This is available to both staff and students for use anywhere not just on campus as the universities version is.  So if you have run out on Elms, or are not suitable to receive it from there head on over to http://bit.ly/aQT9j and then hit the sign up button.  Once you are logged in go to the box with MSDN on it.  Click My products and continue from there.

Hope that this is of interest to someone.

Nick

We will be running a short workshop on programming Android native apps. It will happen from 2PM-5PM on the 15th and 16th of June (Wednesday and Thursday) in lab G21. 

The purpose of this workshop is to create a (very) simple Android game from which participants can create their own (not-so-simple) games, as well as having skills for other applications.

The code will be based on the code structure of my two games Rune Escape and BoB lite,and they are examples of two very different games that has been created on top of this code basis.

To get the full benefit of this you should come to both sessions, and you should have plenty of programming experience  (preferable with Java using Eclipse, but that is not a requirement.)

You register by making a comment on this blog post, and what degree you are doing (and the year if undergraduate).

YOU CAN FIND THE TUTORIAL AT: http://oster-lundqvist.com/karsten/?p=4886

After visiting Bletchley Park and the National Museum of Computing a colleague lent me Neal Stephenson’s “cryptonomicon”, at almost a 1000 pages this was not a light book but it was brilliantly written. The plot follows two timelines, essentially one following the work of Lawrence Waterhouse a war time crytographer (and more). The other following his grandson Randolph (Randy), a gifted programmer. The plot moves around the world with the two men and the story intertwines and is linked through code. The link to Bletchley Park is that Lawrence spends some time working there. There is a wonderful description of Lawrence and his duffle bag arriving at Bletchley station. Both in the US and Bletchley Lawrence is suppose to work with Alan Turing and some of the stories of Turing match those told by the guide at Bletchley Park.
You probably need to be a geek to truly appreciate this book but Stephenson writes so well there is entertainment available even in the description of eating of breakfast cereal.

James Bradley’s “The Resurrectionist” is described in the blurb as: “A classically claustrophobic Gothic chiller”. I’m afraid I found it too claustophobic and even after endeavouring I could not get into it, so I put it to one side, and have bow decided that it would be a chore to finish it - so I won’t.

Kate Atkinson’s “Started Early, Took My Dog” is much more my sort of books, I have nejoyed earlier mysteries by her and this was equally good, lots of twists in the plot, which once again links to the line of missing and murdered girls.

I bought Jonathan Kellerman’s “The Conspiracy Club” because Amazon offered it at a very good price, and it turned out to be a very good buy, quite readable and lots of twists in the plot.

This final project has made me realised that programming cannot be completed in one day within the last minute. As it was said, programming is like a language, only by time and through sheer practice can strengthen the power to program programs.

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Conclusion

Although the code does what is required of it, further research would probably improve the code, so that it can use a variable number of letter words, rather than a constant number, as it really limits the number of words that can be added to the text files.

Adding difficulty levels would make for a more interesting and challenging game and more complex code.

From this program I gained understanding in reading and writing text files from a source code, and the structures in which the files are read in either linux or windows. I gained more knowledge in the manipulation of range in the srand function.

This project effectively implemented principles obtained in practicals and lectures. I was able to practice known techniques and become more profficient in unknown ones. Overall i believe that this project was a success the number of problems were relatively small in proportion to the size of the program. My main issue would be the confliction of ofstream functions through different operating systems. The time spent rectifying this problem has shone a negative light upon linux and i've come to the conclusion that i much prefer windows.

The specification stated that the program was required to run in linux and this was taken in to account when designing the problem. Functions and headers were chosen with this in mind and perhaps made the program more difficult to impliment. Prior to this project i did not understand the importance of commenting during coding. I have now recognised that commenting well is a vital aspect of programming especially when the program size increases. The main difference between the project and practicals is that if you find a problem, YOU have to fix it, reliance on practical helpers is reduced; though i still readily accept help when avaialble :). I believe that this has made me a better programmer overall and improved my understanding of programming as a whole.

The most difficult part i found was with the paperwork, i had a very hard time trying to figure out what i was supposed to be writing. The coding side of tings went pretty smoothly.

The main aim of this project was to demonstrate the use of various programming constructs and techniques by developing a selection of text based utilities. I feel that I have achieved this aim fairly well as I have improved both my knowledge of c++ and the efficiency of the code that I write using new techniques, such as the ability to dynamically allocate memory to an array.

One of the key things I have learnt from the project is the value of dynamic memory allocation, as my whole project is based around the use of queues to store an unpredictable amount of data from the user. The main disadvantage of dynamic memory allocation is its complexity, using a queue is much more complicated that using an array which can be easily accessed through the use of a for loop. More care is needed when using dynamic memory location such as queues with for loops as the size of the queue decreases with every repetition, meaning that a separate variable needs to be used to store the queues original size.

During the course of this project I have also learnt a lot about string manipulation, in particular how to search through a string effectively and add new characters into specific locations in the string. This has caused me some problems, especially when detecting new lines where I have now learnt that ‘\n’ is counted as one character rather than two. I also had some problems working out where to add in words to the string and how to delete previous ones.

I have also learnt a lot about getting a program to work on multiple operating systems, as some libraries and functions can only be used in specific operating systems. This effectively limits the libraries that I could use in the program meaning that I have to be more selective about the libraries I decide to use.

One way I could improve my program would be to add a spell check function. I feel that this function would be a very useful utility as it will allow the user to edit and correct text that they have already typed into the console application, making the word processor a lot more useful

In conclusion my program meets all requirements and specifications all the utilities work as expected in both Windows and Linux.

From this project I have gained a greater insight and knowledge into several areas of c++ a greater knowledge in file manipulation and several inbuilt functions in c++. I have also learnt the value of ifdef statements to make a program portable between operating systems. This project has also illustrated the importance of functions in programming to save on time coding and debugging huge lines of repeated code. I also have learnt a great deals about queues and there uses which is an area previously I knew little about which has made me want to learn more about some areas of programming I was previously weak on. I also feel this project has greatly reinforced my existing knowledge of programming (one such area is case statements) by making me think for long periods of time about my program and how to fix bugs I feel I have gained a greater understanding of the key principles when programming.

If I could improve my program in any way I would add more validation to prevent crashes if the user enters invalid data at the menu, if the queue is empty and other such areas. I would also have added spell check as the idea of making such a complicated utility interests me, however time constraints made this impossible.