What did you do this past week?

This past week I started on the Voting project for this course. It seems to be going very smoothly so far and I believe that my partner and I can finish it by Monday night. Other than that, I spent a lot of time working on a steganography project for my Introduction to Computer Security course. I enjoy working on projects in that class because there aren’t many strict requirements. She basically says to implement something but puts no restrictions on what language to use or how to actually go about accomplishing the task. Over this weekend I went rock climbing, went to a friend’s house warming party, and had dinner with my Dad. My Dad gave me some great news about the Apogee internship I applied for. One of his friends is good friends with the CEO of the company, so my application is going to have a recommendation from the CEO. It doesn’t guarantee that I will get accepted, but obviously that gives me a huge boost.

What’s in your way?

I don’t feel like I have much in my way right now. As I said in my previous post, my roommate’s puppy still makes it hard to get work done when I am at home. I usually just circumvent this by going to the library, but at the same time I feel bad for leaving her alone for so long at the house. Another problem I have is that I seem to be more irritable lately which is probably because I recently quit smoking. I’m hoping that with time this feeling will subside.

What will you do next week?

I’m just going to keep telling myself that I will catch up on the readings and hope that it actually happens. I will also continue to work on and fishing the Voting project. I think the most tedious part will be creating the acceptance and unit tests, but I’m still hoping that my partner and I can finish it early. Outside of classes I will be taking my girlfriend out for Valentine’s Day. We are going to see Crystal, the first ice show put on by Cirque Du Soleil. As I have a background in technical theater, I love watching these shows because I think about all the logistics and hard work that are put into making them. Just about every Cirque show I have seen is breathtaking, but my absolute favorites were O and LOVE.

What’s my experience of the class?

I very much enjoy the lectures that Professor Downing prepares. This past week we learned about passing variables by value, reference, and by using pointers. Even more interesting was the lecture on the C++ keyword const. As I have had no exposure to C++ before this course, I wasn’t quite sure how to use the keyword and didn’t know how different it was from Java’s final keyword. He showed us that there are many different use cases for const and even had an anecdote about paintball at the end of the lecture to try and help us remember the behavior of each use case. I don’t think that the anecdote will actually help me remember the cases, as they can get messy in a hurry, but at least he tries to make it stick.

What’s my pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick of the week is ClipGrab. This software enables you to copy the link of a YouTube video and easily download them to your computer. It also allows you to convert the video to an mp3 file. I personally used it this past week to transfer a music playlist from YouTube to my Spotify, as the songs on YouTube don’t stream on Spotify. Although this doesn’t seem related to software development, it can be useful for downloading TED talks and other lectures so that you can watch (or listen) to them later when you may not have a good internet connection, such as a long plane ride.