Waterstone's

Am having sever trouble with the above. Ordered the book online from them so I could use the gift card (Waterstone's in Ireland won't take them), and have had nothing but trouble.

Firstly, the order did not process the gift card, so the full amount got charged to my credit card. Very annoying.

Secondly, I still haven't received it, and it is now headaing towards 4 weeks after my order, even though they assure me it has been posted. I have been on holiday for the last week, so it could have arrived in the meantime, but I doubt it.

Thirdly, and this is the one that really got on my nerves, their customer services are SERIOUSLY bad. Absolutely atrocious. I asked the same 2 questions (why wasn't the gift card used, and when will it be delivered) 4 mails in a row and kept getting the same crappy canned answer back. Eventually gave up and demanded a manager, who preceeded to tell me the same thing. Oh the joys.

I am currently considering options. I threatened to cancel the payment off my credit card and report them to a consumer body, so this may be the only way to go about it. Will decided if it's still not arrived when I get back.

Book Token

Has been received. Haven't had time to get down to Waterstone's to pick up the book as yet, but will do either this weekend or on Monday at lunch. With the arrival of the token it gives the project a much more definite and immediate feel, makes you feel like things are getting started. Unfortunately I'm still in the middle of another project (NaNoWriMo), so have to finish that first at the end of this month before I can move in. But I have been planning...


I have a couple of ideas tossing around in the back of my mind, basically to do with what kind of images I can get it to produce. I have a friend who does a lot of mathematical work, and knows a good bit about topography, so she's hopefully going to supply some inspiration for this. It will be interesting if I can make it work, I may well end up playing with the software long after the project is finished just to see what I can make it do :)

Chunks bitten off

Successfully bit off the chunks I wanted from the project - bit processing and masking (77 & 78). Wanted these for two reasons:
- First: The bit processing is more low level code than the high level code/concepts that will be documented throughout a lot of the rest of the book, and its similar to the area I have most experience in.
- Second: The mask work is something I haven't dealt with before, and as such will push me out of my comfort zone. It will deal with more sophisticated errors of image processing than I have seen to date, and will give me a good background in newer methodologies.

I'm looking forward to getting started on the project. Waiting patiently for the book token now to get a hold of the Greenberg text. I've started playing with the IDE and its pretty cool, looks like you can get a lot of advanced functionality for free, wondering now if there are similar (or the same) plugins for something for Eclipse, which would open things up even more...

Interesting....

Initial post on the OU Mass Writing Project

This blog will be used to track work done for the OU Mass Writing Project - details can be found at: http://incemasswriting.blogspot.com/. The project is a collaborative effort to create an academic book using current and past OU students.

I have applied for chunks 77 and 78 of the project, with a deadline of April 09. Check back for updates and more detailed posts, including current progress and submission/code status.