Future Plans at UW

December 21st, 2009

It looks like I’ll be entering the second half of my university career next term. Wow – time has definitely flew by quickly. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a frosh looking to find meaning in life… :P

I suppose it’s about time that I start specializing in topics that I enjoy. After 3A I don’t have any real required courses so I have a multitude of options. Heck, even in 3A I only have 2 courses that I absolutely have to take (CS 341: Algorithms and CS 350: Operating Systems). That pretty much leaves ~18 slots to complete various degree requirements and whatnot. Woot.

From the beginning I knew I was going to lean heavily towards business. I finally formalized my plan change today and added the option in (it’s essentially a minor that isn’t a minor). I don’t know how much it really matters, but eh.

Anyway, for my 3A term I’ll likely be taking CS 348 (Introduction to Database Management), PSYCH 338 (Organizational Psychology) and BUS 352W (Introduction to Marketing Management) along with the two listed above. That looks like a pretty decent selection. :D I might make some changes depending on various factors of course.

After that… Well, there’s a number of courses that I can take. I guess I’ll break it down for future reference.

  • BUS 362W (Building and Managing Products, Services and Brands) will likely be the last business course I’ll enroll in to fulfill a couple of requirements. It’s the successor to BUS 352W (I suppose that’s why the course number was changed) and the topic itself looks pretty interesting.
  • ENGL 119 (Communications in Mathematics & Computer Science) and CS 492 (The Social Implications of Computing) are “required” courses for the business option. I don’t really have any further comments at this point.
  • CS 370 is a prerequisite for a course I want to take. It appears to be a whole lot of math. :P I’m just hoping it’s more applied than theoretical.
  • CS 488 (Introduction to Computer Graphics) is pretty much the course I’ve been looking forward to since my first term here at UW. Graphics has always been one of the few topics that *really* interest me. Indeed, I’ll probably try to learn a bit of OpenGL over the next few months.
  • PHYS 121 and PHYS 122 (Mechanics and Waves 1/2) are pretty much filler courses to satisfy my degree’s breadth & depth requirements. I chose physics in part because I think I can apply a lot of it in, say, animation. My other alternative is to take a couple of astronomy courses, but eh…
  • CS 490 (Information Systems Management) links together computer science and business. That’s all I need to say on that matter. :P
  • CS 349 (User Interfaces) also looks to be a very entertaining course (especially since I wrote my last work report on application design…).
  • Considering how much I’ve been lashing out at Facebook, Google, RockYou and others over the last couple weeks, it’s no surprise that CS 458 (Computer Security and Privacy) is on this list.
  • CS 486 (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence) is pretty obvious. Evil robots ftw! :P
  • I might take CS 448 (Database Systems Implementation) as a follow-up to CS 348 depending on whether I have room. We’ll see.
  • Finally, I’ll probably take CS 343 (Concurrent and Parallel Programming) to round out my programming skills and to satiate my curiosity on developing for multiple cores (pretty useful considering the shift in CPU development over the last few years).

That’s a pretty comprehensive set of courses I think. It should give me a pretty solid foundation to build on in the future. :)

Information Systems Management

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And then there were none…

December 20th, 2009

I’ve just finished writing my last three exams the last couple of days. It was…actually not all that bad.

On Thursday I wrote the CS 246 final. It was pretty straightforward – a bunch of short answer questions about C++ and software engineering plus a rather large programming question at the end. Considering the last question was pretty much an extension/adaptation of assignment #6 and a similar question on a previous final, it wasn’t too hard. There was definitely a time crunch there though; my wrist was hurting when I was done. :P

Next up was STAT 231 and PSYCH 101 both on Saturday. Ugh. I was actually pretty worried about the former (too much formulae to remember), but the exam was pretty easy. I didn’t like the fill-in-the-blank questions though (-1 for every wrong answer vs. +0.5 for every right answer?) – definitely reminded me of certain Asian exams. :P As for the latter, let’s just say I’m glad it was multiple choice. A lot of questions were just strange and there were plenty of duplicates as well – I don’t think the question generator for the exam was doing too great of a job. Ah well.

What really sucked was that since my last exam was on a Saturday night most of the buses weren’t running anymore. I totally forgot about that fact, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyhow. Bah.

(Oh yeah, so my graph turned out to be relatively accurate. I’d bring up CS 240 / PSYCH 101 a tad and maybe tone down CS 246 / STAT 231. CS 245 gets to shoot through the roof.)

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Having fun with Google search suggestions…

December 16th, 2009

Quite a long while ago, Google implemented an AJAX suggestion box on their search page. I’m not entirely sure if it was originally their idea (probably not), but they definitely popularized it. I see it showing up everywhere now. Personally I don’t make much use of out it but to each their own.

Anyway, I’ve been having a little bit of fun with the feature…

University is...
Twitter is...
Google is...

There definitely seems to be a lot of negativism on the internet. :P Now obviously I haven’t been too creative with this, so feel free to speak up if you find anything else interesting. ;)

(Just tried out “Obama is…” – ouch!)

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Two down, three to go…

December 16th, 2009

Well, it looks like the graph I made last Wednesday has been pretty accurate so far. I’m not sure if that’s something I should be happy about though. :P

First off was CS 245. Yeah… I’m not going to lie: the final for this course was made of pure suck. It might not have been so bad given a very strong grasp of the concepts, but that wasn’t going to happen. I’ve already mentioned how woefully inadequate the given resources were; throughout the term I was drawing knowledge from various sites, textbooks and similar course offerings at other universities (go Wikipedia!). Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind having to do extra studying. But when I learn more on my own time than in class (say approximately 75%), why am I paying for tuition? Meh.

Despite my rant, I still did relatively well throughout the rest of the course so I should pass comfortably. *Knocks on wood.* The main thing I’m worried about is how adversely it will affect my performance in the future (for example, when I take databases next term). It hasn’t been too bad thus far, but eh…

CS 240 is on the other extreme. Typically people don’t complain when a course is too easy, but I think there’s a limit. Throughout the term, the class has been relatively quiet and disengaged (in contrast with CS 246 where questions were being thrown around left, right and center). I’ve even heard some comments along the lines of whether this course actually prepares us for CS 341. Guess we’ll know soon enough. :P

I just wrote CS 240’s final a few hours ago and I’d say it was a pretty fair exam. Approximately half the questions were derived from assignments (so they were kind of trivial in nature as long as a few key facts were memorized), but the other half actually required quite a bit of thought (for example, adapting generic algorithms to solve a given problem). Surprisingly there weren’t any short-answer questions, despite the fact that we covered complexity classes and such.

I kind of wish we were given more time though; I didn’t actually get to finish despite rushing through quite a bit of it. Time has been my adversary on pretty much every exam I’ve taken; very rarely do I get the chance to do things like proofreading and whatnot. I don’t like that – time limits test dexterity, not knowledge. My brain just isn’t wired for short, intense sessions. :P

Actually, I can go one step further: I have a bone to pick with the notion of writing exams as a whole. I’ll rant about it in another post though, since I would have to delve into different learning styles and whatnot (plus I’ve deviated enough already)…

Anyway, CS 246 is up next! It should be “fun”. :P

In other news, Facebook changed some privacy features (and in the process ignited a lot of controversy), RockYou gets hacked (exposing some 32 million accounts with passwords stored in plain-text – I didn’t think any company could be so incredibly stupid in 2009) and Google implements personalized search (thus changing SEO completely). Oh, and it started snowing here with temperatures dipping below 0 degrees celsius. Yay. (In contrast, central Alberta dipped below -45 degrees last Sunday. :P )

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Final Exams: A Brief Analysis

December 9th, 2009

Exams: How Screwed Am I?

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It’s Exam Time!

December 8th, 2009

Wow, last week was just crazy. I didn’t think it was physically possible to complete 5 assignments in a week. :P

First off was CS 240. It was basically an assignment on string manipulation via. the Boyer-Moore and Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithms. Then we had to manually construct a Huffman tree to determine an encoding sequence for compressing text. Pretty simple stuff, I guess.

Next up was STAT 231. This was basically on model checking, p-value computation (hypothesis checking) and finding prediction intervals. Again, relatively straightforward considering most of the stuff could literally be copied and adapted from the notes… I think I feel a little more confident about statistics now. :P

The two assignments for CS 245 were insane though. I literally spent two days reading through various logic textbooks and notes just trying to understand the material. It actually doesn’t seem that hard, but you wouldn’t think that from attending our lectures. I’ll repeat my quip earlier on Twitter – “University: the place where people make simple things needlessly complicated”. I think I’ll be using that quote for some time to come. :P The good thing, however, is that I think I have a working grasp of what’s going on; that last tutorial definitely helped a lot (the tutor definitely knows how to communicate concepts at a level most people can grasp). I do have one question though. Why were there two assignments due on a single day? It should have been combined into one (this would save about 100 pages worth of cover pages)…

Finally, I had a massive assignment due for CS 246. It was a two-person programming project modelling a soda concession service (with vending machines, students, soda creation plants and more). I have to say, it was actually a lot of fun writing code for this project; I think this was the first thing involving software engineering concepts that I’ve done in university. Perhaps I’d be singing a different tune if I wasn’t interested in or haven’t done any massive projects previously though. In terms of size, this assignment can’t compare to my content management system and I think that prior experience definitely helped a lot. :P (Alternatively, it might be because I got to express my evil side writing code that overcharges people and steals their WatCards/money. :P )

So now that those assignments are done and over with, I have to start studying for exams. Ugh. CS 240 seems pretty straightforward, but I keep wondering whether we’re going to be thrown a curveball on the final (the stuff we’ve done so far seems far too trivial for a second year course). STAT 231 and CS 245 are likely going to be my hardest subjects (with CS 245 coming up this Thursday…). CS 246 will probably be moderately hard, but at least I know what I’m doing in that course. Then there’s PSYCH 101 which I enjoyed but could barely put time into since I was trying not to fail my other courses. :P

Ah well, we’ll see how it goes. ;)

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Naruto (Chapter 473) and Bleach (Chapter 383)

November 27th, 2009

…and this week’s Naruto and Bleach manga just came out as well.

Did Kisame actually just get wtfpwned by Bee and his brother? That combo attack definitely looked like a room full of hurt. Bee’s pencil-throwing skills are pretty awesome too. :P

Not much to say on that chapter, except that it definitely seemed like deus ex machina at work (with Raikage et. al. saving the day). I suppose they did have a logical explanation since Kisame’s ability was so not stealthy. …and what’s this, Sai speaking up for Sakura?

Kenpachi’s and Byakuya’s fight with Yammy in Bleach just got more interesting. It would have been boring if the latter died without doing anything. :P He probably still doesn’t have a chance though, with three captains (none of them using anywhere near their full strength) watching him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yammy blew up like a bomb as a result of anger (think Deidara in Naruto). :P

Looks like Tōsen and Gin may have gotten hollow powers as well. The shinigami in the fake Karakura Town are so screwed.

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Weekly Dose of Anime

November 27th, 2009

I’ve just finished watching episode 247 of Bleach which is a continuation of the current filler arc. As expected, we didn’t get to see any new sword abilities (Ryūjin Jakka actually did torch things with mere fire, haha). It was definitely a clever plot twist, having Muramasa tell the Zanpakutō to merely stall for time; epic fights were not necessary to advance the storyline.

…and Ichigo falls into yet another trap. Go figure. You’d think Muramasa’s taunting would be enough to ring some bells, but nooo… Everyone else picked up on something suspicious – heck, even Kenpachi knew (though he didn’t give a crap and just wanted to blow things away :P ).

As for Naruto, we finally get to see the fight between Sasuke and Itachi. I was kind of expecting something more…mindblowing, but I suppose you take what you can get. Next week’s episode will definitely be interesting as that mini-arc reaches its conclusion; we’ll get to see Sasuke’s Kirin and Itachi’s Susanoo.

I also found out that there’s a new adaptation of InuYasha picking up from where the original anime left off and continuing to the last chapter of the manga. That’s actually pretty awesome news, as the last few episodes of the original were terribad; there were so many loose ends and it was really obvious that the show was unfinished. I actually picked up the manga right after episode 167 since it left such a bad taste in my mouth. :P

The only negative thing I can say so far is that the new episodes had very little background for those who haven’t followed the original series. I mean, we saw Kagura get killed off 2 episodes in, and she was definitely one of the more interesting characters (few others have had to deal with complex decisions – it’s almost like there was a clear cut between black and white).

I’m not entirely sure how long this “season” will last either. The previous adaptation only reached about halfway through the manga and it had 167 episodes. However, Shōnen Sunday announced that there were only going to be 26 episodes. I’m not sure if I believe that or not, since it’s going to be hard to cram everything in that period of time. Well, as long as we get a decent ending this time around…

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Feedback and its Effect on Educational Quality

November 25th, 2009

Apparently yesterday was evaluation day for all of my courses at UW this term. We get to fill in a sheet of paper for each class, rating the instructor and the course on various criteria. Most of it is multiple choice (so we don’t have to think too hard :P ) with a few short answers. These evaluations are supposed to be feedback for the staff to improve the course in future offerings.

That’s nice. My question is, does it really matter? How much consideration is even given to those forms? Is there even a third party inspecting them and taking proper action? After all, those evaluations could easily be a facade, an illusion to make us think that our opinions matter.

Sure, there are many good (nay, even great) instructors at UW who strive to improve themselves and their course offerings. On the flip side of the coin, there are those who seemingly couldn’t care less about the class (perhaps they were forced to teach a topic they disliked or something). Now, I won’t question their intelligence; they’re obviously insanely smart to get where they are. It’s just that there are people who are better suited at imparting knowledge upon others.

At TED2009 last February, Bill Gates spoke about education (and malaria, but that’s out of the scope of this post :P ). While I believe his focus was on primary and secondary education, several of the points he made are still relevant at the college and university level. What kind of process do lecturers undergo to improve their teaching? How are they rewarded for doing well?

Gates mentioned how video can improve quality of education as a whole. It can be used as a feedback mechanism and gives students another resource to learn / study from; an example of this is the OpenCourseWare project at MIT. Funny that technology use at UW seems to be sorely lacking given its reputation in the area. :P I mean, only recently was video recording equipment added to classrooms (and only a few). Even my high school in a rather small town made use of that particular piece of technology before UW did. Blah.

I figure, given the recent referendums on a new student complex, a health services building and the reinstatement of a radio service fee, we should have one on installing new equipment in existing classrooms. Something like that might actually have a measurable impact on student performance. Heck, it might even get people involved in some decision-making process – kind of important given the amount of student apathy in recent years.

I probably deviated from what I wanted to rant about, but whatever… Something to think about at least. :P

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Blog Claim on Technorati

November 25th, 2009

This is just a quick post for Technorati to verify that I am indeed the owner of this blog. ;)

Claim Code: 8YB9TVZPAN83

Is it just me, or has Technorati been pretty slow to respond ever since they relaunched their site? Ah well, I suppose that backlog must have been huge.

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