Colour Code
May 25th, 2009Something I came up with this afternoon with the help of Fluffy, and for a project that we’ll be doing in the somewhat near future.
It’s a code, using colours. See if you can crack it 
Body QR Code
May 7th, 2009I like QR Codes. I’ve made QR Poems before now, and the idea of having a barcode printed on my hand has been knocking around my head for a while, so I thought I’d give it another shot. Unfortunately I didn’t do it very well. Note to self: paint sticks to paper better than skin >_<
Next time, body paint!
Infrequenty Asked Questions II
April 9th, 2009Ah, time for another happy installment.
- User: Hi, are you a helpdesk person?
- Me: Yes ….
- User: There’s a wasp in Level 2 Computer room … can you get rid of it for me?
- Me: Um. I’ll call security.
- User: Hi are you IT support?
- Me: Yes ….
- User: My the tap in my kitchen is leaking.
In a feedback form:
- User: The noise level in Level 4 Extension is unacceptable! I can’t concentrate, it’s like a discussion area!
- Supervisor: Level 4 Extension *is* a group discussion area.
- User: My document isn’t coming out in colour!
- Me: (looking at their print history) that’s because you printed it to a black and white printer. There’s 2 colour printers, colour2 and colour3.
- User: Oh. Can I get a refund?
- Me: Because you sent it to the wrong printer? No.
- User: My document didn’t print
- Me: (looking at print history) that’s because you don’t have enough credit. And you’re not likely to either
- User: What?
- Me: Unless you happen to have £13,000 in pound coins on your person.
(turns out they had put the pages they wanted to print into the copies section, and so were ordering something like 242,526 copies of a 60 odd page document. )
**UPDATE**
Had to squeeze this one in:
- User: I’ve tried to print a document in colour and it’s not coming out.
- Me: (looking up the job) Ah well, that’s because you printed it on a black and white printer. In a computer room on the other side of campus.
- User: Oh. Can I get a refund?
- Me: Uhh, no.
(I eagerly await the day when someone accidentally prints something on another campus, and then they ask me where the printer is)
*twitch*
March 1st, 2009I’ve been working on my second year project for the last …. 12 hours now. Most of the backend is done. It looks like this:
As I snapped this screenshot, I noticed that my BlueJ window was exactly 1337 pixels wide. That’s surely got to be a good sign, right?
Now, before someone goes off on a rant “Oh, NMEA parsing isn’t hard, I did it in a Python script!”. I’ve got to do a bit more than just updating Location information. I have to generically parse all NMEA sentences and check if they’re valid or not, and depending on whether they’re a Proprietary sentence or not I need to switch send the data to the right sort of object. I’ve got measurements coming in on the stream which gives me Temperature, Humidity, Pressure and vertical acceleration. I need to be able to dispatch these Measurements to the right places so they can be updated in the GUI. Also, each one of these Measurements needs to be associated with a Location. I also need to be able to throw Exceptions which can be sensibly handled by the clients. Also everything needs to be completely documented.
It’s not particularly hard, just big and long. The class to turn the GGA sentences into Locations was the easy bit.
Now: I’m going to watch some BSG and go to sleep before my shift in 10 hours.
