Weekly Check-in

Takeaways

• Finished the KBAI and HCI courses offered by GA TECH with A’s! takeaways
• Completed Head First C by David Griffiths
• Had the first session of my new D&D campaign latex

Courses and life takeaways

I posted my thoughts and review for Knowledge-Based AI and Human-Computer Interaction offered by Georgia’s Institute of Technology last week. This week I received final grades. I was cheered to see that I scored As in both classes. I don’t like to give myself much fanfare for accomplishments, but here I want to say with solid emphasis that I’m excited to start the program with a 4.0.

In the previous articles, I discussed the courses themselves. Now, I would like to quickly discuss what going back to school for my post-graduate while working has taught me.

Deadlines defeat procrastination

There’s an odd paradox with work I have come to realize. The bigger a project and the higher its importance, the more likely you are to want to procrastinate.

The deadlines set by the course leave you with few opportunities to lose momentum or for free time. Applying this scheduling to my everyday life has made me more time-sensitive and aware. I don’t like giving away my time for anything now except study, work, and chosen leisure.

Research, structure, and LaTeX

In undergrad, I read research papers. Maybe 2 or 3 a semester. Post-grad turned this up to an 11. Human-computer interaction alone made me read 2-3 academic articles a week (average of 15 pages each). The experience made me appreciate the importance of structuring information. All work must be as accessible to your reader (target audience) as possible. There is a reality that should be kept when writing any piece. That is, your work is not the essence of any reader: vital information must be communicated effectively.

Both courses used the Joyner David Format (JDF— Yes, the professor’s name). These courses finally gave me an excuse to focus on learning LaTeX. LaTeX is a tool that outputs PDF documents. The PDFs it produces are simply lovely. It’s a little snobby to say, I admit, but the fonts provided look so… clear.

When LaTeX does work, it is the niftiest tool! No dragging things or praying to get formatting correct (Looking at you Microsoft Word!). Just set it and forget it.

I still can’t really recommend it to people over tools like Microsoft Word and markdown because the cost of learning it (and the frustration!) is not worth it.

Schedule

This last point circles back to the first. I took a holiday early in the semester and, I loved it. But I did not realize the cost of taking a holiday mid-semester until a week or two later. Vacations mess with your rhythm, so after I finished my trip, I found my timings were all over the place. The sporadic schedule stayed that way for the rest of the semester. I paid an unexpected price in Monster energy drinks and stress. Set your schedule sooner rather than later.

Head first C

I worked in C in the past but had to switch back to Python and Java for work + school. I picked up Operating Systems for the upcoming fall semester. The course is heavy in C, so I have been taking this time to prepare. After a few exercism.io exercises, I realized I needed to hit the books again. I can still recommend Beej’s Guide to C Programming, to a beginner. Beej has a few too many anecdotes when you want to get to the material. Cue the O’Reilly’s Head First C.

I finished Head First C in about two weeks. It covered everything. Memory. Networking. System calls. Parallel processing. Fantastic read. It was laden with information that was entertaining and informative.

Dungeons and Dragons

Saturday, I hosted a session of Dungeon & Dragons I had been planning for a few weeks. The story’s set in a fantasy book I have been reading. If you have never played D&D, it is a structured improvisation with combat and other systems. The first session was a lot of fun. I won’t discuss the details here, but I will mention that I enjoyed hearing my group of players assault me with questions about the game like, “what happened! Who is this? Are they connected?”

Upcoming Goals

• C practice + LeetCode
• Update the resume to LaTeX
• Upcoming D&D session
• Reviewing linear Algebra with classmates

-Well, till next time space cowboy

Alex