All entries for Sunday 09 April 2006
April 09, 2006
Term 2 recap – what I learnt
Design of Information Structures
The lectures varied from useful to uninteresting to ancient Babylonian, but mostly uninteresting. I think I understand the concepts well enough, but they went over a large number of abstract data types that I'm not sure how we'll be tested on.
The coursework was easy enough. It was less interesting than the Programming for Computer Scientists coursework, but it made up for that a bit by not walking us through every step.
Mathematics for Computer Scientists II
I cannot remember what we covered in this module. A bad sign, I suspect. But at the time, it made sense, so I'm sure it's just buried at the back of my head.
Professional Skills
Why should computer scientists have to write essays? It's silly and ridiculous. Almost as silly and ridiculous as teaching essay skills in the same module as Unix. I've so far handed in a suprisingly good factsheet, an absolutely appalling article critique, and a persuasive essay of unknown goodness (probably not much).
The lectures were dull, but I went to them all, so that means that all the knowledge is hiding away in my brain, ready to be accessed at a moment's notice.
Introduction to Quantitive Economics
Macroeconomics is like Microeconomics, only with a different lecturer. And less maths. There were lots of weird graphs.
Computer Organisation and Architecture
The lectures remained mysteriously sleep-inducing, but we had practical labs this term. They were more interesting, especially when sleep-deprived. The last three weeks of labs required me and James to work together to make a game of Pong, using an oscilloscope as an output device. The first two weeks involved a lot of blunders, a lot of confusion, and a lot of doubt as to our ability to finish. The final week involved a miraculous last minute victory over the hardware by me, and an excellent game of Pong created by James (all in one night, without any way of testing it).
There was also some coursework due on the last day of term, but that was easy.