NICKPROSSER_ASCOMPUTING

In this lesson, we recapped on the networks booklet we had read for homework. The topics included network topologies (namely Star, Bus and Ring), network devices such as; Repeaters, Hubs, Switches, Bridges, Routers, Gateways. We also discussed Wireless vs Wired Connections, and the pros and cons of each, as well as Network Protocols such as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and Single Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Overall, I was pretty happy with all these topics. I still remember topologies from GCSE, and the rest is a matter of memorising stuff, as well as common sense in regards to WiFi vs Wired. And just to check if anyone's actually reading this; banana banana banana.

In today's lesson, we learned about Bubble Sorting, Linear Search and Binary Sorting. After practically demonstrating these, we then went on to program some applications on VB; one using bubble sorting and the second using Linear Search. I completed most of the first exercise, but was unable to complete the last extension at the time, where we had to make a button which would step through each pass of the sort each time it was pressed. Because of the way I have looped the program in order to make it more "efficient" as requested by the previous extension (although I don't personally see what difference it made), I am unable to keep both this feature and the step button; the two cannot coexist in my program. The second task I didn't get very far on because the lesson ended. I'm pretty much happy with everything from the lesson today. And that's about the final word. Except for this one; trumpet.

In today's theory lesson, we learned about Networks and the Internet. This included things such as Intranets and Extranets, both of which the definitions I was unfamiliar with, and learned the difference between the World Wide Web and the Internet (the content and the technology, respectively). I'm pretty much happy with this lesson. So yeah.

In our last lesson, we started off with a couple of tests on Socrative, an on-line educational quiz service. Both of these tests were fairly easy, although being marked down on a question that didn't make it very clear that it was looking for multiple answers was a bit of an annoyance. Regardless, my scores weren't too shabby, so, yeah. We also completed a quick test on Algorithms, where I scored 5 marks out of 7. I lost one mark for saying that an algorithm "is a set of instructions that processes an input and produces an output" instead of "a set of instructions that produce a result." Rather petty and trivial, but I've come to expect this level of tedium from the WJEC exam board (OCR was better, imo). The second lost mark was for one of the methods of writing algorithms, where I couldn't think of the right word, so wrote "Bullet Points" instead of "Structured English". Fair enough, though. We also completed some exam style ...