M256 TMA01 part 1 done!

A record for me, I completed part 1 of the TMA01 which has to be submitted in isolation to the remainder of it, and the module hasn't even started yet. I couldn't even submit it because I haven't had my tutor allocated to me yet. It's good to get ahead though, because I now don't have to think about M256 much until March.

Progress Update

I feel like it's time for a progress update!

I've been struggling with M208, not really enjoying it, and I'm finding the workload a bit heavy. Most of my weekends are now ruined with OU work. The scary thing is that I have 2 more modules starting in February, so it's only going to get worse! Still, I'm about 60% of the way through TMA03, and there are only 4 more after that, so I'm closing in on the halfway point.

Christmas was a write-off, as was the week before, and week after, since I was suffering with an abscess on my tooth which would not go away despite visits to the dentist and 2 doses of antibiotics.  I found I couldn't concentrate for more than a few seconds because of the pain. I would read a sentence, then realise I couldn't remember a word of it, re-read it and immediately forget it once again. So in the end I gave up.

I have, however, done quite a bit of research for my TM470 project, and officially I needn't have done that at this point, since the module has not yet started, but my project is challenging, and I need to get a lot of things clear in my head, since I will struggle for time otherwise. So I'm fairly happy at this point.

I did have an unpleasant episode related to my TM470 project, when an update to Windows 8 on my PC caused Bluetooth to stop working (a clue to one component of my project there). It took me a number of hours to resolve it. In a nutshell, I ended up editing the registry because the Bluetooth Support Service had the wrong account. This had been working on Windows 8, so it must have been cause by one of MS's wonderful update patches.

For my own reference:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\bthserv

set

ObjectName = NT Authority\LocalService

(was LocalSystem without the NT Authority part)

M256 Materials, Netbeans vs Eclipse

The M256 hard-copy materials arrived today, including yet another Netbeans guide, and a Netbeans CD. I'm not a fan of Netbeans, and I actually avoided using it altogether on M255 and used Eclipse instead, but on M362 I didn't have time to mess around with Eclipse and Glassfish, so I reluctantly used Netbeans where I had to.

One of the reasons was that cutting/pasting code from the editor into a word document (or in my case LibreOffice) for the assignments worked way better with Eclipse than Netbeans.

I've a hunch I will be able to get away with using Eclipse for most of M256, except I believe there are parts which use the Netbeans GUI builder, in which case I will have to relent.