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THE END OF COMP3804!! well… almost

What a past few days. Very strange and very busy. Ok, where do i start. Lets start the story since my last blog entry on Wednesday: Wednesday I come into uni to the labs to help the programmers finish the program and to start going through the agenda for the very huge COMP3804 final demonstration on Friday.

I expected to be in there late. The programmers start integrating their various bits, and i soon realise that there probably still needs to be a lot done before the program will be in a fit state to even start one practice of the demonstration. While the programmers are doing their thing, me and Morgan polish up the agenda for the final demonstration. Have dinner at the Red Room at around 7. As the night continues I make several trips to the vending machine in the building. Eventually it comes to 3am. I still had uni the next day (or is it the same day...?), so i decided to be off home. I give Morgan a lift home and eventually get home at around 4am.

Get in a quick sleep, and wake on Thursday at 7ish, get back into uni at around 9. I skipped my 8am COMP2502 lecture (understandably i wasn't in the mood to sit through a Kevin Gates lecture). I attend my HIST2606 tutorial and lecture, had a quick lunch and then headed down to the labs again. The programmers also went home for a few hours after i left the night before, and they were back in their that morning. The rest of the afternoon passes, a bug surfaced with the database (due to the XML importer in the program) and tried my best to solve it. Left the labs at around 7:30pm to pick up Despina from work, had a quick dinner, and then went back to uni at around 9:00.

I was starting to get worried, because we had not done one complete run-through of the demonstration and we were due to preform it in around 12 hours. I can't remember if i've mentioned this, but they only way our program is actually assessed is this 25min demonstration; we never actually submit the finished program itself. Anyway, the programmers finish at around 1 or 2ish and we do a run-through of the agenda for the demonstration. Morgan was designated the person to be operating the program for the demo, but the others decided someone else should actually be talking and explaining how the program works while he is operating the program, and that person ended up being me. A few bugs surfaced, but the programmers assured me that they would fix them.

I decided that if i had to be up in front talking i needed at least a few hours sleep in order to be coherent. Left uni at around 2:30am on Friday, took Morgan home, and eventually got home at around 3ish. Had a shower, got some sleep, and woke again at around 6.

Now its Friday, i get dressed in black pants and a business shirt (the group had decided to dress up a bit for the final demo), picked up Morgan, and was back into uni at around 7:30 (were were due to demonstrate at 9:30am). We do a few quick run-throughs of the demonstration. By this time i started to get nervous. We walk up to the room, and about 5 mins later get let in. I was thinking to myself: "I should really feel so much more tired than i am after only getting 6 hours of sleep in the last 3 days", but i guess I was running on adrenalin.

Darren and Ken (the course coordinators) were assessing us, and there were a few other ITEE staff that were also there to see the show. The demonstration itself went really well. It was easily the best run-through we ever did: we covered everything; we were well within time; and strangely enough, i actually felt calm and collected (at least compared with the practices) giving the demonstration. They said that they were really impressed at the demo, and also at the quality of the program. (i'll see of i can post some screenshots later)

Afterwards, it's quite disappointing to see all the work we did since April basically only covered in a very brief 25min demonstration. It really doesn't seem to give the final product the credit that it deserves.

I eventually went home, and decided that I was going to take this weekend off (we all deserved it).

COMP3804 isn't totally finished yet though, we still have the second presentation (about our managing of the entire project) to do, as well as some reflective reviews. Probably after that i will post my own reflective review of this whole year-long experience.

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