Thinking in Objects

Finally got around to starting the new Object Oriented Programming subject today. I have now selected a text that I hope will work out well. The Object Oriented Programming subject is going to use C# as the implementation language, though it will focus on Object Oriented Programming and design rather than on the language and related libraries...

The book I am going with (and yes it is too late to change now) is "Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities, and Collaborations". I have skimmed over most of it and now read chapter one in detail. It looks really good. The initial focus is on understanding design concepts. I think this is a good start. For the first lecture I have created a "Everything C#" followed by "Building programs with objects" presentations. The first is a bit shock and awe, covering most of the C# syntax, but that needs to be done somewhere and I want to get it out of the way so we can start on the real material. The second presentation looks at what objects are and how we build programs using them. I am happy with how it has turned out so far. Another Beyond Bullet Points success, I hope.

Week one is mostly out of the way. I have found an online tutorial for learning C# so that will be the lab work. The structure for the presentations is out of the way, and I have the text to fill in the design gaps that I am leaving. Its great being able to focus purely on objects knowing that these guys will have some idea about what programs are and their internal workings.

More to come as this unrolls...

MacSaber

The real reason for me getting a MacBook is now out!.

Blogging as a PSD

So you are a uni student now. Why should you blog? Blogging is a great way of letting others know about the cool and interesting stuff that you are doing. Found a cool web site, got some new hardware, done a great assignment, played with some new tech, want to comment on your lectures... All of these are great blog topics.

Keep your blog reasonably professional and it can become part of your online profile that you can use in your resume. Shows employers that you are interested in IT. When you review something new upload a review to your blog and it will also show that you are capable.

Get a blog now, and let others (me included) know about it. I'm ready to subscribe...

The Security Guy

I have attended a number of presentations over the last week, and one has really stuck with me... Unfortunately not because of how good it was. The presentation was about the current state of internet security. The person was really passionate about identity theft, but was way over the top with his message. The result was that anything of value was lost...

My recall of the presentation goes as follows:

You use fly buys - wow... Don't use fly buys
You use internet banking - wow... Don't use internet banking
You don't encrypt your hard drive - wow...
don't leave your computer on...
don't access the internet
You use internet explorer - wow... Don't use IE
You use office - wow don't use office
(now let me go a little further...)
don't use a computer
don't cross the road
don't drive a car
don't carry cash
don't deal with banks
don't deal with people
Become a hermit and remove yourself from society

That is the logical extension of the presentation...

Now unfortunately there was no real advice. There was nothing of value that you could take away from the presentation. In a work environment many people use Office, they are going to need to. Saying don't use office is not going to help. Saying, office has a large number of issues, these are the main ones, this is what you can do to avoid many issues, these are the risks that you cant avoid, etc. That would be useful, you can take something away from the presentation. Just saying 'don't use it' is really a waste of time. I use it every day and I'm still here...

If you give a presentation think about what your audience is taking away. If there is nothing for them they will not be satisfied.

Media Center

I can now say that Media Center has been a real success. Last week Alison said that we should get "something" so that we could connect the TV in the bedroom to the Media Center. Life with standard TV is no longer acceptable. The next part of the conversation went "We should get another 360 for the bedroom", "Yes ... something like that". This comment has been strongly denied :)

I will look into the cost of getting another Media Center extender, but if the cost of getting a 360 drops then that will be the desired device.

Big ticks for media center.

XBox = Sport

Microsoft and NewsCorp are banding together to create a professional gaming league...

"News Corp will aim the big guns of DirecTV, IGN Entertainment and Fox Interactive Media at the project, which is likely to glorify Microsoft Xbox games"

My first step toward becoming a pod person

Well I have asked for a MacBook Pro and even before I get it I'm thinking how I can use Mas OS X rather than windows for a number of things... Get Office for Mac, Free Pascal works, get the mono c# compiler. hmmm so what will I use windows for?

Well I still love Visual Studio. So Parallels can host a virtual PC for me with Windows and I'll run Visual Studio in that as I need to. Thats what I do at the moment on my PC anyway (except with Virtual PC rather than parrellels).

With some luck I'll get approval and start looking at dual booting with Vista soon!

Talents

I have been thinking about people's talents and their study choices.

If you are talented in some area, and you enjoy it, should you seek to advance this or study other areas which are more "in favor" with industry at the time?

As a faculty of ICT we have been blessed with many students lately. Most of these had little talent or interest in ICT. (I'm sure that they all have talents, just not in ICT) These students obviously thought that it was better to study something that is in favor than to study what they are good at and interest in...

In my opinion I would always choose to build upon my talents than to go with current trends.

Having said this, I haven't always done this. I studied a Business/IT degree even though my real talents and interest lay in software development. At the time I didn't realise what I was doing. The degree that I studied came with a scholarship and the money helped make a real difference. I also didn't realise what I was missing. No one ever bothered to say "Hey your good at this. Did you know that there is all this other stuff that you may also be interested in..." I ended up doing well in my degree and getting a job that I hated. Being a proactive person within 6 (painful) months I got myself another scholarship and went back to uni to learn as much of "the other stuff" as I could. The only problem was that I was now doing it on my own. If I had my time again I would choose to do a technical IT degree, and do IBL to get some extra $.

Anyway the question remains, should you follow your interests (and talents), or study areas which have job shortages and hope to build interest and talent? What are your thoughts on this?

Late Weekend

Wow, am I tired. This weekend was a struggle. Its good to be back at work.

Friday night I decided to extend the WinGraph Pascal unit to include the ability to load and draw images on the screen. Finding the code to load bitmaps in the Win32 API is much more difficult than from the .NET RTL. Once I found the code getting it to work didn't take long, though I did make a few really simple mistakes (like passing b then a to a procedure rather than a then b) that took a while to find. Once I got the code basically working I modified the MazeGame and made a little graphical version. Sleep - 1

On Saturday we decided to buy a new TV Tuner and HDD from the Media Center PC. I remember reading somewhere that Media Center can support upto 3 TV tuners, so we planned to get the Fusion Dual tuner and a 300GB HDD. The purchase went ok, and we spent the next part of the day shopping for my brothers birthday present. Got home around 4ish and thought that I would install the HDD and TV Tuner quickly... Big mistake. Basically installed the TV Tuner, and HDD (at the some time) and booting windows failed. My first thoughts were, "damn TV tuner card". Removed the card and tried again. Same problems, wouldn't even post this time. Something did not like the new HDD. Removed the other tuner card, and the wireless network card. Basically the same problem. Got a little further then the machine froze. Change cables, change SATA ports, repeat, repeat, repeat... Anyway, at 6 we went to my brothers party which was great fun. Didn't even think about the PC for a few hours. Got home about midnight and started it again. Thought I had it working, formatted disk (almost 1hr). Then post failed again... Crap. Finally gave up on HDD.

Next trick was to install the tuner. Which turned out to be easy. Plug in, follow instructions. All working in about 1/2 an hour. Go into Media Center, turn them on and get the error "Select one or two tuners only". ARGH... Upto 3 turns out to mean "2" outside US, or "3" (1 digital, 2 analog) in US. Bummer. I could have saved some $$$ and just got another the same as the one I had. So at 3:30 I head off to bed.

Sunday I went to take back the HDD. The guys I got it from check it and it worked ok in their machine. Not much good to me, but they suggested a bios update. So back home update bios. Same problem. Install original drivers, same problem. Install latest drivers, same problem. Back to shop with PC. The technician had told me "Bring it in and I'll have a quick look at it.". When I took it back he wanted $35 to have a quick look at it... Stuff that. There is nothing left for him to change. The customer service rep and technician were quite rude, and unhelpful. I now know why you should use MSY, everyone I know who has had a problem with their equipment has been well treated. Anyway after a little arguing I got them to exchange it for another brand of disk. "There is a 10% repacking fee", fantastic, the customer service here just gets better and better. So I ended up with a 250Gb HDD and a little change + some happy memories. I had always wondered why the shop had so many "Email complaints to ..." signs around the store. Now I know.

Spend the remainder of the day driving around shopping for other things. Finally got home about 6:30pm and installed HDD. Amazing (sarcastic), it worked. First time, no problem. I had some drivers issues with the Tuner card, which I reinstalled. So everything is working well now.

Last thoughts, don't shop anywhere that has a prominent "complaints" signs. You may have to queue for a while, but MSY is worth the wait.