Basecamp / Backpack / Design Patterns
Set up a free BaseCamp account, on cframe's suggestion. I'll be poking at it over the coming week or so, with a view to maybe using it for project management for our group project. Looks quite nifty so far. It's all very trendy, with Ajax out the wazoo, but I'm more attracted by the base idea - if I could actually get people on my project team to use this (and bother using it myself) it might make figuring out what everyone's doing somewhat easier.
Looked at Backpack as well, which is also rather nice, and reminds me a little of OneNote. I've ended up using OneNote an awful lot these days, both for big collections of stuff (my DM notes for the Paradise pen/paper RPG) and for small transient bits of information (like 'Don't forget to LJ about this cool thing I saw'). My main obstacle to using Backpack is that it's web-based, and while I almost always have Usagi nearby (yay for ultraportable laptops!) I don't always have a net connection, and although Backpack allows post-by-email, I still haven't figured out how to do email from my phone. Still, it's a nifty thing, and I may end up using it at some point in the future...
Got a couple of books through the post this morning: Head First Design Patterns, and Computer Networking and the Internet, which is the recommended text for our Comms class.
The latter is expensive and somewhat dry, but it seems pretty comprehensive - although I was very much put off buying it by the fact that we had a sales rep from the publisher come to our lecture and try to pitch the book: "It's very comprehensive ... it was worked on by a team of several people ... it has clear diagrams and tables ..." "You mean, it's remarkably like ... a textbook?" Hopefully it'll come in handy as a reference work - it covers quite a few areas I'm fuzzy on, like backbone routing and wireless protocols.
The former is pretty cool. I've been meaning to try and pick up design patterns for ages, but never quite found the time, although I did pick up MVC, Decorator and Observer in passing (having used API or library classes which used them.) It's pretty light-hearted, which definately helps hold the attention - enough that I spent about half of today reading through it. Picked up some interesting tips already, which I could have used in the past - I've often found myself writing horrible code and thinking "I'm sure there's a better way to design this, but I can't think how..."
And now it's a quarter to four in the morning, and I really should sleep - I have Software Correctness in the morning, which is one class I'm trying to attend as much as possible. I've never been too great at formal logic, so I figure I need all the help I can get, and (for a change) I'm being relatively diligent in taking notes in class to supplement the lecture notes. OneNote really helps for this, too, and I'm actually kinda tempted to pop my graphics tablet into my bag for taking down diagrams. Oh for a tablet PC...
Looked at Backpack as well, which is also rather nice, and reminds me a little of OneNote. I've ended up using OneNote an awful lot these days, both for big collections of stuff (my DM notes for the Paradise pen/paper RPG) and for small transient bits of information (like 'Don't forget to LJ about this cool thing I saw'). My main obstacle to using Backpack is that it's web-based, and while I almost always have Usagi nearby (yay for ultraportable laptops!) I don't always have a net connection, and although Backpack allows post-by-email, I still haven't figured out how to do email from my phone. Still, it's a nifty thing, and I may end up using it at some point in the future...
Got a couple of books through the post this morning: Head First Design Patterns, and Computer Networking and the Internet, which is the recommended text for our Comms class.
The latter is expensive and somewhat dry, but it seems pretty comprehensive - although I was very much put off buying it by the fact that we had a sales rep from the publisher come to our lecture and try to pitch the book: "It's very comprehensive ... it was worked on by a team of several people ... it has clear diagrams and tables ..." "You mean, it's remarkably like ... a textbook?" Hopefully it'll come in handy as a reference work - it covers quite a few areas I'm fuzzy on, like backbone routing and wireless protocols.
The former is pretty cool. I've been meaning to try and pick up design patterns for ages, but never quite found the time, although I did pick up MVC, Decorator and Observer in passing (having used API or library classes which used them.) It's pretty light-hearted, which definately helps hold the attention - enough that I spent about half of today reading through it. Picked up some interesting tips already, which I could have used in the past - I've often found myself writing horrible code and thinking "I'm sure there's a better way to design this, but I can't think how..."
And now it's a quarter to four in the morning, and I really should sleep - I have Software Correctness in the morning, which is one class I'm trying to attend as much as possible. I've never been too great at formal logic, so I figure I need all the help I can get, and (for a change) I'm being relatively diligent in taking notes in class to supplement the lecture notes. OneNote really helps for this, too, and I'm actually kinda tempted to pop my graphics tablet into my bag for taking down diagrams. Oh for a tablet PC...