I was walking along the tow path of the Leeds canal today on my way to uni and I saw a rather worrying sight and took a photo of it (below). In case its a little too blury for you to see (I took the photo on my phone), its a load of rubbish piled up in front of the wier unable to go down the canal, because of the buoys. Whats worrying about it is its not just wood or something like that, but its all sorts of horrible rubbish you really don’t want in the water; bottles, cans, bags, chemical containers, gunge etc. etc. - rather nasty. What I want to know is what the hell do the people who let it get into the canel think they are doing? They’ve caused enough canal polution for a whole year and created a clean-up job that will probably take a few days and most definitely require a boat. I just feel sorry for the people living right next to it all (note flats in the background) and of course the birds that are often seen in the water. People just have no sense of responsibility these days thats all I can say.

While I love the condusive-to-work atmosphere one gets in the university library, I have just had to leave because the only seat I could get in the quiet study area today was one by the window, and as the sun has worked its way around the building over the course of my time in there it got progressively hotter until I was perspiring to a worrying extent simply due to direct sunlight. I have never seen the building so full it must be said; I know exams are close, but lord, the whole world must be in there right now.

In other news today, while I was taking one of my revision breaks I had a brain-wave about the next version of my CMS for phpBB and had a spec and ideas for algorithms hammered out in 15 minutes flat. It will take a while to come to fruition, but its coming

I arrived home this evening from a trip to the Wardrobe and saw a rather amazing sight outside one of the blocks in Clarence Dock. A group of people who had obviously been enjoying the warmer weather earlier on in the day were now huddled under duvets on the same picnic blanket in the freezing night air, watching movies on a portable TV set, the cable for which was snaking from a ground floor window. Looking for tell-tale signs of alcohol consumption or indeed beaviour which would indicate consumption of other sense numbing substances and finding none, I could only conclude one thing; That they are completely and utterly stark raving mad.

Odd title you might say, but as some may have guessed, my poll in the sidebar of late wasn’t just an idle interest thing, in fact, its what I’m going to base this blog on!

When I go to jazz gigs, I often see a couple of girls I wouldn’t mind at least talking to, but most of them seem to be engrossed in conversation with friend(s). While this would be fine if you got a chance to chat later or *some other time*, you just don’t. Thats right, the whole night chatting. Now fair do’s if you are not single and all that, but I refuse to believe, given the number of couples at these kind of things, that every girl who is there just with friends just happens not to have brought their boyfriend along. So, if you are single and want any chance of someone coming up and talking to you, don’t spend the whole night chatting to your friend; sit back, talk less and look around. This makes others think you *might* be available for the smallest of chats at somepoint and immediately makes you more approachable. I’m glad to see that while this was my view all along, the voters seem to agree with me - the majority indicating that someone chatting with their friend would put them off asking them to dance - the kind of thing its nice to do at a jazz club. If you are a single someone who spends their nights out talking to friends, just think, not only will taking some time off from doing so make it easier for someone to speak to you, but you might notice someone you want to speak to as well.

So, onto my second related, but not poll based point. If you are not single and find yourself chatting to a member of the opposite sex you have just met at a venue, *please* drop in that you have a boyfriend/girlfriend. It doesn’t take much, and immediately lets the person know that if they are chatting to you for *that* reason that they won’t get anywhere. There is nothing I hate more than it to take an hour or so of talking to a girl before finding out that she is not single. It’s annoying and a waste of time. I admit that I could ask directly, but this is a bit up front if you have just met someone and makes you look like you are not interested in them as a person, but dropping it into the conversation is far easier. If you are in a relationship,then when talking about yourself just *happen* to drop in something you did with your partner, and mention they are your partner in the process. There, job done. Not too hard and really helps the singletons. You might say its harsh to say speaking to a non-single person is a waste of time, but I don’t mean that in the direct sense. While if they are single and you are interested in them you might want to talk for an hour, if they are in a relationship you might like to just speak for say 15 mins or so and then find someone else to talk to. If you drop in if you are single or not within the first 5 minutes it means you can still have a nice conversation, and also help people out a bit. In my humble opinion its just common courtesy.

I’m sure the flames and counterpoints are going to roll my way now, but I just had to blog about this one as its been really getting to me, lol

Why oh why does this have to happen? I get an early night and then some cretin sets the fire alarm off at 4:30am causing me to have to fully wake up and go outside for 30 minutes, then not be able to get back to sleep for a further hour, and then oversleep due to that lot throwing off my work schedule completely. I think some students need their heads testing around Clarence Dock *sigh*

On the plus side the library is open late tonight and I got loads done yesterday, so work shouldn’t suffer too much.

I saw the Lightnin’ Rods play at the Wardrobe last night. I’ve seen them play there before and wrote a review on it here, but it was still a good night. It was nice to get out of the heat into an air conditioned bar, have a few drinks and let some seriously funky music chase the revision blues away

While a good night of music sets you up for the day ahead, I decided that I had to take action on the weather front. I was no longer content to let the summer weather evade me while I sat inside working, so I headed out to Hyde Park (5 minutes walk from campus) with some other computing students to revise. We covered a number of topics, and while you might argue that the amount of content “going in” was probably less due to the environment, associating it with a nice sunny day in the park is probably one of the nicest ways to make sure it stays there.

Well, the se12 python project officially ended today with the completion of the final report, fulfilling the last requirement of the project (apart from this, the “final” blog that is). Before I reflect on how the project has gone, I would like to reassure all those who have been testing TIM that development *will* continue! This is just an official end to the project as far as my course is concerned, but TIM will live on

One requirement of the project was to make a reflection on pair programming as well as the project as a whole. Always being one to break with convention, I did this near the start of the project, and it is here: http://www.kieranoshea.com/2006/01/29/pair-programming/

In terms of project reflection then, well so much to say! First off, like many other projects I have taken part in to develop something, I enjoyed it. Seeing something go from an idea into a working application is always an enjoyable experience, as is recieving feedback and being able to make further improvements. Far from simply enjoying it though, or successes with respect to the application compared with the project spec, there is the issue of using a brand new (to me) programming language.

The Python programming language is one I had only “heard” of before I embraked on this project, but on those occasions I had been told of it, all reviews pointed to it being a language very suitable for rapid development and creating portable applications. Before I could even attempt to test these reviews however, I needed to see if Python was as rapid to learn as it was to use. Not wishing to invest in expensive texts, I studied existing applications and online python documentation, immediately started to press into service core programming methods that I discovered; trying them out using the python interpreter and small python executable text files. This approach worked well, and within a few days I was actually remembering that curly brackets and semi-colons didn’t belong in python and that nicely indented code was no longer something that was done for ease of reading and fault-finding, but was an actual run-time requirement of the language.

If I had any problems with the language, it would have to be its differences compared with other languages. I will cite java and php here as those are the two languages that I am most familiar with. Curly brakets are nice; they help me see loops, see clearly where you jump out of them and where they are nested. Indentation is good, but I like to use both. Python not having these caused me some issues, but emacs came to my aid with its syntax highlighting and various python related tools for the unwary newbie to the language. I quickly got used to not using semi-colons. So used to it in fact that when I returned to java for some other work I had to do, I was annoyed I had to put them in. Other interesting syntax issues included the “elif” difference and the colon at the start of methods, if statements and loops.

Syntax aside though I like python. Quite a bit more than java in fact, mainly because I hate bloat, and python didn’t have any (or hardly any). I loved not having to declare the types on new variables, I liked being able to store most anything in arrays and the like. Object orientation is a whole different matter though. Java = Nice+Complete, Python = NASTY. I’m not saying that object orientation wasn’t possible, and I did implement it into the application, but the way some things are done makes you cringe after using java. The requirement to use “self.” is a notable example. In java you can use it or not and it makes little difference in an ordinary method. While I quickly realiased how python liked to work with respect to these things it didn’t stop it from being annoying

So, back to if Python is a good language for rapid development…. yes it is! The speed with which I could write and test methods to do things was astounding. While this was purely down to less bloated syntax, it held speed improvements both in the time taken to write and the time taken to debug if there were problems. With less lines to look through, debugging is simply easier. The language was especially rapid for the GUI development in wxPython. Windows could be made to appear in a few lines, and getting them to contain what you wanted and appear when needed was just a few lines more. While some things in Python are a little complex and abstract, overall for speed its a great language to work with.

Something that is often asked about things in general is “Would you do it again?”, so in Python, would I code in in it again? Well, I have already answered that question at the start of this posting. I will indeed code in python again as I am going to continue the development of TIM. The application has real potential to be very useful as a complementary tool to all who listen to music on their computer systems, and so with a demand from users and the developer’s will to make it better, TIM will be taken forward (hopefully to an RC stage) in the near future

Its true, here in Leeds at least, its been 23 degrees today. Not a fine day to be stuck inside revising/report writing it must be said, but a fine one for feeling a whole lot better about the world and life in general just because of the yellow in the sky. Hope everyone else I know is feeling the summer happiness vibes

Last night I finally registered on the phpBB area51 forum which is running a CVS version of olympus - the new era of phpBB! Not being satisfied with the user side investigation of the features, I installed my own copy from the CVS onto my linux box so I could have a play with the admin functions. WOW is all I can say.

The improvements to existing phpBB features are really good and very welcome, but there are also a whole load of new features which have really made a dramtic impact. While many of the improvements and new features are in the admin panel and will assist greatly with forum administration, there are also some wonderful little differences for the average user such as:-

• Adjusting the order threads are displayed in
• Creating folders for PMs
• Creating rules for dealing with incoming PMs
• PMs to full inboxes don’t bounce, but get “held”
• Ability to manage all user settings from one control panel
• Subscribe to forums is built in
• A watch list for threads and forums in the UCP
• Loads of other goodies

Administration wise, there are lots of things that will save the time of Admins on busy boards. The long awaited ability to automatically can users who have not actiavted or posted anything after a preset amount of time is here, as is the option of setting very finite permissions from a number of angles. You can also create “custom” admin/moderator panels with access (or not) to different features, meaning you really can have a structure of control and management that is so much more than “all or nothing”.

Suffice it to say I am going to love using, modding and installing this new phpBB when it is released. While I won’t be upgrading existing forums due to the time taken to port mods, I will certainly be installing it for people who request new forums, and continuing to recommend the webs best free, open source, forum solution

Oh, and if you want some bits to read and play with;

• Feature List
• Development Board (Read, Post, Test as a user)
• LIVE Admin Panel (Same as above, but test drive the admin functions - username/pass = bbadmin)

I arrived home today to find a large number of students sitting on the grass area outside my block chatting, drinking and listening to music very loudly. It would seem that not only does the summer time bring on easy living for some students, but also noisy living. What they clearly don’t consider is that some students when they come home from a 9am - 7pm revision stint, still have work to do and may have exams soon enough so as not to permit being disturbed by such activity, let alone partaking in it. Is there no consideration? Surely students must accept that others have to study, after all didn’t they have said work/exams all but 5 minutes ago? *sigh* I guess I’m going to have to invest in a camp bed and find a secluded spot in the library, although the 24 hour computer lab might be a better bet; can’t be missing out on my internet fix now can I