Reaper Blog

Is it just me, or is the time I’m making these posts getting later and later?

Anyway, welcome episode 18! It’s been a decent week. Some things have annoyed me a little this past week at university, but they haven’t been too bad. I’ll just jump straight into it.

Monday

Another early morning for a meeting. This one with our lecturer for the group project (after a week off from it). It went really well. He seemed to like what we had done so far, which is a bonus (in my mind). We pretty much just went through what the system was capable of doing at that point, which (unfortunately) didn’t include the major part of what I’d been working on for it. I wasn’t too fussed, though – as long as what was being shown did actually work. After the meeting, the group went to the BESE lab and basically just went into more coding for the project (sort of). For the most part, two of us were waiting for the other one to finish what he needed to do (while annoying him). That was pretty fun. I also did a bit of work on the first assignment for MWN. Afterwards, we ended up pretty much just chatting. From memory, two of us may have also played some Minecraft on the server for a bit before our lecture. At 4, we went downstairs for HISE. That was a long and complex lecture, but I think I got most of it (at least, I hope I did).

Tuesday

I somehow got up at a reasonable time on Tuesday. It was later than I wanted to be up (had my alarm set for 8, yet continued to sleep until 9:30), but oh well. When I got into university, I started out doing some study for the first quiz for BMS. That lasted for a bit, before a friend turned up and started playing a game (I kept getting up and walking over to watch). I still got a bit of study done though, just not really enough. As the guys in my group started turning up, we all started talking about the quiz and what was likely to be in it. Then, at 2, we went over to the lecture theatre for it. Turned out to be a pretty crappy quiz. A fair bit of it seemed like stuff we hadn’t really been taught, or could be interpreted in a couple of different ways. I tried my best, though. At the end of it, two of us went back to the BESE lab for about an hour. We were going to do some work, but when we got there decided to instead just play Minecraft. It was pretty fun. Mainly just worked on my friend’s tower that he’s building.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, I got up even later than I wanted to (10:30, instead of 8). I don’t know why I slept that late. It didn’t really matter though, since I don’t have anything until 3 on Wednesdays. When I got into university, I pretty much just sat around being lazy until my group for BMS turned up (we’d planned to have a quick meeting). We talked about what each of us needs to do for it, then just chatted about the course (since it’s that bad). A bit before 3, three of us (my project group) left for the lecture. It was just as bad as every other one we’ve been to. In fact, we mostly just worked on  our project. We did occasionally look up and take a bit of notice of what the lecturer was on about. For the most part though, we just coded.

Thursday

The second of my early days for the week. Thursday morning I had my MWN lecture, which was just as good as usual. We started out the lecture reading through other peoples’ first assignments (since that had been due Wednesday night). The lecturer had done that to try and give us an idea of what other peoples’ thoughts were for the questions. I thought it was a good idea for a group thing to do. After that, she got into the actual lecture content. This week it was about the TCP layer of the protocol stack, and how it needs to be changed (very slightly) for wireless networks. It was pretty interesting, and amazing how many different ways there are. After the lecture, I went up to the BESE lab. For the most part, I just played Minecraft. I also talked a little with the 3rd years that were in there about their assignments, and some other random stuff. As the day went on, it started raining (sarcastic – yay!). It actually hailed at one point too, which was a little surprising (I haven’t seen it hail in years). A bit after the hail and rain subsided, I decided to go home (before it got worse).

Round Up

Well, that was an eventful week. I’m surprised I did as much as I have. I’ve somewhat enjoyed the week, though. I particularly like that I’ve brought down my workload a fair bit, so I don’t have as much left to complete. I’m sure that will change within the next week, though. Especially since the first assignment for HISE is due on Friday (and I sort of haven’t started it). Oh well, I’m sure I can get something done for it early in the week.

That ends another week, and episode. Thanks for reading.
Robert

Hey, everyone! Welcome to episode 17. It’s actually been a fairly quiet week, which I wasn’t expecting. Admittedly, I’ve been procrastinating over my assignments, but I have done a little of what I’ve got to do. Anyway, I’ll get straight into the week.

Monday

Since my group had the client meeting on Friday, we didn’t have any meetings this week. So, on Monday, I was able to have a sleep in! Probably wasn’t the best thing to do at the start of the week, but I wasn’t too fussed at the time. The rest of the day I spent just watching YouTube videos or chatted with people until my lecture at 4. The HISE lecture at 4 was decent, once again. It went on longer than I liked, though (almost right up to 6pm). This week was all about risk analysis, which didn’t seem too difficult.

Tuesday

Tuesday was a little like Monday, in that I slept in. I probably slept later than I should have, but oh well. I pretty much spent the whole day doing the same thing I had done on Monday – YouTube videos and chatting with people – even though I had planned to start researching for my other assignments. At 2, I went to the BMS tutorial (not that I really wanted to). We found out about the first class quiz in the next week (this coming week), then the lecturer pretty much just rambled on about other random stuff to do with the course. My friend and I decided to just start working on the second assignment for that course, since that needs to be done by the end of the month. We were able to get our template converted into GoogleDocs and start on section one, which I (at least) was happy with. After the tutorial, we went back to the BESE lab to chat for a bit before going our separate ways (for me, that was home).

Wednesday

I actually got up earlier on Wednesday. Probably still not early enough, but meh. When I got into university, I spent a bit of time doing some research for the first assignment for HISE. Happily, I found a few papers that would be useful. As I found my last paper, I got asked whether I wanted to play some Minecraft (on my server) by my friend. I thought why not, and went on. That took me until just a bit before the BMS lecture at 3. Once again, it was a really bad lecture. So my friend and I just worked on the assignment once again, while also jumping in and asking questions of the lecturer when we heard something that didn’t make sense to us. At the end of the lecture, I just went home. This week was also slot-car racing week. This one was at the track out at Aldinga. It was a pretty fun night (even if a bit cold). I didn’t do too badly in the overall standings – at the end of the handicap heats, I came 10th or 11th out of 14. I came in about the same position in the scratch races as well (I don’t remember what place, though).

Thursday

Yay, early mornings! On Thursday, I had to be up early for the MWN lecture at 9. On the bus in, I bumped into (for the 2nd or 3rd time this semester) a friend from high school. It’s been nice to see her again after so long – we used to only bump into each other randomly every so often before maybe mid second year (a bit over 2 years ago). When we got into the city, we walked and talked about courses, and bus tickets (yeah, we’re that awesome). After going our separate ways (she goes to UniSA), I went up to the BESE lab to check my emails before my lecture (cause I didn’t feel I had much else to do), then went to the lecture. It was an interesting lecture, even though some of the stuff mentioned in it I already somewhat knew. In fact, a lot of the lecture was the class talking in groups about what we already knew about the Data Link Layer (DLL) in the network protocol stack. After the lecture, I went up to meeting people in the BESE lab. For a while, we pretty much just chatted about our courses. We also spent a bit of time watching a video or two (one that I remember is the week’s Extra Credits episode). After some of them left for a presentation that they had to do, I watched another (YouTube) video then started working on what I had to do for the group project. That took me until a bit after the lecturer in charge of clearing out all the old systems from our room came in to do that. A bit later, my friends turned up and we chatted a bit about their presentation. I then decided to go home.

Round Up

Well, I think I’ve proven that my week hasn’t been that busy. It’s been really good, though. I’ve been able to catch up on some of the sleep I’ve missed out on (not all of it, though). I’ve also been able to do some of the work that needs to be done, so I’ve been (at least a little) productive. Probably not the best that Thursday was the day I got most of that work done, but oh well. This coming week I’ll try to make up for it by working on assignments as soon as I get into university.

That ends this episode. Thanks for reading.
Robert

Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode sixteen for this season!

This past week has been just a bit more busy than I was expecting, but I’ve enjoyed it a fair bit. There’s been a first this week – I had university on Friday! So this episode will include all five days of the week. I’ll get right into it.

Monday

Monday started out just like last week – up early for a meeting. This week, the meeting was with the lecturer for the group project course. We had to go through our group process with him, so he has something to mark us on for the semester. Before the meeting, when the guys in my group turned up, we made some final adjustments to the draft for our Software Project Management Plan (SPMP). We didn’t have to do too much though, since it was pretty much all done. In the meeting, our lecturer told us our process (and the SPMP) are pretty good, but that we should add a bit to a couple of sections. We weren’t too surprised by what he asked us to add in. After the meeting, we just went to the BESE lab and chatted (for the most part). We also started working on setting up for an editor subsystem for the project. It was mainly just copying some of the stuff we already had and changing it for the editor stuff. Aside from that, we pretty much just sat around. At 4, we went to our lecture for the day (HISE). That was a pretty decent lecture, once again. This week was more on Hazard analysis. At the start of the lecture, we were given a surprise quiz (sarcastic – yay!). Thankfully, it wasn’t worth anything. Plus, we were given a chance to talk with others around us. The rest of the lecture wasn’t as bad, though.

Tuesday

I somehow managed to sleep in a lot later than I wanted to on Tuesday. By the time I got up, all I had time to do was eat and shower then leave to catch a bus into the city. On the way in, I got a message from a friend asking if I still wanted to catch up for a bit (she forgot to get back to me earlier about it). I said yeah, and met up with her when I got into university (about 20 minutes later). It was good to catch up with her, since we haven’t been able to meet up since the last few weeks of last semester (around 7 weeks ago, from memory). We mostly just chatted about the holidays and start of this semester. We couldn’t talk for too long through, because she had a tutorial (or it may have been a lecture, I can’t remember what exactly was said). I just went to the BESE lab to do a bit of work. That didn’t last long, though. I pretty much just watched YouTube videos until the BMS tutorial at 2. That was another pretty pointless tutorial. For the most part, I just worked on my group’s document for the first assignment with one of the group members. Didn’t really do too much of it, though (since the tutorial is so short). Afterwards, we went back to the BESE lab and did a bit more work on the document, then just went home.

Wednesday

I did the same thing as I did Tuesday morning – woke up later than I wanted to. It didn’t turn out too bad though, because as soon as I turned my phone on I got a message from my university friend saying the WiFi was down. So I decided to stay at home until about 1 (just watched YouTube videos, for the most part), then left for university. When I got to university, I bumped into one of the guys in my BMS group. At that point, I decided to just stand around and chat with him about the assignment, as well as courses that we’re taking. It was good. A bit later, my friend turned up and we chatted a bit about BMS before heading off to the lecture. That was probably a mistake (that we went to the lecture). It was pretty bad – not that we really took notice. For the most part, we just worked on the document once again. We got a fair bit done, which I was happy with. Half way through the lecture, about 1/4 of the students decided to leave for the day (it seemed like). It was pretty funny. The lecturer made it a little funnier (strangely) by pointing it out, and giving a reason why they did it. The reason made sense, but was too much on topic for the course. It annoyed me.

Thursday

The second early morning for the week. When I got into university, I started out by going to the BESE lab and checking my emails (to wake myself up a bit), then went downstairs for my lecture (MWN). It was a fairly interesting lecture once again, mostly about some web technologies and a little about cloud computing. I knew a little about the topic already, though. A bit after the hour mark for the lecture, we were given a small break before another guest lecturer came in. It was a PhD student, who talked about his area of research – the different types of cloud computing services on offer around the internet. I’ve got to admit, it seems like a decently interesting area of research. The student wasn’t the best at explaining his area, though – probably just because he hasn’t done any lecturing before (I’m guessing). After the lecture, I went up to the BESE lab for a while to work on the BMS group assignment (by myself). For the most part, I was able to get my part of the document completed for others to check out. When I finished, I decided to go home.

Friday

Ah, Friday. Probably one of the best days of this week, aside from getting up at 7am. When I got into university, I printed off four copies of the agenda the other two in my group had created (as asked for), then just went through emails and started watching some YouTube videos until one of the guys in the group turned up. We just chatted about the project, and what still needed to be done. A bit before 11, we met up with the lecturer for the group project before we all left for the meeting with our client at Adelaide Airport. That was a pretty awesome meeting! We showed them the current version of the editor subsystem (which still has a fair bit of work left to be done), and got some feedback on it. We also asked them to look into stuff to do with their current website that we will need to know. At the end of the meeting, we came back to the university once again (with our lecturer). At that point, we met up with the other two guys in our BMS group to finish up the document and submit it. Then, some people left. I pretty much just stood around for the next couple of hours chatting with those that stayed back. It was pretty good.

Round Up

Looking back on it, the past week doesn’t seem as busy as I initially said. It was still fairly eventful, even if not all to do with university and assignment work. I enjoyed pretty much every day this past week, which is a first in a while (I think). This coming week, I’ll definitely have to get working on my other assignments, since there’s a lot to be done on them. I’ll try to get another post out during this week sometime, if I can find something interesting to discuss.

Thanks for reading this week’s episode.
Robert

Hello everyone!

Welcome to episode 15. It’s been a tiring and busy week this past week. A heap of my time has been spent on the group project once again, so I’m still not complaining. I’m thinking I should get to work on my other assignments, though. Anyway, lets get into what’s been happening.

Monday

I had a very early morning on Monday – up at 6 to be in for the client meeting at 10:30. Yeah, I was early, but we all sort of wanted to be so that we could make sure everything was ready for the meeting. Turned out we needed to fix a couple of bugs in the code, anyway (which we did). This week’s meeting was really good. The clients really liked what we had gotten done, and had some great ideas for what needed to be changed and rearranged. We also let them know about the site I’d set up (on the same server my site is on) so they could play with the system between meetings. We didn’t have the system running on it at that point, though. So after the meeting, we worked on getting it all set up to run on there and uploaded it for them. Unfortunately, we didn’t realise that it didn’t work (or even look reasonable) in Internet Explorer, so we had to work on fixing that up. Before we could, we had to go to our lecture for the day (HISE). It was a pretty decent lecture once again. At the start of it, I think I surprised the lecturer (in a good way) with my response to a question.

Tuesday

I woke up later than I wanted to on Tuesday, even though I had set my alarm for 7. It didn’t really matter, since I didn’t have anything until around midday, but I still would have liked to have been up earlier. When I got into university, I met up with one of the guys from my group project last year. We chatted for a bit before he left for his project meeting. At that point, I worked on fixing up the Internet Explorer problems from the day before. That wasn’t too difficult in the end. Once I’d fixed it, I just uploaded it to the server and told our client about it so they could take a look. A bit after midday, my group for BMS (which is pretty much just all the software engineers) had a meeting to work out what we’re doing for the assignment, and figure out some questions we wanted to ask during the tutorial. It sort of turned into watching a video of a cat saying “no” over and over (really quite funny). At 1, we left for the tutorial. It was pretty boring, to be honest. Some people had their questions answered, and we realised the lecturer hadn’t fully thought out the ideas behind the assignment. It was actually kind of funny seeing the look on his face when he got the questions from one of the members in my group. After that, three of us went back to the BESE lab to chat for a bit and organise what else we’re doing for both the project and BMS assignment.

Wednesday

Once again, I woke up later than I wanted to. This time was even later, though. Thankfully, once again, I didn’t need to be in too early (only had a lecture at 3). When I got into university, I met up with my friend in the BESE lab only to find out he was “sick” (he didn’t really seem that bad) and wouldn’t be staying for the lecture. We chatted for a bit while he was there, though. After he left, I mainly just watched some YouTube videos until the BMS lecture. That was a pretty bad lecture. I admit, it’s probably really important stuff. But it wasn’t that interesting and didn’t keep my attention. I was considering leaving early, but ended up just staying for the whole thing. After getting home, I had my slot car racing (after a rushed dinner). This week was a fun night, which was (as the name of it may suggest) really fun! The first set of races we raced some olden-style F1s, with a rule of that if your car comes out of the slot twice, you’re out of the race. The second set of heats was Mini Coopers in the dark. That was really fun! The final set of heats was some GT40s. I really liked racing them, because they were really fast and smooth. I’m considering getting myself one, once I’ve saved up enough. Once I got home from the racing, I checked up on the state of release for Minecraft 1.3. Turned out it got released just as I was checking, so I quickly updated the server.

Thursday

Yet another early morning. This time, for a lecture. It was a fairly interesting one, mainly on application design for mobile and wireless networks. About three quarters of the way through the lecture, we had a guest come in to talk to us about research. It didn’t really interest me, but oh well. After the lecture, I went to the BESE lab and did some work on the group project, as well as watched YouTube videos. A few hours later, I decided to just leave. There wasn’t really much point in me staying, since I could do the same stuff at home.

Round Up

And that ends the second week of semester 2. Looking back, it was a pretty hectic week, even if I mainly only worked on one or two different things. I’m happy about that, though – didn’t have to keep changing what I had my mind on. This coming week looks to be just as busy, if not a little more (since I’ll need to do some work on other assignments).

Thanks for reading this week’s episode.
Robert