October 2009 – Stochastic Geometry

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Joel Spolsky, Snake-Oil Salesman

snakeoil If there is a lecturer in TCD’s CS department that doesn’t know of the problems and issues Joel just raised in his Capstone Projects post, they’re a rare bird indeed. But what Joel hasn’t mentioned — and what those lecturers can tell you because they’ve been debating it for decades, writing papers on it, holding conferences and have published peer-reviewed journals on the topic, as opposed to Joel’s one blog post — are that there are very specific and very good reasons why CS and CEng undergraduate courses don’t get to cover all the industry tools Joel uses.… Read the rest

Mark Dennehy in 27 Oct 2009 88 Comments

Why seeding is important for random functions…

General

Like many people these days, I use facebook to track what’s going on with friends and family I don’t get to see as often as I would have done in years past. Long work days, large numbers of balls in the air and general “stuff” prevents actual face time far too often, but while it’s not the same as a night spent laughing over a beer, it’s better to note that a friend has a new job or that there’s a new baby en route or whatever over facebook than not at all.

And of course, facebook has games. Which is handy sometimes, for those moments when you have literally six or seven minutes to fill – too much time to sit still and be bored, too little to get anything real started.… Read the rest

Mark Dennehy in 24 Oct 2009 36 Comments

Logitech Professional Presenter R800 Review

Academia CS7004 General

Linux New Toys!

I went a little mad for an hour there after being assigned my first course to teach, and afterwards found I'd ordered the R800, Logitech's top-of-the-line presentation remote/laser pointer. Here's what I think of it so far.

Mark Dennehy in 20 Oct 2009 4 Comments