CMOD6001 Presentations

Students who want to use my laptop for the presentations should e-mail the a PDF of the slides in advance of the class.

SOFT6001 Week 09

[Thursday Evening]
We did some exercises with loops.

Everybody got there, eventually.

Week 09 Exercises

COMP6021 Class 24

We looked at video compression and MPEG.

Many students left with a headache. Mighty stuff.

CMOD6001 Class 24

Colin brought chocolate.

Students met in groups for the first half of the class.

Students did a time management exercise.

Handout on Chicago Style references.

CMOD6001 Class 23

Wed.
We did an exercise that required groupwork and communication.

COMP6021 Class 23

One of these images has just 100th the color information of the other

We looked at how JPEG works. That was hard work.

Using Photoshop and Lab channels we simulated subsampling of the chrominance channel to see just how much one can get away with.

We looked at the effects of adjusting the quality settings of JPEGs in Photoshop's Save for Web preview.

A good day's work.

COMP6021 Class 22

We looked at Transparency, Alpha channels, RGBA, & PNG.

The screen capture software messed up so it will be a while before the video is online.

Use of Dictionaties in Exams

... students ... whose first language is not English ... may be entitled to the use of an English dictionary and extra time depending on their level of English.  Please note this is at the discretion of the Head of Department.

Any student seeking such a provision for their exams should fill in the attached form and have it signed by their Head of Department. They may be allowed up to 10 minutes per exam, but this is at the discretion of the Head of Dept.

The student should bring the original signed form to their exams for the attention of the invigilator at the start of the exam. They should also bring a copy of the form to Ruth Murphy, Exams Organisation Office, based at the Admissions counter on the ground floor of the Administration Building.

Please see the attached updated form and explanatory information.  Please note these documents can be downloaded from the Exams webpage on the CIT website: http://www.cit.ie/exams#english_language_

CMOD6001 Class 22

From now on this hour will be a tutorial only. So attendance is not required. It does make for a handy group meeting time though.

Students had project group meetings

I offered to meet with students individually to discuss the paper. But only one was interested.

I checked in with the groups on the progress being made with the projects. I get the feeling that the groups are not being realistic about their schedules.

SOFT6001 Week 08

We looked at loops. Loos can be very tricky.

notes and video
Loop exercises

The Microsoft ELSEIF:
When I am Emperor of the World the ELSEIF will be first against the wall.

Many programming languages nest IFs like this:

IF x < 10 THEN
      B = 9
ELSE
     IF x< 20 THEN
          B = 10
     ELSE
          IF x < 30 THEN
               B = 11
          ELSE
               B = 12
          ENDIF
     ENDIF
ENDIF

Notice how there is an ENDIF for every IF.

In VB is it possible to say:


IF x < 10 THEN
      B = 9
ELSEIF x< 20 THEN
          B = 10
ELSEIF x < 30 THEN
               B = 11
ELSE
               B = 12
ENDIF

Here the nested structure is lost. This is very inelegant.

COMP6021 Class 21 (Tutorial)

No body came to the tutorial with questions. I was really tired so I sent them away.

The tutorial plan doesn't seem to be working, so I think we will re-instate the Thursday class as an actual lecture and then have a whole bunch of tutorials at the end of the semester when they might be more productive.

CMOD6001 Class 21

I asked students to meet in their presentation groups.

Students that do not attend class will very likely end up in separate groups of their own.

CMOD6001 Class 20

There were not enough students class for any kind of meaning group work. So class was canceled.

COMP6021 Class 20 (Lab)

Students worked away on their assignment.

I asked students who were finished to experiment with animated GIFs.

COMP6021 Class 19

We looked at how GIF works.

Class only took 40 minutes, but I never keep people just for the sake of it.

SOFT6001 Assessment Results

I have put the results of the group work and last week's exam online. You can find your result using the last four digits of your ID number (unless it starts with zero(s)).

If you do not know your student ID number, I am not prepared to find it for you.

There are some students for whom I do not have ID numbers because they have not yet signed up for the class.  I am not prepared to give those student their results by some other means.

CMOD6001 Class 19

I hadn't made it clear enough that today's class was a tutorial. More students came than might have, had they known.


We settled on 2000 words for the paper.

Seeing as we were all here anyway I met with the (video) groups.

HEA report on drop out rates

A HEA report on dropout levels found that only 73% of students who start computing courses progress to second year. Of all the courses in the country computing courses fare the worst.

A success rate of 73% at CIT would be considered a very good year. Our retention rates are much lower. The report does compare the university sector with the IOT sector, but does not compare individual institutes. This is probably wise.

The report found that there was a correlation between the number of points required to get onto a course, and the retention rate.  Retention rates in medicine are much higher. But it would be crazy, of course, to conclude that computing is more difficult than medicine. One can conclude that students with higher points in the leaving cert do better than those who have low points. But we didn't need a HEA report to tell us that.

SOFT6001 Assessment

We will have an in-class exam on 02 December at 1815.

If you know you can't make this, please let me know well in advance and I will try to find you an alternative.

SOFT6001 Week 07

I explained why I haven't corrected the exams from last week yet.

This week's exercise was the the same as the exam, but just Part B.

This was tougher than it looks. The devil is in the detail.