Saturday 13 May 2017

The Big Red Button



Eek - it's done!  Having worked my butt/socks off on lots of extra daytime study sessions, the assignment is finally finished, and before my own deadlines too!

It's been safely parcelled up and set to one side, with backup copies made just in case.  Then it will wait a day or two, get passed through one last final common-sense check, and then - the button will be hit, sending it on its merry way to await marking.

It's still all a bit surreal, can't quite put together in my head that it's over - the OU study journey is finished, although there will be a most pleasant journey towards the graduation ceremony still awaiting me after the results.

Monday 8 May 2017

Overthinking and Dreaming in Code

Oh, you can tell the assignment is getting to me now - 3 nights in a row I have been dreaming of data analysis in Python.  Very frustrating, particularly as it never solves any of the problems and just wakes me up unrefreshed.

Today however in my studies, I was the victim of my own overthinking.  Spent 2 hours or more undertaking a chunk of data mining to predict some missing data from one of the EMA datasets.  Thought that I had 36 things to predict, so hey good practice with the data mining, right?

Err - not quite!  Turns out I had 4 things to predict, which I could find on a simple Google search within 5 seconds!  So this fact has also been written in to the final report as a warning to would-be users of data mining.

I have a couple more major tasks to do (statistical testing and possibly some data mining if I can bring myself to return to it yet again), and then a lot of pulling together and tidying up the final report and folder structure.

But feeling more positive now (thanks to some sacrificed time-off and weekend daytime study) that I will be finished in time for my own deadlines. (no choice about the module deadline as I will be on holiday by then and unable to submit it late).

And then - what next?  For me?  For my mojo?  For the blog?  It's always been about the OU journey from start to 'wherever' - now I am within a couple of weeks of 'wherever'.  Of course there's still that last walk down the aisle to Graduation too....roll on November ( - but not too quickly,  I want to enjoy that hard-earned time off...!)

It's still really odd not to have the next module waiting to be signed up for.  And unfortunately the OU courses are now out of my price range to do as a 'fun thing', so unless I decided to go down the Masters route (nah.... I'm done.....) then I will be 'done'.