Openlog - A Uni Blog

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 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*

01/03/2010 - 05/03/2010 + (07/08 Activities)

This is only to make a small recount of the first week. The order of my subjects is as follows:
- Communications for IT Professionals (Monday)
- Introduction to Information Systems (Tuesday)
- Programming Fundamentals/Object-Orientated Programming (Wednesday)
- Web Systems (Friday)

CITP::
To say the least, this subject doesn't exactly cover something I don't know, but I suppose it's a good idea to try and develop my communications skills further, for all that the subject appears to be like English for Uni. I admit that my oral skills could do with a polish, however. Even so, an upside of day one was being let out early. ^^

IIS::