Update

I have completed sorting out my form in the design view in Visual C#. I have appropriately named and labelled each element in the form. I have begun coding the buttons and have my "Cancel All" button done.

Programming

I have begun working on my pizza ordering program and will complete it when it is completed. Managed to get stuck into my work, even after having to move around the class twice due to two computers not working.

An update

Well, this is an update on what has been happening in class. I am doing some practice related to methods so I can improve on how I make them and learn more about them so I can further develop my program. The one problem I have with this class is not being able to sit directly beside Jake. :(

Compression

I made an image of a sunset using the gradient and paint brush tools in Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 and saved it an a JPEG format with 3 different levels of compression.

This is the original image.

This is the lowest level of compression and has the highest quality.

This is a medium level of compression and has medium quality.

This is the highest level of compression and has the lowest quality.

As you can see, as the level of compression is increased, the quality decreases in the image. The most significant change that is noticeable in the change in quality is in fact the line quality of the image. Most of the colours are there, but the lines are reduced in quality and make the quality of the image look bad when it is highly compressed.

I also made an image in black and white on Paint to use for the compression exercise. I have the original image and three levels of compression of that image.

This is the original image.

This the the image with the highest quality and the lowest level of compression.

This is a medium quality, medium level of compression image.

This is the lowest quality image with the highest level of compression.

The line quality in these images slowly decreases as the compression level increases.

Encoding

A Caesar Cipher in encryption coding is a shift in the alphabet a certain amount of characters. As an example, I will write out the normal alphabet and then make a shift in the alphabet of 21.

Normal alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Shifted alphabet:  VWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU

That is what a Caesar Cipher is. I have encoded a message using my Caesar Cipher with a shift in the alphabet of 21.

Ocdn dn v nzxmzo hznnvbz.

The encrypted message above says: "This is a secret message."

I was also given a code to work out without the key. Code I was given: Aol gpwwf Dvtisl sprlk av lha Hwwslz. I used a Caesar cipher with a shift in the alphabet of 7. After the code was deciphered, it said: "The zippy womble liked to eat apples."

When the key is given, the person will easily be able to work out what the encrypted message says. This type of encryption is prone to a Brute Force attack which will easily work out which letter is which. The Brute Force attack which involves using every possible key to eventually find the correct key.

A Substitution Cipher is a method of encryption where the plaintext is replaced by the ciphertext and be anything from single letters, pairs of letters, triplets of letters and so on. When the Substitution Cipher is being unencrypted without the key, the person doing so does a inverse substitution.

A Frequency Analysis attack takes advantage of the most common letters in the English alphabet to find the key by assuming the most common letter used in a Substitution Cipher is 'e', and so on.

An awesome picture

I thought I should post something completely unrelated to what my blog is about. So here it is:

http://media-titanium.cursecdn.com/attachments/40/479/halo4concept11.jpg

http://halofanforlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Halo-4-gravity-well.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl-4ZZUTMDVGiBOHQhd1e1GNpl1clJ4xmXy9tE1397gqtBDCecj_XUsSyLwxdfo7tHnZzoIJkKMfbWHjuTwbyweUTK3ouJ5e7surEJe_j-1sN3_3Sbn3t73TH6Nwn8f2yjCw2KMo3G6mge/s1600/Halo-4-Concept-Art-1.jpg

Usability heuristics

In class, we are learning about Nielsen's heuristics to do with using a device. My chosen device is an iPod Touch.

We have been given 5 steps to carry out.

1. Identifying common tasks.

My 5 common tasks are:

Turning the device on
Play "Tourniquet" by Knife Party
Changing the time
Taking a picture
Viewing that picture

2. Reorder the tasks into an order in which they may be carried out.

Turning on the device
Changing the time
Taking a picture
Viewing that picture
Play "Tourniquet" by Knife Party

3. Apply Nielson's heuristics as someone else carries out the task.

I took a series of screenshots for each step in the task of playing the song had been completed and one on the lock screen.

The usability of the iPod is really easy to use as it's all touch screen and has a really basic way of navigating the interface. This is done by accurately labeling each of the buttons on the screen that are used for navigation. It only required 2 taps (clicks) to find where the song was located and a third to play it.

4. Choose 2 problems to fix. (Explain how)

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors:

Some errors that occur on the iPod can cause it to freeze and doesn't make an error message appear detailing what went wrong. I would fix this by either fixing the bug which caused it to happen or by making a message box appear detailing what happened to cause the error and how to fix it.

Error prevention:

Relating to the above, it would be even better to not have the errors occur at all. So to fix this there would have to regular bug checks. These bug checks would lead to finding the bug which causes the error to occur and then lead to an updated version of the software.

5. Does your selection violate any other heuristics?

If the explanations on how to fix an error are quite long, it would violate the help and documentation heuristic. Otherwise, no.