Thursday, October 30, 2008



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).

Sunday, October 26, 2008

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.