Rebel Power Supply

I was catching up on reading Ubuntu Planet, and came across this post by Rich Johnson which really caught my eye. I’m going to help run Chapman’s ACM chapter next year, and we’re planning on having programming competitions, movie nights, study sessions, and some sort of  “Learn How to Bug Triage!” or other open source themed event. After reading through it (and skimming the Ubuntu Chicago Mailing List), I realized that if I made the scope a bit broader, I could make it a lot more appealing.

So instead I figure we’ll start with a sort of “Introduction to Open Source/Linux” program, and depending on who shows up, move on to learning about how to start developing and contributing. It’ll be cool to have a bunch of people get together to help work on it, and the Ubuntu California team is interested in helping out as well. We have our annual Math/Computer Science picnic tomorrow, and I’ll bring it up with the faculty. If anyone has any other ideas for cool events to hold on campus, please let me know.

Supremely busy right now. Thinking over my application for Google’s Summer of Code, working on Common Lisp, studying for Linear Algebra, and hopefully finally getting paperwork through the bureaucracy of Chapman’s Student Employment office. I’m stoked to start working at the Networking office, it seems like I’ll get a lot of hands-on time and learn a lot.

Moral of the story: Get shiz done time.

Ubuntu Mobile’s finally released!

In personal news, my Topology professor is challenging me to create a more efficient Python program that deals with this problem from our Topology homework:

The set consisting of two elements {a, b} can be given four different topologies:
1. {∅, {a, b}} – The indiscrete topology
2. {∅, {a}, {b}, {a, b}} – The discrete topology
3. {∅, {a}, {a, b}}
4. {∅, {b}, {a, b}}
Each of these is a topology on {a, b} because each one includes {a, b} and is closed
under ∩ and . There are no other topologies on {a, b} because any other set of subsets
would fail to include ∅ or {a, b}.
Determine all of the topologies on the three element set {a, b, c}. Remember that a
topology on X is a set of subsets of X. There are 23 subsets of X. So there are at 3
most 22 = 256 possibilities, most of which fail to be topologies. Any topology must
include ∅ and {a, b, c}. So this cuts down the search. In particular, since we have
no choice but to include these two subsets, the actual subsets of {a, b, c} that are
“up for grabs” are only the remaining 23 − 2 of them. That is, you only need to check 3
22 −2 = 64 possibilities. Even for these, many will fail to be topologies. For example,
τ = {∅, {a}, {b}, {c}, {a, b, c}} is not a topology because {a} ∈ τ and {b} ∈ τ but
{a} ∪ {b} ∈/ τ.

Set theory… brutal.

My friend Chris Lee and Chapman’s Acapella Group have a video up on Youtube, which I highly recommend to everyone

Cool post on slashdot about Sage, an Open Source alternative to commercial math suites. One of the classes offered over interterm is “Computational Mathematics Tools” and apparently we’ll be going over Tex, Sage, and Matlab. I think I’ll get a bit of a head start on the class (as usual), and play around with Sage as soon as it finishes downloading in 10 minutes. I may just audit that class and enroll in a GE. This way I can chill out a bit - just show up and be obnoxious while learning a few things. I guess that’s usually the plan anyway, but it’ll be more blatant this time.

This is the last week of the semester, I’m really stoked for winter break. Just so long as I don’t sleep through any exams, things should be totally fine. It’s fun to listen to my friends experience their first semester of college exams, as they realize how much studying they need to do. They’ll BS their way through it, but at least now they understand why I was grumbling last year.

So I still haven’t enrolled in any classes yet. The good thing about being a CompSci major is that classes don’t fill up that quickly (at least here at Chapman). There are a lot of really interesting math courses, and all the professors are really pushing people to take them. My advisor is teaching a course in topology, which sounds like it should be fun. We went over some of the basics in Foundations of Geometry this semester, so we’ll see what I wind up  taking.

Finals this semester shouldn’t be a big deal, I’m glad I spent so much time learning and studying earlier, since I can pretty much chill out and be jolly now.

Yay blog claim: Technorati Profile

So the Computer Science Forum. With a “Microsoft Evangelist.” It was …

…

respectable. Sam Stokes actually seemed like a way chill guy. At the beginning, he was pushing how Micro$oft is offering XNA Express “for free” (as he’s getting his laptop set up) so I decided to ask:

“Free as in Freedom?”

*he looks up*

“Now that’s a heavy question…”

“Well then … free as in beer.”

“Yeah, I like that a lot better”
So at least I could tell he knew what he was talking about. Later on, he said “When you guys go back home for the holidays, make sure you do whatever you can to make sure your families are safe on the internet. Hopefully your answer won’t be to have them install Linux.” Clearly just pandering to the open source devotee, but it worked.

He was also trying to get everyone excited about the Microsoft sponsored Imagine Cup, which may or may not be interesting. Yeah, um … thanks. But I think I’ll spend my time playing around with MOTU recipes and packaging. Overall, I thought he was pretty open minded and laid back.

I was speaking with the department head afterward, and they want to have speakers come down about once a month, and even asked if I knew anyone from the open source community that’d like to come speak. So yeah, looks like we’re finally starting to have some activity get started, which should lead to more school spirit/participation.

But if we could only have this much spunk, it’d be freaking amazing.

Well well, won’t this be exciting?

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Computer Science degree at Chapman University

The first event in the 2007 - 2008 Computer Science Forum series will be a presentation by

Mr. Sam Stokes

Microsoft Corporation

Sam Stokes has been working with embedded technology for 20 years, from GPS Navigational Data Unit, to a system that lands commercial aircraft automatically to being a Premier Consultant for Microsoft, as well being an adjunct Professor from time to time. Sam is currently a technology evangelist for Microsoft Corporation, with a focus on working with professors and students on how to use the Microsoft technology.

Please mark your calendar for this program.

Thursday, October 18 2007

The Charles and Nora Hester Faculty Senate Board Room

Argyros Forum 201

Refreshments and networking 5:15 PM

(Free to Chapman Students, Graduates, Faculty, High School Teachers and Students)

Program 5:30 PM

Clearly, this is going to be an interesting night. If anyone has any questions/ideas they want me to bring up, I’d love to hear them. Otherwise, I’ll be sure to let you know how things go.

Update: Just got another email from the department secretary (who made some bomb taco salad at the picnic, I might add), and the title of this entry is the actual title of his talk.