Week 13: Data Store/ Entity Cross References, PDPs, Therapy

So we got ran through how to cross reference Entity diagrams and data stores, this week, which may or may not have bored 70% of the class. We got told about our assignments a little more, and that this would be included in the exam next year. By the sounds of it, there's a lot of stuff to revise for, and do for the Abraham Heights Hotel assignment study.

There was a PCDS tutorial about Personal Development Portfolios, too, where we were introduced to websites like LinkedIn. It's a really good idea to have a LinkedIn profile because of how versatile they can be; you could be looking for a drummer for a band you're starting, and you could look for them on LinkedIn, and the same applies to any industry - council work, acting, production, civil engineering, and the list goes on.

I've also been for a talk with a local counselling group called Steps2Change to see if I need help with anxiety and other troubles (which I feel uncomfortable talking about on this social platform), but those problems do exist and I will need to combat them.

I still have no idea, truly, what I want to do at the end of this entire course.

Week 12: Web Page Design, Number Systems Assignment and some SaD Stuff

There seems to have been a bit of confusion regarding which weeks we are doing what activity, so this post is probably going to be as big as King Kong's banana budget.

Dynamic Web & Media had us laying out web pages all pretty and stuff, making sure that paragraphs and line breaks and pictures and navigation bars are in the right place and that the page doesn't look like it just came out of a typewriter that can print images of cats and vegetables.
The main idea is to use a CSS file (Cascasding Style Sheet) to keep things flowing; you can use it to space out your paragraphs and style tables how you want.
For example: You could make all of your tables have a thick border and colour that border lime green. This is possible in CSS, and it makes your HTML code a lot easier to read (you don't have to dredge through a huge <...> tag to see what's happening - just open your CSS file and it's all there).

We got our first number systems assignment. I have Christmas coming up; birds to eat, mountains of food to climb and conquer, I don't need another birden on my mind.

Logicalisation. Ah yes. Lovely. It sounds hard, but we've just got to write down what the system's doing at the minute and then write down what we think is ought to be doing when we design the final database. Thinking about what the system should do is a bit of a brain tease, but it's no sudoku, so it shouldn't be too hard!

Week 11: LOOP DE LOOP, SaD Interviews, Web Accessibility

This week we did some more array work, but this time the lecturer threw in some loops.
A loop (sometimes called a for loop) is a way of making a subroutine run continuously until either a specified parameter is met or the user ends the subroutine or entire program. We were told that in a few weeks we would need to find a way to implement loops and arrays in to a mock assignment.
The class didn't seem too enthused at the prospect of a mock assignment, considering we'll have a few assignments coming our way soon enough.

This week we also sat down and interviewed the manager of the Abraham Heights Hotel. Well... It wasn't actually the manager, per se, just a member of the teaching staff acting out the role of the manager. Nick and I interviewed the manager whilst Jasmine and Scott interviewed the receptionist. We asked questions such as, 'How do you think the system could be improved in a specific area?', and, 'Do you have a budget in mind for the new system?'.
Me and Nick ran a bit over time and Steve was ushering us to finish, but I think we came away with all of the information that we needed in order to complete the assignment.

Dynamic Web & Media had us looking at how to make a website accessible to a wide variety of audiences. A website should be intuitive and easy to use anyway, however sometimes you need to account for those who may be red/green colour blind and those who have dyslexia.
To someone with red/green colour blindness, a red page will appear a shade of green, thus making it incredibly difficult for them to make out which parts are supposed to be red and which parts are actually supposed to be green.

RG Colour blind (left) - Original image (right)

The photo above (source: http://www.washington.edu/news/archive/images/20090916_pid52016_aid52015_colormarket_w400.jpg) details what life is like through the eyes of someone with red/green colour blindness. Anything that is red to someone who does not have the blindness is green to someone who is (as you probably figured).

Week 10: Troubleshooting, Web Accessibility, Resources and Arrays

We restored the operating system of our virtual machines on Wednesday, which is crucial to troubleshooting a computer. If a program that has recently been installed is causing issues with the computer, but simply uninstalling it does not solve the issue, a system restore can be performed in order to set the computer back to a previous state - one before the software was installed. At first this would cause concern about the files saved on the computer, but the system restore tool does not affect saved files; only what programs have been installed and uninstalled on the system. This saves the user from having to remake all of the files that would normally have been removed.

We learned about how severe red/green colourblindness can be and how it would affect someone using a website with the condition. There are several ways to make things easier to see for someone with this disability, one of them being to use a different CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) file for those who tell their browser to use it.
Another disability that severely affects computer users is dyslexia. More often than not, most fonts that are easy for non-sufferers to read and understand will be significantly more difficult for a sufferer to read and understand. The same can be said for certain colours; most computer monitors these days have an option programmed in to them that allows a user to tell the monitor to use a specific shade of a colour that makes large chunks of text easier to read, however not all computer users will know about this in-built feature, thus forcing web coders to use either a specific set of colours and fonts that will be easy for everyone to comprehend, or have a different stylesheet again for those who suffer from dyslexia.

In place of our Professional, Communication and Digital Skills lecture we had a woman come up from the main campus on Infirmary Road and show us how to use the resource finding tools that the college provides. This is incredibly convenient and well-timed considering we are being given a large assignment next week that will require us to use this service that is very similar to Google Scholar.

Arrays came up in programming. They're pretty much just fancy lists that start at 0 as opposed to 1, which is illogical - though I guess it wouldn't be the same if programming followed the logical conventions of society.

Week 9: JavaScript and Operating System Tools

So this week we've been playing around with JavaScript in HTML and manipulating our web page to do something that HTML cannot achieve on its own.
We got an example to work through to get a basic understanding of what the code can do and how it's written, which threw us off at first but we eventually managed to grasp what it was doing. The JavaScript allowed us to view an image by clicking on a thumbnail, which then displayed a new image on the page. When you clicked on another thumbnail, it displayed a different image in place of the original one without going to another page.
Even though it was just a basic piece of script inside the web page, it was impressive to see what the code itself could achieve.

Last week we installed an operating system (Windows 7) on to a virtual machine using VirtualBox. The C:\ drives on the computers here are regularly swept clean of non-crucial files and folders, so every time we want to use the "machine" we used the week before, we have to unzip a zip file on to the hard drive and compress it again once we're finished with it so that we have all of the settings saved. This proves to be a bit of a pain, but it's something we're managing with.
On the "machine" itself we went in to the administrative tools and learned what all of the different services provide on the system. We also used the task manager to view how much memory is allocated on the machine and how much is being used at any one point and how much work the processor is doing. We will no doubt come back to this in the future and talk about the different hardware and software you can use to find this information.

On Thursday Nick and I interviewed the manager of the Abraham Heights Hotel case study. The interview lasted around ten minutes and we got an answer for all of the questions we pitched to him. When we were evaluated on how we performed during the interview, we scored 31/40. We lost marks for not keeping quite to the ten minute schedule that was set and we lost a few marks each for not wearing more formal clothing. We have been asked by the hotel to write up a report on what is wrong with the current system and what can be done to improve it. Scott and Jasmine have interviewed the head receptionist and have their findings with them, so we will collate all of this information in to our own individual reports.

Nothing on the sausage roll front, still.
- Alex.

Week 8: Fact Finding and Ethics

So this past week we have been talking about the different ways used to gather information and facts and the ethics.
We decided that the best way to gather information would be to do an anonymous questionnaire; be it online so that the user can simply click "yes/ no" buttons or a physical questionnaire that can be filled in in a short space of time. The idea behind still using a paper-based questionnaire is that the piece of paper will be getting in the way of whatever it is the employee is doing and they will fill out the form to get rid of it.

The ethical side of the information gathering process is that you may come across critical information about a company's infrastructure; network passwords, employee details, and the sort, will all need to be kept private. This information should not be shared in a report under any circumstances. Leaving documentation about this information laying unsecured is also unethical and the company can take the violator to court and sue on grounds of breaking the Data Protection Act (1998).

Re: the sausage roll situation.
No action has been taken to increase the number of sausage rolls available to the students. This will probably not go down well with the class. Anarchy surely follows. Take to the hills for safety. Shall keep you posted.

- Alex.

Week 7 Extra: Student Rep Meeting

This week I automatically became the deputy student representative for the class.
Before we broke up for the week holiday Nick was nominated as the student rep for the class. This meant that he would be attending several meetings throughout the year regarding student worries and suggestions for the rest of the board.
However, he's ill until further notice. So, we needed someone to stand in for him, and you're looking at the person who put those boots on. Yes, I stood in as deputy for Nick and have been told to relay all information and minutes taken throughout the meeting to the main rep.

We covered all points raised by the other students in the class - a list was compiled and annotated by myself and several students. We talked about:

• "Is the course how you thought it would be when you signed up?"
  A lot of the people in the class said that they thought it would be more applied than what it currently is. This was addressed and I was told that the first year touches all bases and gives you a very generalised idea of what the course is about, what subjects and paths we can take in the second and third years.
• "Do you have access to the information and resources you need?"
  We said that we knew about the eBooks that were available to us via the college, but we had no idea what to do or where to go in order to get them. This was addressed this morning by our tutor, Steve, who showed us how to get to the books.
• Other points.
  We wanted a bigger sausage roll budget, which the curriculum manager, Bill, said would be answered gladly: a lot of students have said over the years, apparently, that food might sometime run low on busier days during the week (Wednesdays and Thursdays especially).
  We asked if it was possible to sort out some sort of common room, like many universities and sixth form colleges/ schools provide for their students. I was told that there was a common room set up on the ground floor near to the library in previous years, however that was converted in to a private learning suite.
  The "2X Server" is incredibly slow and tedious to load up: we use Notepad++ via the 2X client and it takes time to connect and download the software each time we need it (especially when we all connect to the client at the same time). Apparently this has been an issue for some time and we are appealing to get the software installed on to the individual machines at some point in the near future.

The meeting took place yesterday (Wednesday 6th November) and some issues have already been addressed today, as mentioned in the paragraphs and pointers above.
I will hand these notes on to the head rep when he is next in.

- Alex.

Weeks 5 - 7: An Update

Over the past couple of weeks, there has been more of the same.
We had a Systems Analysis and Design task to complete, which involved drawing up an information flow diagram and then two data flow diagrams (one level one and one level two diagram). When we had completed these diagrams, along with a context flow diagram we had a meeting with Joyce about the progress that we had made and she provided feedback on what we could improve on.
At first the diagrams were really hard to understand and draw up, but after looking at examples for long enough we eventually got the hang of them and produced diagrams that were of a good standard.

We had no work to complete over the half term holiday, thus giving us the entire week to ourselves. Success.

Nick was nominated as the student representative for the class and we had a short meeting with the entire class about any issues and doubts we were having about the course, which would then be taken up with several lecturers on the campus.
One thing we all decided on was that the canteen here at Tapton didn't have a big enough sausage roll budget. I imagine that will be an interesting point to make in the meeting. Have fun with that, Nick.

- Alex.

Week 4: Personal Development Plans

This week we were reintroduced to the Personal Development Plan (PDP) and were asked to write one up.
Basically, a PDP is used by an individual to determine what it is that they want to do over the course of several years. It can be as in-depth as that person wants, sometimes going in to monthly detail for specific planning.
The discussion we had this morning about them outlined the fact that older PDP's laid out by an individual might not be reliable because of their age, but hey, that's why you update them. You might end up finding an old one from years and years ago and think, "Why did I want to be an astronaut when I was twelve?" and laugh at yourself because of how your views and ideas have changed.
(I'm not poking a finger and laughing at astronauts; it's a cool thing to do, going in to space and building the International Space Station, you might just end up laughing because these days you might want to be the lead designer at a game development studio or something *cough*).

Here's a basic idea of where I want to go and what I want to between now and 2023:

• 1 - 3 Years
  Complete the foundation degree with at least merits and get on to the top up course at Sheffield Hallam University and get the full Honours Degree. This will take me three years to do, and I hope to come out with a good set of grades and enough UCAS points to get me on to another, more specific course at a university that specialises in the areas I want to go in to.
• 3 - 5 Years
  After completing the current course, I hope to have accrued enough UCAS points to get me on to a games development course at Sheffield Hallam University or one of several journalism courses at the London School of Journalism.
• 5 - 10 Years
  I hope, in this amount of time, to be well established in the area of my choice, be it games development of journalism.

In short, I'm hoping that I will be able to get in to the games industry through development or journalism. I have been playing video games ever since I was a small boy and they are a passion of mine that I would like to share with the rest of the world.

I have always enjoyed writing short stories and blog posts in the past, and so with the journalism route I would be able to do something else that I enjoy doing.

With the development route I would be able to create and collaborate with other developers in order to express an opinion or an idea, as a lot of smaller games are doing these days. The problem I can see with becoming a games developer is that a lot of large companies are making a lot of jobs redundant and thus forcing people in to other fields of work, or going indie.

Indie developers are becoming more and more of a hit (see Minecraft or Super Meat Boy) and I have always considered learning the industry standard coding language and going indie. However sometimes the pressure of going indie and having an incredibly small team working on a game can significantly increase the pressure placed upon the developer.
One of the most recent examples of this is of July 2013 when Phil Fish (developer of Fez) quit the industry due to constant scrutiny from the public and press for his work, having taken him five years to complete and fully release Fez.

Lots of decisions to make in the next few years. That should be fun.

Weeks 2 & 3: Group Work and Getting to Know the Class

The past two weeks have been dedicated to getting to know the other people in the class and forming friendship groups that could be useful for completing the assignments that will be set out before us in the coming months.

We have settled in to Tapton House quite well and have found ourselves a seating plan that we can all agree on. We are all within our smaller peer groups, though we do still communicate with the rest of the class.
The whole class seem to get along well without any friction, which is great - on my previous course the class got split in to two or three different groups of peers who seemed to cause a little friction with one another, though a lot of the people who found that the course wasn't for them had left by the start of the second year and the entire class was less tense.

The cue for the canteen up here is ridiculous on a Thursday, though. It can take up to ten minutes to get a bottle of water, but that's a given; a lot of people are in at the beginning and end of the week, though I imagine Wednesday to be the worst day of them all.

'Mathematics and Problem Solving' is proving to quite difficult and in-depth. The binary and hexadecimal work is quite hard, but once we know the number systems properly then it won't be so bad - I've only had experience with binary once before on the first year of the BTEC course, so I'd forgotten quite a lot about how the system works.

Will post again this time next week.

- Alex.

Week 1: Course Introduction

So a couple of weeks ago I started a course up at the Tapton house campus of Chesterfield College; the course is a foundation degree in applied computing, run by Sheffield Hallam University.
In the first week we were told to brainstorm our hopes for the course and plans for after we finish it, as well as building our team working skills and getting to know the people that we're going to be spending the next couple of years with. This first post will be solely about that awkward first week.

We discovered that some of us had been to Tapton previously on some of the BTEC courses - myself being one of them - and some of the class hadn't the slightest clue that this was part of the college, so the tour of George Stephenson's old pad was only useful to about half of us (A Wikipedia article. Blasphemy! The college won't like that).
The entire group is interested in doing something in a very specific area of computing, so this course is the best thing to sliced bread to all of us; some of us want to go in to networking; some of us want to go in to a more media and entertainment-oriented area of computing. It's all good.
We were already sick of hearing the words, "module handbook", and so by the end of the first week we were seeing the things in our sleep - haunting us like document-shaped ghouls.

Our week consists of two half days on Wednesdays and Fridays and a full day on Thursdays. Some of us don't quite see the point in doing three days when we could squeeze Wednesday and Friday together and have two full days, but there's not a great deal we can do to change that.
(I am writing this post after my third week on the course and twice I have had to catch the bus in because the guy I car pool with has fallen sick, so that seems to be a bit of a disadvantage to coming in for just a couple hours on a Friday).
The real tragedy is the fact that Friday's lesson is perhaps the most important to me, you see. Friday is programming day; we have Programming Concepts and that is the main reason I signed up to this course.
I'd coded before on the BTEC course (Visual Basic and ActionScript (yuck)), but I'd forgotten everything I'd been taught because of the gap year that I'd taken. In my time away from education I'd attempted, and failed miserably, to teach myself C++. Yes, VB might be a good language to start out with but I wanted to be able to code in the industry standard language.
So that's what I'm hoping this course will be able to open for me; I want to be able to go to Sheffield Hallam at the end of the two years here at Tapton and learn how to code in C++. 

Now don't get me wrong, I do want other things from this course (even though I won't get a million pounds or chocolate ring donuts), but I'd quite like to be a better team player - I'm rather reclusive and prefer working alone on projects, but that might be half of the problem:
Most, if not all, of the assignments are made for group work and that bugs me a little, because those who don't work well alone won't be developing the skills that are needed for individual work, and working in groups on every single project can be quite cumbersome and overwhelming with the amount of communication that would be needed.

I suppose we'll see where the course go and what happens.
- Alex.