DJ's Blog

Well thats a wrap

2009-07-01T21:17:00.000-07:00

So exams are done and dusted, project handed up and I have now vacated the country for a while. lol. Chicago rocks !!! I love it here. Final results have come back and I am so happy to announce *drum roll please* I have achieved a 2.1 degree in computer science.

College was one of the most challenging endevers I have ever took on and I am proud of myself for getting through it. But I wouldn't have been able to tackle it on my own. Without my friends and family I would not have been able to see it through. Without Martin Murphy I probably would have given up in first year so thank you Martin for going through it with me and encouraging me to push on.

Katie, Edel, Dani, Jon, Neil C, Neil G and Donal, what would i have done without you guys. You are the most brilliant group of people I have ever met. Throughout the four years, we have been through the good and bad times together, supporting and there for eachother through it all.

Jon, you I think had a significant affect on me through college. There were times after Martin dropped out that I felt a bit out of place and I felt that I didn't belong. But when you came into the class all that changed. Thank you Jon for bringing cheer into college every day :)

My family were there for me every step of the way. The drive to make them proud kept me from trailing away from what I wanted to achieve with the studies on my life. Thank you for being supportive, understanding and for being there for me.

Brian, you gave me inspiration, support, a warm bed :) , guidence and for that I could not thank you enough. But most of all, Brian gave me a warm, loving and caring heart. He gave me currage to be strong and a shoulder to cry on when it would all go wrong. I love you Brian. You are the most wonderful person ever to have come into my life and I could never let you go. You mean the world to me.

So thats it. No more lectures in DIT. I have survived computer science in DIT. We should not only get a degree certificate, we shuld be getting a friggin medal.

Congrats to all the gang :) I love you guys and you are the bestest friends anyone could ask for.

Cher has competition!

2009-03-17T16:53:00.001-07:00

take out the claws cher, you'll have to claw onto your number 1 spot or these guys will take it!

Sleeping beauty

2009-03-17T16:44:00.001-07:00

Cher catches some z's after a night on the town. Her B.ball friends have turned her into a party animal. Ha

Cher stuck for words.

2009-02-26T02:42:00.001-08:00

The lab had enough of her catchy music and lyrics and had to restrain her from further performances!

Boggers and Bloggers

2009-02-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

One of the best weekends away I have ever had. Damien Mulley, you are a legend !! Who would of thought that an event held in Cork (a place of which I had usually disliked in the past) would change my perspective. The Irish Blog Awards 2009 rocked!

To all the bloggers and friends and friends of friends of damien, I would like go give ya's a big thanks for making the night so much fun. You guys are awesome. Oh and Charles, get well soon. hahahahaa

ps. I still think the Cork accents are hilarious !!

college work update

2009-02-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

WOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!! I PASSED MY EXAMS !!! And done a good job of it too :) Since the exams I have been working hard on the coding part of my assignment. I started by implementing my database design into MySQL and creating all the tables etc. MySQL was installed on my laptop and so was ApacheTomcat and then classpath to all the necessary directories was set up in the environment variables.

I started coding the project in servlets and that was going fine only that it was taking a while to get the pages to the screen. Because if this I looked into other ways I could do this and was then informed about jps. I picked up a few books from the library and went through tutorials online and now I am planning to use servlets and jsp. That way my web pages can be mostly done in jsp which should be a bit faster to develop and with the use of servlets I will be able to add more functionality.

During the coding of the jsp I needed to connect with the mySQL database that I had setup only to realise that the database is completely wrong and had to be redesigned correctly. This took some time and effort but now it is at a point where I am fully satisfied with it. Originally I was not able to create users and supervisor because of constraints that had been created due to the wrong implementation of relationships and attributes, but now this has been rectified.

So up to now the coding I have achieved is:

• database can be populated with users
• students and supervisor details can be inserted
• a functional sign in page with error checking
• access to database for users existence
• access and displays students details on a jsp
• jsp can see what type of user they are and direct them to either the studentPage or supervisorPage

I think that’s it up to now. The most frustrating part of it all was the database as it took a couple of days to finalise. Even trying to get a GUI to enable me to control the database tables etc was an annoyance as most of them failed to deliver a proper service. But I am now using SQLyog Enterprise which I am happy to say that I haven't had any problems with yet :D

Nearing end of exams

2009-01-19T06:43:00.000-08:00

So it's coming up to the end of the exams now. Tomorrow is the last exam for semister one and it's going to be nasty. Advanced databases. Then on monday and tuesdayh of next week we will be doing presentations of our final year projects so far. Must get some presentation work done for it soon lol.
So looking back on my first semister of 4th year what would I have done differently? ..... The question should really be that if we had more time how would I have spent it. There was just not enough hours in the day for classes, assignments, project work, study and sleep. And with the computer science course of DIT being so super unorganised, it's shocking that noone of the class (the I know off) have packed it in or just gone crazy. If any of my friends were to tell me that they were thinking of going to DIT to study computer science I would try to steer them away from the place because it is so disfunctional.

Come on tomorrow 3pm !! Exams will be over for a few months and we really need a drink !

Cher the vcr repair woman.

2009-01-16T07:04:00.001-08:00

Can she fix it? According to katies relatives she fixes vcr's in college lol. Bless their cotton socks

CherWatch update

2009-01-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

she has done it again. Finding a new way to reinvent herself, cher is seen here with cock on her face. This is the outcome of a very bored dj and katie in the dit library trying to study. Studying in Kevin st library is so awful. I put it down to the dudes from the engineering school with their loud deep voices and complete lack of awareness of others around them.

Step 2 j1

2009-01-08T15:32:00.001-08:00

Spotted. Katie and edel having a moment of celebration as they leave the booking agents. Thats step 2 completed, now lets hope the Americans will will like us :)

Born (to live in) the usa !

2009-01-06T01:41:00.001-08:00

that right people. America here we come. The geeks for computer science are seen here (I'm taking the picture) have made their first steps toward living in America. The medical number of d.i.t. geeks of computer science making the note is now up to 6 with a possible 7th member to visit for a month.

Santa clause is coming to town.

2008-12-17T03:01:00.001-08:00

You better watch out katie Santa is coming and is dancing on the streets of Dublin. Watch out when shopping on grafton street katie or he'll get ya!

Students are reminded to change their undies?

2008-12-16T06:52:00.001-08:00

need students away from their mammys have to be reminded to change their underwear regularly? Yes apparently according to this piece of work that can be found on the back of the door in the make toilets on the first floor in Kevin's st.

Where is my nose?

2008-12-10T11:02:00.001-08:00

looks like someone is in trouble. Mark has lost his nose. It was last seen in Kevin street room 117 computer lab. If there are any sighting of the nose please contact us!

Cher, the nativity

2008-12-10T10:46:00.001-08:00

she's the woman that keeps on coming. Cher's new number 70 album is the worst Christmas album ever! This is sad news for all her fans but they remain hopeful that she will pull another hit for the Christmas no1 position. come on cher- you can do it!

Cher watch!

2008-12-10T06:26:00.001-08:00

cher has once again been spotted in the grounds of dit Kevin street. This time she was being escorted by two other mystery muscular men? Maybe this could be the start of the new cher band? Stay tuned for more

The beat goes on

2008-12-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

Interim Interim Interim
Why won't this year end already !!! So much to do, so little time and very little patience left.
My supervisor doesn't think the interim report is that important, which is good ... in a way that i don't need to be worried all that much about it. But is that wise? After all it is worth 10% at the end of the day.
The last meeting I had with Oliver, I had to follow him on his adventures to the office on the first floor of the annex building. About 20 of more minutes of my time was wasted as he stopped to chat with various people along the way and once he reached his destination i was hanging outside the office for him to come back out. I felt like a dog that had been tied up outside a shop and left there while their owner went in for their daily groceries.
At this point I was already in full panic mode and was trying to get presentations, assignments and the interim report done. WTF people !!! Oliver informed me that they only had the staff meeting with damian gordon last week?Why only last week?! Some supervisors were actually surprised about the due date of the interim report. This course has to be the most badly organised course in DIT. It's ridiculous !

distributed systems meltdown

2008-11-18T09:29:00.000-08:00

So i am currently working on my distributed systems assignment which is a complete disaster !!! I find a problem as soon as i fix one. gur !!! I have to hand in my Advanced Internet development assignment tomorrow. I flew through that one and was able to help others too which gave me a confidence boost overall. But that still didn't stop me from crying on my way home last night. Like what was that about. haahaa. went to pizza hut with Brian then, he thought it would cheer me up ..... it did :)

As for the project work, managed to attend a meeting with Pat Browne and he thought my idea was great. He emailed to me a project dissertation that was done before by one of his evening course students that may have some reliance to mine which he went through. There seems to be good information there for my research.

I also had a meeting with Damian Gordon. This one was recorded so that i wouldn't miss any important info that he may have to share. This meeting was extremely usefully as i had a planned set of questions in which to ask him and his answers were very in depth. He even gave me ideas for future work that my be done with the project.

my meeting with Oliver went well this week. He can see that i am very interested in getting the work done ("you seem to have good work ethics, have you always been like that "). The truth of the matter is that i don't want to be here next year so if i do it well first time round hopefully that won't happen lol.

So yesterday i was at my locker and Oliver came out of his office and didn't notice me. I said hello to him and his reply was "David isn't it. There was something i was to tell you ......hmmm.... eh .... what was it now ....... Oh yea. When is out next meeting."
I replied:"Friday, 5:00pm "
Oliver: "yea, i'm not going to be around...... i'm going to Galway".

meeting with damian burke 6th nov

2008-11-08T02:19:00.000-08:00

After my meeting with Oliver i was to set up meetings with Damian Burke, Damian Gordon and Pat Browne. Unfortunately, it was review week and during that time I was unable to get in contact with them. This week i managed to arrange a meeting with Damian Burke.

I gave him a copy of my draft proposal and asked him to have a read through it and see if he had any ideas of any criticism to add. Damian was very helpful with this as he went through my proposal and was able to criticize my proposal in a constructive manner which will help me develop a sound proposal. He gave me ideas on research that could be done and also come up with an idea of incorporating a gant chart. This is a chart in with is visually informs the duration of tasks and can help with the over allocation of time etc ..

On Friday I was able to get a chance to talk to Damian Gordon after my efforts of getting in contact with him via email had failed. I explained to him that due to him being our project course coordinator, his input would be of great importance to help develop my research. He gave me a web address to prepare questions for him and told me to email him to arrange a meeting. The meeting was going to be informal but was going to be recorded for the benefit of having the interview on a wav file.

I emailed Pat Browne to set up a meeting with him. The scheduled date we arranged is for Tuesday the 11th at 5:30pm. But now this meeting will have to be rearranged as i will not be able to attend.

Things to do for next week:

Review systems that already exist like wedCourses and myDIT
Research on gant charts
Make out a paint doc on what I think the system will look like
make use case diagrams and make small descriptions on each i.e. who is doing what, prople and functionality.
Acquire the formal meeting log document for understand it's layout.
Prepare final proposal to hand up to Damian Gordon upon our meeting.

Others:

While all this is going on I have to keep up to date with lab work and assignments. I currently have three assignments on the go in Advanced Internet Development, Distributed Systems and Advanced Databases. So far I am nearly done with the Advanced Internet development assignment as i just have some minor details to complete. then I'll have to move on to distributed systems.

Joke of the week:

What did one tampon say to the other ? .......

Nothing cause they are both stuck up cunts !

28th October

2008-10-28T04:06:00.000-07:00

So last Friday we received on email detailing who our supervisor was. I was assigned Oliver O'Connor which i was pleased about. So after my classes on Friday I went around to his office to introduce myself just in case he had forgotten who I was :)

During our talk it was established that if i was to do this project it would be required fir it to be more detailed and in 3D. So with this i became worried as I have had no preference with doing anything in 3D. I thought it was time to think up a backup project cause i didn't see the marauder's map happening for me.

Over the weekend, i asked Brian to come up with some ideas. He came up with one which i thought was quite good. A project management system for final year students. With this i got to work with brain-storming and then creating a mind-map.

The idea evolved into this:
The project would be web based with a database back end. The student will be able to set up some tasks for the week and the Supervisor would also be able to set tasks for the students by logging onto their own GUI.

A schedule of these tasks will be kept in a visual calendar, this calendar will also note the dates of importance such as hand up dates etc. When a student fails to upload/complete a task the supervisor and student will be notified.

The system will also be a means of backing up the students work and documents.

A fourm will also be used. there are a few areas i was thinking that this would be useful. the first would be for documents such as the proposal as it follows a uniform method. This would help with the assignment of the supervisors and provide a clear description of what the project is aimed at.

User authentication will play a big part as each user will have their unique properties.

Provide a blog for the students, this will help with the final dissertation. the user should be able to edit etc. as the student feels fit.

News updates:
The users will be able to view any news updates that would be set by the course coordinator or even by Damian Gordon. This that would appear here would be, upcoming course topics and changes in schedule.

This project, i feel is more for me as it would incorporate the technologies that i would be more familiar and comfortable with and project management skills. So my next step now is to have another meeting with Oliver to explain my plans and to email Damien to notify him and ask for his advice.

proposal to propose

2008-10-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

Last week saw people desperate of coming up with their project ideas to had in for a draft proposal. Myself, I was trying to make contact with mark foley who had been missing from action as he was away at some conference. Finally i managed to have a brief chat with him on the thursday and gave him my idea. He said it was a "runner" but there was the minor problem of getting the structural plans of the building, which he said he would contact the media department in aungier street to try and get a hold of them. He also said he would be emailing me a reply to an email i sent asking him would he be my project supervisor ( still waiting for that reply ).

In the meantime I started my own investigation into getting my hands on a copy of the building plans. I went to martin Dunne as he would have some knowledge being involved with the grange gorman building plans. He was able to give me names of people to get in contact with and so i sent them on an email. Brian Fordes got back to me with floor plans in a DGW format and once i downloaded a viewer for this i was glad to see that the files looked exactly what i needed.

So now i am going to have to complete the draft proposal and get a definite answer from mark foley about being my project manager. Fingers crossed that this week will be a non stressful one.

5th October

2008-10-11T04:13:00.000-07:00

I went through some more ideas for projects that were provded by the lecturers. There were some good ones in there but i did not see myself doing most of them. one of them stood out to me very much, the marauders map. This was a project idea supplied by Damien Gordon.
After email him to further explain/elaborate on the project idea i grew more interest. It was to be a web based application that provided a 3d version of the DIT kevin street building that would enable a user to be able to find there way from one place to another. It was to display the route the person would need to follow to get there.

So here is the delema, if i was to do this project then it would mean that I will have to obviously pick GIS as my option ( which I think i would really enjoy ) but this could end up being more work than i bargened for. My way of thinking around this is that I feel i sould allow myself to take that chance and do something that I would consider fun, as up to now, i feel as if i haven't really found a subject that i have really enjoyed in college.

So for next week i am to draw up a paliminary project proposal and i don't think i am in anyway of a position to do so. I might just make up two ( as if one isn't enough ) just to cover myself. Hopefully the lecturer will be back on monday to do some work in GIS and I will get to see what the practical side of the course is like.

September 29th

2008-09-29T05:03:00.000-07:00

So, still no definite idea of what my 4yp is going to be .... I was thinking more about the idea i had previously and thinking it could be a good idea to make the application mobile. But after thinking about it further, I came to the conclusion that most mobile devices can browse the internet anyways.
More ideas came springing into my head as i thought about the calender application idea. If i was to integrate it into the MyDIT homepage, how about trying to make the homepage more personal altogether by letting the user change colours of their homepage and maybe allowing the user to move about the modules to what they desire.

Forth Year Begins

2008-09-29T04:57:00.000-07:00

ok. so here I am. After passing all my exams (repeats) and surviving my time in Ericsson on work placement, I find myself stressing out after my total of two weeks of a break. The stress being that i am now in 4th year trying to decide what streams i want to do. I have a week and a half to decide, not much is it. not only that, I also have t have my project proposal in on the first week of october. So time to put the thinking cap on. Trying to relate courses to what i would need for the project is hard seeing that i can't decide on it all.

I have only had one idea for a 4th year project but i don't know if there is enough work in it to qualify. The idea came to me when i was complaining about the past years i had in DIT when it came to being organised, in particular, when the lecturers do not turn up to scheduled classes and they do not inform the students sufficently or at all. So my idea was to create a system to amend this, to inform students sufficently to one point of contact. I was thinking along the lines of an organiser that a student logs into, possibly when they log into their email accounts. The application could be presented in the form of a calander where a student could interact with and add notes etc. I could be personalised accordingly to the course and year they are in i.e. the classes they have and it could be populated into the calander appropriate to the correct day.

This is where the application becomes even more practical, when the lecturer is going to miss a class of needs to reschedule something, they could be able to send an alert update to all the students affected through a GUI. the alert could appear on the calender date (along with maybe an email alert?) and the student would be able to clearly see the update when checking their planner in the morning etc. ( another functionality i had in mind would be that an alert would be sent to the contact numbers of the students affected).

So thats all i have for now. Need to do more brainStorming and come up with more ideas. Dame the FYP !!!! GURRRR