Dave's Grumblings

After much grumbling and discussion about the subject for a while, the SUCS team (led by chckens) finally got around to setting up Planet SUCS. It should give members more of an idea of how much work we do for them (ahaha!). The new SUCS game server is also live, albeit it on a limited campus-only basis for the time being. We’ve got in contact with the LAN Society to help publicise it and hopefully we’ll end up co-operating with them on events in the future. Setting up the server was a lot smoother than I’d anticipated, but I hope LIS see sense and let us open it up for off-campus members to use. It totally sucks that I spent ages setting the thing up and now can’t actually use it. In other news, I sorted out my choices for the 3^rd year project. I’m looking forward to it immensely as it’ll be a good opportunity to do something creative. Doing set coursework is OK for so long, then they get boring and restrictive. The project counts towards 25% of next year’s marks which is quite a hefty amount, I hope I snap out of my recent trend of leaving work until the day before (or even after) the deadline. The choice of projects on offer was mind boggling, I narrowed it down to the maximum of 7 though (in order of preference):

• A web log system (AG-7): This was something I suggested to the ever helpful Gimbo and he seemed happy enough to take me on, w00t!
• A web log client (AG-6): Related to the above, but a prescribed project rather than something I’d thought of. Could be fun - the brief is to create a blog client that can talk XML-RPC to upload entries to a blog. Funnily enough, I’m posting this entry with a client that does just that.
• Rich music meta data system (MJ-2): The purpose of which is to find and exploit links between a user’s listening habits in different situations/activities/locations. What’s slightly odd is that I had an almost identical idea about a year ago, but never got around to implementing it in anywhere near the depth this project requires.
• Tamagotchi e-mail (MJ-4): This one could be seriously fun - create an e-mail client where each message is its own distinct entity with ‘health’ that changes depending on several factors, such as who it’s from, when it needs to be replied to, etc. It’s an exciting prospect, and I think if it was done properly, it could become a massive part of how we interact with each other using e-mail.
• Real time CSS Editor (NAH-6): Not so revolutionary as the above projects, but quite nifty nonetheless. My vision of this would be a two-paned window that updates the HTML display in one half while you create/tweak the CSS in the other. Would certainly speed up web design.
• Web Server Log Analyser (IR-11): This one involves working closely with a local company to generate statistics on their web traffic. Might not sound all that exciting, but there’s a small part of me that’s nutty about statistics - I often write logging code into things I create even if I then completely neglect the possibilities they present.
• Online Source Code Version Control (NAH-4): Basically a CVS/SVN type affair. I touched upon something like this with some code I wrote for the group project, so it would be fun to implement it more fully. Although after I’d handed the sheet in, it was pointed out to me that ‘Web Services’ probably meant .NET Web Services. Ugh.

Although I’d be happy doing any of the projects I’ve chosen (obviously), I’d rather do the ones towards the top of the list (obviously). Here’s hoping I get good enough grades! If you’re wondering about the title of this post, I direct you towards Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Pure genius.