Update

Well it is over a year since my last entry, so I thought that I should pull my finger out and provide an update.

I have always been interested in photography and in June last year (as a reward to myself for graduating) I purchased my first non “point & shoot” camera, a Canon EOS 450D.  At this point I was a total noobie, so things like aperture, exposure and depth of field were all alien to me.  Now after reading numerous articles, both on and off line and having joined 2 local photography clubs I am starting to get to grips with my new hobby and gaining a better understanding of it’s technical side.  One book that has certainly helped is “The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/450D Companion”, it covers all the bells and whistles of the camera, giving good and helpful explanations as to when, why and how to use the different settings.  Although still very much a novice I am growing in confidence and in March of this year signed up for the OU’s short-course  “T189 - Digital photography: creating and sharing better images”.  T189 is a 10 week course with the first week starting on the 1st May.

For a number of years my other interest has been motorsport, primarily motorbike racing, and am now combining this with the photography.  Last year I went to a number of meetings (MotoGP, WSBK & BSB) and each time my technique has got better.  Its a slow process and requires a lot of practice, but I do feel that I am improving.  If you would like to see my efforts so far, take a look at me Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianmcy/.

Luke Helm @ BSB Round 1 Brands Hatch (f/5.6 1/320 300mm ISO 250)

Open University curbs Tesco 'clubcard degree' scheme

The Open University is scaling back a scheme which allows students to pay for courses with Tesco clubcard points.

Since February 2007, OU students have been able to use reward points earned from shopping to pay fees for their undergraduate degrees.

But now the university says it has had to "re-evaluate its budget" and restrict the deal to students in their first years, under a phased programme…

ref:  BBC News

What next?

A number of people have been asking what I will do next, and to be honest I am not to sure at present.

Some students and tutors have suggested teaching.  Although this is something I have looked at in the past I am have decided not to go down this avenue because from what I have seen secondary schools at present do not teach computing, they just teach pupils how to use computers / software.

Several other tutors having suggested tutoring for the OU and this is something I might well look at doing.

Or I could continue studying by doing an Msc.  Having taken a brief look at the OU website I have estimated it would take 5-6 years at a cost of about £9,000.

What every I end up doing I am taking a year off.  Even though I have a few jobs to do around the house, a year of no TMA’s, revision or exams will be so relaxing.

Thank you

Having completed my degree I would like to extend a big thank you to the following:

• The “Open University” for giving people the opportunity to better themselves;
• The tutors who have helped me through my courses;
• My fellow students whose messages of help and congratulations have been a great motivator.

Degree Confirmed

The OU, via my “student home page”, has confirmed this morning that I have my degree.  It is a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computing, Upper Second-class Honours (2.1).

M366: Result!

The final results for M366 have been released (3 days earlier than stated) and I got a Grade 3 (OCAS 92 & OES 54).  I felt that the exam didn’t go well for me and I have been worrying since then that I had failed the exam (thus the course) and would have to do a re-sit.  So I am mightily pleased.

This means that I have got my degree and if my calculations are correct it is a 2:1.

M366: Finished (well hopefully)

Yesterday afternoon I took what I' am hoping was my last exam for my degree.  To say that it was a joyous experience would be an extreme exaggeration as I found it concentrated to much on the minor aspects of the course, i.e. those areas that you think want crop up in the exam or if they do it would be the odd one or two questions.  Plus they changed the way formulae were presented making them look partially different to how they were in the course text.  Exams are a stressful experience and with the time constraints I for one did not need the challenge of having to decipher a formula before using it.

I now just have to wait until December to see if I scrapped enough marks together for a pass and not have to worry about doing a re-sit in April 2010.

M366: Revision starts today

Having attended the M366 strand at the M500 Revision Weekend and submitted my last TMA (Tuesday evening) I can now concentrate on revising for the exam on the 14.Oct.

To aid in my revision I have created a plan:

Day	Date		Block	Unit	Description
1	Fri	18.Sep	1	1	Learning outcomes
2	Sat	19.Sep	2	1	Learning outcomes
3	Sun	20.Sep	2	2	Learning outcomes
4	Mon	21.Sep	2	3	Learning outcomes
5	Tue	22.Sep	2	4	Learning outcomes
6	Wed	23.Sep	3	1	Learning outcomes
7	Thur	24.Sep	3	2	Learning outcomes
8	Fri	25.Sep	3	3	Learning outcomes
9	Sat	26.Sep	Tutorial		10:30 – 15:00 Croydon
10	Sun	27.Sep	Turotial		10:30 – 15:00 UoW
11	Mon	28.Sep	3	4	Learning outcomes
12	Tue	29.Sep	4	1	Learning outcomes
13	Wed	30.Sep	4	2	Learning outcomes
14	Thur	01.Oct	4	3	Learning outcomes
15	Fri	02.Oct	4	4	Learning outcomes
16	Sat	03.Oct	5	1	Learning outcomes
17	Sun	04.Oct	5	2	Learning outcomes
18	Mon	05.Oct	5	3	Learning outcomes
19	Tue	06.Oct	6	1	Learning outcomes
20	Wed	07.Oct	2	All	Recap
21	Thur	08.Oct	3	All	Recap
22	Fri	09.Oct	4	All	Recap
23	Sat	10.Oct	1	All	Recap
24	Sun	11.Oct	6	All	Recap
25	Mon	12.Oct	5	All	Recap
26	Tue	13.Oct	Study	exam	papers
27	Wed	14.Oct	Exam		14:30 – 17:30

and constructed a revision pack:

1.	Learning outcomes;
2.	M500 slides;
3.	TMA's & marked answers;
4.	08 exam & specimen papers;
5.	Glossary;
6.	Maths guide;
7.	Course text index.

Using the course text and my revision pack I plan to answer, on a postcard, each of the Learning Outcomes for course.  I will then carry the postcards around with me all the time and use them (i.e. whilst commuting to work) to aid in an attempt in retaining all the necessary information.

M366: TMA03 Result

Last night I got the result back for TMA03, 93%.  Still on course for a Distinction if only I can find a way of nailing the exam.  One of the problems with M366 is that it covers so much information and I am struggling to remember any of it.  Hopefully the M500 weekend and revision tutorials will help.  If anyone has got any revision tips and tricks they are most welcome.

M500 Revision Weekend

I have just booked a place at the M500 Revision Weekend.

The M500 Society began in 1973 as a self-help group for Open University maths students in Southampton.  Now there are members throughout Britain and in many other countries across the world.

Every year they hold a revision weekend at the Aston University, Birmingham.  The Weekend, 11th - 13th September 2009, is designed to help with exam revision, is open to all OU students and this year includes M366.

There are five teaching sessions for each course, which are Friday 19.30 - 21.30, Saturday 9.30 - 12.30 and 14.00 -17.30, and Sunday 9.30 - 12.30 and 14.00 - 17.00. Total teaching time, excluding the tea breaks, is about 13.5 hours.

If you are doing more than one course, you are free to go to any of your courses for any session. Most tutors will produce a timetable to help you decide which course to go to for any particular session.

I have previously attended these weekends for both M301 and M359, and found them to be invaluable in assisting with my revision.

For further information goto http://www.m500.org.uk/sept.htm

TMA03 finally submitted

Finally got around to submitting TMA03 this afternoon, and as some tutors have commented, it took a mighty long time to complete.  This is primarily due to the number of neural networks (and variations) we had to create and the number of training sessions needed for each one.

Now on to Block 5.  No peace for the wicked.

Online Tutorials

M366 is the first course I have done where there are a number of online tutorials using a system called Elluminate (http://www.elluminate.com/).  This does present a problem though in that the tutor taking the online tutorial can have the tendency to post messages about the tutorial only to their tutor group, as is the case I experienced on Tuesday 23.Jun.09.

Although I reside in region 13 I tend to participate in region 1 tutorials as I work in London and it is often easier for me to attend these tutorials rather than my official ones.  One of the region 1 tutors’ has been very helpful in supplying me with dates and times of the online tutorials so that I could participate.  So on Tuesday I logged on at 8pm only to discover that there was no one else around.  I hung on till 8:30 but with no one else coming online I assumed that perhaps the tutorial had been cancelled.  Yesterday I discovered that in fact the tutor (a different tutor to the one previously mentioned) who took the tutorial had actually started it at 7pm and only her students were aware of this.  I have e-mailed this tutor in the hope that she will keep me informed of the start times of future online tutorials she is taking.

M366: TMA02 Result

Yesterday I got the result back for my TMA02, and am very chuffed as I got 90%.  Like TMA01 this TMA had a number of questions that were word limited, plus some of the questions were not to clear on what was required.  Overall I did not screw up any single question but lost the odd mark here or there for missing out a particular point.

Now onto Block 4 and TMA03, which is all about Neural Networks.  The opinion of one tutor is to leave plenty of time for the TMA as it is very time consuming.

M366: TMA02 Submitted

Last night I managed to finally finish TMA02 and submit it 4 hours before the deadline.  Initially this TMA looked as though it was going to be easy, but appearances can be deceptive as it got harder and harder the further I progressed into it.  Still it’s done and dusted, and I am going to chill out for a couple of days before starting block 4.

The one thing the TMA has shown and greatly concerns me is how quickly I am forgetting things that I have studied in the course text.  For example I had to totally re-read the section on Ant Colony Optimization as I could not remember any of the details.  This means that revision is going to be a real slog.  The way I feel about this course at present I will be happy just to get a pass come exam time.

M366: TMA01 Result

I have just got the result back for my TMA01, and am rather pleased as I managed to get 93%.  This was not the easiest of TMA’s especially where questions specified a word limit.  I have always had trouble with trying to provide short concise answers.

For TMA02 I am endeavouring to answer each question after finishing the relevant unit.  This way I hope to be able to give myself more time and improve how I answer word limited questions.

M366: An update

It has been sometime since my last entry so I thought I would give an update on how my M366 studies are going.

• Block 1 and 2 have been completed;
• TMA 01 was submitted yesterday (13.Apr.09);
• Attended 4 tutorials (1 official one at Croydon College and 3 region 1 tutorials at the University of Westminster).

4 tutorials might seem a bit excessive but I have found them (except for 1) to be of great benefit, and for this course any additional help is certainly needed.

TMA 01 has been a nightmare.  I have probably spent double the amount of time of this TMA than I have previously spent on any other level 3 TMA.  One of the major problems was that a number of the questions required us to document our understanding of a particular subject but with a set word count.  For me this proved very time consuming especially when trying to fit an answer in to say 150 words without plagiarising the course text.

AI is a subject that has interested me for a long time, and the course material is both extensive and interesting, but the course text itself is dire.  The authors of the course have tried to cram to a broad range materials into a limited space, with some subjects only being briefly covered.  For example Block 2 has a section about logic and “rules of inference”, yet without having previously studied these subjects in M263 I wouldn’t have stood a hope in hell of understanding them from the course text alone.  This is not being an isolated example.  Block 2 also covers “developing good heuristics” in a page and a half, yet the subject was a major part of TMA 01 question 4.  And don’t talk to me about “alpha-beta pruning”, without a flash based app developed by one of last years student’s I would not have stood a chance of fully understanding this particular concept.

At present my opinion of this course is DON’T DO IT, unless AI really does interest you and then make it your very last course.

M366: Yet another tutorial

On Saturday I attended my 3rd tutorial for M366.  The previous 2 tutorials have been at the University of Westminster, but this one was at Croydon College and held by my actual tutor.

Even though it was a 2.5 hour round trip for a 2 hour tutorial, it was worth it as the tutorial was both informative and enjoyable, as well as being well attended (10 students if memory serves correctly).

After the general intro’s, we had an overview of all the blocks and the TMA’s (i.e. weighting, no substitution), plus general discussions about AI and the course so far.  A number of students thought that the course text made a lot of assumptions (i.e. the logic section) in that we have previous experience in specific areas, and I made the observation that perhaps M263 should be a required course for taking M366, as M263 covers in depth a number of topics in Block 2 of M366.

One very useful piece of information given is that we should allow plenty of time for TMA03 as it will be rather time consuming due to the practical's involved.

M366: AI on YouTube

Whilst wondering the ether yesterday I came across a couple of lecture series on Artificial Intelligence, on YouTube.  Both come from the “National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning” in India (NPTEL).  Their objective is:

The main objective of NPTEL program is to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum based video and web courses.

Links to the lecture series:

• Computer Sc - Artificial Intelligence  There also seems to be an associated web-based course containing an extensive number of PDF’s.
• Computer Sc - Artificial Intelligence - Prof. P. Dasgupta

I also came across another site, AITopics,that is a massive portal to all things AI.

M366: First Tutorial

Last night I attended my first tutorial for M366. Not being one of my official tutorials it was one run by Region 1 at the University of Westminster. This is one of the many positive aspects of the OU in that you are not restricted only to your official tutorials as you can go along to any of the tutorials being run for the course you are taking.

The tutor was a Dr. Dorothy Monekosso (http://cism.kingston.ac.uk/people/details.php?AuthorID=45) and 9 students (including myself) attended. The evening started off with the general introductions were I discovered that for a number of us this was our last course for our respective degrees. This was followed by a crossword to assist in identifying and understand key terms from Block 1. I really hate crosswords, I find them so frustrating. The evening finished off with a discussion about the Turing Test.

As Dorothy travels a lot a number of her tutorials will be online using an application called Ellimuate (http://www.elluminate.com/) with the first one being on 24th March. And my first official tutorial is on the 28th March at Croydon College (a long way to travel for just a 2 hour tutorial).

M450: Result!

Last night I got home to find a letter from the OU giving my result for M450.  To my surprise (after all the heart ache and worry) I got a DISTINCTION.

The letter was the standard OU result letter also showing my OCAS (83) and OES (87).  There was no explanation as to why there had been a delay in releasing my result.