Getting Ready for the Exam Period

I’m writing this in the middle of the Easter break. The draft timetable has come out and suddenly it’s evident that the end of the academic year is approaching quick. In fact, I needed to remind myself it was April. The exam period begins at the end of May. As with all exam periods, this could be a little stressful, so I intend on getting the work in over Easter and hopefully not finish the term in a mad rush. Campus is relatively quiet as you would expect. This is a double edged sword as the social scene is naturally a little quiet. On the other hand, this week has been great work wise and I’m plugging on nicely with the work outstanding.

It has been a marked improvement on last week where I got hold of a new machine and started to tinker – sorry, “configure” – said machine. As this involved building large chunks of an operating system from source code, there are plenty of puzzles to be had. A lot of what was covered in two modules were put to good use or could be applied. For example, since only a very basic text editor exists in the environment all the little bits of shell scripting from System Administration Tools and Techniques came in handy and having done a bit of background reading from Computer Systems and Architecture, the options in the Linux Kernel make a little more sense.

For the non-technically obsessed amongst you, this is the equivalent of solving the crossword in the Times, but it can take a little longer. Talking of newspaper crosswords, this may well have been where our lecturer for Advance Programming got the idea for the second coursework in that subject, which got set before the break up of term. Yes, its a crossword application. It is one of those nice visual pieces of work that makes you think about font rendering, mouse event and keyboard events. It is also something you can show to friends and family without the need to explain the theory of complex numbers*. That being said, the spec does outline what the definition of a crossword. Seems odd, how could you not know what a crossword is? Then I stop to remember the international village that the University is part of. That being said, I only just got around to familarising myself to the very British creation that is Monty Python. Now I tell you this parrot is dead…

* The first coursework involved rendering a fractal, which was visually pleasing. However, it did involve absorbing several wikipedia articles to get to grips with.