Gulp

Just looked at the date on the last blog and realised how quickly time had gone. What has happened inbetween, well I have more or less kept up with all the blogs I'm subscribed to, some of them have amazed me in the depth of knowledge that their author's display.

I have finally received my graduate as a 2:1 with honours so I am happy. I have also signed up for one of the earlier chapters dealing with Operators. Since I have a week off next week I will be making a start tomorrow. I have been trying to get my hand it with writing, after a long break I have been writing poetry again and finally started on the book I meant to write 15 years ago. Now all I hope is that my new found enthusiasm survives into the new year. :)

By the way congratulations to everyone else who has graduated this year and an earlier happy new year to everyone.

Book Arrived

Finally my book has arrived so I like many others am rejoicing. Now to sit down and start reading then play catchup with people like jannetta and mike ;). Well I won't get too ambitious.

Book on the Way

Email from Waterstones today the book is in the post, finally I can play catch up. For some reason I don't get on well with PDF documents. I prefer a real book any day.

Head Scratching

Not much time to play so far, had all the family over for a house warming this weekend. Tried to write a program that altered the colour of a peice of text based on mouse movements, only very limited success, for some reason code that looked like it should work didn't. I think I need to go back and start from the beginning, drawing seems easy enough, but some other areas are not so easy.

Found a website with some nice examples on today though. http://www.sjeiti.com/?page_id=6

Thank you for your recent order at Waterstones.com.
Unfortunately the items below are not currently in stock in our warehouse, so we have placed an order with the publisher.
The items are:
IRA GREENBERG Foundation Processing

I wonder if Waterstones will place a bulk order with the publishers to keep up with unprecedented demand?

On Order

My gift card arrived 10 minutes ago and I've already used it at Waterstones.com. The power of the Internet is amazing sometimes, no need to drive for 30 minutes to my nearest branch to find the book is out of stock just sit at home and order. It was also one of the most pain free experiences for awhile, I expected problems with processing the gift card, but there were none.

The only thing is the quoted 2-3 weeks delivery time, I wonder how accurate that is. I blame all those other chunk writers getting there before me. So now to wait and continue playing (or studying as I tell my wife).

No point starting a blog and leaving it empty

Like many of the other blogs in this project my first post will be an introduction to me. I have just finished M450 which was a grueling experience. I thought that as soon as I finish the project and wait to hear whether I achieved the BSc (Hons) I was going for that I would take a break from the OU. Already though my brains has developed an I can't scratch. I find myself looking at the prospectus of courses and thinking what if?

Fortunately I have just been tossed a temporary lifeline. I received an email about the mass writing project, somehow I had missed the article in sesame. Immediately I thought I am interested in this. I have always had dreams of writing, for the last 18 years I have been writing 3 different books in my head, occasionally I put some of paper, but the stories don't flow the same way.

Last year I started writing an open source book on C++ programming which is half finished and was put on hold since it took time from M450. Maybe soon I will get back to it. So this project immediately appealed to me I have a lot of experience with C++ and object oriented programming through this. My Java is more limited, I have used it during a couple of courses but somehow I can't get the same feel with it as C++.

I have looked at the Processing ide and already I am amazed by the power in such an unassuming package, I hadn't even heard of it before, but it takes me back to programming in basic, a couple of lines of code and you can get something up on screen. Even better you can then export this to embed in a web page. I am going to enjoy playing with this.

Already I have written more then I expected, I hope it is this easy for the project itself.