Happenings – 2013 Mar 30

I hate to say it, but I’m really pretty comfortable doing one course right now. The blog will just have to wait.

Oh, I did get a certificate with distinction for the controls course… I’m a little surprised, since 86% didn’t seem all that high to me… but I guess the top 10% of the scores were not 100%. Anyway, I’m still in the same condition I’ve been in for the past couple of weeks: math for the blog just doesn’t cut it right now. But who knows? The weekend is young… and we’ll see what happens.

Happenings – 2013 Mar 23

So what’s been happening?

I’m down to one course – but I should have noticed that a quiz was due at 4 am this morning. Oh, well. We’ll see what happens.

So, I got a certificate with distinction for the image processing – but I’d really like to do some actual image processing! Didn’t actually find time to do that.

I expect to get a certificate in control of mobile robots, but the grading doesn’t actually end until midnight or something Sunday, so we’ll see. And, just as with image processing, I really need to do some controls.

There is no certificate, or even a record of my grade, for the computational finance – but that’s OK: I learned something, and that suffices. I am a little shocked that there is no record of my grade… but that’s no big deal.

So: I should start working on a technical post for Monday evening.

Happenings – 2013 Mar 16

Okay. I’m down to one course; three of the four are finished. And I’m thinking about dropping the last one. Digital Signal Processing is an order of magnitude harder than any other MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) I’ve taken. Still, I ought to at least see where it all goes, and then drop it at the end.

I’m not working very hard at getting my tax stuff to my tax man, and I really need to get my act together on that, too. OTOH, “Warhorse” was a good movie to watch last night.

Back to the courses…. The image processing was a spectacular overview, and I really ought to do some coding for it – I have what looks like the perfect book The controls course was a marvelous insight into real control theory: we got a quick intro to PID and state space, and then focused on switching between different control strategies (go-to-goal, obstacle-avoidance, and follow-wall). I was impressed by how much controlling they did with so little theoretical machinery. I haven’t decided what I’ll do to follow up on all that. Maybe I’ll just keep on with what I (was) doing.

We’ll see whether I actually get a technical post done for this Monday….

Happenings – 2013 Mar 9

School continues, online of course.

I have finished a second course, Image and video processing…. As usual, I’ve done what I had to, not all that I wanted to. Anyway, I’m down to two active classes. (Never again will I try 4 at once. And I’m not even thinking about the next course I’ll start yet.)

This leaves Control of Mobile Robots – where the major challenge is that we can only take each quiz twice, but I was doing OK… and Digital Signal Processing, where I have fallen quite a bit behind. For the controls course, my next quiz is due next Sunday evening. For the signals course, on the other hand, quiz 3 is due before I go to bed tomorrow. OTOH, I can take each quiz 100 times.

And this is the weekend I really ought to get all my tax stuff together for my tax man.

As for the rest of the world, I’ve noticed that physicists are not ready to declare that they have found the Higgs particle… the Pittsburgh Steelers have released James Harrison.

Happenings – 2013 Mar 2

School continues. Online, of course… MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), but I’ve finished the Intro to Computational Finance. Now I have to get caught up in Digital Signal Processing and in Control of Mobile Robots. I am up-to-date in Image Processing, but we’ve just started a set of lectures on compressed sensing. I would really like to see a couple more simple examples.

In the meantime, the blog remains inactive: I’ve got too much coursework to do. This is where my major weakness comes to the fore: I sweat blood to get new computations to come out right. I have to hammer out the details before I get things. So let me dig out my hammers (Mathematica and MATLAB) and get pounding.