Anna Elizabeth Kirkman is HERE!
May 23rd, 2010
Today, May 23 2010, Anna Elizabeth Kirkman was born.
Archive
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Awesome award!
June 4th, 2009
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I got a nice award for my census work last year. It’s not some wimpy trophy, either. It’s solid marble. Kickassery!
My awesome office!
April 1st, 2009
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Check out my totally awesome office:Personality Test
December 14th, 2007
Extraversion……………1
Friendliness………….0
Gregariousness………..2
Assertiveness…………20
Activity Level………..40
Excitement-Seeking…….9
Cheerfulness………….15
Agreeableness…………..18
Trust………………..17
Morality……………..94
Altruism……………..1
Cooperation…………..76
Modesty………………11
Sympathy……………..0
Conscientiousness……….66
Self-Efficacy…………93
Orderliness…………..59
Dutifulness…………..63
Achievement-Striving…..38
Self-Discipline……….36
Cautiousness………….83
Neuroticism…………….7
Anxiety………………1
Anger………………..5
Depression……………17
Self-Consciousness…….37
Immoderation………….39
Vulnerability…………4
Openness to experience…..48
Imagination…………..49
Artistic Interests…….38
Emotionality………….0
Adventurousness……….35
Intellect…………….88
Liberalism……………86
Time Machine, LaunchServices, and Application Duplicates
December 13th, 2007
So I was getting pretty annoyed at my computer, because when I right-clicked on a file and went to the “Open with…” menu, applications (MS Word in particular) were getting listed TWICE. It took me damn near an hour to find a fix, but I got it.
The issue stems from there existing multiple copies of an application: the normal copy, and the copy sitting in the Time Machine backup. LaunchServices, the system responsible for keeping track of what applications handle what files, was seeing these duplicates in addition to the originals. The fix was to rebuild the LaunchServices database, which I learned to do here.
I made an applescript application to do it for me, and stuck it in my personal Applications folder. Since running it, all has been well.
CS Department Curriculum Conference
December 7th, 2007
I was a member of a conference today on the CS curriculum at GMU. Apparently I was nominated by a faculty member to attend. The conference was about the CS curriculum, especially changes and suggestions.
To quote from the invitation email:
The CS department has a student advisory council for providing feedback to the CS faculty about the CS curriculum, advising, and other issues which are relevant to the CS undergraduates. You have been nominated by your professors to be on this council, and I hope you will agree to serve on it.
Basically, being on this council will involve meeting with the faculty members once a semester, and letting us know what you think is good about the department and the undergraduate curriculum, what is bad, and what can be improved.
It started at 11am and ran until 1:45pm. Of particular interest to me was the discussion of the early classes, especially CS112. CS112 is the first programming class a student at GMU will encounter, and I am a TA for it so I have a bit of “insider” information on it. This semester they switched to Python, instead of the Java they had been using. This was discussed at length.
I was of the opinion that using Python was a bad idea. The next class, CS211, is taught in Java. It is my opinion that the language switch involved was going to throw a lot of students for a loop. They would go into CS211 and be utterly confused.
There was significant discourse on the nature of the lab sessions associated with it. Of particular problem was that the lab sessions weren’t really effective for anything at present. The idea we wrangled out was this: CS lab sessions would have daily quizzes, and be much more in sync with the lecture. The quizzes would be designed to emphasize core concepts that a lot of students are having difficulty with. These are the fundamental building blocks, which they usually don’t have the ability to use. For example, they would be given a chunk of code and told to change it to use a for loop. I think this is a particularly good idea.
The other generally agreed on idea was that some more real-world-applicable subjects or activities would be good, especially in programming. I’m not entirely in agreement with this myself; I’m very much into the science of CS, and think that too many students have too shaky an understanding of the theory involved. Suggestions included having each class spend a few sessions answering real-world-style questions from the students. The idea of having specific classes for specific tools was vetoed, at least. The industry changes too much too fast to make this practical.
They gave us lunch too.
Roy G Biv
December 6th, 2007
Artists like him, but I have it on good authority that he is a crack fiend who steals all their printer ink.
Some students fail.
December 6th, 2007
It’s a hard lesson. Some students fail. Some students can’t be helped, and you can’t do the work for them.
I have several meetings with a particular student scheduled. She is thoroughly lost. To paraphrase her in a short discussion with one of the other TAs, she has gotten by so far by copying and pasting slices of code, and has no idea at all what she is doing. Their project is due soon, and I think she’s fucked.
As a TA, I’m here to help her with her project. But I’m not allowed to do the work for her. And I think she’s going to fail horribly. This is hard for me to accept. On the other hand, she’s had all semester to get help and hasn’t been here since something like the first week of the semester.
Maybe it’s part of being a teacher.