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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Friday 14 October 2005 (Day View) – CSSE3004 Final Demonstration

Mon 10 Oct | Tue 11 Oct | Wed 12 Oct | Thu 13 Oct |   Fri 14 Oct   Sat 15 Oct | Sun 16 Oct | Mon 17 Oct | Tue 18 Oct |

14.10.2005 – Friday 14 October – Final Demonstration

8:50am

• I arrive at uni before eight o’clock, pretending not to be mostly asleep, and head down to the labs where I find Q Group preparing for our nine o’clock demonstration, extremely stressed. Robert, our presenter, hasn’t turned up yet. Mark has run out of print quota, and has to submit things ten minutes ago. I give Mark some money for print quota. The printer has run out of paper. Matthew finds paper. I phone Robert. Robert arrives. Jervina discovers that the desktop application won’t run without Eclipse, and we’re not allowed to run the system from a development environment. Robert and Jervina manage to write a batch file that runs the application without Eclipse. We all run for the lift.

9am

• Q Group attends their CSSE3004 final demonstration, where their demonstration runs flawlessly, right up until they run out of time. In fact, Ken and Darren were interested enough in the system to allow the group to run ten minutes overtime, only stopping them when there is a logical break in the demonstration. This is fortunate, as had the group been stopped precisely on twenty minutes, they would have been unable to demonstrate a large proportion of their programme’s required functionality. As it was, they were unable to demonstrate their XML database backup and restore functionality, and, much to Johnson’s distress, the fancy scrolling Winamp-style “about” screen. Ironically, the XML backup and restore component along with the “about” screen had both been Johnson’s responsibilities, meaning that very little he himself built was actually demonstrated. Overall Q Group feels that their demonstration was a success, being told at the end that it was “nearly commercial quality”, well thought out, simple but comprehensive, and that it was obvious the group had invested considerable effort into the project, which had paid off in the form of a well-presented, successfully “sold” product, containing more than the required functionality; but still simple, logical, easy to use, and meeting the business requirements. The only criticism, coming from Darren, was that the colouration used in various reports was not what it probably should have been—an ironic statement as the same colouration had elicited praise from Darren during the individual component demonstrations.

Lunch

• Half of Q Group went their separate ways; to work on other assignments or whatever it is they do, while the Jervina, Mark, Ned, and later Johnson, had lunch at Grinder’s, discussing the project and life in general. In some ways, this is a sad moment—essentially the end of Ned’s IT degree—as the only significant assessment he has remaining is in philosophy or psychology.

Afternoon

• Ned cleverly bought himself an airplane ticket from Sydney to Brisbane, on the correct day, at the correct time, with the correct flight number, and precisely one month too early. This cost him $89, and would have cost him $75 had he not decided to check another fare halfway through the ordering process, and then accidentally choose the wrong month when renewing the order. He then discovered that it would cost quite a lot more to change, so he rushed to a phone, pleaded plaintively to a girl at the airline, and managed to get the changing fee waived. Unfortunately, even with the fee waived, his $75 flight cost him $104. This is why he should never do anything when running on no sleep and directly after frying his brain with stressful assessment.
  After his exciting trip to the payphone to discuss airline economics, he sat in the hallway at GPS and chatted to Mark and Kieran and whoever else walked past for the rest of the evening, until he had to go to the Ville for dinner (getting a lift with Kieran) and then on to work.

Comment by io – Tuesday 18 October 2005, 10:00 AM

  Well done with your achievements in your IT degree and may you reap rewards from your lack of sleep next year. I however hopefully am about to start a new degree geared around music or ARTS aka bludging.

Comment by Ned – Tuesday 18 October 2005, 10:00 AM

  Thanks ;-)

Comment by Clint – Tuesday 18 October 2005, 10:00 AM

  Following your three years of studious study and achievement, I hope THE PLANE CRASHES AND YOU DIE!
  
  You have to admit, it'd be funny for the rest of us. Sort of.

Comment by Jojo – Tuesday 18 October 2005, 10:00 AM

  so your saying because they liked your demo and product theat you were allowed to go for 30 mintues of presenting.... and were not capped exactly on 20 minutes....!!!???
  
  this sounds interesting indeed!
  
  (as our group was capped right on 20minutes....)

Comment by Ned – Tuesday 18 October 2005, 10:00 AM

  I urge as many people as possible to complain about as many facets of this course as possible. I don’t think it was possible to demonstrate full functionality in twenty minutes without unrealistically reducing the spoken component—it wouldn’t be possible to both demonstrate and “sell” the product in twenty minutes, and given the length of, and importance attached to, this course, not being given enough time to demonstrate such a significant component is an insult.
  An “independent review” of the course is being conducted over the summer semester. Also, Ken is running the first year IT project (COMP1800) over the summer semester, and attempting to take over its running for subsequent semesters. He plans to introduce industry components into the course, claiming that this is better than the current academic manner of running such courses. I urge everyone to strongly oppose this.