Here is my warmup project that I made last week in my computer graphics class, CS 3451 at Georgia Tech. It is coded in processing, and I use processing.js to display it here. Processing.js allows you to run processing code on any HTML5 compatible browser, which is pretty handy.
Roll your mouse over the black square below.
I am thinking CS 3451 should be pretty fun. You get to play with math to make stuff that looks cool.
CS 2110, the bane of every CS kid’s existence… If you read my last two class reviews, you may think that I am not capable of writing a positive review, but today I prove you wrong. Although the class is time consuming, CS 2110 is possibly the most valuable class that I have taken so far.
Before I took this class, I knew that computers ran on 1′s and 0′s, but I was pretty embarrassed as a CS major because I had absolutely no idea how this was possible. Using programs like photoshop and programming in high level languages, I was utterly perplexed about how these things could ever simplify down to binary. After taking CS 2110, I could probably write programs in 1′s and 0′s. Obviously this would be miserable, but I think it’s pretty cool that I could do it if I had to.
Another great thing about this class is that towards the end of the semester we get to write Game Boy games! I enjoyed this a lot. It is rare to get the chance to do things in a college class that your 8 year-old self would also think is cool. Here are the games that I made for my homework:
This class teaches you how computers work. You start out with just transistors and build on that until you get to C. So when you finally get to C, you know how it does all of its magic… you know what pointers are because you know what its doing in assembly, you know how to smash a stack because you understand the calling convention, etc. Here’s a basic outline of the course:
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Christine Ries, guest speaker for CPAC Cruise
Fall 2011, I took econ 2101, the Global Economy, with Dr. Christine Ries. I signed up for this class on a whim becuase of the interesting intersection of computer science and economics (e-commerce, e-currency, bitcoin, etc.). Later I changed by mind, but by that time the other classes that I wanted to take were full at all of the decent times. While I have mixed feeling about dominant economic thought, I figured that the class would be interesting and was not eager to drop it for a morning class; however, if I knew the following things, I probably would have changed my mind…
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I have decided to start writing detailed reviews about all of the classes I take in hopes that they will be helpful to other students trying to decide what classes to sign up for. I start by reviewing CS 4400 – Intro to Database Systems, which I took Fall 2011 with Professor Shamkant Navathe. This class is very standardized, so this information should be applicable across different professors and sections.
If you are a computer science major, this is an InfoInternetworks thread pick under the “Introduction to Information Management” category. If one of your threads is InfoInternetworks, then you will have to take 2/3 of the classes in this category. I figured that all classes in this category (Databases, Information Security, and Networking) seemed important, so I planned to take all three. I now realize that CS 4400 would be the class to skip.
I’m not implying that you should skip this class because databases are not important. They are very important to application development, and I strongly encourage every CS major to become comfortable with them. At the same time, there is a lot to learn as a CS major, and you need to decide what is worth learning on your own and what is worth paying tuition to learn in a class. I found this class to be extremely dry and a bad use of 3 credit hours. CS 4400 is geared towards Industrial Engineering majors since it is a required class for them and optional for CS. Maybe the class could be more useful if they had a class specifically for CS majors that was more focused on building things. For the time being, my recommendation for any CS major would be to get a good book on database theory and SQL and practice by making your own database driven applications. I bet you can get more from 2 weeks of this than a whole semester of CS 4400.
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Looks like I stirred up some controversy on a facebook event page for the JPMorgan Chase Tech Talk which is going to be held at my school, Georgia Tech.
My original post was:
“Going into the banking industry has to be one of the worst uses of a computer science degree. Don’t use your knowledge to let the rich get richer.”
Minutes after I posted that, I received a message from the creator of the event saying that he was being pressured to take the post down by someone who worked at JPMorgan Chase. He said that he did not feel comfortable censoring, so he left it up to me to take it down or not. I apologized for putting him in a weird situation, and told him that anyone is free to post a rebuttal, and I thought that would be a better solution than removing the comment all together. The post has generated lots of comments. It’s a pretty neat discussion. Check it out: screen shot of facebook thread
NATO missile used in airstrike that killed Gaddafi's son and three grandchildren during a family gathering
We have a government that can turn every problem into its own war (War on Poverty, War On Drugs, War on Terrorism, etc.) and at the same time, evade the label for real combat situations when convenient, namely, to dodge obtaining consent from even the most petty representation of the American people. We see this happening now with the military operations in Libya.
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This is a project that I made for my Calculus III class at Georgia Tech (Fall 2010). The assignment was to make a program using vector calculus to display a particle bouncing around disks formed on the vertices of an equilateral triangle. I used Flash and ActionScript 3 for this project. We were also asked to find a launch angle that would maximize the number of bounces. Through randomized simulations, the best angle that I found was 95.53703633252331 degrees which yields 18 bounces. I dare you to beat that.
My Old Website (anybeth.com)
I am finally taking down my old flash website. Flash makes it really easy to do cool things and scale to every screen size, but unfortunately it is not very accessible or easy to manage. Instead of focusing on my design portfolio, this website is going to be focused on my blog. I find that the best way to digest what’s going on is to write about it. The plan is to write in this regularly. We’ll see how that goes.
Hi. My name is Bethany Sumner, and I study computer science at Georgia Tech. I do a bit of web development and user-interface design on the side (view portfolio). I have a fascination with web start-ups. I also try to pay attention to issues that deal with civil liberties, human rights, and democracy, especially in cases where technology is involved. You can contact me at bethany@bethanysumner.com.
HOPE Scholarship Cuts and its Effects in the Classroom
Below is an article that I wrote for the Learner’s Voice, a blog from the Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Georgia Tech. It was also later published on hope-scholarship.net.
HOPE Scholarship Cuts and its Effects in the Classroom
In the wake of the Great Recession, governments everywhere have tried to slash spending. Unfortunately, education has not been spared from these cuts. In the past four years alone, the state contribution to Georgia Tech has been reduced by 90 million dollars or approximately 31%.[1] Colleges across Georgia have had to cope with shrinking funds, which have led to pay freezes, reduction in faculty, decrease in admissions, fewer degree programs and course offerings, and even a controversial maneuver to merge eight colleges in the University System of Georgia into four. In addition to these measures, universities turn to their students to help make up for lost funds by raising the cost of tuition and adding new mandatory fees.
The inflation of tuition and extra fees has placed increased pressure on the HOPE scholarship, Georgia’s state scholarship program, which until recently has covered full tuition and fees for students who maintain a 3.0 GPA. About 30% of students in the University System of Georgia receive this scholarship.[2] From its inception in 1993, HOPE has awarded $6.4 billion dollars to help almost 1.5 million Georgians pay for college[3] without requiring any public funds. A portion of the revenue from the Georgia Lottery has fully sustained the program to this point but now risks falling short of the needed expenses for its continuation. The state legislature’s latest response to this problem was the passage of HB 326, a bill that dramatically cuts the coverage of the HOPE scholarship.
HB 326, which was signed into law one year ago, broke HOPE into a two-tiered system. In order to receive the same benefits as before, students now must maintain a 3.7 GPA throughout high school and a 3.3 GPA in college. This has been renamed the Zell Miller Scholarship. What is still known as the HOPE scholarship no longer covers full tuition, mandatory fees, or book stipends. To receive this, students still must maintain a 3.0 GPA, and in addition, they must score a 1200 or higher on the math and reading sections of the SAT. This requirement represents a significant barrier to entry, considering that 1200 is two standard deviations above the average score of Georgia high school graduates: 978.[4] The changes to the HOPE scholarship program introduce new problems for students and campuses throughout Georgia.
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