The results of last term’s modules were released today – a day into the first teaching week of this term. They are graphed here.

The grade bands are defined in % as follows:

In Computer Systems (half-module) and Software Development 1 (full module) I scored D4, while in Database Systems (half module) I scored D3. The maximum possible marks for these scores are shown on the graph in mid-grey while the minimum marks are shown in dark grey. However, since you either pass or fail a module, I have 40 of the 180 credits needed to gain my MSc. I’m fairly pleased.

I’m now tackling the fun and games of object-oriented programming and delving into things such as this (ugh!)

I like sprouts. I like curry. So what could be better than combining the two?

I adapted this recipe slightly. If you make it, don’t believe ‘serves 4-6’ – it makes enough for two people at the most. So I served it with brown rice and baked beans for that extra ‘clearacil’ effect – highly enjoyable on a blustery cold evening.

My version
150g Brussel sprouts, cut into quarters or mini sprouts cut in half
55g red lentils, these will be yellow in colour as they are shelled
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 clove garlic, crushed
2cm/1in ginger, crushed
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 tsp olive oil
1/4 tsp salt, adjust to taste
1 small tomato, finely diced

1. Part-cook the lentils in about their own volume of boiling water until they begin to soften.
2. Heat the oil in a medium pan, add the cumin seeds and cook for 30 seconds.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and add garlic, ginger and chillies. Stir this very quickly, as you don’t want it to burn, add lentils, turmeric, salt and 150ml of warm water.
4. Bring to the boil, cover and cook for 10 minutes on a gentle simmer. Do not let the water reduce by more than a third of the original quantity. (If it does add more warm water.)
5. Check that the lentils are cooked to a tasty mush. Then add the sprouts and 50ml of warm water.
6. Stir and check seasoning, cover and cook for 5 minutes on a medium heat, stirring occasionally.
7. The sprouts should still have a little crunch to them when the dish is cooked. Serve and sprinkle with chopped tomatoes

I plan to cook this version tomorrow.

You may recall a post in which I reported some issues with an exam. I saw the lecturer in charge of this module yesterday. He agreed that the exam had the issues I described, apologised for them and even thanked me for bringing the issues to his attention. I have no doubt he’ll take whatever action is needed to minimise the chances of these issues recurring.

End of problem, as far as I’m concerned.

Reading BBC news while reinstalling Hexie as a triple-boot machine (MacOS, WinXP and Ubuntu Linux)…

Scotland the brave!

Recently a former colleague mentioned going to a ‘spin’ class. I asked for an explanation and was told ‘Spin is a gym class designed by the devil. It involves cycling uphill for an hour to hard-core dance music’.

How could I resist this? Cycling to music but without headphones, no traffic, no weather and above all without the potholes and cobbles that make cycling in Edinburgh such a pain in the rims* and ringpiece**.

I couldn’t join the class my colleague goes to – it’s only for alumni of Ediburgh’s other university. However, Google found Lifescycle. I went to my first session this evening – it was all I’d hoped for and more: very friendly and welcoming, obviously knowledgable and committed instructors, yet with a slightly hippie/ just be/listen to your body ethos. I’d guess that the mean age of the class was around 25, while the instructor was probably about 40. I couldn’t keep up with all of the standing cycling (adjusting to and from standing on a fixed-wheel bike requires a knack which I’ll take a while to acquire anyway) and I imagine my ‘velocity’ was only about half of that managed by the experienced spinners around me but I’m pleased that I kept going, cranking up the resistance as we came to ‘hills’ and pushed hard against ‘headwinds’.

I think the musical/emotional highlight was pushing hard, and then harder, and then harder still along to Comfortably Numb. Along with millions of others, this song almost always gets me, takes me to a much darker and unhappier place – and yet somehow it’s cleansing. Maybe the cleansing effect is a byproduct of nostalgia, coupled with the knowledge that I am much happier (or possibly just more complacent) than I was in previous years. Whatever, allied with intense physical effort, I could just lose myself in the experience – an entirely sober inebriation!

The comedown was realising that that the session was only half-done! However, I kept going and I’m pleased I did so. I’m told I cycled about 30 km in the hour-long session.

Oh, and then I had this fun cycle back in the dark. I had thought that Leith Walk would defeat me or that Picardy Place roundabout would be impossible. (It used to be too much for me when we lived in Brunswick Road.) However, I managed this largely uphill 2·3 mile cycle in about 18 minutes.)

My legs are going to hate me tomorrow but I’m so looking forward to the next session.

* Not rude – see here
** OK, that one was rude.

When installing an OS or any other bit of software from a physical medium, it’s very likely that the installation will be out of date. For example, the installer DVD for Iggy (my Mac Pro) installs version 10·6·3, while the latest version of ‘Snow Leopard’ is 10·6·8.

Apple seems to handle this sensibly – software update offers a ‘combo update’ that upgrades in one go from whatever version of the OS you’ve installed straight up to the latest in that family. However, if you want, you can download the updates from 10·x·y to 10·x·y+1, 10·x·y+1 to 10·x·y+2, etc and install them one after another. This can occasionally be useful. For example, 10·6·8 causes kernel panics on my Hackintoshed netbook so I keep it at 1·6·7.

I’ve just installed a VM for Windows Vista, and am part-way through installing a VM for Windows XP Pro on Iggy, so that I can try to reproduce any problems my family might have with their Windows boxen, while still being able the smooth VNC facilities built into MacOS to take over the PCs.

Firstly, credit to Sun/Oracle for VirtualBox – their hypervisor ‘just works’, is free and has great documentation.

Secondly, no I don’t want to use Apple’s BootCamp to choose to install Windows as a separate bootable OS:

• I want to be able to use Windows and MacOS at the same time.
• It seems you can’t have more than one instance of Windows on the same physical hard disk, even if it’s partitioned into several logical hard disks.To get around that, and to prevent any nasty effects on my MacOS boot disk, I installed Windows XP on a different hard disk. (Iggy has room for 4 physical hard disks.) The only way I could get Iggy to stop booting into Windows when I wanted to return to MacOS was to
  • shut Iggy down
  • pull the Windows HD
  • start from the MacOS installer disk and use it to choose Iggy’s MacOS startup disk.

   

It seems that the EFI boot-chooser didn’t just work – no thanks for those rather stressful minutes Steve. (Iggy predates Tim’s promotion to CEO and Steve’s promotion to glory.)

So on to the Windows way: having installed Vista, I started on the long update process. I’m absolutely happy that Microsoft puts out so many security updates. My ire here is for the arses who make this necessary.

However, I’m flabbergasted and ready to shove excretia through Steve Ballmer’s letterbox because, after an age of downloading and installing updates to the original installation of Vista, the update system offered Service Pack 1 ‘including all the updates previously installed’. Same again with Service Pack 2. Same again with the different versions of Internet Explorer. For the love of wasted bandwidth WHY? Why not notice that my installation is the original version of Vista, then offer to go straight to Service Pack 2, then offer the security updates that postdate SP2, then offer the latest version of IE rather than having to download and install every version from 6 through to 9?

Even more galling, the update for my copy of MS Office went straight for Service Pack 3, so it’s not as if Microsoft don’t get the ‘go straight to the current version’ idea. Do they have shares in my broadband provider? Honk tweet gibber!

Is there a way around this day-long update horror for when the VMs become corrupted? (Yes, I will take snapshots and other backups of the VMs…)

… this!

Just out of the Computer Systems exam which could have raised my grade.

While the questions on Architecture and OSes were on topics and at levels on par with the course and previous exams (and I didn’t need to attempt them because I have already passed these blocks), the questions on Networking were either on topics we hadn’t covered. (Supernetting? Anycast? Static versus dynamic routing? No recall these being even mentioned) or asked for more depth than had been covered or even hinted at.

During the teaching sessions, there was no mention of further reading being needed: in fact the lecturer for this block had said everything we needed was in his handouts. It was not. In fact, I had to do a lot of extra reading just to begin to comprehend the gaps in his handouts. (Of course, reading around a subject per se is a good thing.)

It would have been more productive to stay in bed today and enter pictures of my bits in Keith Richards lookalike competitions. Fumingly angry again.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

At 13:12 today I was informed that I’d got 26 out of 30 for last Friday’s exam. This is 87%. It’s short of what I had expected once I’d sat the exam (though much higher than I thought I’d achieve before the exam started) and definitely short of what I want to achieve (90% or more in each exam). My other marks are 28/30 and 29·5/30, so while I’ve achieved 93% overall so far, I’ve not reached my self-imposed target so I want to achieve at least 27/30 tomorrow.

Another target is to get into the top marks band (95 to 100%). To do this, I’d need to achieve at least 28/30 tomorrow.

Meanwhile here’s my current marks status.

Am I too hard on myself? You betcha!

<Edit>
No, Sarah Palin doesn’t make me hard!
</Edit>

I’m somewhat annoyed that it’s taken so long for last week’s marks to be sent out – I’m at home revising when I could be at an interesting lecture on green IT.

I’ve just received my mark for the classwork which accounts for 90% of the Software Development module. You can see it here.

You can obtain or see my original code

• as a Word doc,
• as an RTF file,
• as a PDF,
• as a text file
• and as the original source file.

Those of you who fly Macs should be able to download and run the binary code while others may be able to download and run the .jar file I’ve just created.

You can see my write-up here.

So I now have received my results for approximately 17% of my MSc, and have an average score of about 92·9%, as shown here.

However, I’m still waiting for the result of last Friday’s class test for the Networking block of the Computer Systems module. I was told we would get our marks today but have seen nothing yet. So I may have to sit the full exam this Friday and hence not be able to meet up with former colleagues tomorrow evening. You may recall my dissatisfaction with the running of this exam. Bah and double bah!

Also, I will not receive the result from yesterday’s Database Systems exam until 24th January 2012. I believe this is because the exam board doesn’t ratify marks until 19 January. Bah a third time.