B+ Trees - A Whole New World of Pain

One of the practical exercises that has been set for my course is to implement a B+ tree in Java. Sounds fairly easy right? Just implement a tree and make a few changes for search and insert/delete.

Not quite, I'm currently on my 3rd attempt to get a working tree. This time I'm successful (though delete is still to be implemented). The difference - I've moved away from recursive techniques for insertion to making use of a stack I can access programatically. This means as the child nodes are split, I can update up the tree making further splits as required. Once the stack is empty and if a split is still required, I can then simply create a new root.

Yay! Now to get on with the rest of it.

Interviews and Playout Systems

Yesterday saw me taking a 700 mile round trip for a job interview, all in one day. To say I was a little tired by the end of it is a bit of an understatement but it was far better than my previous trip, overnight, by train (you can imagine the pain, now multiply it a few times).

On the good news front, STAR's new playout system now has a music library. This means the music team can be trained for the system to go fully live and take over the current one.

It'll be a bit of a see how it goes on this one. We've now tried a few Linux based playout systems and if this is hopeless, we'll be paying out for a Windows licence and a mainstream playout system.

Talking of Windows based systems. Work on AllDay DJ 3 is well under way. I've started afresh, using NHibernate for the database stuff (it'll now work on a number of DBMS without screwing about AND I don't need to write all the boilerplate SQL) but still the same old for the audio library.

Progress wise, I've got the database part working, a track importer operational and the main player core operational, though without overlap / VT or soundcard playthrough support (think IRN if you're not seeing a reason to support this). The plan for supporting these is to edit the player object to take different special file names (e.g. "#PLAYTHROUGH 30" to indicate 30 seconds of playing through a soundcard input).

Change Of Job

That's it, I'm now mainly self employed. I am to start working as a freelance radio presenter [available for work in Fife and surrounding area :)] with a gig presenting Saturday Breakfast on Perth FM (in Perth).

Should be fun and certainly an interesting change from retail.

First Show on Commercial Radio

Well, I suppose I'd better tell you how it went. Not too badly by the sounds of it. I will tell you it's a rather strange experience getting up at 5am and enjoying it. :)

I even had my father taking a listen (the last time he did that, I'd just started on hospital radio). He was rather blown away by the whole thing.

However, it will remain to be seen if I get the position perminantly. If I do, I've got a cracking embarassing story to share with you then.

First Steps

Yesterday, I got a call rather out of the blue from Perth FM. The reason for the call: asking if I would do an on-air trial on Saturday morning.

My answer, of course was yes. So this Saturday (tomorrow) I'll be presenting Breakfast between 7am and 11am. I can only hope it all goes smoothly tomorrow.

Though, I was at the studio this afternoon. Mainly to get keys and obtain training on the equipment. It was also a great guide to how difficult it is to find the studio. Ah well, I know where it is now.

Anyhow, if you want to listen, it's 106.6FM in Perth or online at http://www.perthfm.co.uk/

ResNet, FATMAN and JA.NET - A Romantic Tale

Trust me to get the title of Ian's talk wrong, eh. Well that's the correct title. And as promised I am linking to the video.

To see the embeded video, click on the read more link.

WiredSoc Presents...

... Resnet, FATMAN and JANET - (A Love Story). Or I think that's what the title of last night's talk was. Thankfully, the talk itself was more memorable than the title. There was certainly a fair amount I learned about the whole setup and history of St. Andrews connection to the world. That combined with a few pieces of kit being shown off at the end kept the attention of the audience (ooh... look at the shiny!).

A video of it has been recorded and if it makes an appearance online, I'll be sure to post.

Oh, and the talk was followed by an EGM. We now have the same person as last year looking after the website and I get a vote on the executive committee. :)