business

Data Flow Diagrams

I’ve a test on this on Thursday, so i’m gonna kill two birds with the one stone here and turn it in to a creative blog post which (a) entertains you and (b) helps me learn about how these things work.

A Data Flow Diagram is a pretty cool way of summing up an entire organization’s ‘flow of information’ with a few arrows, circles and squares For a more boring, proper definition see here.

Now these lads seem like bread and butter, school-kid type stuff, but when you’re stuck with a few paragraphs of text and have to create one of these from your head, it’s not as easy at you may think

Circles represent systems, rectangles represent people and parallel lines represent storage/database and the arrows are the flow of information between the lot.

Here’s something which is so simple, yet invaluable as it sums up all of this stuff;

So you end up with a big pile of circles and rectangles and arrows all over the place. Looks great when done right, but one wrong arrow or using a rectangle instead of a circle fecks everything up and the whole system usually needs touching up then, at which stage things become messy…. so messy you end up scraping the lot and starting from scratch

Anyway, here are some cool charts / diagrams i’ve come across on the web;

Procrastination Flow Chart

Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart

Vista Decision Flow Chart

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Ebook Assault

Although i’m extremely busy at the minute, i need to start getting in to the habit of selling stuff. Defenced.com didn’t sell on sitepoint, with no bids. Surprising but not the end of the world. I’ve listed it on digitalpoint instead with a lower BIN.

Looking back at my past earnings, you’ll notice one area stands out head and shoulders above anything else. Ebooks. I’ve written & sold 3 ebooks for a combined total of $3,350. Although i don’t really enjoy writing ebooks, once i get stuck in to them the content flows and i can deliver the final product to a pretty high standard. Download my free webmaster ebook to find out

So i’ve started writing another Ebook and i plan to keep writing and writing until i have several ebooks complete. I’ll then either;

• sell copies individually
• sell exclusive rights/master copy along with a site
• sell the master copy by itself with no site

Option 2 is probably the wisest thing to do but requires a bit of extra work. Option 3 is the easy way out. Option 1 is probably too much work for me to take on, even though i’ve done it before.

Of course i may not sell them at all, i might just hold on to them or give them away for free but i want to have some products i can bank on for cash when i need it and ebooks are probably the least hassle to create for me and it’s also something i’m pretty good at (writing)

playing games to study maths

I’ve said before one of the major benefits of doing an IT course is that everything you need is online. It’s just a case of finding it or taking the time to find it.

As you’ll all know i started studying for maths last week… i ended up playing games online but fear not - they’re games which help me learn about maths

I hadn’t a clue what a ‘planer’ graph was before today. After playing this game - it all made it so clear… none of the lines or ‘edges’ can overlap. That’s it. So simple. One problem cleared up by playing a game for 3 minutes.

Forget two or three paragraphs of boring text, show us the damn games!!

Anyway, it’s very much a case of getting down to business now. Despite the fact it’s only one exam, there’s more pressure now than there was on any of the other 11 modules i’d passed first time.

That’s good. It means i know what i have to do and i only have one chance to do it - that’s when i work best. I also think the experience of a repeat is a good thing for me, especially so early on in college (with 2/3 years left).

It means i’ll be more pumped up for exams from now on… any exams i do this year and next, actually mean something… it’s not just about passing or failing, it’s about honors / ordinary / fail

Honors require a 70%+ average. That’s not easy, no matter who you are… it takes time and a lot of dedication…

It doesn’t bother me too much though if i end up with an ordinary degree, as i know the difference between ordinary and honors will be my online work.

Nobody can question my dedication to my online work I’m 2 years doing this now, but i’m slowly starting to see how things work online. College stills comes 2nd and always will until someone can show me how an honors degree outclasses and ordinary degree + bags of experience.

This week however, college comes first (until thursday at about 5pm!)