Tim Ginn’s Personal Blog

Well, the results are in, and the government is a Liberal minority. Only 60% of those eligible to vote casting a ballot, the region of Canada I’m in (Ontario and maybe a few other provinces, I don’t exactly remember how they were grouped, if at all, on the news thing as it passed by fairly quickly) had the highest voting rate, of a mere 62%. There are still votes being tallied, but only one or two ridings are not a clear majority vote for a candidate at this point in time (and which way they go really doesn’t affect the overall scene very much).

Personally, I’m not too impressed by such a low voter turn out. I’m not able to vote yet (too young), but surely will as soon as I have the opportunity. It’s been an interesting campaign, though. My favourite video is Ed’s Back (the Conservative party tried to challenge this video, and Ed invited the other candidates to go against him in a "rap off"). I have to wonder, do other countries find their politicians quite so entertaining?

For those interested, the results of the election, as they are tallied, are displayed on the CBC Canada Votes 2004 site. The parties are Liberal Party (LIB), Conservatives (CON), Bloc Quebecois (BQ), New Democrats (NDP) as well as there is an independent candidate (NA). The area I’m in is part of Riding 121.

I came across some rather interesting entires in the Wikipedia. First of all the entry for KDE includes some links to the historical posting on Google Groups. I also found the List of mascots which taught me that Wilber is the name of the GIMP mascot. I wonder if the KDE project site mentions its entry in the Wikipedia anywhere… it seems like it would serve as a good introduction-level document. I’ll probably have a look for it tomorrow.

Well, I’m finally done my Software Engineering project. It’s quite a relief to be done. I managed to pull off a 100% on the project, and that leaves my grade 12 programming final mark at a rather impressive 99%. This is in addition to the 100% in Computer Science Co-op (it’s too bad final marks don’t count for anything more than bragging rights of sorts once you’re already accepted to University). My marks in Physics and Algebra and Geometry aren’t quite so amazing (I don’t know my Physics mark, which won’t even count as part of my top 6 anyway and definitely doesn’t affect University entrance, but I finished with a respectable 81% in A&G).

The project was quite fun to do, I imagine I’ll post it here some day. It was a complete software project, from meeting with the client to create a requirements analysis to writing the software, documentation, test cases, and creating the installation CD complete with autorun and a custom-made installer. All in all, it’s a rather impressive project. The task was to create a programming language suitable for teaching programming skills to students with no prior experience. This was accomplished by creating a playfield with 4 tanks, 4 different students would each program one of the tanks. The 4 tanks battle each other, and eventually one wins (or a draw, etc. occurs). My responsibility was primarily the game server (that runs the student code), as well as the autorun and installer programs. Also included in the project is a programming editor (with a tutorial mode that walks the student through the programming of a tank using a talking character) and the documentation. The project is written in VB6 (the language used for the grade 12 computer science course).