FIT2001 week 1: beware gorillas!
This week has been learning about what a Systems Analyst is, how to think about systems, and to be very aware of gorillas.
Gorillas?
There is a problem with simply asking how the company wants you to solve their problem, or even what they think the problem is. It’s called situational blindness, and it means that people see what they want to see. When we design systems to solve problems, we need to be very careful that we observe how the company works, what the actual problem is, and the best way to solve it. It’s good to take input from the client, but we still need to be aware that they might be suggesting something that won’t actually fix the real problem they have. You’ll have to watch the lecture 1 from Caulfield to work out what I mean about the gorillas.
An analyst doesn’t need to be an expert in every kind of technology, but it helps to be aware of what is out there. The most important skill an analyst has is observation, and then using those observations to solve problems. It’s good to develop a few solutions to be able to pick the best one to solve the problem.
In the tutorial, we started to play with analysing a system. I remember getting frustrated with this exercise last year, but this year it has been easier to generalise the system into an object oriented sort of system. We were assigned the water system, at Clayton we are looking at the super system as well as the different parts of each system. I think we might get some more practical experience looking at a specific part of the system in more detail, but looking at the overview makes sense also. It has been good to look at the Characteristics, State, and Actions/Activities of each object in the system. I’m looking forward to next week to see how we can do better at analysing the system.
As a side note, using Google Docs was a great way for all of us in the group to collaboratively develop the document as we went, instead of having a “secretary”.
I must admit that the 2 hour slab of lecture is difficult for me. I find the Caulfield lectures fun to listen to, but after 1 hour I get restless and wonder if I could be using my homework time more efficiently. The Clayton lecture explained things a bit differently, and since POD is the head examiner I reckon it’s important to get the Caulfield perspective as well. I’ll be listening to the mp3s, maybe when I’m transiting. I’ve had success in the past of speeding up recorded lectures to 1.5x speed, (2x is often garbled) to get through the recordings in 2/3rds of the time, we’ll see how this goes.
The Quiz
I found the quiz very easy, I got a lot of the questions right without having to review the material. I was stuck in programmer mode however when I said false to “system construction is the last system development life cycle” – it is true that there is maintenance and testing needing to be done afterwards, but those processes involve a different life cycle and often a different part of the company. (Probably because I’m doing Project Management (FIT3086) this year also.)
Case stands for Computer-aided system engineering.
ERP is Enterprise Resource Planning, where a company commits to a set of software packages to deal with their systems of information.
I also found it amusing that there was an odd thumbs down icon in the quiz- I think it’s because the question was A/n (for A or An).
FIT2001 week 0
Anecdotal evidence tells me that students who blog or journal about their experiences and newly acquired knowledge do better in those subjects. Perhaps this is because they solidify their knowledge through summarisation, and are able to recall this knowledge when doing assignments and the exam.
Happily, there is an optional 3% bonus for FIT2001 if I blog reflectively each week about what I’ve learned. I will be using the existing Wordpress infrastructure on my own personal blog to write the posts, but will be using an RSS scraper to display these reflective FIT2001 posts on my newly acquired student web space (used for another of my subjects: FIT3084, Multimedia programming and the WWW.) (Due to complications I have just submitted the fit2001 category page as my blog.) Another advantage of blogging on my personal blog is to keep the posts I’ve written after the semester ends and my access to the Monash server ends. I will be using the category “fit2001″ to flag each of these posts.
I’m looking forward to FIT2001 this year, it is my last 2nd year subject and pre-requisite for my Computer Science Degree. I was enrolled in the subject last year, but as I was overloaded to 5 subjects (instead of 4), I had to drop one, and FIT2001 was the most logical one to drop. So, I’ve had an advance taste of the subject, and it looks like it will be lots of fun!
If you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed of just my FIT2001 posts, use this link: RSS for FIT2001 posts only.
telephone charades
I played this game with a group of girls aged 12-14, and it was a real hit.
I got the idea from Group Games.com, but modified it a little to prevent cheating.
You need a group of people- I had 10, probably 15 and 5 are the upper and lower limits respectively. You also need a room and a corridor (or another room.) You also need good charade ideas. The best charades involve several actions, are a bit silly (“driving” was a bit easy) and involve more than just the hands.
Start everyone outside the room in the corridor. The first person thinks up a charade, then gets the next person from outside the room. Now inside, the first person performs the charade. Then the second person gets the next person from outside the room, performs the charade (no one guesses the charade yet) in the room (out of sight from the other players). So it continues, until you get to the last player. The last player then guesses the charade. If they don’t get it, go backwards through the players to see where the charade changed beyond recognition.
Optional scoring system: for 10 players, give 10 points for a correct guess at the last player, -1 for each player back through the line, so you get 0 points if no one guesses the charade. This might work well to split a larger group into smaller teams.
addressing an envelope
Since I’m younger than email, and grew up in a country where mail sometimes could take 8 months or longer to arrive, I’m not very familiar with letter writing or addressing etiquette. I found this page on the Australia post website useful, it talks about how to write an address, the best place to put it on an envelope, and how to be friendly to the electronic sorters they use these days.
Also: 55 cents to send something, when I send email for (pretty much) free? Wow. No wonder email revolutionised the world.
flat packed furniture
As I type this I am sitting on a brand new sofa-bed from IKEA. It’s huge, heavy and blue. (It’s also much comfier than our old sofa.) We have also bought our new dining table and chairs from IKEA. The furniture is pretty good, but this article isn’t an advertisement in praise of IKEA. This article is about the adventures we have had in getting the furniture from IKEA to our house, out of the cardboard boxes and assembled into useable furniture.
First Trip: last week, participants: Mum and Dad.
One Table, dining room size. One dining room chair. The encouraging part of the story is that the table, originally thought to be too big to transport home in our own car, was actually flat packed in a really clever way, and was in fact in a very small package. The discouraging part of the story is that only one chair was available in the colour that matched our other furniture.
We assembled the chair on Saturday, and the table on Tuesday.
Second Trip: Tuesday this week, participants: Dad, my sister and me.
Already in the city, we decided to visit IKEA and see if there were more chairs available. We had also found out about an “Eat your discount” deal, where you could eat at the restaurant and then deduct the price of your food from the cost of your furniture, in effect eating for free. We looked at a sofa-bed that my parents had looked at on their previous trip, and then went and enjoyed a Swedish meatballs meal from the restaurant. Wandering down to the shop floor, we found that the colour of chair we wanted was unavailable. Apparently “yellow brown” is a popular colour! (The colour actually doesn’t look as unappealing as it sounds.) What to do? We had already eaten and it looked like we wouldn’t be taking advantage of the “Eat your discount” deal! We asked at the service desk about the chairs, no go. We then thought about the sofa-bed. Being a large item, we had to pay for it and then pick it up from the warehouse. Unlike the table, the sofa wasn’t as easily compacted into a flat pack, and instead came in two large boxes, plus a smaller box for the cover (purchased separately, so you choose the colour.) After waiting for the sofa to emerge from the warehouse, we took it to the home delivery counter, and took home the smaller box (the cover) ourselves.
The next day, a scorching hot day of around 37 degrees centigrade, the delivery truck arrived, and our sofa was delivered to our living room. It was too hot to assemble anything that afternoon so we rested.
The following morning in the refreshing coolness, we opened up the two large boxes. One was amusingly coffin shaped. As we sorted out the bits and pieces, there appeared to be a part missing- an alan key. However we decided to attempt assembling the sofa bed as we went. It came together pretty easily, until we came to the legs. They needed a long thick alan key to reach through the legs to the bolt into the rest of the sofa, and that alan key was missing. After phoning up IKEA, we decided it was time for another IKEA trip- a quick check of their website revealed that there were some chairs in stock.
Third Trip: Thursday (today) participants: Dad and me.
With a half assembled sofa in our living room, we drove into IKEA. The first thing we did was go straight to the flat pack pick up and grab the four chairs in yellow brown. Heaps in the other colours, but only four of the ones we wanted. Then I waited with our trolley while my Dad went to the returns desk to get the missing alan key. It took a while for them to give him the right part, but eventually he got it. Now, it was close to the middle of the day, and we were starting to think about lunch. But how to get to the restaurant without abandoning the chairs that are so hard to get a hold of? We wheeled the trolley back through the show room to the lift, and went up a level to the restaurant. We enjoyed our lunch and then retraced our steps down the lift and through the show room to the check outs.
Then my Dad pulled out the parking ticket (you get four hours free in the car park if you purchase at least five dollar’s worth from IKEA) for the check out person to process. He had two in his pocket: after the first visit to IKEA there had been so many cars wanting to get out that an employee had opened the boom gates and waved everyone through. He picked one, we thought it was the right one.
Unfortunately, we caused a traffic back up because we picked the wrong ticket- we had picked the old ticket. One dollar and a sprint there and back from the parking paying machine, and we could load up the boot with the four chairs and return home with the alan key.
Once we had the right alan key we were able to bolt the legs on really quickly, and were able to assemble the sofa-bed and test it out. It’s really comfy. We then got really good at assembling the dining room chairs, following the instructions like you follow the instructions for LEGO.
So, over the course of a week, we have one sofa-bed, one dining room table and five dining room chairs, from three trips to IKEA. One chair short.
the beautiful things I saw today
I had a wonderful day today. This morning I was almost awake when the alarm went off, so didn’t have any trouble getting out of bed. As I left the house I saw the beautiful black sky dotted with twinkling white stars above me. As I drove the orange glow in the east began and grew stronger. Driving into the university I looked across the sports fields to see the amazingly orange clouds preparing to welcome the sun. I parked the car, and looked back to see the sun rise over the horizon. Beautiful! It was joining the lovely moon, which I had seen calmly glowing a magnificent white pitted with the grey shadows of craters.
During the day I enjoyed the wonderful colour that is sky blue. Driving home again, I was stuck in traffic, crawling up Springvale road for at least half an hour. This didn’t matter though, as I was able to listen to great classical music on Classic Drive (Classic FM). As I turned up High Street Road, I noticed a half of a rainbow in the clouds. As I drove on it got better! The colours became more intense and the arc was completely from side of the road to the other. I saw it touch the ground. Then I drove underneath the rainbow, right through the middle, and it disappeared. Looking back through the rain shower I had just come through, I saw the a lovely golden glow of the sun shining through. I really liked the clouds, fluffy yet majestic. The sky was tickled briefly pink, then the gold faded to a beautiful velvet, and I saw the first stars come out.
Yes, I had a good day today.
an interesting evening
Blooding again! Number 6. An interesting experience- the needle rolled over or something, and the blood flow was really slow. After 11 minutes 50 had elapsed, I had only managed 430ml of the 470ml that they go for. They’ll still be able to use my blood- after 12 minutes they can’t use the platelets so it was best to stop. I’m a bit disappointed though! Haemoglobbin 13.4 (down just a smidge) and BP 117/74 (from memory.) See if you can do a better job- give blood.
Next I went out to get in my car and go to Girls Brigade- only to find that my car was being petulant again. It has had some issues, but has just come out from a service! After a good rev it started again, and I have parked so a roll start can happen tomorrow, if needed.
Then I found out that only one girl had come to Girls Brigade, so I could go home. So instead of driving to church, I drove home, and wrote this. I hope tomorrow is a bit less interesting!
my first “fun” python program
I’m doing a Computer Science subject this semester that is requiring the use of Python as the coding language (as opposed to Java, which we have been taught so far.) For today’s prac, we were required to write a simple guessing game. The computer would generate an int between 0 and 100, and then accepted user input, telling the user if they were warmer, colder or if they won.
I was pretty happy to complete this in half an hour with limited python knowledge (admittedly with the help of Google and an internet connection.)
I will upload this python file after the pracs are over for this week, so people can’t cheat. 
blueswirls wordpress theme
The theme this website is based on is called greymonger and it is released under the GPL- this means that anyone can play with it and modify the code. It also means that the code of the modification must also be released under the GPL licence.
The CSS, XHTML and design is released under GPL:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php
So here you go, the theme I use. It’s simply an archive of the theme folder, with the images slightly modified.
blueswirls.tar.gz This is just the theme folder, not the full website.
(update: 28 July 2009) Perhaps the best way to license this theme is under the Creative Commons “share alike” license.
holidays
I suppose I should blog that yes, I am finished all my exams and projects (at least for semester 1, 2009) and am on holidays! This means of course that all the things I haven’t had time for because of exams and projects take centre stage. We’ve been redecorating, good bye 1979 styling. I’ve also been working on some hiking gear, been to a football game in a stadium (my first) and general recovery from the stressful exam period. I don’t get my results till the 17th, so I’m just going to enjoy the holidays. (Ignorance is bliss, yes?)
Ah, holidays.