Honourable Mentions

The past week was, I'm glad to say, quiet and pleasant. The final specifications for the spreadsheet project was suppose to be up on last Monday, but the lecturer only got around to do it on Friday (and, as per our agreement, he shaved his head on Monday). The peacefulness of the week was also accentuated by the absence of any tut tests. So there wasn't too much to do in the week and I capitalized on it. On Tuesdays I went on an excursion with the third year Physics class to go attend a public lecture on the Big Bang given by the famous professor Harald Fritzsch at UCT. Because it was a public lecture, however, it was very pop sciency and I already knew a lot of what he talked about. Afterwards, the bunch of us went for a drink.

The departments of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (which are technically all part of the same department, but never mind that) chose last week as the one where they would present their offerings in honours courses to the third year students. Originally, the Computer Science honours courses didn't seem all that appealing and I strongly considered taken two modules at Applied Mathematics (you are allowed to take up to two courses offered by a relevant/affiliated department). But I was surprised at how appeal most of the Computer Science modules look now! They have, for instance, introduced a new module, which is generically named “Software Construction”, which is effectively the “game-engine-design course”. There are also modules in, amongst others, Automata, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Graphics, Concurrency, Theoretical Computer Science and Networking. Its going to be difficult to choose...

I would really have liked to take a module or two from Applied Mathematics, but that seems unlikely now. I have come a long way with Applied Mathematics and there are also interesting and appealing courses offered by the department, but in the long run, it won't help further my “Computer Science” career that much (unless I decide to go in the theoretical direction, which seems unlikely).

And, as it always is, I'm discovering a lot of interesting topics and things now on the eve of the exam. Friday I briefly learned about a topic called “Social Network Analysis” which concerns the study of social groups (schools, churches, governments, terrorist cells, book clubs, hospitals etc.) and how things like information, gossip, diseases etc. are dissipated through them. There are also other applications also. It's a union of psychology and mathematics and seems very interesting and tempting. And, to boot, it took only a couple of clicks on the web to get to pages on artificial intelligence from the social networks pages. I would really like to explore this topic more in detail. *sigh* Things like this and the desire to start working on the website again are tempting me away from my studying efforts (which still have to start). The cruel irony is that, when I'm on holiday, I want to break away from academic topics and then these things are placed on a dark, dusty shelve again.