Author Archives: Dean

About Dean

Currently a research student at the University of West London, completing a PhD in the area of context-awareness and mobile software product lines.

And now press refresh

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Hey guys, sorry for the lack of blogging but I have been snowed under with work. This iPhone app that I am doing is on such a strict schedule that I have next to no time for anything but programming. Plus also I have a great assignment for my masters that need completing too :(. I do promise that when the iPhone app is done and is publically available I will show screenshots of it, but I don’t want to get into trouble showing it before hand! I have also some plans for the summer too.
The first is that my website and server need a complete overhaul! The website I did when I was 18 is massively out of date and I feel that I should have the Web 2.0 services I use shown. I also need to do a rebuild of my server as it is currently running Fedora 8 and I hope to upgrade it to Fedora 11. By doing this I’m hoping to add email support to this as by then I will have purchased my very own domain name with I hope will allow me to do this.

Secondly I have a idea of a taxi app for the iPhone, which I may start as early as June providing the other parties involved allow me to. Will Keep you posted!

Viva la France!

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Hey Guys! Sorry for the extreme length of time since my last post, to say I have been slightly busy would be a complete understatement! Since my last post I attended a paper workshop in Windsor for colleagues on our project to meet, discuss the current dissemination strategy and overall try and start some paper writing. This session proved to be extremely productive, but since has gone rather flat, well at least that’s my opinion. Since then I have been starting a new project for a client involving an iPhone Application development. This development has now commenced and has a deadline, at least for the iPhone development side in the next 4-5 weeks. Overall feel slightly concerned, mainly that I am the lead programmer for this (which I feel is slightly crazy for such a tight schedule). I’m slowly getting the hang of Apple iPhone development, though inexperience in using Interface Builder is causing me some head ache. Hopefully this weekend will prove productive and lower some stress I have currently. Until next time people!   

Brummieville

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Rightio last week I spent two days in birmingham for two events. The first day started abut on a bad note because of train delays which made me a hour late even though I left earlier. But was an interesting day, got to hear about other projects going on. We then went to a dinner at a french style restaurant which was nice, maybe it was the wine that sweetened the night. After dinner I went drinking with a few of the guys and ended up getting slightly over easy. Was funny though setting up our project poster up still drunk. Was a shame though how little the guests interacted with the various project stands, obviously the food stand was more important. Anyhow the trip back was ok, with no delays. Overall good experience with pictures of my room below below.

The Desk

The Desk

My Bed

My Bed

Dev8D :: Thursday 12th February

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dev8D

dev8D

Today I went to the dev8D event sponsored by JISC at Birkbeck University. Though the event is being held over the duration of this week I was only able to attend today. Today the main agenda was community activities with discussions into real life systems and how they can continue to grow.

In the morning there were two sessions running;

  1. Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) including Blackboard, Moodle and Sakai.
  2. Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs) including library catalogs.

I chose to attend the session on VLEs. The talk/discussion facilitator was Sarah Sherman, where we were told about the various systems used including a talk about a single blackboard instance that is ran and shared with 6 brands and how this is managed. A talk was then given about Imperial College’s web ct system, though was quite surprised to see that they used it for short question assessments, though the fact that no wiki was being used didnt surprise me.

A close look was then done for LSE’s system which runs on Moodle. I was quite surprised to see that well since college the layout of Moodle had been kept the same (the college i studied at implemented a VLE running Moodle). The moodle system still is a flat structured system will alot of the functionality being on the homepage. The system is used for content delivery, discussions(class and group) and presentation tools. Wikis are not used because of the lack of power and turnitin is not currently used.

The VLE used by Cambridge was then domonstrated, which was Camtools for their current system and their currently in development Sakai system.  The interface of the Sakai system was similar to the Blackboard V9 with the draggable widgets, though it was said that those system provides the user with the option of changing the layout to their preference, only approx 4% of the userbase had actually done this.

Blackboard V9 was then presented. This version I felt had a slightly improved interface to V8 that i have been using at University currently. Some of the new features included allowing the user to move the screen widgets to different parts of the page which is also implemented on the Cambridge systems. There was further work to make the system easier to manage and help make tasks easy to be carried out by academics. There were also features that had been improved on since  V9 including the wiki system.

Some interesting discussion was brought including talking about using a single blackboard instance for more than 1 brand. Though it was mentioned that you can not have more than one customisation of the system for one instance. Perhaps this maybe sorted in the future?

Lunch was then served with an array of different sandwidchs, that definately put a smile on my face! Just sat around chatting to a nice bloke from Southampton University and talked briefly about Remora which I am involved in.

For the afternoon sessions I chose to attend the talk/discussion on Collaberation Tools including Instant Messaging, VoIP and various online cloud-based tools including Google Mail and Google Docs.

This talk was very interesting with talks from Westminster University and about how they moved their University wide email system to Google (Though perhaps quite a funny turn with the 2 1/2 hours downtime that happened yesterday). This talk did show that money can be saved by using services over hosting your own systems but then there comes a problem which some including myself is an extremely important matter, trust.

Some people could already express concern at the amount of reliance on Google for their email and documents that what happens if Google decide to either charge you or perhaps use your sensitive data?

The talk then basically turned in a grilling by a security consultant from darq# which was very interesting to be inbetween. Some talk was given into the advantages of using Instant Messaging and VoIP tools such as Skype, and disadvantages including the problems with bandwidth if your an unlucky soul to become a “super node”.

Overall I enjoyed myself alot and got to speak with some very interesting individuals. Perhaps Happiness did come of this event?

Windows 7 or Vista 2.0? My First Thoughts

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I have to admit, I am the sort of person that loves to jump on the bandwagon of something new in the world of IT. I love using very new software and systems, though I haven’t made the oh so tragic leap to Vista from XP. This was because of a few reasons:

  • For a start I was (some how) content on using Windows XP
  • Before Vista SP1 there were a lot of bugs and different problems I kept reading about, one particular x86_64 driver signing. And since I also use a x86_64 bit version of Fedora (Linux distro) I was convinced the following Microsoft OS I would jump to a 64-Bit environment. But with all the troubles with hardware not having signed drivers it was suggested for most people to run the 32-Bit version which to me seemed rather pointless. Because of this I thought i would wait until the 64-Bit Windows environment had matured slightly.
  • With the quite serious price of over £300 for the Ultimate Version I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just openly throwing hard earned dolla in the bin.
  • While having mild exposure to the new OS, I found the OS massively over-weight and resource hungry, and also found tasks I could previously go and do I now couldn’t, because of the OTT hiding of inners the system, which I can only assume was done in an attempt to make the system more “usable”.

 

I then found that as the months went by and then years went by, the possibility of me making this plunge was becoming increasing unlikely. I felt that though security was an extremely important, but feel that the user-experience should not be compromised because of this and I think that it was in a big way. My biggest irritation was the UAC (User Account Control) that caused the famous dark screen with a prompt asking if you did actually want to continue with what you was doing. I know that there was some un-official documentation showing how this could be disabled but still.

I also found that the more I “used” Vista on other peoples machines, the more I was inclined to either going Mac or Linux as my main OS. Then I started reading about the development of Windows 7 which gained my interest, to see if maybe Microsoft would take on peoples feedback and turn it into a tangible that would some what solve some of the issues with Vista. And now I have a copy of the BETA version of Windows 7 (Build 7000) 64-Bit.

I installed this on a fresh hard drive and have disconnected my current XP hard drive as precaution, and i found the installation very straight forward, though did find it quite slow to get started, but in general very similar to Vista. Once booting, I did like the boot up screen, thought it looked much nicer than Vistas progress bar. Once in the logon screen was pretty much what I was expecting, same as Vista.

The main desktop I found to be quite pretty, with the same glass-look as what come with Vista (Aero).

 

Desktop Showing Task Manager

Desktop Showing Task Manager

The Above photo shows the task manager, to which I noticed a lot of RAM being used, which come to a surprise to me. I think though that this is still quite reasonable and perhaps the reason why it seems a lot is due to me being a little “too” used to XP. As you can see, the widgets are very similar to Vista but you can change the size (from large to small).

 

Task bar showing window previews

Task bar showing window previews

The above photo shows how the System shows multi-windows for an application. When you click on the application on the task bar, the windows that are currently open then preview. This I really like as it allows you to have more applications running without the taskbar becoming ‘clogged’ up.

 

Start Menu

Start Menu

The above photo shows the Start Menu, which is very similar to Vista. Though there is a nice feature for programs such as Internet Explorer. This feature allows a user to click on a arrow next to the application in the menu and choose a previously viewed site which I liked.

 

Showing the window outlines

Showing the window outlines

Another thing I liked about the task bar was that when you hover your mouse over a window preview it brings it to the front of the screen and shows all other opened windows as plain transparent windows. I think my only issue with this could be the load it may place on the graphics card and though my computer has a very capable graphics card, I would be quite interested to see how this affects a lower scale machine.

 

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player

And the above picture shows Windows Media Player. This looks pretty much the same to Vista, but still quite nice. I do though think it would have been nicer though if they used similar colours to the XP version as I personally liked the black and dark blue combinations.

I did though come across some issues though with the OS. This issue was related to what I learnt using AVG free as my AV (Anti Virus) software. I keep getting BSODs (Blue Screen Of Death) approx every five minutes with a “tdx.sys” file being involved every time. After some looking up I found other people had found the same problem, but when using some other AV software. I then uninstalled AVG and the problem went away leaving me using an unprotected OS (clever ay?). So next I will looking for a new free AV i can use while using Windows 7 BETA.

I do think that though I had that issue still think there were improvements over Vista, including the performance. This is also backed up by tests carried out on zdnet.co.uk which spoke about the disk performance increase over vista which shows some sign of improvement.

But I still am questioning if this is a completely new OS or just an improved Vista. I think this question may be answered over time (i hope) so I will continue to use Windows 7 and blog more about it.

 

Main System Information

Main System Information

What an interesting day…

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Yesterday was a rather good day but ended on a different note. The day was going well, i had got lunch with a friend and then went shopping though i didn’t buy anything. When i was talking to another friend in the evening the friend started acting extremely judgmental and rather arrogant and nasty. I just can’t understand why i get spoken to nicely sometimes by this person then treated like rubbish the next? Thing that gets me is how I didn’t say anything to aggravate the situation and rather tried to not say anything back.
On that note last night i continued with my helloworld app on the apple sdk. Had some problems being caused by unhandled exceptions that i didn’t understand because the helloworld app is an example I got from a book. Today i went on the authors site and downloaded revised code directly and it was slightly different to the book (weird?). Anyhow the program is now running so just in the process of having a play around with the app to try and get a greater understanding of the language

Goodnight, Daisy…

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Ok today’s been a very good day. Had to get up at 07:00 to drive my parents to the airport which was a bit harsh as I had major insomnia until about 04:00. Didn’t do much more until about about 15:30 when I left to pick up a friend to see “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” at the Southend ODEAN. I really loved this movie, great storyline, lots of depth in the characters and a some what sad ending which did bring a few tears out. Was funny though seeing the guy getting struck by lightning loads of times. The film was about 2 3/4 hours, and by that I learnt why you shouldn’t drink your drink too fast! Overall had an enjoyable evening. Once I got home I didn’t do much really, just mainly sat around alone watching some tv. I did though have some Pie n’ Mash for dinner which was nice, but would have been nicer if my nan had made it.

Other than that good day really…

The beginning of something…I just don’t know what…

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Welcome to my blog. I am attempting to use this blog as a way conveying some of my thoughts and feeling about loads of things. God I don’t know where to start really… Ok here goes, my name is Dean, I’m a Computing University graduate now working for the University I studied at. I’m taking my Masters Degree and do hope to move onto a Ph.D afterwards. I enjoying programming a lot as I find it as a way to be creative and help solve a problem. Current on the project I working on in work I have done web programming by customising and new functionality to a open-source social networking framework named Elgg. I have also started iPhone development this week, this development will involve designing and creating a native application that bring together the previous work done by other members of the team.

That’s the work side of me out, now the more social/personal side. Well I’m single, to which I find difficulty in finding some one that truly understands me. I was with one girl for 3 3/4 years which was ended November 2007 by her. I found it very difficult to get over it, and still feel kind of scared by it, perhaps I’m not fully over it (highly likely) I don’t know. I did see one girl for about a month last year starting from valentines day, which I did enjoy my time, but we did feel that though we had a good time the direction we both wanted to go in didn’t match. Then in September I met a new girl that was amazing, we got very well and did have a quite well matched, in a nutshell that ended. I feel that I was equally to blame for this, but I do think that I did take my fair share of drama and stuff. Though we wasn’t serious we were still seeing each other until the second week of January, to which since I haven’t see her at all. I still speak and I did have plans to see a movie with her and good friend tomorrow but that got blow off for a certain new person in her life (that was quick…?). Now though I am seeing the film with just the good friend which should be good. I do hope I meet some one, though I do keep that I don’t right off people I have dated before so if one of those become a viable option to be with then perhaps that may happen.

That’s the relationship side of me out. Social I think I’m quite a laid back type of person. I do have a large serious part to me, but then I think that is important to keep myself on track. I do though enjoy letting my hair down and enjoying myself. This mostly involves friends, perhaps going to a pub for a drink, club to get drunk and dance or go and see a film at a cinema. Though I haven’t been clubbing for a while because of my situation, usually the club i go to mostly is Mayhem in Southend-On-Sea on a Monday Night. If you go, look out for a guy in a red visor. I wear this visor as way of being different as you find people wear all the same type of clothes, have similar haircuts etc. and i just wanted to be different. I also find that wearing the visor recognise you more because of this.

This is probably where I’m going to leave you to start with. I will try and blog as often as I can (daily) to which I will talk more about myself and random thoughts of mine.