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Andy Baker

MEng Computer Science (Graduated)

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Began Making Real Progress with the Prototype

Ethically sound In the immortal words of Professor Farnsworth: "Good news, everybody...": yep, Ethics approval got given for my questionnaire and it is now out in the wild. So the natural progression has been to get anyone and everyone to fill it in. If I haven't got around to ask you yet, it can be found here. Some people in the computer world appreciate getting Slashdotted. In ECS, one can get Joyced. What is Joyced? The term (coined by Samuel Weston esq. Continue reading →

Deadlines Before Christmas

The oddity of having the third year project progress report deadline before Christmas did have the advantage of pushing the project on to the back burner during the Christmas period. Not having questionnaire data to sift through was something of an issue, but hopefully there will be some movement on that front when everyone including undergraduates have had feet under desks for at least a week. Continue reading →

A story of coffee, pasties and the plan for the future*

A story of coffee, pasties and the plan for the future* It's done! The 'it' being my project progress report. Between 8:30am on Sunday and 1:30pm on Wednesday I clocked up 36 hours of work solely on the assembly of the project report. This involved being rooted to the spot in the undergraduate labs and subject to regular caffeine fixes at predetermined points of the day. For someone who likes to run long distances, there is decidedly not natural and had left me feeling unhealthy. Continue reading →

Snow, ethics and the ability to blag

Snow, ethics and the ability to blag It has been an interesting week which was initially dominated by the snowfall and the disruption that it caused. There was never any question of putting my feet up and using the abject weather conditions as an excuse - a simple case of far too work to do. As I'd be holding back on a day off from work, I had no problem with getting involved in the snowman construction - Man with shovel, will travel - on the Thursday. Continue reading →

A question of ethics

My aim has been to write a blog weekly, but there is a limitation to the amount of verbal output I can achieve in one week (I accept that this may come as a shock to my parents and a fair few people I know). My primary occupation recently has been the development of a questionnaire., as I need first-hand data to draw conclusions in addition to those that I have drawn from research. Naturally this involves humans, and anything that involves humans involves a submission to the ethics committee. Continue reading →

Requirement Evolution

Requirement Evolution My flow of blogs was delayed by another management essay - this time on consultancy and entrepreneurs - but the third-year project still moves on. Having settled more firmly on the intended outcome of my project, I decided it was time to revisit the purpose of the project. Two reasons: 1) In all third-year projects, a second examiner is appointed. Continue reading →

Eureka!

Eureka! I think I may have finally hit one of those eureka moments. Fortunately for the residents of Southampton, I wasn't in the bath at the time and simply just expressed this is as a knowing grin for the rest of the day. For many months, I have had a vague idea of what I wanted to achieve in my third-year project, but was struggling for the academic justification and/or supporting evidence to provide foundation for my work. Continue reading →

On the back burner

On the back burner The advance of my project slowed significantly for week 4. The third-year project accounts for a third of the workload, so there are going to be weeks where very little is done despite the best intentions. That being said, it was possible to continue with a drip-drip approach. For example, I managed to complete an initial project plan in a 40-minute gap squeezed between two lectures. Continue reading →

Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation

Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation Repeating something three times is a method to emphasis heavily à la mode of Tony Blair's 1996 conference speech. Evaluation is very much at the core of the project. It is all about user requirements and fitting them not only well, but very well. In a typical application, one focuses on functional requirements and does the best to fit the non-functional requirements first. Continue reading →

Developing good habits and a plan

Developing good habits and a plan The aspiration for this week is developing the plan. Given the choice of writing about a project and getting on with the grunt work, I very much prefer the latter. In my ideal world I'd have a subordinate who'd handle that for expressing the plan. Projects imply size and therefore large chunks of time. Accountants will say time is money, so it is a sure bet that such a commitment of time will require somebody somewhere to give the OK. Continue reading →