Graph Paper

I decided that graph paper is magical and makes my notes obscenely neat. I might actually convert to graph paper for all my note taking. We shall see.

On a more related note, I forgot how awful getting up early was! Regardless I managed to drag myself off to bed and get ready for my first class of the day: Introduction to Coding Theory. Once again I had to hike up that awful hill and go up several flights of stairs, if nothing else at least I'm getting a good workout from studying here. This class was in the same room as the previous day, so it was nice to know exactly where to go. Once more I had an energetic middle-aged man with a German accent for my teacher. Not the same person, but similar enough that I found it funny. This teacher had good English and a clear voice though, so that's always good.

As for the actual academic content of the course, he gave a very brief introduction to what we would be covering and then began the lesson. It is a very math heavy course, and he said that we would be doing no programming (which makes sense because I am in fact receiving mathematics credit for this class). It would mostly be building off of linear algebra, dealing with matrices and vectors, with a little bit of probability theory, number theory and discrete mathematics. These are all things I have a relatively good grasp of, but I'll probably spend some time reviewing. It also looks like a few of the topics in this class will coincide with things discussed in my Cryptography class. I always enjoy it when my classes have overlapping topics because it allows me to get different angles, and to seriously reinforce my understanding of the subject.

All and all it was a good class, what we covered wasn't too involved that I was lost, but wasn't so simple that I was bored. I'm still adjusting to having such a long class period (roughly 2 hours) and sometimes my attention wanders as the end of the class approaches. Hopefully I'll get used to it quickly. Since my classes only meet once a week it's rather important that I can focus for the entirety of the class.

Went back to the dorm, relaxed for an hour and a half and then I was back outside for my second class. Once again, a miserable uphill walk, and then up 4 flights of stairs! How wonderful it was(n't). The teacher is a short Indian man with a very very thick accent. This might pose a slight problem, I can understand most of what he says but often times the words near the ends of his sentences tend to run together. He also talks rather fast, and that certainly doesn't assist in my understanding. The lecture was again, a short introduction, an overview of the course and the beginning of our first lecture.

We began with an overview of what Cloud Computing was. He basically asserted that there was no clear definition for it, and instead gave us multiple explanations. We then went over a sort of timeline, how we had come to the point of cloud computing. Talked about virtualization, virtual machines, the characteristics of cloud computing, different services, themes and economic implications of cloud computing. There was a lot of time spent on the economic portion because he was trying to enforce why we were learning about Cloud computing. He wanted to show us that it is interesting because of the economic models and scalability of it all. Overall the class was fairly interesting and I think I'll enjoy it. This was also the first class that assigned homework.

After class I met up with Ariail and we headed over to the bank. There she started the process to open her account here while I picked up my debit card. I've been pretty impressed with the speed they handle customers there, they're quite efficient. Once that was done we both grabbed an early dinner (it was around 4:30) at the Metro Cafe. After that we parted ways, as she had a class and I was headed back to my dorm.

Upon arrival at my dorm I relaxed for an hour or so and then got started on homework. This homework was for Randomness in Computer Science, the class for which I have the most...trepidation. It's not particularly encouraging that I receive an email one day before the class assigning homework. For the class. Which is tomorrow. Somewhat frustrating, though I suppose I didn't have much else to do. It's really the principle of it all that frustrates me. The assigned reading took me quite a while, as it was detailing probability theory, algorithms and a bunch of other information that was condensed into a not-so-easy to digest format. I also tend to take copious notes when trying to understand readings, so that slowed me down considerably. Regardless after a while and a couple breaks I completed the reading. I'm not entirely sure I can say that I understand it all to the best of my ability, but I hope that actually going to class will serve to augment my comprehension and not further confuse me.

Once again, my class isn't until 4 tomorrow so I get to sleep in a bit! I always enjoy that.