Author: admin

Last week (15th March 2017) I handed in my COMP104 Concurrent Processes assignment. (I aim to leave at least five days after the deadline before dicussing assignments online as that is the point at which no more submissions can be made.)

This was a variation of the Dining Philosophers Problem, a common test for concurrency algorithms.

Copyists = Philosophers

Copying & Checking ~ Thinking & Eating (Except have to copy before you can check)

Pencil & Eidograph ~ Chopsticks/Spoons (Except different tool in each hand)

copyists 7 and 0 share pencil 3
1       2                           0
3      4                            1
5      6                            2
copyists 0 and 1 share egraph 0
2         3                         1
4         5                         2
6         7                         3

The Copyists had to work in synch until each Copyist had copied and checked 5 drawings.

There were also other restrictions, such as the length of time each copyist took but the details of the assignment are beside the point.

This task was… a rollercoaster …

I started off very slowly, always forgetting to take my latest version of the program to labs with me so kind of working on two versions simultaneously (or, some might say, concurrently haha). I then stopped doing any work on it whilst I worked on my COMP106 assignment. When I got back to working on this assignment, at first I struggled to work out how to synchronise the threads but, using a combination of the lecture notes; a sample assignment on the Producer-Consumer problem from previous years; and trial and error…(s, many errors…), I eventually had a working solution which I happily handed in two days early after sorting out the output display. The next day, however, I suddenly realised that Copyists 7, 0, and 1 were all sharing Pencil 0! This didn’t take long to fix but I cannot stress enough how important it is to check for logic errors. Sometimes getting the program to compile in the first place is so difficult that I’m almost afraid to check for logic errors- but, as anyone who has ever played with a Rubik’s Cube is well aware, sometimes the only way to get perfect results is to mess stuff up a bit first.

My webpage for Assignment 2 of Human Centric Computing! It is far from perfect but considering that I knew very little HTML and no CSS a few weeks ago I’m pleased with this…
and, more importantly, the w3 validator is pleased with it too!

31/10/17 Edit: As the University stopped supporting the page once I’d completed my first year, I think that this is the final .html file I submitted… you’ll need the stylesheet too though.

I don’t have very much experience of HTML and CSS. I have made mockups of websites a few times using HTML- once when on work experience with Rok Animation, and another time for my A2 Computing Project, and (nerd as I am) probably just for fun too…

But I have never had any particular training in HTML, and I haven’t written any CSS, so I was excited to find that COMP106- Human-Centric Computing- will involve being taught HTML!

I find it a little difficult that many people on my course already have a lot of experience with many things we learn, but I’m a quick learner and it may be better to learn formally from scratch than thinking that I know everything already because I’ve messed around with it and made a website before… I get the impression that, had I ended up at University of Hull rather than Liverpool, I would have actually found it harder to progress as they work in C#, my first (programming) language, whereas here I have retained and built upon my C# knowledge by learning Java too!

Anyway, about to embark upon my first HTML + CSS tutorial, wish me luck!