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Inheritance Makes My Brain Hurt

Miriam2 Comments

The second programming assignment of the year has rolled around and this time inheritance is the name of the game. Inheritance is one of those things that’s lovely in theory but really hard to implement properly particularly when you get a 2 hr lecture and you’re then expected to write a program involving inheritance, polymorphism and singleton classes without any satisfactory explanation of what it is in the first place. In any case I’m finally starting to get my head around it and once I confer with Peter the resident programming genius at uni I’ll get stuck into it and start doing some proper coding.

In other news I reinstalled windows yesterday so now my computer is lovely and fast and ready for Office 2007 Ultimate, which I purchased for the very reasonable price of $25 for a 1 year subscription. The idea there is that if I have the same puter a year from now I’ll spend the $50 to upgrade to perpetual and if I haven’t I’m $50 better off. I know there has been some Office 2007 bashing going on recently but I have a really very slow computer and I haven’t really noticed any major problems. So, to all of you geeks with your newfandangled 1GB RAM, STOP WHINEGING!!! I’m stuck with 512MB and you don’t hear me complaining about the amount of time things take to load. Besides it’s pretty… Surely you can forgive a little bit of lag for the prettiness?!?

Exams will be rolling by in just over a week; but fortunately I seem to be getting more, rather then less confidant about the exams as they approach. Every time I do tute questions these days I realize that I know way more about the subjects than I thought I did. I guess that whilst the exams are a lot closer to the semester this year than normal due to Swinburne abolishing SWOT VAC, I am also far more prepared than I might normally be at this stage. I’ve made a huge effort to try and force myself to pay attention this semester and clearly my new rather antisocial habit of sitting right up the front of the lectures away from my friends is starting to pay off.

I still haven’t had word about IBL, but neither has anyone else so I’m not worried yet.

The End of Semester

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The end of semester is approaching and it’s been a busy one let me tell you! My first freak-out cry was in week two of semester and the workload hasn’t really lightened up since. Now there’s a week and a bit left before exams start and after that a short break and then… I actually have no idea what’s happening after that, and its kinda exciting.

IBL (Industry Based Learning) is a program which gives students an opportunity to get a year of full time work experience halfway through their course. Officially I’m doing my IBL year starting July; however, I’ve only applied for one job. So, either I get the job of my dreams next semester and off to work I go, or I get 8 weeks holiday and then I’m back at uni for another semester. The way I figure it if I don’t get the placement I want this year I can always do IBL starting January instead and cast a wider net then.

I’ve been totally uninspired with my writing recently. I guess its a combination of stress, tiredness and the constant feeling in the back of my mind that I have something more important to do. So I apologize for the drop in writing frequency and hopefully I’ll think of something witty, imaginative or insightful to say soon.

A Year of Blogging

Miriam1 Comment

When I looked at the date the other day, I was rather startled to discover that it was April. Yes, I know a little behind the curveball; but nevertheless, In my state of confusion, you know ‘where did the year go,’ ‘what has it amounted to’ that sort of thing, I had a little look through my archives and discovered that today is my blogs one year anniversary. Hooray!

I started out blogging intending to post my wisdom (check), recipes?!? and random thoughts (double check). I really had no idea what blogging would amount to. I was only doing it because Cam and Rich made me feel guilty in their rant about how everyone should have a blog, contribution to society etc. Now, I’m involved in a community. A community which is full of intelligent, articulate and altogether wonderful people.

I’m more confident, I’m more aware of current affairs, my writing skills haven’t diminished quite as much as they would have, had I not been writing all this time.

So thankyou to everyone for putting up with the less than consistent style and content of my writing. Thanks to everyone who commented, or gave me advice. Thanks particularly to Cam and Rich for getting me into this, and to Urbaer, Scienta, and everyone else who have dropped the occasional comment.

MODM

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Its been a couple of days and the more cohesive post that I promised hasn’t surfaced; however, Colin and I have been having a couple of chats about MODM (Melbourne Online Digital Media) and where it could go so there is potential for some form of useful contribution in the future.

Cam, was clearly going to a different party to the one I was… Or perhaps it’s just that my poor mind (which I must admit is fairly suggestible) was so shocked by what was going on around me that it just blocked it out and made something else up to fill the gap.
btw Cam, Colin and I are not ‘just bloggers’, firstly Colin isn’t a blogger at all; more importantly we have a couple of projects in the works, ready to get properly started as soon as this confounded university semester is finished.

The blogging is just an outlet for my otherwise completely unutilised writing skills which, interestingly, seem to be diminishing at rate which is inversely proportional to the frequency at which I read Douglas Adams. Who would have thought that everything I know about writing I learned from HHGG.

Back on topic, I think there is some real potential for a bit of useful networking, support, advice etc with this MODM community. I look forward to seeing where we take it in the future.