Settling in

Have been getting a little behind with things lately as the added complication of moving house means I don't have my computer with me yet, so everything is being done either at work or on my laptop. In the Databases course there were 6 seperate assignments to do for today, thankfully its been a quiet week at work and I got all the exercises done there (as it would have been very frustrating to try to do them with one small screen) and then earlier today I went over the other two sebjects that just had quizzes to do, and got those sorted. Things calm down from this point apparently, and certainly I only have one assignment due next weekend, so thats a significant drop!

In C# I completed my hangman game, and was given a task of making a calculator which was certainly not seeming hugely complex in the time I put into it (about half an hour or so, and had all the buttons laid out, the interface displaying and addition calculations working, and the concept for all the rest). I've installed VS express onto my work computer so now I can do stuff there if I am bored, but it feels odd to be doing it there, which is strange as watching the database videos doesn't - I think its that its not overly strange for me to be watching a video or fiddling with a webpage, but programming in visual studio is not really in my standard job description - plus I feel it looks like I'm doing really basic stuff, which is hardly suprising given I am, but it still makes me feel a bit bad.

There is rumour of someone at work doing some programming training. This sounds very interesting. Teho has suggested I ask Alex to give me some tutoring as he reckons Alex would enjoy teaching someone. I'm a little nervous of the prospect, though it would really be nice to get some one to one teaching that ran at my speed.

I've signed up to do another course that Stamford are running on Human-Computer Interaction which starts in January. I was considering the CompSci 101, but watching the video it looks a little too basic for me, though I guess I could go along with it anyway to round off anything I don't know and to get the little statement at the end. Hmm, maybe. By then I'll have finished both my current courses so should have the time.

At work I'm involved in a project to change around quite a big part of the renewals process, which looks very interesting and its nice that Angus trusts me to make sure it works as it should. Next week is Down Tools Week and apparently one of the guys is supposed to be making a tool similar in function to my calculator for co-terming, but better done and built to intergrate with the CRM, which is way beyond my skill level. Simon says he is keen for me to be involved with this, which should be interesting - I wanted to get involved with a DTW project but didn't know how I could be of use to anyone, but this has potential :)

I'm still moving things over from my old flat to my new house. So far sharing seems to be working out well, and I think it will only get better once we have more than just our bedrooms furnished. Much easier to be social when we have a properly equipped lounge. I plan to get the sofas later this week, and TV etc tomorrow, so things will be rather more comfy here by next weekend.

My (ex) father in law brought down some stuff that had been left at my mother in laws house today, including my wedding dress. It was very tempting to put it on and flounce around in it all day.

Developments

Well, I got the other assignment completed relatively swiftly - this was looking at modify statements, so it was more awkward to try to feel my way through the problem (only one was complex, the other was very simple) due to the way the assessment software is designed, but I got there. I've found the next section is based off some videos that have been brought forward in the running schedule from last time, so its new work for me. I've now watched 3 out of 5 of the videos, and done one of the quizzes (out of 3 that are due in this weekend, though I want to go through it again as I only scored 6 out of 8). This weekend is the mid term exam, but its only covering up to what I am working on now, so I shouldn't have to work overly hard, though a review before sitting the test may be wise.

Regarding the C#, we started working with GUI functions last week, which went well. I remain unconvinced about the technical skill of the teacher, given she was telling me I would need some ghastly combination of Ifs and loops to work with 3 non-exclusive checkboxes, when in fact all I required was a simple XOR on each one to reverse its value. I dread to think how long the coding would have taken had I tried to work it with loops rather than thinking 'surely there is an easier way' and hitting google. She freely admits to basically having no time for this course and finding exercises for us online, so its not exactly filling me with confidence.

I've been watching a few videos on MDX and DAX from talks that were done at various SQL Bits events, which have been very informative and have actually given me a much clearer idea of what the languages actually do. I've still got a lot to learn, but I think now I know what value there really is to learning it, and have come concept of what the two each do, and why there are two of them, when they do very similar things.

In other news, things are going to be even busier for me soon, as to add to all this learning I am now moving house too. By this time next month everything should be done, but for now things are going to be a bit manic. Not the best time for the hassle, to be fair, but what can you do.

Oh, and I gave up on the wheat thing. I put on weight, rather than lost it, and didn't feel any different. I also concluded I rather like an awful lot of wheat products so it would have had to do something pretty damn amazing, and it wasn't.