to be displayed from the projector.

(All the links above are images I scanned for Su, who was sick and thus, away.)

I'm not sure if I was very thorough with mine, but at least it was pretty detailed to the extent that I could make it, so I was pretty pleased with the work I did .... We had to form groups afterwards for our assignment. This is where the team charter comes in. We have to make a set of rules for us to obey, and then all sign it. As well  fill in a form that says that we have someone to interview.

It was all in all a pretty enjoyable lesson as always. Hehe. We had to make some name cards at the beginning of the lesson too, and me and Julie wrote Japanese on ours just because... well, we could. It was amusing. xD We used the leftover paper and made two cranes too...

Then I met Sebastian for a while... went to Karebear, he got a KHR ring, I gave him some stuff... we had the sponsor meeting... not much else I want to report here.

Tuesday = IIS

I... am not sure what happened here this day. IIS and I don't really directly connect. But I met up with my team for the assignment (though Sean was missing) and we tried to work on some questions and a video store. At the very least we decided on a video store, and Amy did good work making up questions, but ... I wonder how well this is going to go.

We were meant to have a surprise quiz during IIS, but once again, the tutor decided he'd just do what he liked (I know he has our best interests in mind, but I would at least like to know what I'm missing out on from the other classes...) and although we did do the roleplaying like the tutorial sheet said, we spend the latter half of the tute drawing diagrams of the system in the roleplay. Although it was potentially helpful... all the diagrams looked remarkably similar, AND the writing was bad and small so I couldn't even read it, and thusly could not focus.

I'm sorry, don't blame me.
This subject I admit is not going that well...

Wednesday = Programming Fundamentals

Also one of those subjects in which I scream and die.The lecture was alright, although I did drop my Netbook on the floor accidentally. O_O At least it's alright. I recorded what Ryan did during the lecture although not sure how much of it was processed. I guess this reflected in the lab. Although I did alright in the tutorial, always manage to do alright in that, actually, but I had a hard time during the lab, and Joel helped me out a lot (THANK YOU SO MUCH IF YOU EVER READ THIS). I think I better go back and do all the examples and that again to try and get a better grasp of programming.

We also got our assignment. This is slaughtering me. :P
I do believe something happened before I went to the tute and lab, but my memory fails me at this moment...

Thursday  = No Class

Tried to make a start on the assignment. What a miserable failure it was. I wasted a lot of time, and ended up switching to trying to complete some LinuxGym instead since I find UNIX much nicer for me. T_T

Friday = Web Systems

Great. :D This was pretty much HTML day and I was quite happy about that - it was like visiting an old friend. Ah the good old days of HTML coding in Year 10. Soo fun ('cos Dreamweaver is such a .... ok... hehe) In any case, I figured out the problem I had yesterday with Linuxgym Chapter 7. It was because you had to set the folder permissions, and anyone who had read everything properly would have realised. I'm not 100% sure how I missed it, because I did (attempt) to read everything on the front!! But I fixed it... Yay, and fixed it for Julie too... who had also not read the first page, obviously. xDD; Whoops...

OH RIGHT, yes, first off on Friday, I volunteered for Bandaged Bear Day with erm, people from my course, but I only ended up working with Bianca, Alex and Alex's boyfriend. We wandered around Central going, asking 'Would you like to support Bandaged Bear Day?' 'Would you like to buy a Bandaged Bear?' Bianca had to leave about... 10? So then I worked by myself. We were supposed to be on shift from 9-10, really, but we ended up working from about 8.45-10.45 (at least I did).

That meant that I was late for the CITP meeting we were meant to have... urgh. In any case, when Alex finally arrived at the First Years' Lounge, we organised a few things, but we still couldn't get that much done...

Saturday

==> Had a msn conference with group members of CITP assignment. James shall be flogged for not turning up!

I'm always a little lax with this in the middle of the week.

Wednesday = Programming Fundamentals

... Do I even recall what happened that day?... Uhm, so we had our lecture. Oh, with a different lecturer! I can't say I remember his name, however, he was pretty good. He's also a subject tutor I think, since he takes one of the tutorial/workshop classes. This week we actually had to submit the work we did in our workshop to PLATE. The previous class seemed to have a lot of trouble trying to make it work. It seemed later on that we had to submit them as .jar files, since the system wasn't taking .zips. When I (finally managed to) finish(ed) mine, I .jar-ed it wrong and it didn't work. xD Thank goodness Zen helped me by telling me that I probably made the file wrong. Not that we were given any instruction on that... *sigh*

Short summaries today...

Thursday = No classes

But I still spent the whole day doing Unix/LinuxGym, though I got distracted a lot...

Friday = Web Unix Systems

Indeed.
Well, since I did the chapter that we were doing for that lesson the previous day, I was pretty much done, so I divided my time helping the others and doing the next chapters. Unix is really fun, and I reckon it'll give me a lot less nightmares than Java will...

Very short this time, but there's not much to say, really.
I'll write more next time.

... I feel somewhat under pressure today... for reasons I will not disclose. It mostly has to do with getting ahead of myself, when I should just sit back and relax (as if) about it (alright, maybe just... not worry so much... which is a lame and inadequate answer...) - but I guess I really am a woman worrier. Or am I woman warrior? Oh Mr Phillips, I am confused. xD
(I apologise for all the ellipsis, but it reflects my current frame of mind...)

Tuesday = Introduction to Information Systems.

Lecture was pretty much about Business Information Systems. I think I might need to look up more information on this topic, although I guess it all depends on the level of detail they go into in consecutive weeks - more stress though. Ugh assignments....

Speaking of which, lecture we did follow the sheet this time, although most of us are still under the impression the tutor cannot really speak properly. Well, I have nothing against his accent... but I'm just not sure what he's wanting part of the time. Urgh. >_< Still at least we have a GROUP formulated now! Yet, we have no name... and we were supposed to send our group details to ... our lecturer? I forget so I need to find that, wherever it is! *gets a stressed feeling...*

Also in the group, there are two second years, and two first years (a boy and a girl in each), so I feel a little intimidated. Just a little.... or a lot.

Haha. Well... I might as well. This way I can look back too, and I won't lose it.

REFLECTIONS

a) What I learned ...
... useful?
About what people felt were ethical and unethical? During the Case Studies where we voted, I found it useful to see what professionals had to think, even though I had my own strong views and code of ethics.

...interesting?
The Code of Ethics for the ACS? We had such trouble trying to come up with our Codes because they were so specific, however, the Code of Ethics for the ACS is simply written and covers a large amount of aspects. Although it allows interpretation in different ways, it's still fascinating how it can be so simply worded and yet apply to so many situations. (I feel that useful and interesting really do cross over however.... Both this and the point mentioned before are both interesting and possibly will influence our professional behaviour.)


... good?
Can I be general and say everything? Everything is very relevant to what skills we will need in order to be a professional IT person, and therefore good for me and my future. There was nothing I learnt during the lesson which I would define as 'bad'.

b) One thing I found ...
... useful?
I think this appeared mostly in the form of the video. I reflected on the way I present and decided that perhaps there are things I need to work on too, as ... scornful as we may have seemed about the man's presentation. That's not to say anyone performed badly however, since I watched everyone presenting their case studies and they were all very good.

...interesting?

Monday = Communications for IT Professionals

Well, it was to the workshops this week, and I think I was looking forward to this a lot more than the 3-hour lectures (although 3 hour workshop also is a bit =A= by the time you're finished, heh). It also helped that I was relieved that I was in a Band 1 workshop of course.

The tutor introduced herself, and I remember the first reaction I had was to look at Julie next to me and exchange glances. Her surname sounded very Japanese. She did an example of how she wanted us to introduce ourselves also and ... well I guess we found out we were (somewhat) right. (Though to what degree I have no idea, of course....) I'm such a Japanophile. Or I just like Asian things, really.

We then tried to define ethics with the person next to us/the people around us.

Ethics:

"Morality and actions, What we perceive to be right or wrong, Sense of personal responsibility - consequences of actions, Personal conduct based on respect for others, Principles and values you choose to live by."

We also talked a little about Ethical Dilemmas and moved onto the case studies. I found myself pretty opinionated on this topic. I think I have a strong code of ethics... sometimes. I'm not really sure. I feel these things are wrong, but when push comes to shove, I think sometimes these things get ignored. By not having this kind of real life experience, I suppose we can't really know. However, from experience from my own projects, say in HSC Year, I'm quite a perfectionist and will try to make the system as good as I can get it - so I think I can uphold my personal code of ethics well enough.

We tried to come up with codes of ethics afterwards and although our codes were a lot different to other peoples', I felt they were rather valid. Although our group was the only group that presented with only three codes, I had six written down in actuality, however, we kept arguing that it could already be explained by another dot point and thus we were only left with three. I felt some of the other people's points seemed perhaps a little too general, however maybe we were the ones thinking too specifically? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, however.

We had a short break then watched a segment of a Youtube video where we were supposed to look carefully and pick out what we felt was good and bad about his presentation. My whole group agreed wholeheartedly that his presentation overall was pretty bad, but probably definitely in stronger words. It was true however, overall he was uninspiring, looked confined and bored... I think it's alright to be informal in your presentations sometimes, depending on who you are presenting to, and depending on what kind of message you are trying to present (you want to create a relaxed interested interactive air, right?), so it's not necessarily a bad thing he said 'Hey, guys', but his lack of enthusiasm was the real problem.

We looked at presentations skills and worked on Case Studies then, and each of us picked a 'role' in the group for the presentation and tried to build up our points. I don't think I did too badly, though I could have gestured more, I suppose. The thing is that I'm not necessarily bad at presenting, I just don't like to volunteer myself up for it. At High School, generally I'd be with people who'd rather not have to present, so the responsibility would fall with me (Sorry if anyone is reading this....). While I can't say I was magnificent at it either, at least I do have experience with it and am willing to present if no one else is? Or at least I find myself a lot of enthusiastic now unless I'm feeling unwell ... like somewhat recently...

Afterwards I had to go meet sponsors for lunch. We went to that cafe in the UTS building that's next to the ABC (oh I forget all the numbers and everything, yikes).Luckily I didn't have to pay I guess, since I don't have a lot of money these days. We chatted with the sponsors while eating. Felt like some of it was going over the top of my head. I should look up more on stuff - but I'm not really that much into the business side of this course. Perhaps that's not a good thing to say. I acknowledge that no matter what I do, it will have something to do with business, of course, however, if possible would like to do more programming related work,  or the like, depending on how everything goes - and depending on what Masters I might decide to do later?

I still want to work at the ABC eventually. My dad works there, and I really enjoyed work experience there, but I still don't know what I could do there. Perhaps I could work on the web stuff or their TV stuff, but I don't really know if I'm in the right course for those occupations. So I need to find out more about the jobs availiable at the ABC then, I suppose.

Went with my dad to a move after everything. He got free tickets from work so we watched The Last Station. It was quite interesting. ^_^

(I didn't blog on Wednesday... but never fear, the memory is still pretty fresh.)

Wednesday = Programming Fundamentals

I think writing out my notes is a good thing, especially for Prog Fun (Hehe). It may be less neat, but for some reason, I reckon it makes me understand it better. Well... I'm not really sure.

In any case, I looked over the notes the night before and went to the lecture, and then it was off to the first tutorial and lab. The tutorial I thought was fun, writing out the lines of code, and underlining methods, and classes, and objects and so on. The tutor commented that my writing was neat, and I guess it was. I haven't written anything in ages, and I think I'm making an attempt to be neat - the only thing is how long it can really last. That I know from experience. xD

The workshop was a bit harder, not to mention with the people on either side of me freaking me out with their skillz. Alright, I jest, but they completed it very quickly, whereas I worked quite slowly. I had some problems with the last section in particular, where you had to make a house from scratch. The problem was that I did not understand the code that Bluej gave me when I made the new class. Although the booklet did say we could copy the code from the moving the circle, I ... was quite stubborn. In the end, I had to copy anyway though, however to make it more unique, I tried to change the size and colour of the house. Black house + fuschia (it looked fuschia anyway) roof = odd house. I had to create some objects with the existing classes to try to see what kind of code I needed to write in, since the compiler kept telling me I made an error. The coding didn't seem exactly the same as what we did in our tutorial, nor did it match what I tried to look up in the textbook. I suppose I'll have to work this out later on and see what I can do now...?

And one of the members of the group changed classes, so it looks like we have to look for another member. I think there was someone I know from the Anime@UTS club who was not in a group, but I ... have actually forgotten his name...

Thursday = No classes. ^^;

Friday = Web Systems

I found Friday particularly fun. The lecture was pretty interesting, and I think Unix is pretty fascinating, as frustrating as it can be trying to get the Movie Player to work (but I think I overlooked some things there, so it really is my fault...). At any rate, the lecture was about file allocation methods and .... I actually wonder if I should defragment my disk, even though the lecturer mentioned newer versions don't really need defragmenting anymore. At any rate, the lecture was quick! As a friend commented, if only Prog Fund went this quickly! (Well, it's just that two hours can be a bit... taxing...)

The workshop we were working on LinuxGym. For some reason, my internet dropped out at first, so I couldn't access even Google and LinuxGym couldn't access the internet either, but then I logged off and back in and it seemed to fix itself, so I got it working. I have realised that it seems that LinuxGym doesn't work in certain situations.

But back a few steps. My friend next to me (no full names, but his name is James) was having a little trouble with LinuxGym. First of all his folders were all missing (like the ch1-fdr (?) and the rest), so he had to manually make them (actually the first exercise's question was not very clear, and didn't mention it had to be in the chapter 1 folder until we clicked 'mark'). And then on the third part of it, LinuxGym froze and he had to close it. But when he reopened it, it would not log him in.

This is what I realised. I told him to try relogging into the online er, site? (the 192.168..... etc) and then try to log into LinuxGym, and it worked. LinuxGym will not work without an internet connection, and it will not work unless you are logged into that IP address either. I think the connection from before must have timed out, just like the Juniper Network Security things for UTS Wireless. If you break off from the Wireless, you have to close the Juniper security before trying to log back in to use the Wireless or it will not work.

I feel like UTS's technology can be so temperamental.

But we finished the questions, helping each other. James did a few typos at one point, or couldn't find the right thing to type and I'd show him, and I'd make a typo and it wouldn't work and I'd consult with him. I also helped the person next to me, and some people behind me before while doing the calender thing. I'd always spelt calender as calender, but the site wanted us to store it as 'calendar' which was why we'd keep getting the question wrong. I guess this hones our observational skills. :D

All in all, although we all had some problems trying to get everything to work, it was quite fun, particularly the helping others. xD I do like to make people happy, and then I'm happy too. And helping people makes me happy too. Maybe it was my attitude the previous week that I felt so down and depressed about university. But now it seems pretty exciting, except for all the things due - that makes me quite apprehensive. >_<

I also made an error before. The IT wireless network (which the Student Centre has no idea about) is actually called UPNFIT. Which everyone calls upen-fit, but I always just call it U-P-N-F-I-T. I think that's just a habit I have of reading everything in Caps, as just the letters? Unless it's during internet conversation of course.

This afternoon (4-7) I also had a good time with the Anime@UTS club, watching several shows. We watched Mr Brain, a japanese drama which was quite.... odd and hilarious and... odd. And then watched Baka to Test to Shokanjuu and Seitokai no Ichizon which parodied some other shows. Some things I didn't get and I wonder at my anime knowledge, but then again... I do read more manga than I watch anime anyway, so I wonder if that can be excused.

Then we also watched Detroit Metal City which made me want to crawl under the table and hide there for a few hours. I don't know those people. xD It.... was not my type of show, is all I can really say...

I guess that's all for now? Unless I've forgotten something. The club as an Art/Mecha Jam tomorrow, so I'll be going for a while, then I need to get some new clothes. I'm kind of running out with uni, since although wearing the same outfit is not unusual... well wearing the shirt 4 days in a row isn't something people want to see either... But I need to work! *worry*