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crschmidtSo, I've been at school for a while now and haven't really been writing.
A couple days ago, my entry was about how much work I was doing as a PCC acting as a nettech. I'm still a PCC, but after I made myself sick from working too much, I decided that job could just sit and rot for all I cared. So, I stopped going around and fixing computers.
The day before classes start, I stayed up way too late talking to a friend of mine. It was nice to get to know someone really well, but it was quite... well, I was exhausted in class the next day because when you stay up until 5:30, getting up at 7 is entirely too early.
Lessee...
First day of classes. ECE 205 is looking to be a somewhat hard, mostly because it covers a lot of the same material as PHYS 112, which is the class I failed last year, for those of you who remember that. I'm hoping I can pull that one off okay.
Geog 101: looks to be easy (lots of upperclassman taking it as an extra filler course): 2 hours a week plus an hour of discussion. Things like learning about how to map different things, how to draw maps, etc.
No Phys 113 on thursday: lecture starts next week.
CS 311 was on Thursday. Of my classes, that's the one I'm most excited about. It's a database systems class, using SQL. It's really neat - a group project, learning about SQL and query language and query optimization and everything. I'm really looking forward to learning more about WHY what we do on LiveJournal works and all.
I've already got an idea for a project:
Many times, you want to form study groups with people that live near you. So, using the University PH system (http://www.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/ph/) as well as an opt-in emailing of the schedule to the web site for processing, allow users to search for other people in the area with the same classes.
The email the university provides from our registration system is pretty easy to parse: my roomate already has a java parser that produces a pdf version of your schedule. The format isn't that difficult:
Included in there, you can see the "crschmid", which can be used in ph to look up users by their NetID, which we could then store information from. So, an original email is sent to whatever the website email is, which parses the class schedule, stores information on the student (netid/location information) and the courses being taken (Course name/numbers or specific sections: not sure how that would work). Then you can do a simple pull of other people living in, for example, Allen Hall, who are also taking GEOG 101, and contact them using the information available in their PH listing.
If I really wanted to get advanced, I could do distance type searches. However, that might be out of the scope of this project.
We're encouraged to do this project in C++ or Java, but I'm really hoping to get together a group that likes programming in perl or PHP. The prof said that the reason he didn't mention a web-based option is because it would "Take too long". I find those types of interfaces way easier to work with and design, personally, so I'm hoping to talk him into it.
I could get into client/server protocol stuff too. Allow people to upload schedules more directly somehow, by writing a server to accept the information... man, there's all kinds of neat things this could turn into.
I love diving into a new project like this. The class seems really fun, as you can tell by the fact that I wrote about 10 times as much about this one as anything else. My professor is a Hungarian trained vietnemese who is really really funny, and I look forward to this class.
Let's see... I think that about rounds up the classes I've taken so far.
http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~crschmid/schedule.pdf has my schedule. Note that it's missing CS311, since neil had to do his own AM-PM conversion and never schedules classes at those times. :P
A couple days ago, my entry was about how much work I was doing as a PCC acting as a nettech. I'm still a PCC, but after I made myself sick from working too much, I decided that job could just sit and rot for all I cared. So, I stopped going around and fixing computers.
The day before classes start, I stayed up way too late talking to a friend of mine. It was nice to get to know someone really well, but it was quite... well, I was exhausted in class the next day because when you stay up until 5:30, getting up at 7 is entirely too early.
Lessee...
First day of classes. ECE 205 is looking to be a somewhat hard, mostly because it covers a lot of the same material as PHYS 112, which is the class I failed last year, for those of you who remember that. I'm hoping I can pull that one off okay.
Geog 101: looks to be easy (lots of upperclassman taking it as an extra filler course): 2 hours a week plus an hour of discussion. Things like learning about how to map different things, how to draw maps, etc.
No Phys 113 on thursday: lecture starts next week.
CS 311 was on Thursday. Of my classes, that's the one I'm most excited about. It's a database systems class, using SQL. It's really neat - a group project, learning about SQL and query language and query optimization and everything. I'm really looking forward to learning more about WHY what we do on LiveJournal works and all.
I've already got an idea for a project:
Many times, you want to form study groups with people that live near you. So, using the University PH system (http://www.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/ph/) as well as an opt-in emailing of the schedule to the web site for processing, allow users to search for other people in the area with the same classes.
The email the university provides from our registration system is pretty easy to parse: my roomate already has a java parser that produces a pdf version of your schedule. The format isn't that difficult:
Schmidt Christopher Robert crschmid
CLASS SCHEDULE - FALL 2003 8/21/03
Course Call# Section Credit Schedule Location
C S 311 01547 Q LECD 3.00 H 12:30- 1:45PM TUTH 1320 D C L
ECE 205 02540 A LECT 3.00 H 8:00- 8:50 MWF 151 EVERITT
ECE 206 02546 F5 LAB 1.00 H 10:00-11:50 TH 268 EVERITT
GEOG 101 03628 9 LABD 3.00 H 9:00- 9:50 F 137D DAVENPORT
A LECT 10:00-10:50 MW THEAT LINCOLN
PHYCS 113 06510 A LECT 2.00 H 8:30- 9:45 TUTH 151 LOOMIS
06513 N1 DISC 10:00-11:50 TU 242 LOOMIS
06537 E1X LAB 1:00- 2:50PM M 164 LOOMIS
PHYCS 114 06560 A LECT 2.00 H 8:30- 9:45 TUTH 151 LOOMIS
06563 N1 DISC 10:00-11:50 TU 242 LOOMIS
06587 E1X LAB 1:00- 2:50PM M 164 LOOMIS
Included in there, you can see the "crschmid", which can be used in ph to look up users by their NetID, which we could then store information from. So, an original email is sent to whatever the website email is, which parses the class schedule, stores information on the student (netid/location information) and the courses being taken (Course name/numbers or specific sections: not sure how that would work). Then you can do a simple pull of other people living in, for example, Allen Hall, who are also taking GEOG 101, and contact them using the information available in their PH listing.
If I really wanted to get advanced, I could do distance type searches. However, that might be out of the scope of this project.
We're encouraged to do this project in C++ or Java, but I'm really hoping to get together a group that likes programming in perl or PHP. The prof said that the reason he didn't mention a web-based option is because it would "Take too long". I find those types of interfaces way easier to work with and design, personally, so I'm hoping to talk him into it.
I could get into client/server protocol stuff too. Allow people to upload schedules more directly somehow, by writing a server to accept the information... man, there's all kinds of neat things this could turn into.
I love diving into a new project like this. The class seems really fun, as you can tell by the fact that I wrote about 10 times as much about this one as anything else. My professor is a Hungarian trained vietnemese who is really really funny, and I look forward to this class.
Let's see... I think that about rounds up the classes I've taken so far.
http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~crschmid/schedule.pdf has my schedule. Note that it's missing CS311, since neil had to do his own AM-PM conversion and never schedules classes at those times. :P