1970s Style Laptop - My new project logbook

I couldn't resist it, I needed a log book for my TM470 project and saw this in a stationary shop called scribbler today and had to buy it.

It's approximately one hundred pages with ruling on one side and the other side being plain, which should accommodate sketching and capturing of information as I work through my project. I'll eventually have to digitise a lot of the information but it will be a useful thing to have a round.

At £6.99 it's certainly the cheapest laptop I have ever bought... and it will never crash!

TM470 and my new keyboard

Here it is, the MK520 logitech keyboard! So after a late night of frustration trying to work up a CENTOS 6 installation with JBOSS in Virtual Box I realised that a Mac Keyboard being used in a Linux OS via Windows 7 really wasn't working. I had been trying to get an example instance set up of the Virtual Private Server that I am going to use to host my project application on but the keyboard mappings for Mac keyboards were appalling. 

I decided to go down to PC WORLD this morning and hunt for a keyboard that I could comfortably code on late into the night and would map smoothly onto the Linux operating system and my current setup. After playing around with various keyboards I settled on the MK520 which is pictured below, after 5 hours coding I'd definitely recommend it!

As for the project, I've been working up the project idea in the course forums and it seems to be going well. Without going into too much detail at the moment I am working on an idea for a Java based web application for a corporate service. I've registered my domain name and started to work up my ideas, I'll be keeping a separate project blog but will try to incorporate some of the information as I progress into this blog so that those of you who are interested, or future TM470 students can get an idea of whats involved.

As an overview of what the course has gone like so far (its not even started formally!) once I got around to being able to access the web forums there are two major forums, a project choice forum and a general discussion forum. The project choice forum is a place for all students to post ideas and contribute comments to each others ideas, providing feedback and suggestions where appropriate. For those people who are yet to identify a project, students have been posting the courses that they have previously studied and topic areas with other students trying to help provide suggestions. The course team are also very active posting responses to project ideas and help to try and focus ideas where they are too broad, or widen ideas that are far too focused. The general discussion forum is there to provide a place for discussions around other topics such as "which IDE should I use?".

So far we have had to submit a tutor assignment form, where you list the courses that you have studied in the past or are currently studying and rank the two topics that you wish to base your project upon in priority order. For me this is M362 Concurrent and Distributed Systems and M359 Relational Database Theory and Practice. 

I am expecting to be allocated to a tutor towards the end of the month and will post anything else of relevance that comes up as the course continues.

Back from Christmas and the M359 Results and TM470 registration

Ok, lets go.... Final module of my BSc (Hons) in computing is about to begin, Christmas has been and gone and it seems like a blink of the eye ago that I sat my Exams.

The M359 result came in over the Christmas break and I scored a disappointing Pass 3 with an OCAS score of 81% and an OES of 58%. Whilst it was a disappointing result and the poorest result I have had with the OU to date, reading my blog posts back it was quite obvious that I didn't have the usual enthusiasm for this course and ultimately my final grade reflects that.

It is frustrating because if I had pulled my finger out a little more I know I could have done a lot better but hindsight truly is a wonderful thing and when life and work is already on top of you its easy to reprioritise your M359 efforts.

Whilst the grade is what it is I am still looking for a strong 2:1 degree if TM470 goes well and I am quite excited about getting started on it. I parted with the £735.00 a few days ago, which to be honest seems steep for a 30 point module which is likely to have far less support than any module I have studied. I can't help feel that its the final milking of the Student before they graduate, and when it's your own money you've saved up it makes you that bit more conscious of how you spend it. I'll be interested to see if I still feel this way come completion.

I've got an idea for a project and after all my thoughts around carrying out a project on AI based work, over the Christmas break I have come up with a new idea for a concurrent distributed system. It will be a big piece of work and I will probably only have time to do some basic work on it during this project, but if it does go well it is something that could be developed and commercialised so it gives me that bit of extra drive to make it work. More on that to come once it has been approved, for now I wait with baited breath for the course module information to become available so I can get on with the project.

I'm intending on running a project log through a blog but I'll post all that information up once it has been created. I've been looking at project management tools and I think I'm going to take run the management through BaseCamp which is a basic project management facility allowing milestone setting, document storage and note making facilities. You can host one project for free at BaseCamp by visiting this link. I've also been looking at source control hosting and have been debating between Google Code and Git Hub  I'll post up once I've decided on which to go with.

Until then good luck with the 2012 study!

M366 Results are in....

The results for M366 were made available today, I obtained a Pass 2 scoring 66% in the final exam and having and OCAS of 86%. Speaking with one fellow student they scored nearly identically to me so it looks like I wasn't the only person to struggle with the exam. 

The fact that I scored as pass 2 with 66% suggests everyone under performed however I can't find the usual OU course breakdown which shows where the exam results distribution sat for all students sitting the course. If anyone has it please let me know.

So thats it for now, I'm in the process of working out what to tackle for my final project and will update once I have got a proposal together.

M359 Exam complete, TM470 here I come...

Just returned from the M359 Exam and it was tricky although I think I have got enough marks to pass (well here is hoping).  I made sure to take time over the questions and go back over them trying to squeeze out any marks that I may have missed and whilst there were the odd 2 marks where I was literally clueless in general it felt better than it could have done. I certainly wouldn't have liked sitting the course on its first few presentations as I really think I would have struggled without access to all the past papers.

I have also enrolled on TM470, the project element of many of the Computing degrees run by the OU. I believe this is its second presentation, and in a nutshell as a student you chose a topic of interest out of those that you have studied at level 3 and carry out a project into a particular area with some (but not a lot of) tutor support.

I'm quite excited about the idea, I bumped into Paul a fellow OU undergrad at the exam today who has been mirroring my courses over the last few years as we both head towards the same degree. We were discussing how the AI area is of particular interest and it sounds like Paul has already made good progress with thrashing out a concept for his project and starting to research it. As for me I am pretty confident that I will base mine on AI although I'm fully intending on giving myself a few weeks off before I start to do any research into the matter.

The good news is that was the last exam I have to sit for my degree (and hopefully for a little while longer), I didn't find the course fairly dry compared to M366 but it is bread and butter computing theory so everyone really should do it or something similar to become well rounded in the subject.

That's it for now, I'll update anything new with TM470 as it comes around, I wish everyone who is sitting exams good luck and hope the Christmas results period is a festive one.

OU Degree Classification Calculator

In the midst of exams people may be wondering what grades they need to be pushing for in order to obtain the degreee classification that they want, I've come across the following unofficial degree classification calculator which may be of some use.

Degree Classification Calculator

It appears to be working although I, like the developer, would not want to make any promises of accuracy. It is definitely worth a look if you are interested in how you are progressing or awaiting those grades or also experimenting with course grades to see what the outcomes could be.

Simon

M366 Exam Complete and Assignment scores

So the exam is complete and there is no doubt about it, it was a real slog.... This is the first time I have ever had to write all the way up to the end of an exam, there is just so much content in this course that you end up putting down lots of information. I think it went ok, a couple of bits didn't go too great but overall I managed to work through the questions reasonably.

One issue I had was a misprinted formula in the exam book, I knew the formula must have been incorrect but thought I would revisit it at the end, little did I know how long the exam would take and when I had a quick glance at the end I noticed what the issue was but didn't have time to re-write my calculations. I've posted this up in the course forums and it looks like everyone else had noticed the formula issue, hopefully we won't be penalised for using the incorrect formula.

I'd agree with a lot of people that this course could be considered a 60 pointer, it has a phenomenal about of work to get through and when it comes to revision time you realise just how much you need to learn. That being said it is an extremely interesting course and I would recommend it for anyone with an interest in the subject matter.

I noticed I never posted the TMA 04 results for the two modules so here they are..... As it stands I'm operating at something like 86% average for M366 and with substitution I think I will be around the early 80% for M359.

M366 TMA04 - 88

M359 TMA04 - 83

Back to revision for the M359 exam next Wednesday, my last exam with the OU! Just a project to go after that!

Simon