Sunday, November 30, 2008

Exam study begins: Reading chapter 3 in course textbook. Progress report.

I have carefully read sections 3.1 and 3.2 in our course textbook. In section 3.3 I have read up to section 3.3.2.2. There are still the remaining sections of section 3.3 to read. Then section 3.4 and then I need to read and look up the references in section 3.5. I hope to do this tonight and early Monday morning read chapter 4. This is all to prepare for our exam review class tomorrow on Monday afternoon. I have studied for one hour of the eight hours planned

Our term project is good at the third step. I am planning eight hours study over night now.

I am getting ready for eight hours study over night now for my SYS5110 exam. Tomorrow is our exam review class.

Our project has been marked for the third phase. We did good work on it.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

I finished reading The Making of Second Life by James Wagner Au.

I finished reading The Making of Second Life by James Wagner Au. His writing is entertaining but laden with American military culture and military buzz words. This amounts to a light reading business behind the scenes look at Linden Labs and some briefly sketched Second Life events. We find out in the book that the usual Internet capitalists like Bezos and libertarian capitalists like Kapour are investors in Second Life. I think it awful that computer science which was once upon a time for me a school subject related to math and language is so money oriented. I really need to sit back and think more about all this reading about the net and whether I really want to continue to expose myself to this set of libertarian values again and again.

Our term project is coming along on time.

We submitted our project step 3 on time. The two programmers did almost all the work on this phase of the project. I did some minor documentation and did the submission from my eMac. Our next submission deadline for the full and final project is in two weeks. We have one more class and then we have an exam the week after. I am taking time off work that day to write the exam. The day after the exam I start work in the Internet Society section of my workplace Statistics Canada.

I am installing a one year one time install version of ESRI's ArcGIS 9.2 student version on the new PC crystal 89.

I was surfing the school's web pages for computer services for students. I was trying to find a copy of Symantic anti virus software. I did download the school provided Windows version of Symantic anti virus software but it is 32 bit and will not work on the new PC. But while exploring software available for students I noticed that the license for ArcView has changed at school and we are now allowed to use the software at home. I was taking a break from work and decided that in my travels on the buses yesterday to go to school and get a copy of ArcView which is now in version 9.2. I had trained in version 3.2 in 2000 at Carleton at the geography department there where I have done many years of part time studies. I have also done an analysis of a conference paper about GIS last winter 2008 as a school term project. I have also read an introduction to ESRI GIS database use this past summer by borrowing a book from my workplace library. I was studying for a job competition but did not get very far with that application so stopped reading the book. So at the moment I am installing ArcView 9.2 with the intent of continuing a project from 2000.

At the moment I have installed the software and plan to open my old term project from the course I took in 2000. Then, by accessing recent census data I will update the ArcView project. I had used spreadsheets containing census 1996 data, entered into Excel from Zypher at the Ottawa Carleton Social Planning Council. There I had been paid to enter the data. I am a proud supporter of the Ottawa Carleton Social Planning Council and give them money every pay cheque through charitable donations. This is my present and first project for ArcView 9.2. I then may also attempt to open GIS files provided by Statistics Canada and Elections Canada, two of the workplaces I have worked.

I did not succeed right away with the new software. I was able too import my project file but could not get a map to appear. I am up over night and do not want to spend my time on a desktop computer working out this problem as I had planned to read books. So I am stopping now with the software successfully installed and registered.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I submitted an assignment but did not run the code.

This is a very worrisome course this term with both ODE's and JAVA programming. I hope I manage to do well with this course.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

I am now writing the last method which is called a Precondition method

I am now writing the last method called a Precondition method. This is the last page of code of a seven page Java program. There is also a seeds class file that is about half a page and a main method file that is also about half a page. The seeds file I rewrote from one of the professor's files last week. Yesterday night, I wrote the main method and the professor looked at it today and said, it looked fine. I started with a file of the professor's as he suggested for the longer file and started to rewrite it last weekend and now have about one page of this longer seven page file to write. The last page has what is called a Precondition method and I will now work on that tonight.

My first school Java program is almost done.

I have studied Java a little in the middle 1990's. I today have written a Java program that does a simulation of a city garage. This is for a school assignment in modeling and simulation. I am almost done the program and have about two pages left to program in a 7 page program.

I have my Java main method for my assignment done now.

I worked last night on an assignment in simulations and modeling. I have a Java main method now completed. I now just need to write the class file which is an instance of EveSched a type of class we are using for simulations. I am now writing the various methods in this class and have I think completed all the action sequences. I still have more of the process events method to write. This morning I printed this class file for proof reading. I may be able to complete tis assignment today if I focus on it.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

I cleaned up the English in our term project this morning and started section 3 of the report document.

I was up early today after some long work days this week. We are working on a paper I am a coauthor of on retirement. I will say more after we present the paper. Right now I should keep the details quiet before peer review. But it is a lot of work and all the data must all be quality checked.

Yesterday morning, I proof read our conceptual model and SUI and spotted enough English errors to plan a rewrite this morning. That is now done. I have also started the intermediate step of tabling all the Java code. I am going to spend more time with Java tonight and tomorrow. The rest of this morning and afternoon will only be reading time.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

No coding all day.

I ended up completing the building of a new computer so did not do any coding today or reading books.

We had a guest lecture from Louis Berta

Louis Berta who is the former professor of this course and coauthor of our textbook gave a guest lecture last night in our simulations and modeling course. He covered continuous systems modeling. He also lectured superficially on numerical analysis and optimization.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Progress report on Java coding

I now have the entities, the constants, the parameters, the data modules and the inputs programmed. I am working on the process events method. At least, I think it is called a method. I use Excel columns to do repetitive lines of code. I then save the excel as text with tabs and copy and paste it into the code file. I have stopped programming yesterday and have class tonight. I still have more methods to write but have tomorrow off work. I did all my coding on the VIA train from Toronto to Ottawa.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

The Perl Script for creating a BibTeX file: progress report

My back up files are not html or plain text but I can "view as source" each month's posts and then save these html files on my local computer. So I can create the text files needed. I searched google for Perl scripts. The Perl scripts I have viewed so far seem to have some of the required stuff but my script will need to be more complex and I may, in fact, use regular expressions mixed with Perl.

Java code writing.

I am starting to write some Java code for my present assignment at school. It is due Tuesday night. I have so far written the part required for translating from the conceptual model to Java code. I followed the course material this far. Now I must make a Java source file that works. I am not sure I have to get it to compile but I do need to actually write some code.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Term project coming along; learning conceptual modeling

I have been learning conceptual modeling. I have worked with three other students to produce a conceptual model of a restaurant simulation. I also have an assignment to write some Java code and have finished one of the steps in the process. Now I actually have to translate this work in to some Java code. I have been teaching myself Eclipse software. Eclipse is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).