Posted by Hamish on September 29th, 2008 — Posted in Computer Games
So with my Open University courses coming to an end what can I do with my new found free time? Well seeing as it’s been a while since I last played any computer games, why not relax with some quality gaming!
A quick look around my computer revealed that Guild Wars was still installed and after almost a week of dealing with the PlayNC support folks I once again have access to my account, it seems that somehow a scumbag had managed to ‘hack’ my account and register it as their own! It took a week to sort out as I had to prove that the account really did belong to me…
Surprisingly, or maybe not considering my weakness for MMORPG’s I was soon running around and managed to complete a couple of quests tonight, although not before the “You have been playing for 2 hours. Please take a break message.”…
Just in case anyone’s wondering the quests I completed were The Ambassador’s Quandary for Ambassador Zain and Rastin’s Ritual for Witness Raisin both in Old Ascalon.
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Posted by Hamish on September 22nd, 2008 — Posted in Formal Study, Uni
I’ve just received my M253 Team working in distributed environments TMA 02 results and they make interesting reading, not least as it appears my score for the individual half of the assessment has improved, while the team’s efforts have deteriorated!
That said I feel the marking of the team reports is fair and valid, especially as I believe it vindicates some of my comments about the reports which were ignored by the team!
Still only four weeks and one more TMA to go…
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Posted by Hamish on September 8th, 2008 — Posted in Formal Study, Uni
Well my M253 Team working in distributed environments Milestone 2 submission is due today, and we’ve managed to agree on the final drafts of our two team reports, so my submission has been submitted on time.
I’m still finding this an immensely frustrating course but thankfully we’re only six more weeks and one milestone away from completing it!
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Posted by Hamish on September 3rd, 2008 — Posted in Formal Study, Java, Uni
I’ve just submitted my M257 Putting Java to work, Tutor Marked Assignment(TMA) 3, it’s been finished for just under three weeks but I’ve held back from submitting it just in case they amended it! It was another interesting assignment, this time dealing with threads and Internet programming.
So all we’ve left to do now is a couple of optional case studies and the exam on Friday 10 Oct 08!
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Posted by Hamish on August 23rd, 2008 — Posted in Sailing
Wow! What a day I’ve just had!
RAF Rutland Water Sailing Centre are running another children’s sailing course this weekend and I answered their call for dinghy instructors, a whole new experience for me as so far I’ve only taught adults, well except for a 14 and 16 year old on our last RYA Level 2 course at Grafham Water.
I arrived just before 10am to discover 15 children of differing ages and ability, along with Kate and Rich, two other RAF Sailing Association Dinghy Instructors and Alistair a Senior Instructor from the Ruland Water Sailing School. Incidentally Rutland Sailing School also provided all the necessary equipment and boats for the course, without which the course couldn’t have taken place.
Once the children were suitable kited out in wetsuits, buoyancy aids and helmets Alistair split them into two groups, those who had sailed before (this year) and the rest! Kate and I were assigned to the ‘experienced group’ and once Alistair had briefed us on the exercises we were to cover, highlighted a few potential problems (children get bored far quicker than adults!) and explained the child protection policy/ rules to us instructors we took to the water, or rather Kate and the children did, I stood waist deep in the water while the children tacked around me!
After a slightly early lunch, caused by the wind vanishing Rich and Alistair started the afternoon off with a couple of games to get the children moving again, cheating blatantly at ‘ non-stop cricket’ and ‘catch Rich’!
Back on the water, (or pontoon in my case) Kate and I got our students sailing a triangular course, as the session progressed we taught the more advanced student to come alongside the pontoon. Then it was time for play, so we took the sails off four of the Pico’s, assigned the students to the boats in two teams and had them paddle around collecting balls and returning them to a couple of moored rescue boats.
We rounded the day off with capsize recovery drills, which went down far better with the children than they have on the adult courses I’ve taught on…
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Posted by Hamish on August 1st, 2008 — Posted in Formal Study, Uni
Today my team received our M253 Team working in distributed environments TMA 01 results, I came out of it with an overall score of 76%. While this is a little disappointing, my score for the individual half of the assignment was significantly higher than the score for the team’s half, and at the end of the day the course is a pass or fail, with only 40% required in each of the three TMA’s to gain a pass!
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Posted by Hamish on July 22nd, 2008 — Posted in Formal Study, Uni
I’ve received my M257 Putting Java to work, Tutor Marked Assignment 2, result… and I’ve somehow managed to achieve 100%! To say that I’m happy is an understatement and a half!
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Posted by Hamish on July 21st, 2008 — Posted in Formal Study, Uni
Phew! My M253 Team working in distributed environments Milestone 1 submission is due today, and thankfully my team managed to agree on the final drafts of our two team reports this afternoon, so my submission has been submitted on time.
I’ve personally found this series of activities hard work, partly as we’re still struggling to sort ourselves out as a team and partly as I ended up as team leader again! Still I’m determined, not to get suckered into that role again during the course… after all there are six others in the team and only two more Milestones to go!
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Posted by Hamish on July 20th, 2008 — Posted in Informix, Linux
For a while now, I’ve been trying to understand why I was unable to connect to the Informix demo database that’s running on my Fedora 8 server, as I don’t currently have the time to do much with it… it’s been a low but annoying problem, especially as I had it working on my old server that ran Fedora 5.
The problem was that I couldn’t connect using dbaccess as it wouldn’t start due to “The type of your terminal is unknown to the system…”, I followed all the tips and help I could find… setting TERM to vt100, LINES to 24 etc but to no avail. Then in a flash of inspiration, I checked /etc for termcap and found nothing!
A quick…
yum list termcap
…revealed that it wasn’t installed! So…
yum install termcap
…and suddenly everything is okay!
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Posted by Hamish on June 20th, 2008 — Posted in Formal Study, Uni
I’ve just submitted my M257 Putting Java to work, Tutor Marked Assignment(TMA) 2, six days early! It proved to be an interesting assignment, dealing with GUIs, which had to be hand coded, although from reading the course forums it seems not everyone is enjoying it…
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