Friday 22 April 2011

Week 39 - Final Blog

This week I have finished my first draft of the report, and I'm now starting to put together the appendices. That means that this will be my last blog, as I need to include it in the appendix.

The report is around 13,000 words long, and I'm quite pleased with that. I'm going to get some feedback and polish it up a bit before the final hand in on May 2nd.

The last thing I need to do is a short presentation on the project. That's going to take place on Wednesday, and will be followed by a demonstration of the program.

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Week 29 - Report.6

This week I have broken the 10,000 word barrier!

Since the previous week, I have completed the Requirements Analysis and Design sections of the report. I've still to do the Intro, Testing, Conclusions and Reflections sections, as well at the rest of the appendices.

I'll also need to start working on my presentation soon, that's due to be given in around two weeks time.

Thats all for this week.

Thursday 7 April 2011

Week 28 - Report.5

Quite a bit of progress on the report writing this week - I have finished the implementation section, and the word count is standing at ~ 7700 words, not including the appendix.

I say that because, on Robs advice, I have created another appendix section for tables and calculations. I have moved the orbital calculation steps which were in the research section, into the appendix, to improve the reading of the report. I've also included the table of orbital elements that I used in this appendix.

Aside from that, I cleaned up a bit of the implementation discussion that was going a bit too in depth, so I think its reading quite well at the moment.

No meeting this week as it's our holiday week, so I'm aiming to have the requirements analysis, and design sections completed by the next meeting.

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Week 27 - Report.4

Report word count: 4150

I have still been writing the implementation section this week. I have written about the vector class, the first model loading stages and implementing the orbital calculations to get animation. I've been having a slight problem, in that I am not sure whether it is best to discuss the implementation in a linear fashion, as in when I coded them, or discussing things in a class by class basis. What I've settled on so far is a mix, discussing small classes like Vector3D and CreatePlanet on their own, but breaking down the main DrawSolarSystem class into seperate discussions like Model Loading and Animation.

I'm finding loads to write about in this section, and I think it will end up the longest section in the report by far.

No word back from Rob on the draft I sent in last week, hopefully that means its not too bad! I'm sure we'll discuss any issues with it in the meeting tomorrow.

That's all for this week.

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Week 26 - Report.3

This week I'm up to about 2,800 words in the report.

I've finished the research section - it's 1668 words, and I'm currently writing the implementation section. I'm going to send a copy of the report so far to Rob tonight, so he can give some feedback on my writing style and correct any issues there may be with it!

Hopefully I'll be able to finish the implementation section by next week, although I've only written about two classes and I'm already over 1,000 words so it could be quite a long section.

Thursday 17 March 2011

Week 25 - Report.2

Still writing the report!

I've got the cover pages and contents sorted, and I've made a start on the research section - I've wrote about 1,200 words so far, and I'm hoping to get to at least 2,000 in this section, if not more.

Another exciting report update next week!

Friday 11 March 2011

Week 24 - Report

The blogs will be a lot shorter now, as I'm just using them to record my progress as I get this report done! I'm aiming for somewhere around 10,000 words, and here's the initial report structure (subject to change):

1. Introduction
2. Requirements Analysis
3. Research
4. Design
5. Implementation
6. Testing
7. Conclusions
8. Reflections

Appendices

A. References
B. Initial Project Brief
C. Extra Program Screenshots
D. Selected Code Sections
E. Presentation Slides
F. Project Log

I'm planning on getting started this coming week, likely on writing the research section.