Further progress on the CS assignment

Today I hammered out the backbone of a reference solution the CS programming assignment I've been assigned to write. I also fleshed out the test cases (grading sections) that I've written so far. Of course, my solution so far passes the tests so far. The tests so far are still fairly easy to pass relative to when the assignment will be released in the course, but I have a functioning assignment. Fortunately, there's plenty of time to keep working on the interesting parts.

Keeping up with reroutes

I semi-recently published an unofficial app for the local bus system and only then realized how often there are reroutes. I signed up for reroute notifications about all routes from the official bus company so that I can manually create concise alerts in my app. (Most students aren't aware of the official alert system, and it's nice to have the alert right in a bus app instead of needing to check e-mail or a web site.) A particular, moderately important thoroughfare tends to get closed for large music-related events, including some festival this weekend, which affects a ton of campus routes.

Cell transformations not going so well

My cell transformations didn't work again last night, but a test using a known-good plasmid did. Therefore, it looks like I made a mistake during the assembly of the new plasmid, so next week I'll go back to that step.

New procedures in the lab

This week in the biochemistry research lab, I've learned how to transform bacteria with new plasmids. My first attempt yesterday didn't work, but I tried again under slightly different conditions today and will see the results tomorrow morning.

Progress on the CS assignment

Tonight I continued writing the auto-graded CS assignment I'm responsible for creating. I now have the skeleton of a test suite, so I "just" need to write the test cases and precompute the correct answer for each. Other scaffolding and helper objects are done, barring any little bugs remaining. (I found and fixed one tonight while writing a few test cases.) Of course, I need to write a reference solution so that I can determine and finagle the difficulty.

Last of the dry labs

Today was the last of three "dry labs" in the organic chemistry lab class. In dry labs, we did worksheets about using spectroscopy results to determine the structure of compounds. Next week, we'll start doing "wet labs," experiments in the actual lab.

Still writing the CS assignment

Tonight I continued working on the new CS assignment. Most of the scaffolding (convenient builders for the data structures that will be provided to the students) now exists; I just need to put it through more thorough tests. Even now, though, I can start writing some test cases for the autograder!

Getting some course dev work done

I finished my my queue of normal schoolwork this afternoon, so I had time to finally get started doing some CS course developer work! Since the task of creating a programming assignment has a specific deadline - namely when it's supposed to be released to students - I started on that first. It takes a lot more work than I expected! After a couple hours, I'm only partially done with infrastructure/scaffolding.

First exam went well

Official scores for this past week's MCB exam aren't out yet, but the answer key is released, so I scored my answers. I just missed one question out of 34 (originally intended to be 35, but one was accidentally duplicated in the assembly of the exam). Considering the difficulty of the exam, I'm very happy with that. Next up is the first CS 225 programming exam next weekend.

Early morning exercise

The campus ministry I've joined is doing its annual "mini-Olympics" tomorrow morning, starting at 7:30 AM. The logistics and practice meeting went until almost midnight tonight, so hopefully I'll get enough sleep to perform and have enough energy to make sufficient progress on the pile of work I have for this weekend.

Lots of projects

Today I had my first one-on-one meeting with the professor of the CS class I'm a course developer for. I got information on what he's looking for in the project I was originally put on, plus all kinds of interesting plans for a new, related project. These are both in addition to the assignment I and another course dev will be writing, so there's all kinds of exciting things for me to be working on.

First exam of the semester

Tonight was the first MCB 250 midterm. As expected, it was challenging. There were a couple details that I didn't expect to be tested on (and that weren't in the practice exam), but I worked around that by remembering related information and applying some test-taking strategies. I think I did pretty well.

Tomorrow is the second CS 173 examlet.

Assignment development starting

This morning I met with the other CS course developer who will be working on the new auto-graded programming assignment. We determined who will be doing what, decided on some architecture, set up the source code repository, and got our development environments working. I can now get started on my half!

Exploring the town

This afternoon while taking a break from MCB homework, I walked south off campus to try to visit an interesting loop of road I had seen in bus route maps. I couldn't actually get all the way there because the sidewalk veered away from the road into what shows up on Google Maps as an extremely long detour around to the other side of the loop. I turned back there since it was hot and I had already gone a long way. The walkway goes through a park, part of which I saw on my way there and back, but much of which I'll need to go back to experience.

CS course dev work starting

Today I had my first meeting with the professor of the CS class I'm working as a course developer for. I'll learn about the details of my specific project next week, but today I learned that I'll also get to work on creating a new auto-graded programming assignment for the students. My assignment will replace one that tests similar concepts but wasn't amenable to interactivity. (One goal this semester is to add an Android frontend to more of the machine problems so the students can interact with their creations.) The assignment won't be given for at least a month, so I have plenty of time to engineer it and write up the directions.

Now the semester is actually going

The semester is now in full swing. The first MCB exam is coming up, both MCB and chemistry labs are meeting weekly, and CS 173 is holding its first quiz/examlet tomorrow. CS 225's autograded programming problems are starting to be a bit of a challenge. Exciting times!

Semester up and running

It's now been two weeks of class (one of which was a bit short due to Labor Day) and the semester is fully going. I had the first Data Structures exam this afternoon. Discrete Structures will start holding weekly quizzes this coming Thursday. Both the biology (class, not research) and organic chemistry labs will be held this coming week.

Paperwork done for now

I recently got through all the new-hire HR electronic paperwork and gained access to the time tracking web app, so I think I am ready to start actual work as a CS 125 course developer! I think I'll receive more specific directions at the meeting of all the developers, which will hopefully be next week.