Uni Life
Wow, I think this is the longest gap in my blogging since I started! I wish I could say I've been enjoying the sunshine or taking up a new hobby, but the truth is that the weather's been horrible and ...
Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science is a new Computer Science text book designed for use in introduction to programming classes, written by John Zelle, who's Teaching with Python p...
I've set up a new blog, A Year in Kansas, to chronicle my adventures during my 11 months in the States. I'm going to keep my two blogs pretty much separate; my Kansas blog is going to be squarely targ...
I received my J-1 Visa for 11 months in the US this morning, accompanied by my certificate of eligibility for J-1 status. I promptly cut the certificate in half with a pair of scissors while opening t...
Richard P. Gabriel's proposal for a Master of Fine Arts in Software looks like it's getting some serious consideration from the University of Illinois (via Sam Buchanan). The idea of programming as a ...
If you've been wondering why the site has been so quiet for the past few days, here's the reason: I've moved to the States! To cut a long story short, I'm here in sunny Lawrence for a couple of weeks ...
I finally got my exam results for this semester through today. The exam results are great (three 73%s and a 76% for Graphics, which was my weakest subject!) but my average is pulled down quite a bit b...
I'm off to the Glastonbury music festival. Back Monday....
My friend Tristan has got his blosxom powered blog up and running again. He's also set up an experimental public aggregator of feeds from a small group of friends from Uni, using blosxom's companion a...
Via EdTechDev, this report on the important characteristics of course management systems makes very interesting reading. I've been considering doing something along these lines for my final year proje...
My infrequent updates can be blamed on two things: revision for exams (three next week) and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. One of these two has been taking up far more time than it should......
I'm all courseworked out. After 4 hours sleep on Saturday night, I got up at 8am, headed in to Uni and spent the next consecutive 57 hours in the Library doing coursework (grabbing a total of about tw...
Via Zeldman, Skill Swap is a community based new mania free training scheme based in Brighton:
SkillSwap is a voluntary group set up by members of the local web design community and specifically ...
An Interview with Sterling Hughes on PHP5 from the PHP-Con site:
Personally, while I have programmed with both C++ and Java, I am mostly a procedural guy. I feel that most object oriented program...
Bloody hell - Glastonbury 2003 has sold out within just 24 hours of tickets going on sale! My first thought was that this must be an April Fool's thing, but it seems extremely unlikely considering tha...
Cool - the new Glastonbury Festival website uses a CSS layout! Unfortunately it completely fails to validate as XHTML Transitional, but comes to within an inch of validating as HTML 4.01 Transitional ...
Two interesting reads relating to the Programming Languages course I'm taking at University:
The evolution of programming languages on Reflective Surface (Ronaldo's recent thoughts on Smalltalk ar...
Tim Bray provides an in depth, practical explanation of the binary search algorithm with example code in Java. Great revision material for second year computer scientists like myself....
I ran an intermediate to advanced PHP session at University today, on behalf of BCSS. The turn out wasn't particularly impressive, probably because the only lecture today had been cancelled so there w...
Here's the reason I've been blogging at a relatively low frequency lately: BCSS - the Bath University Computer Science Society. The site is still under heavy development (there's a surprise) but there...
I had my first ever Quasar (otherwise known as laser tag) experience last night with the Bath University Computer Science Society (BCSS). Due to various misunderstandings our booking failed to materia...
Off to Amsterdam. Back Sunday....
Weebl and Bob like pie. I also like pie. Luckily for me, my girlfriend, while frequently a disaster in the kitchen (rice and OXO gravy anyone?), is a truly accomplished pie chef as of last night. She ...
I've had an off-line Christmas, during which I've been struck down with a particularly nasty combination of 'flu and a chest infection. After sweating it out for a week I finally decided it wasn't imp...
Coursework is done and dusted; normal service can now resume :)...
There's a heck of a lot to learn....
An Introduction to Lambda Calculus and Scheme and Wikipedia's Lambda Calculus page have both proved useful recently....
Coursework frenzy is kicking in again. This time I have a large group project and two personal projects (one small, one large) due for Tuesday of next week. I'm clearing out my things-to-blog list and...
For my future reference, here are some useful Prolog sites I found over the past few days while working on my (now complete) Prolog coursework:
SWI-Prolog - an open source Prolog implementation, ...
Coursework finished. It still has some niggling bugs but, as a group, we have agreed to stick them in a "known issues" list and forget about them....
It's coursework crunch time. Deadline is Thursday, we have an application that works but doesn't work (if you get what I mean) and it looks like I will be spending the next few days immersed in Java. ...
The aforementioned PHP training system was a mixed success. On the one hand, I discovered that trying to teach a room full of people is a lot tougher than I had expected (to cut a long story short, I ...
No, I'm not dead - I'm just weighed under with coursework. Two large group projects and a whole bunch of personal pieces are conspiring to make me feel gulity whenever I load up a browser window. It'l...
No time to update tonight. I'm frantically putting together a 2 hour training course on HTML, PHP and mySQL which I shall be presenting tomorrow as my first ever experience of teaching a large(ish) gr...
These notes are from a Computation III lecture on 2nd October 2002.
Term Languages
If ƒ is a function symbol, the number of arguments taken by ƒ is caled its arity. For example, +, - a...
Lisp Special Forms
Special forms are generally exceptions to normal Lisp syntax that make coding easier and more convenient for the programmer. They are expressions that do not follow the normal ru...
EuLisp
EuLisp gives programmers the ability to define their own error handlers. The default error handler used by the interactive interpreter displays a description of the error and starts the debu...
Applications
Example 1: Traffic Flow
20
_ B <---------
/| \
x1 / \ x2
10 / \| 70
----------&...
Gauss-Jordan Elimination
The steps of the Gauss-Jordan elimination process are as follows:
Input augmented matrix A
Get the reduced echelon form for A using elementary row operations. This is...
Basic Lisp
Typically, Lisp is run as an interactive interpreter. People write a whole load of Lisp in a test file and then load it in to the interpreter and try it out to see if it works. Lisp is a...
Languages and Grammars
These notes are from a lecture on the 26th September.
Let P be a Σ rewriting system.
A word ω is terminal in P if there is no word Z so that ω =>P ...
Managing Data
These notes cover chapter one of "Data Management" by Richard T. Watson.
Organisations generate, store and process large amounts of data. Data management is the management of this ...
Maths for Applications Problem Class (27th September 2002)
Theorems
I didn't quite understand this part of the lecture as we arrived late. These are the notes copied from the board.
The ele...
Graphical User Interfaces
This course covers HCI with a heavy emphasis on implementation. We will be developing the interface/interaction components of software using Java, in particular the AWT an...
Functional Programming
These notes cover the first two lectures of Dr Bradford's Function Programming course.
This course is about the gapp between computer science theory and practise. It consi...
String Rewriting Systems
These notes are from the second lecture in Dr Richardson's Formal Systems course.
Let Σ be a finite set of symbols. Σ* is the set of all finite length string...
Formal Systems
These notes cover the first lecture in Dr Dan Richardson's Formal Systems, logic and semantics lecture. I missed the lecture so these notes are being made with the help of the course...
The Bath University Web Standards & Publishing Guide makes interesting reading. They have standardised on HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS level 2, although the actual page that suggests those stand...
Since I'm using the University Library computers at the moment I'm having to reinstall Mozilla on a daily basis. Here's how I do it:
Download Mozilla 1.2 Alpha for Windows (11 MB), taking advantage...
These notes are for Dr Daniel Richardson's course "Mathematics for Applications I" at the University of Bath.The required text book is "Linear Algebra with Applications" by G. Williams, published by J...
The Computational Complexity Web Log (via Kottke):
This is the first of a long series of posts giving an informal introduction to computational complexity.
Computational complexity theorists try...
Google cooking (via Kottke). This is going to be very useful when I get back to uni....
This one's for Paul from Uni: Tales of the Plush Cthulhu
Some thoughts on blogging etiquette. With anything like this I have a policy of always linking to the blog entry that pointed me to the site...
Point. Click. Think? (via from the orient). This is an interesting, well written piece on the effect that the web is having on student learning and research habits. Looking back at my first year at Un...
I've had my application for editorship of the DMOZ University of Bath Category accepted. Bath's main site has notoriously bad navigation, so hopefully I'll be able to use DMOZ to build an alternative....
Mark Swanborough (a friend from Uni) now has a blog. He's getting hooked already.
Since he asked, my results for the first year came through the other day and I scored a respectable 75% average. Ro...
No updates until Monday - I'm taking a long, offline weekend with my girlfriend....
Oh wow. Which PowerPuff Girl is your blog?. I'm Blossom - yay! Thanks Mark-from-uni for the tip off :)...
Hixie BSc (Hons) passed his degree. Congrats :)...
I haven't finished the Glastonbury writeup yet, mainly thanks to a banging headache and weird flu thing I may have picked up at the festival. Rather than promise it tomorrow I'll fall back on the good...
Gone to Glastonbury
My girlfriend won tickets to Glastonbury from her local radio station (and backstage passes, which is nice). So off I go for four days of muddy hedonism - and hey, I might even ...
Well, I've reached the end of my first year at Bath University (studying a degree in Computer Science) and I can safely say I've never had 9 months go so fast. I've had a fantastic time - I met the gi...