2 June 2009
On Thursday, I was presented with my Certificate IV in Information Technology (General) from Campbelltown TAFE.
What does this mean? I’ll tell you what it means: fractals. The more you discover about something, the more you find out there is to learn. I’m currently doing the Diploma of Information Technology, due to be finished by the end of this month, which branches out even further into the mystical realms of network security, project management, and other crazy stuff.
Probably the most annoying thing at this point in time is the fact that the certificate is in landscape format, which means it will not look good next to my bassoon certificates, which are printed in a portrait format. I wonder if TAFE offers a certificate in document forgery so I can make a portrait version of the certificate…
Tagged: real life, TAFE | No Comments »
13 May 2009
I now have a shiny new BenQ G2220HD monitor. The resolution is 1920×1080, which means it can draw 1080p movies at their native resolution. I tried Big Buck Bunny on it, and it looks fabulous!
After a few minutes of use, a pixel on the right hand side went bright red, and stayed like that for a few minutes. Fortunately, pressing on it lightly made it go away. Here’s hoping it stays that way, as MSY Computers apparently tries to make it as hard as possible for you to return the device after seven days (regardless of legal requirements).
Perhaps the main reason for me getting the monitor is so I can pass my existing 17-inch HP L1740 on to Alec, who until now was stuck with a crappy Digital CRT monitor that only supports 1024×768 at 60hz, has become blurry with age, and the screen flickers off and on every few minutes.
Not only that, but multitasking will be made more awesome. At Campbelltown TAFE last year, I got to use the computers in the web design room, which were also widescreen monitors. I noticed I was far more productive being able to have a code editor and web browser on the screen at the same time, not overlapping, and at readable widths.
Tagged: hardware, TAFE | 1 Comment »
29 October 2008
I’ve been doing this assignment on system evaluation and change management as part of my TAFE course. Basically, what I’ve needed to do so far is research a hardware auditing tool (I chose OCS Inventory NG), change management software (if you actually buy any change management software, you’ve been duped hard — it’s not much different from bug tracking software), and produce some forms used for manual hardware auditing.
Well, I thought I would save some time by creating the hardware audit form in a table separate ODT document, and use OpenOffice.org’s Insert → Section feature to add the linked document to my report. That way, I could edit the document with the table in it, and have the one linked inside my report automatically, as well as link the table to other documents.
That was all well and good, except after I saved and closed down everything, and attempted to open it the next day, every document that had been linked to my hardware audit form had been corrupted.
As ODF documents are really just zip files with XML documents inside, I opened one of my ODF files in an unzipper. Interestingly, all the files extracted fine, except for content.xml. This was the same for all the documents.
So, content.xml got corrupted after linking the document to an external document? I’m probably just jumping to conclusions — after all, correlation does not mean causation, and the file could have been corrupted by another way. I can’t think why, though, especially seeing as though I was working on lots of documents at the time, and only the ones linked to this particular table were corrupted.
Luckily, I have a backup that I made on Monday, so I only lost the work I did on it yesterday. Here’s hoping this doesn’t happen to me again.
Update: Another two documents got corrupted today. These documents were completely unrelated, and weren’t linked to any others. I’m starting to look at OpenOffice.org 3.0 as a culprit.
Tagged: aargh, openoffice, real life, TAFE | No Comments »
12 June 2008
Just a note as to why it’s been so quiet here. Basically, it’s about two weeks ’til the end of semester, so I’ve got a few TAFE assignments that I’m allowing to take priority over my blogging and hacking. Well, taking over blogging more than the hacking.
So, yeah. Be prepared for a flood of posts when the holidays arrive.
Tagged: real life, TAFE | 1 Comment »
19 March 2008
Since starting at TAFE, I’ve found it difficult to see the contents of the whiteboard when I’m sitting up the back of class, so as of today, I’ve been fitted with glasses. It’s kind of weird — everything now looks like it’s straight out of a computer game (except with way more antialiasing and light bloom effects than you’d get in a game).
Tagged: real life, TAFE | No Comments »
