This is the essay I wrote to the Dean of Engineering on why I want to switch from EE to CS.
I am requesting a transfer from Electrical Engineering to Computer Science. I have come to this decision based on my increased desire to become a software engineer. Even though I have always had an interest in electronics I discovered that I enjoy it more as hobby than as a career. My interest in programming began after I started to tinker with Lego Mindstorms in 6th grade. I wanted to extend the capabilities of the kit so I looked into NQC (Not quite C) which is a C based programming language for the kit. From there a took a C++ class in high school and recently did quite a bit of scripting work for Caterpillar this summer in what was supposed to be an electrical engineering internship. I enjoyed it so I decided to switch to computer science. I succeeded more in the CS courses I took this fall than my previous EE courses. I have planned the rest of my course work for CS and I believe I can graduate in 3 to 4 semesters since much of my EE coursework transfers. Steve Herzog advised me on the decision and believes that I have demonstrated the ability to succeed as a CS student. Both departments are very prestigious thus making this a very hard decision but I believe this is the best decision for me in the long run. I feel that CS requires more creativity and interest in discrete mathematics than EE and EE requires more of an interest in continuous mathematics and physics. I wish I had known that difference back when I made the decision on which major to study.
Please leave comments if you had to make a similar decision. Thanks
I posted before about how to filter your Bacn email by label but I found out that you can’t make a label containing other labels. Gmails Quick Links is the solution. Quick Links provides a ‘quick link’ to saved email searches. By default if you search ‘label:Amazon label:iTunes’ you will get messages that contain both labels(Boolean ‘AND’). We want to get messages that contain either label. Thus enter:
‘label:paypal OR label:iTunes OR label:twitter OR label:Amazon OR label:Facebook’
Apple’s Address Book is a great contact manager that comes with every Mac. So when I made the ’switch’ I easily imported my Outlook contacts using the vCard format. However the ‘notes’ section of all my contacts looked like this:
So I wrote one of the simplest Address Book AppleScripts ever. Check it out:
tell application "Address Book"
set peopleCount to (count every person)
repeat with i from 1 to peopleCount
set note of person i to ""
end repeat
end tell
I decided what better way to get ready for the New Year than to setup a few gmail filters for Bacn. Bacn is mail you want, but not right now. GlitchNYC gives a good outline on how and why you would want to do this. I thought I would compile a list of bacn that gets a label and skips my inbox for you to get you started or spark some ideas.
Facebook: Any message from Facebook
Twitter: Any message from twitter-follow-EMAIL@postmaster.twitter.com
I don’t want all messages from twitter to skip my inbox, just the follows, because I want to see my DM’s NOW.
iTunes: Any message from Apple AND subject contains receipt
Paypal: Any message from Paypal AND subject contains receipt
Amazon: Any message from Amazon AND subject contains order
That’s about 90% of my bacn. I wish gmail could automatically recognize these like it does spam. I made tried to create a master bacn filter to check these all at once however gmail does not let you filter labels. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
*Updated, sorry I used ‘code’ tags instead of
‘pre’ when I posted the code. Try it out now*
I’ll post more details later but I just wanted to get this off before I leave to see my family for the Holidays. This is an applescript for iTunes that I modified. The orginial grabbed the top tag for an artist from Last.fm and wrote it to the genre field of the ID3 tag of a selection of mp3’s. I modified it to grab the tags for each individial track and write them to the groupings field. This allows you to make smart playlists of your music based on the Last.fm tags. So in the end your music will be organized in a Folksonomy fashion. Here is the code, think of it as a belated Christmas gift or celebration of the Fevistal of Stephen :)
(*
--orginial script authored by Last.fm user T-spoon
--modified by Stephen Moser
contact@stevemoser.org
v1.0 Dec 26 '08
-- initial release
http://www.stevemoser.wordpress.com
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Get a copy of the GNU General Public License by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
or visit http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
*)
tell application "iTunes"
if selection = {} then
display dialog "You must select one or more tracks first." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 with icon 1
end if
set trackList to selection
set lastartist to ""
set lastgenre to ""
set lastcomment to ""
repeat with i from 1 to count of trackList
set thisTrack to item i of trackList
set theartist to artist of thisTrack
set thename to name of thisTrack
set thegroup to grouping of thisTrack
--set genre of thisTrack to ""
--set comment of thisTrack to ""
set thiscomment to ""
set theurl to "-d api_key=f10c1bc4b66d5a4b6ca86440d95a32e8 -d method=track.gettoptags -d artist=" & my encode_text(theartist) & " -d track=" & my encode_text(thename) & " http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/"
set tags to {}
set thexml to do shell script "curl " & theurl
if thexml does not start with "failed" then
tell application "System Events"
delete every XML data
set this_data to make new XML data with properties {name:"lfm", text:thexml}
--tell thexml to set level_1 to XML element 1
--tell thexml to set level_2 to XML element 1 of level_1
tell XML element of this_data
every XML element of XML element 1
repeat with x in every XML element of XML element 1
set thetag to value of XML element "name" of x
set thestrength to value of XML element "count" of x
--change strength to your taste
if thestrength as integer ≥ 1800 then
set the end of tags to thetag
end if
end repeat
end tell
delete every XML data
end tell
if tags ≠ {} then
--set genre of thisTrack to item 1 of tags
repeat with i from 1 to count of tags
set thiscomment to thiscomment & "‹" & item i of tags & "›"
end repeat
set grouping of thisTrack to ((get thisTrack's grouping) & thiscomment)
--appends tags to grouping, can change this to comments
end if
delay 2
end if
--set lastartist to theartist
--set lastgenre to genre of thisTrack
--set lastcomment to thiscomment
end repeat
end tell
-- this sub-routine is used to encode text
on encode_text(this_text)
set the unacceptable_characters to " &+%'/\"\\()"
set the encoded_text to ""
set the character_list to {}
repeat with this_char in this_text
set this_char to the contents of this_char
if this_char is not in the unacceptable_characters then
set the end of the character_list to this_char
else
set the end of the character_list to encode_char(this_char)
end if
end repeat
return (the character_list) as string
end encode_text
-- this sub-routine is used to encode a character
on encode_char(this_char)
set the ASCII_num to (the ASCII number this_char)
set the hex_list to {"0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"}
set x to item ((ASCII_num div 16) + 1) of the hex_list
set y to item ((ASCII_num mod 16) + 1) of the hex_list
return ("%" & x & y) as string
end encode_char
You can change the field it writes to to the comments field instead of groupings. Also you can change the strength of the tags it looks for. This script might have problems if your artist name or track name has special characters. I will post updates in the future. Let me know if you have any problems.
This is the original post on Last.fm that started the project:
http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/285676/1#f8093324
Thank you Doug from DougScripts, t-spoon, and nautisch for your help.
I put together this top ten list to commemorate the release of WALL•E on DVD. I must admit the first time I watched WALL•E in theaters I didn’t own a Mac and thus I didn’t catch all of the subtle references to Apple products. However, upon watching the movie again after purchasing a MacBook I couldn’t help but notice:
10) WALL•E’s iPod nano
I couldn’t find a screen shot of this but it is the most obvious reference to an Apple product in the film. I not sure how you can feed video into an iPod nano but WALL•E found a way.
9) WALL•E’s recharge/boot chime
When WALL•E recharges, he plays the familiar Mac boot up chime. I picked up on this one even when I didn’t own a MacBook. I hear this sound at the beginning of almost every other class because of prevalence of MacBooks on this campus. If you want to hear the sound you can listen to it on Wikipedia.
8 ) Eve’s got Mac
This is another similarity you can’t help but notice. Eve’s seamless white body is like a white MacBook or screw-less iPod. I encounter the same difficulty as WALL•E did when he tried to pop a panel open on EVE as I did when I tried to open my iPod.
7) Eve is processing
Fortune magazine revealed that Apple’s lead designer, Jonathan Ive, had helped with the design of EVE. This might be why when you look at EVE’s neck you can see a progress cicrle inside.
8) Eve is sleeping
Another Mac inspired feature of EVE was her green status light. After EVE received the plant she “went to sleep” and displayed the soft glow of a green plant icon which pulsed much like the white LED of a sleeping Mac.
5) Green is the new white
While some believe that WALL•E pushed to much of an environmental message, I disagree. I saw the film as a fun sci-fi film aimed at kids. This film did encourage environmental responsibility much like Apple does. With the recent launch of the aluminum MacBooks, Apple has greatly reduced the number of toxins produced in their MacBooks.
4) The magic of Leopard
Ok this is a little bit of a stretch, but the galaxies WALL•E passed by on the way to the AXIOM born a striking resemblance to Leopard advertising.
3) Escape Pod?
So if the last one wasn’t a stretch this one definitely is. WIRED’s article describes how the iPod got its name. The designers tried to come up with a name that would reflect the Mac as a hub for other devices. The idea of a space ship came to mind which naturally lead to the idea escape pods. Plop an ‘i’ infront and the iPod was born. The escape pod scene in WALL•E is short but fun nonetheless.
2) Heads up display
I got this idea from a patent Apple made described here in an engadget article. All the humans on the Axiom are seen floating around on hover chairs with a heads up display chatting away to thier friends. Although is patent is for a HMD (head mounted display) you still get the idea.
1) Auto – Macintalk
I saved the best for last. This is probably my favorite Apple reference in the whole movie as evidenced by the ending credits. The voice for Auto was Macintalk which was a voice synethsisor for PlainTalk in early Macs. You can still access the voice in OS X. If you can’t get enough of the Macintalk voice you should check out Satisfaction by DJ Banger.
Well that wraps it up. I can’t think of a better way to end this post than with this youtube clip.
So I haven’t posted to my blog lately. I guess I feel like I don’t have time to post or to make a very good post. I read other rss feeds with awesome graphics and feel like a post with just text is worthless. I guess I need to just jump in and start blogging. I kind of did that with my ‘Just swag it’ blog that I am shutting down. It was a good test run. You can’t getter better without practice. Oh and not to just make this a worthless post I have an iPhone app pick. Its Ocarina, which can be found here. It is definetly worth a buck. Everytime I play it for someone they are amazed and instantly want to try it. It is the original apps that get attention these days.
I found this while doing my online Logic Philosophy homework. Actually it claims that Chuck Norris is a woman is an invalid argument. I was still pleasantly surprised when I found Chuck Norris in my homework. Time for a few Chuck Norris jokes.
Chuck Norris can make a valid arguement with a true premise and a false conclusion.
Define Vacuous Truth: The displacement of matter behind Chuck Norris’ roundhouse kick.
This is an excerpt from an extra credit assignment I did for CS210, a course in computer ethics. We had to evaluate a speaker from the ACM UIUC Reflections Projections conference. I attended Rands’ talk about nerds.
”Rands is a very charismatic speaker, to nerds that is. Rands is his online alias, his real name is Michael Lopp. The engineering management evangelist is most prominently know for his book Managing Humans and his blog RandsInResponse. Both of which are about how engineers can be better managers. One of his more famous articles “The Nerd Handbook” <http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_handbook.html> is a guide to show significant others of nerds how nerds ‘work’. I actually read the article when it was published around a year ago so I was excited about attending the talk.
The first thing I noticed about Rands’ talk was his slides. They were usually a combination of black, white, and gray with beautiful typography, which is understandable because he is a self proclaimed typography nerd. The first part of his talk was about different types of nerds and geeks. Rands then parsed important nerd needs like the ‘cave’, quoting some of his ideas from “The Nerd Handbook” article. He definitely knew his audience because many of the attendees were laughing and clapping. To finish up his talk, Rands made a ‘context switch’ from nerd cliches to how to start a career, not getting a job. He offered insightful advice on how to improve one’s resume and left with an offer to provide “30 seconds” of personal resume advise to anyone who sends him their resume.”
