Chris Miller » 2006 » May

I might have quit smoking

Chris — Wed, 17 May 2006 01:52:55 +0000

So I was out at a party on Saturday night, smoking up a storm as usual whilst getting really drunk. Then at around 5 in the morning I ran out of cigarettes, since which I haven’t had one.

I realise it’s only been three days, but so far I’ve managed not to be tempted to have a fag, although mainly due to my lack of said fags.

Hopefully I’ll be able to stave off them for good, although it’s a bit boring not having anything to do all the time. I’ll keep up the posts if there are any changes.
- Chris

Enterprise Computing (M)

Chris — Fri, 05 May 2006 02:17:39 +0000

The first of my exams this year, and one of the lesser of the many evils I am facing.

The rubrik of this exam was 7 questions out of 7, so no room for breathing space.

Question 1

A – Easy question outlining the three driving factors for integration driving factors and tactical vs. strategic initiatives
B – Another easy question to indicate the level of integration that should be used in three different companies, giving justification for each

Question 2

Seemed initially an easy question, although upon reflection may have been harder than I thought. Basically give reasons why using a MOM and integrated enterprise would be better than the existing system. The part I was unsure of was the discussion of “integration facets”, a term which I don’t remember ever hearing – hopefully it just refers to the properties and isn’t something I’ve totally missed

Question 3

Discussion of a paper by Nicholas Carr called IT Doesn’t Matter, just mentioning the main points of the paper and explaining your standpoint

Question 4

A – Discussion of how to integrate legacy systems
B – Legacy system maintenance, wasn’t quite sure how to answer this question, ended up reiterating parts from A

Question 5

Another tricky question, in two parts to discuss the use of either interoperability, federation, consolidation or integration with respect to two companies. For a total of 8 marks there didn’t seem that much to say.

Question 6

Easy question to discuss the issue of performance in Internet-Based systems and to draw a couple of failsafe devices used for the hardware

Question 7

Another simple question to write a small essay based upon parts of the course, I did the essay on EDI vs. XML as a method of data exchange

All in all not a bad exam, one of the nicer ones to have as the first anyway.
- Chris

It’s been a while

Chris — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:58:54 +0000

So it’s been far too long again since I last posted. I’d like to say that things have been overwhelmingly busy, well for the most part they have, but I’ve had ample time to post something.

I’ve just had nothing worth saying… until now!

It’s that time of the year for an obligitory exams-are-coming post, here it is.

I have in total, 8 exams this year, 1 less than the grand total last year although starting 9 days earlier.

Before that starts I’ve got to hand in my proposal for my project, it’s nearly done and has to be handed in on Tuesday 2nd May. Once that’s out of the way it’s onto exams, the line up is as follows:

Wed 3rd May: Enterprise Computing (M) – Business / Computing type course
Mon 8th May: Information Retrieval (M) – Search engines, retrieval functions
Tue 9th May: Professoinal Skills (M) – PI for dummies
Wed 10th May: Grid Computing (M) – DAS and some
Fri 12th May: Compilers 4 – Writing machine code
Thur 18th May: Network Communication Technology 4 – Cables and RFCs
Tue 23rd May: Advanced Research Readings in Computing Science (Software Engineering) – Readings in the area of Web Engineering
Thur 25th May: Types and Programming Languages (M) – Functional language implementations

So it looks like a fun month ahead for me then!
- Chris