Exams 2: Return Of The Invigilator

Invigilator, that’s a nice word.  A cool sounding title, and yet one that has never appeared in a movie name.  

Picture the scene.  

A spacestation, floating thousands of miles above the planet Vecron.  Our heroes, battleweary from their latest battles, run through the slowly closing blaster doors, just in time as it slams shut behind them.  They emerge in a darkened room.  The sound of footsteps on a metal floor.  The room is just bright enough that they can see a metal balcony above them.  A figure walks slowly to the edge of the balcony, and the footsteps stop.  Our heroes look up defiantly at the figure.  ”Who are you?” one of our heroes shouts.  The figure laughs deeply and slowly.  The lights come up suddenly to reveal a man in a black cloak, an evil serious expression on his face.  ”I AM… THE INVIGILATOR.”

Or something like that.  Looking up the word, its definition is rather more restricted to exam rooms than evil overlords though.

Picture the scene.

An exam room, situated in a large building near Vecron University.  Our hero, exhausted from his latest question, rest their hands for a little while, just in time as the clock approaches the end of the exam.  They go back and check their answers.  The sound of footsteps on a wooden floor.  The footsteps are coming from behind him.  A figure walks slowly to their side, and the footsteps stop.  Our hero looks up defiantly at the figure.  ”Who are you?” he shouts.  The figure laughs deeply and slowly.  The figure moves round to the front of his desk, revealing a man in a black cloak, an evil serious expression on his face.  ”I AM… THE INVIGILATOR.”

Or something like that.

I say we get the definition of invigilator changed so it can be used more, to more closely match the definition of “observer”.  

“What are you doing?” “Oh, I’m just invigilating this chemical reaction.”

“What are you doing?” “I’m just invigilating this meal so it doesn’t overheat.”

“Hey man, would you mind invigilating my beer for a minute?”

And so on.

I’m sorry, I think I got sidetracked there for a second.  Anyway, yes.  This post marks the beginning of EXAMS 2: RETURN OF THE INVIGILATOR.  In what way?  Well, my exams timetable has been announced for the summer exam period.

I’ll start with some key dates.

April 20th – I return to work, and get back to lectures and labs.  A hard grind for 4 weeks.
May 15th (I assume) – End of lectures, big World of Warcraft raid to celebrate.
May 4th – MAYDAY, MAYDAY.  Day off, basically.
May 21st – Exam period starts officially.
June 10th – Exam period ends officially. 

And now a list of exams by date (WordPress doesn’t natively support tables (Boo) so this will have to be hyphen-delimited)

Date — Course Code — Course Title — Location — Seat Number — Start Time — Finish Time 

MAY 22 — COMP10042 — Fundamentals of Computation — Armitage Centre Conf Hall — 32 — 2:00 PM — 4:00 PM
MAY 26 — COMP10092 — Object Orientated Programming With Java 2 — Armitage Centre Main Hall — 70 — 2:00 PM — 4:00 PM 
MAY 28 — COMP10052 — Fundamentals of Distributed Systems — Sackville St Bldg K3 — 60 — 2:00 PM — 4:00 PM
JUN 01 — COMP10020 — Mathematical Techniques for Computer Science — Stu Union Council Chamber — 21 — 9:45 AM — 11:45 AM
JUN 05 — COMP10412 —  Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence — Sackville St Bldg Ent Hall — 87 — 2:00 PM — 3:30 PM

If you REALLY want to see it in table form, copy all that to Notepad and open Excel and import the text file with ” — ” as the delimiter.  But that’s not important.  What is important is that these are my exam times.

Stay tuned for more information in… CHRONICLES OF MINDEZ: EXAM 2 – RETURN OF THE INVIGILATOR

Revision Strategician Mission

Dear blog.

How are you?

I’m fine.  Today I researched XML decoding in flash files and relearned some basic C++.  In addition I learned how to use Carpenterion on Dark Chronicle, and killed Leon in Kingdom Hearts.  

After this, my attention was redrawn to my blog by somebody leaving a comment on an old post.  I’m surprised my physics revision topics are still popular.  I’m sure the mark schemes and overall relevance must have dropped since then.  All those physics revision notes were taken from the mark schemes of the past papers, almost word for word, going over 6 years of past papers and taking every point that hadn’t been covered in a previous past paper and adding it to the knowledge base.  I say this becase that was my revision style.

It worked for me, and it got me through both Physics and Computing.  It was the most efficient revision strategy.  Learn what’s been asked before, because by the time I got to year 4 or 5 all the knowledge was repeated.  Questions like “What’s the difference between a progressive and a standing wave” and the like were very common, if I remembered and understood everything that had been asked before and learned it all then I was as good as guaranteed at least 80%, I could probably make up even more from rambling about my understanding.

This revision style took me about 2 days of working per subject.  It was fast, got good results, and efficient.  And now, as I get to the end of my first year in university, I’m starting to realise that despite how well this revision style has worked for me in the past, there’s one important thing that it’s lacking.  Using an analogy to artificial intelligence, I am lacking training data.  The syllabus at university changes so fast, it seems, very few past papers are available.  Distributed Systems was only added this year, for example.  The subjects are broader, and the exam papers far less predictable for the most part.

The principle remains though.  I can use my notes as training data, admittedly I’ll have to change my algorithm to try and isolate the more important features of the course, but ultimately university exams are more about understanding than having a summarised knowledge base.  Perhaps it’s an outcome of my previous learning style, but I find this harder.  I find it very easy to understand concepts, and understand how concepts work, why they work, etc.  I can DO understanding.  What I can’t do is put my understanding down into words without sounding like a fool.

This also makes my labs quite a nightmare as well.  Some of the points on each exercise in the labs are always for understanding.  Now I can understand it fine, but I can’t express in words how it works.  I end up just using words like “this thing” and “uhhh” a lot.  And remaining silent when asked a question even when I know the answer, because I just can’t think up the words.  This has cost me marks in the second Distributed Systems lab certainly.

So, yeah, I’ll get to the point.  They say that only by expressing an idea in words such that others can glean insight from your understanding can you truly understand something.  In more laymans terms, true understanding comes from being able to teach other people.  This is why I’m going to be putting my revision on this blog again, like I did for my AS year physics and some Computing.  That hopefully, by expressing the ideas of my understanding in such a way that others can understand it, perhaps I’m helping both myself and others to understand it all.

Well, that and the fact that my physics revision notes are now by far my most viewed and commented post.  And the amount of easy to understand information on, for example, finite state automata, is very limited.

For the furthrance of the internet, I take this challenge, to create this resource, to help others.

People have asked me, what’s the point in sites like Digg and del.ici.ous?  It’s just a site to let others know what you’re reading, what’s the point?  Why should you care what other people read?  My answer is that it’s because the internet is an unstable resource.  It has both good things and bad things, funny things and downright crap things.  In my view, Digg ensures that the internet can promote the good stuff, cast out the bad stuff, and generally gives us the ability to shape the internet into a more sociable place.  To decide what kind of sites are approved and which are not, such that the future will create more good sites rather than the crap.

That’s my view, at least.  It’s our generation’s duty to define the future shape of the internet.  Because nobody knows what the internet would become without our social input.

Okay, post over.  Comment away.

tl;dr: Revision notes coming, Digg is awesome, I rule at Kingdom Hearts.

So. So so-so.

So.

My exam results have been published.

I’m sure I have the opportunity to squeeze at least one blog post out of this.

Yeah, it’s so-so.

COMP10211 – Hardware design (Which I have now found out is called “Fundamentals of Engineering”) – 64.7% [2i]
COMP10031 – Fundamentals of Architecture / A Computational Model – 77.1% [1]
COMP10081 – OOP with Java 1 – 82.8% [1]
COMP10020 – Mathematical Techniques for Computer Science – 85.9% [1]

Fairly good results there then.  Those are my overall results for the modules, incidentally.  So the COMP10081, COMP10031, and COMP10211 marks counts both the exam and the lab work. I should point out that I have no idea how to navigate the maze of confusing tunnels that is Campus Solutions where I was supposed to read my mark from, so these are subject to change as I verify them tomorrow.  Overall average 77.6 [1].  So that’s good.

Ummm… Yeah, that’s about it.  Those are my results.  I’m not sure what’s going on for COMP10020, since that’s a two-semester course I’m not sure how much the 85.9% counts towards my final mark.

But COMP10211, COMP10031, and COMP10081 are now officially passed and I need never look back on them ever again.  Except when I next use arrays in Java.

I earnt that chocolate bar

Yay.  I earnt a chocolate bar.  Fundamentals of Computation is fun.  So many mistakes filling the notes we’ve been given, and for every one you point out that nobody else has yet you win a chocolate bar. Yaaaay.  Students love free stuff.  I am a student.  Therefore, I love free stuff.  And yes, earnt is a word, I made sure of it.

I sit now in a 2 hour lull between activities.  I frequently have this problem, every Monday and Thursday.  Usually I figure which is the least important activity and lie in or play WoW accordingly.  I figured I’d use the time to do my java work for Monday, but really I’ll just spend the whole 2 hours writing a really intricate and looping blog post that will never be read, and probably won’t even be posted.  Although by the fact that someone’s reading it clearly it has been both read and posted.  Huh.

The rest of my blog post will consist of a series of random statements, rather than having any running narrative.   Just things as they come to me.

My phone is officially out of order for an undeterministic period of time.  Whether it’s the charger, the battery, or the actual phone that’s busted is up for debate, but I’d be more inclined to suggest it’s the charger.  I may have to do some research into where I can actually get one.

Todays favourite video is that of Flight of the Conchords performing the song Jenny.  Watch it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlYkIJVguCU

I’m now prevented from doing my java work as somebody has stolen my lab manual.  Bleh.

There’s a weird high pitched whining noise in this room that happens when you turn your head one way but not the other.  Intriguing and headache-inducing.

I really don’t know what else to blog about.  I really don’t.

I got a new achievement in WoW.  Kill Sarth-25 with less than 21 people.  We had 18, only 3 healers I believe.  It was easy as hell. I’ve spent a hell of a lot of money optimising my enchants, glyphs, gems, and spec.  Dammit I will be the best holy paladin!

Uhhhh.

That is all?

Epoch Ranting is What It Is

Evening viewers.  Or readers.  I’m never sure on when to use which term.  Because in order to read, you have to view as well.  Why is it that when I blog normally you’re ‘readers’ but when I post a picture you’re still ‘readers’?  How do you read a picture? You do not, you view a picture, hence you are ‘viewers’.  But why use the term interchangably?  You have to view words before you read them, hence I shall refer to you as viewers as a general term.  Unless by next blog post I’ve forgotten and go back to the online standard of ‘readers’.  Should I start?  I should start.

We begin this blog post with views.  No, not– Ugh, I knew that first paragraph would confuse you.  MY views.  Yes, my views.  Of course I have them.  Admittedly not often, and when I do I don’t voice them, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a good old rant.  I’m in one of those ranting moods right now actually.  Friday the 13th hasn’t been kind to me.  It’s been a very up and down day really, I’ve never been able to get the hang of Friday the 13ths.

I should warn you now that this is liable to be a very wrong and -VERY- inaccurate blog post.  It’s posting about things that I don’t claim to understand.  With that in mind, it’s time to begin.

[rant]

Professor Richard Dawkins.  Darwin’s Rottweiler according to the media, inventor of the word ‘meme’, and super-ultra-mega-atheist. (This prooves nothing other than the fact that I was able to find him on Wikipedia and that I know what a meme is).

Quoth Mail Online:

 

Outspoken atheist Professor Richard Dawkins is to warn children of the dangers in believing “anti-scientific” fairytales such as Harry Potter.

Prof Dawkins will write a book aimed at youngsters where he will discuss whether stories like the successful JK Rowling series have a “pernicious” effect on children.

The 67-year-old, who recently resigned from his position at Oxford University, says he intends to look at the effects of “bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards”.

 

The ‘effects of bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards’.  This is just yet another layer of cotton wool to wrap children in, really.  I have to say I’m very against the future in the way that children will just be brought up protected against every tiny thing and never learning for themselves or experiencing culture.  It’s just another thing for people to constantly be worrying about and casting judgement on.  Like “Oh, you let your child read Harry Potter?” and overprotective parents being all up themselves for being perfect while their child is screaming in a padded room safe from all outside influences.  Sorry, went off on a strange tangent there.

Dawkins fails to see creativity beyond “This is probably fucking up kids, lets tell people that”.  He comes across as being the kind of extremist that wants us all to be governed purely by science, to have no outside influences that change who we are.    But it’s the outside influences who MAKE US who we are.  Take away anything that could influence us, take away anything that could inspire us, take away anything that could cause us to develop in our own ways and we will just be the same.  And encouraging people to do that, I feel would be harmful on creativity.  No inspiration, no creativity, we may as a result become more ’scientific’ in our methods but ultimately we will just be robots.

Children learn.  They learn from the outside world.  They pick up on ethical frameworks, reasoning, logic, how to think for themselves, what inspirations they have.  If you show a child what conclusion to arrive at, you do not teach the child to think for themself.  It is not until adulthood that we learn what to learn.  It is as a child that we learn HOW to learn.  Then at university you tell them “YOU’RE WRONG” and teach them how to learn all over again.  But that’s in a more academic sense.  Have I got sidetracked?  I’ve got sidetracked, doh.

Real world example.  Santa Claus (Or Father Christmas to us in England).   Children are told about Santa Claus.  they believe in him.  Over the years, they get suspicious.  Then they come up with theories as to how he can get all around the world in a night.  Then they tweak those theories and learn, for themselves, that they are implausible and eventually probably derive for themselves that he is not real.  What Dawkins is trying to do is change that to “Children are told about Santa Claus, then told he’s not real”.  No learning process.  No deriving for themselves.  Spoilers, if you will.  Same with Harry Potter.  Children read about Harry Potter, some may believe in him, over the years they come up with theories, start to doubt, then realise he’s not real.  Self learning and self bettering process.  Dawkins version: Children read about Harry Potter then are told he’s not real.

Back to the real world example, the person who no longer believes in Santa Claus will now grow up, and tell their child about it.  This, I feel, is at the heart of Dawkin’s problem with the system.  He is, in Loup’s words, “occasioning a radical break with cultural tradition.  He is saying, no, don’t allow that process to take place, deliver the myth and its debunking all at one stage”.  Which I would argue is hardly encouraging children to think or reason for themselves.

Picture totally unrelated.

[/rant]

Ah, man, I feel so much better now.  It’s been so long since I’ve had a good rant, I need to get that out of my system more often.  Okay, I have more things to talk about.

HAPPY 1234567890!

I should explain for the non-techie readers.  Computers store dates by storing a number, which is equal to the number of seconds that has passed since midnight on 1st January 1970.  That’s called Epoch time.  On today (13th February) at 23:31:30 precisely, Epoch time totalled exactly 1234567890.  So, happy 1234567890.  I just love saying 1234567890.  It makes the keyboard make a nice sound.  123456789012345678901234567890.  It’s the most awesome Epoch time number until 2038, when it will equal #7FFFFFFF in hexadecimal, which is the largest value a 32-bit number can hold.  Which means in 2038 all computer clocks randomly reset to 1901 as #80000000 (which is the next second) is a negative number.  Yay.  Like the millenium bug but more real.

Anyway, enough about techie stuff, what’s next to talk abou–Oh.  Snake.  Well, I guess it’s not enough about techie stuff.

Yes, today was the deadline for the Snake game.  Which I finished, with all optional extras included.  115/115 marks, which is pretty good in my experience.  About average for me.  17.25% of the entire Java lab module, I am led to believe.  The next project we have to work on is a national (sorry, ‘notional’) lottery game.  Not sure how that’s going to work.  I really should read the assignments ahead of having to do them.  But yes, that’s gone well.

My phone is broken.  It won’t charge.  I’m not sure if getting another charger will fix it, if not.. then I’m screwed.  Ugh.  I plug the charger in and nothing.  Tried with different charger plug sockets.  Something must be wrong with the connection between the phone and the charger.  Using another charger may fix it if the problem is the connector which is actually notably dented.  Otherwise the problem is in the phone and well, it’s out of battery and unchargable.  It’s basically a brick.  Sigh.

How much are iPhones?  Oh.. that much.  Ouch.

Finally, today was the day I went to see Dylan Moran.  I’m never sure if you pronounce that mor-run or mor-ran.  I suspect it’s mor-ran but I use mor-run in speech because nobody knows who you’re talking about for some reason if you say mor-I’m sorry I’ll get back to the point.

I was somewhat underwhelmed.  It was still funny hahahaha.  His one-liners and comments were certainly chuckleworthy at least.  But it all just seemed so scripted.  And he seemed to get bored some time after the interval, as he was a lot lower energy in the second half.  And he ended poorly, no build up, just one joke the same as the others and right I’m off have a good night.

I’m not saying it was bad by any means, it was a very entertaining evening and I loved it.  But parts of his act just seemed.. underwhelming.  Particularly most of the second half and the end.

I have blogged for FAR too long, so I’m going to sleep.  Night.

I Think I Found A Bug

Hmm, I think I found a bug.  Beta testing is useful.  I got so close to handing what could become this in that it wasn’t funny.

Still the Snake I’ve managed to create is very awesome.  

 

I’m going to see Dylan Moran live on Friday.

Errr and I think it’s chippy tea tonight.

EDIT: Also, the third series of The IT Crowd far surpasses the first two in writing and quality.

 

…That is all my news.

Pythons, Wyrms and Snakes

Dear Blog-ary. How are you, I am fine.

Anyway, I need to sort out what I’m going to blog about, else I’ll lose track, go into a rant and then have no structure to fall back on.  Right… right… right, I think I can start now.

University is fine.  I got through all my exams at a reasonable, I feel, performance.  The new subjects are quite fascinating.  Artificial Intelligence we’re looking into probability theory and such, Distributed Systems we’re looking at Python (the programming language) which is gorgeous as a language, and Computation we’re looking into formal languages, which seems to be the basis for regular expressions as to their use in defining a language for which patterns must match.

I got told many many times before I came to university, mostly by a certain computing teacher whom must not be named, that the scope of university is so different to college et al.  That those that are toward top of the class in college will just be lost amidst a sea of faceless people of greater skill in a university course.  Let me just say that that is complete and utter crap.  I was top then, I’m top now.  And I was top last semester.  And I’m not posting this just to be all boasty, I’m posting it as advice to anybody at that age I was at that’s considering how scary university is.  It’s nowhere near as scary as everyone’s making out.  Just assume everyone else is talking bullshit.

Java’s fun, we’re making the main part of a Snake game.  I’ve managed to get my snake running around happily, need to put in collision detection and actually respawn the food and spawn trees and stuff.  It’s fun, I’m enjoying this exercise.  Hopefully get that finished by the end of today.

In WoW I’m currently trying to kill Malygos, the master of the Blue Dragonflight and Lord of Magic; 25 man raid boss.  As a boss he’s very fun.  The fight mechanics are quite unique and debatable as to whether they’ve been used effectively; using the new vehicle system in raid boss is an interesting idea but with all the problems and addons not yet redesigned for vehicles, quite buggy.  As a Pitbull unit frames user I’ve been totally unable to heal in phase 3 and even see my own health, which is somewhat problematic.  Overall though I approve of the epic feel of the fight.  We had one wipe night on Friday and have another lined up for tonight.

So, Python, Snake, Dragons.. it’s been a very reptilian blog post.

tl;dr I’m fine.

SNOW!

SNOW!

SNOW!

 SNOW!  Oh, this is where I write.  I couldn’t get the hang of WordPress’s image frames for a second there.  The above scene is the view from my room at the moment.  It was far more white earlier, at 3AM it was snowing hard and looked so fantastic.  I got a couple of snowballs thrown at my window.  And I have it from a reliable source that there were a good couple of hundred people around the foot of the tower having a truly epic snowball fight.

Ah, enjoy the snow while we can I guess.  There won’t be a tremendous amount before too long.

Tomorrow I begin my long period of working yet again as the second semester starts.  It officially started today I suppose, but well.  According to my timetable at http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/undergraduate/timetable/timetable.php?year=2008&timetable=SPLUS4CE9B3-2008 everything’s cancelled.  And I start newer and more interesting modules as well; tomorrows lectures cover artificial intelligence, java, maths, and distributed systems.  AI promises to be interesting, then again it always is.  Java will merely be more complex programs built up from last semester, for which I have to pick up some lab manual with all the work and stuff in.  Joy.  Maths I believe is on discrete maths again; functions if I remember correctly.  Distributed systems are interesting as well, sharing a computing task between numerous computers.  The labs I imagine will be a NIGHTMARE, but still.

Interestingly I found a list of the most popular search terms that find this blog.  Quite interesting.

manchester university
difference between standing and progressive waves
the whole of manchester university
who invented the manchester baby and when?
contrast between progressive and stationary

I appear to be a source of information for the university, manchester history, and a physics revision aid.  My physics revision notes on Standing Waves that I did almost 2 years ago is by -FAR- my most viewed article at 573 views.  Followed by my computing revision actually, at 239 views.  Then my first visit to Manchester and talking about Baby at 129 views and my amateurish musings on String Theory at 109 views.

By now you’ve probably realised I only post on this blog when I’m trying to procrastinate from doing some kind of work.  Which is pretty much true.  But it’s a piece of work I don’t see the point in doing, so it’s alright.  It’s a LaTeX-written reflection of all my course units thus far, talking about the best, worst, most surprising, most important parts of the module, talking about such fascinating subjects about what I’ve learned about what I’ve learned, how I’ve developed, and changes I need to make for the future.  For each of my subjects, apparently.  I’m not sure if reflection is the point or if it’s reinforcement of learning how to use LaTeX, but either way it doesn’t seem…. important.  I think COMP10900 in general is too focussing on reflection.  True it’s the tutorial-style module, with group tutors and team projects and fundamentals of how to use fundamental programs, but well.  I’ve never been fond of tutorial-style classes with reflection and the like.  It just feels so pointless.

Meh I’d best get back to this actually, since I’ll get more and more work tomorrow to do.  And it’s for Thursday.  So begins the long grind of semester 2.

And I need more pepsi max, I ran out.  Ugh.

SNOW!

Woah, We’re Half Way There, Woah, Livin’ On A Prayer

I am now half way through my exams.  2 down, 2 to go.  The first week is over.  I’ve faced both my easiest and hardest subjects.  Next weeks exams both rank fairly middlish.  Maths much higher, of course, but I’ll still have to revise for both of them before the week is out.  Rough self-markings given all the answers I was roughly certain about I gave myself around 20/25 for the java MCQ exam (Which would be enough to get me around 80-90% overall, an easy first), and surprisingly around 20-23/40 for The Underlying Machine.  Given my coursework mark that gives me a total of around 58-63%, which is either high 2ii or low 2i grade.  Which, considering it’s the single subject I’m absolutely not sure about doing well in, is quite a good result.  I ended up leaving after 1 hour from the 90 minute exam, partly because I’d done all the questions I could.

I was the first to leave anyway, which is either a very good or very bad thing.

At the risk of repeating myself, I’m still looking at a 1 for Maths and a high 2i / low 1 for Architecture.  So everything’s been going rather well.

I got a new game a couple of days ago.  Lord Of The Rings: Conquest.  It’s quite a good game.  For a LotR simulation it’s quite well implemented; the missions are realistic(ish) and, on Legendary difficulty, damn hard.  One thing I’m not certain about though is the overpoweredness of some of the classes.  I like the fact that it is very well balanced, it’s hard to favour one class above the others as they all have their uses.  But for example, whenever you have a boss objective, no matter what it is, “kill Saruman”, “kill Sauron”, “kill Wormtongue”, etc… it’s just time to find the nearest class changer and go Rogue, sneak up behind them, and one shot backstab them.  I’m not certain that it’s a fitting tribute to a dark lord that’s lived thousands of years and controls dark armies and oh yeah who is also immortal to just be one-shot ganked by a single human rogue.

I’ve only really been doing the coop campaign though, I’ve not tried online much.  It seemed a bit…. badly paced, when I tried it.  Like, it takes both too long and not long enough to kill someone.  It was only a hero battle though, so perhaps some normal ranked battles will have me thinking more of it.

I also purchased a Video Capture Card for Kaine in preparation of the possibility of machinima creation.  I’ve temporarily removed my PhysX card since.. I don’t actually think I was using it and had no drivers for it.  And I wasn’t sure what it was doing taking up a whole PCI slot and a power cable, greedy card.  Either way, a few online games and stress tests later and I fail to see any difference.

[EDITTED SECTION OUT]

The final point for tonight is that Lost is officially on US screens for the fifth season.  That’s actually a major part of why I’m still up, in fact.  I’m waiting for the streamz.  That’s the theory anyway.

In practice, I’m very tired and hungry, and will probably fall asleep or starve long before streamz present themselves.

And I’m down to 15 litres of Pepsi Max.

The Examination Factor

It’s the last two weeks of the semester, which means traditionally that this is a time for last minute cramming revision and running around trying to find more intricate ways to plagiarise or cheat.  Next week, the exam period starts and it’s time to put my newfound knowledge to the test.  I say newfound knowledge, I’m still adamant that I’ve not actually learned anything new this semester.  Still I want to pass with a 2i average, that way I get some Mindezpoints.

But before I start, I must just say that Tesco are selling 2 litre bottles of pepsi max for £1.  That’s a ridiculous bargain, like getting 500ml bottles for 25p.  Naturally I did what any student would do, took the largest backpack I could find, went to the nearest Tesco and shouted “FILL ME UP”.  The security guard took quite an interest as I dragged my open backpack around the shelves.

Looking at it from an exam-by-exam basis:

Exam 1 – Object Orientated Programming With Java 1.  Monday 19th January, 14:00-16:00

The exam is worth 50, the coursework is worth 50.  I got a total of 76.6 in the coursework, which is 38.3 total.  So I need 31.7 to get a first.  Seems doable, that’s not even 66%.  It’s 10/15 marks, and in the mock I got 13/15 anyway.  A quick read through the later notes will guarantee good results in this one.  And it’s even multiple choice, so if I can’t get them then I’ll get 3/15 from just guessing.  Which is 10 points, which is at least a pass.

 

Exam 2 – The Underlying Machine.  Wednesday 21st January, 14:00-15:30

The exam is worth 50, the coursework is worth 50.  I got a total of 66.3 in the coursework, admittedly though my last piece hasn’t been marked but isn’t likely to get good marks.  So that’s around 33.4 points already.  I’m not going to be so ambitious with this one as I’m very unsure, but feel that a 2ii would be preferable to get a 2i average.  This means I need 16.6 points out of 50 from the exam.  This is 33.2%, or 14 marks out of 40.  I’m not confident.  Having looked at and tried myself on previous past papers I barely scraped 14-15.  I think on this I’m looking at a certain pass which is good because I can go onto the second year, but probably closer to 45% than 55%.  This is the one that’s been the focus of all my revision thus far, as it’s the one I’m least certain of by far.  In addition to this, none of the past papers that are available are valid as the syllabus was changed this year, adding to a sense of anxiety and uncertainty.

 

Exam 3 – Mathematical Techniques for Computer Science.  Monday 26th January, 09:45-11:15

This exam can’t really be summed up.  The marking scheme for this module is just way too obfuscated and just doesn’t make any sense.  In addition, it’s not the final exam.  It’s only the final exam on logic and probability; I have another exam in this at the end of the second semester.  Needless to say though, I should do rather well.  I’ve been discussing maths, particularly logic, at length with a friend and tend to always be the first to answer other peoples questions about it on the Computer Science forums.  A quick read through and some examples on Probability may help, but I should have this one in the bag.

 

Exam 4 – Fundamentals of Computer Architecture (Or “A Computational Model”, since they can’t decide what to call it).  Wednesday 28th January, 14:00-15:30

Another that I’m not 100% confident on, but I’m far more confident than The Underlying Machine.  I’ve found and printed off a lot of revision material particularly for this module so a quick read should sort things out.  For this, the coursework is worth 25 and the exam is worth 75.  Having got 76.8 on the coursework, that means I already have 19.2 total marks.  To get a 1 I need a further 50.8, which is 67.7%, which is 28 marks out of 40.  I think this is within me; looking at the past papers that doesn’t seem so unachievable.

I would say overall that I’m well on my way for 3 1s and a 2ii, for a high 2i or a low 1 average.

After these two weeks, semester two begins, and I begin such interesting subjects as “Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence”, “Fundamentals of Computing”, and “Fundamentals of Distributed Systems”.  All sounds very interesting, to go alongside “Object Orientated Programming With Java 2″, the remainder of “Mathematical Techniques for Computer Science”, and a hopefully successful display in the “First Year Team Project”.

All of this of course eats very heavily into my time.  In fact, my next semester timetable can be found online at http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/undergraduate/timetable/timetable.php?timetable=SPLUS4CE9B3-2008&year=2008&weeks=SEM2&event_type= - And it’s not a pretty sight, I can tell you.  Finishing at 5 on both Monday and Friday, the two longest days of the week?  Starting every single day at 10, or even 9?  What life is this for a student?! On top of all -THAT-, a whole total of FOUR of the days have a 1 hour break in the middle.  And one of them is 2 hours long.  I really don’t think I’ll be attending COMP10092 labs on Monday afternoons evenings, sitting around for 2 hours waiting for 2 hours of not even having a deadline, just sitting in the labs working as long as we like.  Week A it’s important though, since it looks like it’ll unfortunately be a deadline for COMP10412.  So I have to sit around for hours just to hand in a piece of work and then go, sigh.  I’m not impressed with the timetabling for Mondays, to be perfectly honest.

In fact, week B on a Monday is bad all around.  I go in for 10, do about 15 minutes of answering questions (as is the norm in an examples class), spend 1 hour 45 minutes doing nothing, spend another 15 minutes in an examples class, then spend 2 hours and 45 minutes doing NOTHING, then wasting 2 hours sitting in the UNIX lab with no deadline to hand in and the work already done.  I may, in fact, just not bother going in university on week B mondays.  Or, at least, I may go in for the first examples class, then see if I can be bothered waiting, if I can go to the second and then go home.  But no, Mondays are not impressive.  In fact, what do I do on the first day back, February 2nd?  All I have on that day is an examples class at 10 and PASS at 1.  But considering we’ve NOT LEARNED ANYTHING yet, how can those go ahead?  Perhaps we have the first Monday off after all.

Tuesdays look alright.  4 lectures, seperated in the middle for lunch and to absorb the knowledge.  I don’t mind that, it’s the official day of learning.  Wednesdays as well, 3 lectures.  Another day of learning.  Thursdays, two lectures, a break, then tutorial.  (I’d prefer it without the break, but still.  That’ll give our group chance to finish any pre-tutorial activities or at least make up some plausible explanation as to why we’ve not done the work).  Fridays, two more lectures, a break, then examples class and a deadline lab.  These days are all fine.  I don’t mind Tuesday to Friday.  But the Monday on the timetable just looks so… sloppy.  And feels so sloppy.  Far too much sitting around for classes that aren’t even required, with no deadline.

Still, enough about my timetable.  After writing this blog post I’m now down to 9 litres of Pepsi Max.  Another good thing about Pepsi Max is it has far better distributed sweetness and seems to take longer to go flat.  Coke goes flat very easily, and for some reason always ends up with a lot of horribly sweet coke at the bottom at the end which is just undrinkable.

Anyway, enough of this frivolity.  I must sleep now to ensure that I get up in time for my exam tomorrow.  And after the exam I have a nice raid to attend, of Naxxramas-25 at 19:00.  Gluth and Thaddius in the construct quarter to kill, while the entire Military quarter and Frostwyrm Lair is still up.  The chances that we’ll clear it this week are minimal at best, but still.  Hopefully things will pick up.