Since it’s the start of the school year, why not blog the classes I’ll be taking? I like them all so far; I think it’s going to be a great (although very busy) semester!

2.004 – Dynamics and Control II

Since I’m minoring in course 2 (mechanical engineering), I’m taking one class from the MechE department. It seems like a good class so far; and I already tried to learn a significant chunk of the material from OCW over the summer. Control theory is pretty important in robotics, which is one of my main motivations for wanting to take this class.

6.041 – Probabilistic Systems Analysis

This class seems like it’ll be pretty good. I’m taking 6.041 even though I already took 6.042 last year, because 6.041 has a lot more probability than 6.042. 6.041 will satisfy one of my MEng math requirements, and since probability is important in AI, I elected to take it instead of some other math class.

6.003 – Signals and Systems

This is one of my favorite classes so far. The content is really cool, it’s taught very well, and it applies to a lot of engineering. 2.004 is very similar so far to 6.003, although I expect the two classes to diverge a little bit as 6.003 focuses more on signal processing and 2.004 will focus more on mechanical controls. Tasty.

6.142 – Robotics Science and Systems II

I’m really looking forward to this class. Unlike nearly all the other courses I’ve taken so far at MIT, this one is more research-based rather than concrete lecture-style. You may have heard of the DARPA grand challenge, a competition in which teams must develop autonomously-driven vehicles that drive themselves around a city-like course, complete with other cars. MIT competed in 2007, and is now working on a spin-off project to try and develop an autonomously-controlled forklift. That is, the forklift will ultimately be able to take in user input, and automagically drive to and pick up crates of stuff and move them around. That’s pretty hard to do in a non-controlled environment, and is on the cutting edge of robotics. In 6.142, we get to explore the codebase for this project (which is in active research in the CSAIL lab, and much of the code is based off the DARPA grand challenge), and do an independent research project on some component of the system. If our code works well in simulation, we’ll get to try it out on the real robot (awesome!). And if it works really well and is helpful in some way, it may even make it into the final robot (double awesome!). This definitely seems like the kind of class that the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.

21M.392 – Music of Africa

And now for something completely different. This is my humanities class, and it’s been quite fun so far. We get to study the music across the continent of Africa, learn a little bit of Senegalese drumming, and even go to some concerts at jazz clubs around the area. Yeah!

So, those are my classes for this semester. Ideally I’ll have time to do well in all of them, have a life, *and* have time to sleep!

Here are some thoughts for the next school year:

• Linux kernels are cool. Why not have a Linux kernel-building party?
• Typically, I have little free time during the school year because of all of my classes, and lots of free time during the summer. Why not even it out a bit? Lately I’ve been trying to pre-learn as much as I can for some of the classes I’ll be taking next semester through MIT’s OCW (open courseware; MIT puts lecture notes/course materials for a number of courses online). That way, maybe I’ll have more free time next year!

Wow, this semester flew by really fast. In some ways, it feels like I just started classes a few weeks ago… it’s funny how that happens!

Since it’s the end of the year, a number of my classes are shutting down. For example, I’m now completely done with 6.004 (Computation Structures) and 21M.340 (Jazz Harmony); I’m almost finished with our 6.005 final group project (an Instant Messenger program). After that, I just have two finals – 2.003 (Dynamics and Control I), and 6.006 (Intro to Algorithms). Hooray!

Some things on my mind:

• Everyone in the Class of 2011 got their Brass Rats (the MIT class ring)! It’s pretty awesome, and I’m really happy that we got them. Last Friday night was Ring Delivery, the night in which we go and get our rings. It was a very nice affair at a fancy place in Boston. Perhaps I’ll post some pictures soon. After Ring Delivery, some friends and I then went to see the new Star Trek movie – it was amazing!
• I’m trying to figure out which classes I should take next semester for the next few years. I’m trying to balance my course 6 requirements and MEng requirements, as well as my course 2 minor. It’s getting tricky, but I have some ideas!
• Brass rats are awesome.

That’s about it for now! It’s good to be blogging again

Steve has been hosed lately! (for those of you who don’t know, “hosed” = MIT slang for being ridiculously swamped with work). This has been why I haven’t been blogging lately! Five classes are really starting to keep me busy

For example, this is what I have due this week (note that I’m crossing things out as I finish them):

Monday

• 2.003 PSet
• Rough draft of Jazz mid-term assignment

Tuesday

• 6.006 PSet (Part A)

Wednesday

• 2.003 Exam I

Thursday

• 6.006 PSet (Part B)
• 6.005 Sodoku-solver exploration
• Jazz mid-term assignment due
• 6.004 Lab

Friday

• 2.003 MATLAB PSet

Sounds like fun! I should be pretty busy, to say the least. Hopefully I’ll have time to blog soon again!

Here’s the third installment of my blog posts about classes! Time time I’ll talk about Dynamics I, other known as 2.003.

2.003 is a mechanical engineering class. Now, I know some of you might be asking: why are you taking a mechanical engineering class, Steve?? I thought you were course 6 (computer science)! Well, that is indeed true – I am majoring in Computer Science. However, I’m also planning to minor in Mechanical Engineering, hopefully it’ll turn out to be feasible! I do like my CS classes, but I also want to build stuff. Mechanical engineering of course is the right place to go to satisfy that urge, which explains why I’m enrolled in 2.003.

So far, 2.003 has been a fantastic class. The lecturers are great (our professor is awesome), and the material is pretty interesting as well. I even have a few good friends taking the class as well! In terms of material, we’ve started out talking about kinematics (things moving, ignoring “physics” and forces). This usually involves basis vector transformations to convert vectors from one frame to another, given that some of the frame are translating and/or rotating with respect to other. If you saw my last blog post, it’s this kind of stuff that has really polished my chain-rule abilities from calculus . After we finish talking about kinematics, we’re going to move into dynamics and other magic ways to make the math easier. It promises to be a really neat class, and I love it so far. It’s defnitely up there with my favorite classes this semester!

Here is the second of my promised posts pertaining to this semester’s classes. This one will be about “Computation Structures,” which is known as 6.004 at MIT.

Computation Structures promises to be a really amazing class! So far this semester, it’s definitely one of my favorites (probably tied with 2.003, my dynamics course). The goal of the class is basically to learn about how computers work, and then design one – from the ground up. We begin pretty much at the bottom, briefly discussing the device-level physics of things like MOSFETS and CMOS circuits. Then we proceed to use these elementary circuit elements to design basic logic gates such as AND, OR, NOT, etc. With these, we can build more, higher-level digital circuits like adders and memory elements. Generally, we keep moving up and up through the various layers, until eventually we’ve made a fully-functional computer processor called the BETA! So awesome!

As if that weren’t cool enough already, we’ll actually get to try out our processors by simulating them in a computer (yes, a “computer” running in a computer…) and doing some coding with them. We get to develop a minimalist operating system using assembly and C, which sounds quite knarley in my opinion.

Of all the classes I’ve had at MIT, this is certainly one of the more denser ones in that it packs a lot of information into each lecture. Our professor is amazing – even his word order seems to convey additional information. It’s been an awesome class so far, and I’m looking forward to more in the future!

I really like my classes this semester! I’m going to copy the cool-sauce style of my good friend WS and write a post about each class

One of them has changed however since my last post. Instead of taking 21M.302 (Harmony and Counterpoint II, a second-level classical music composition class), I’m taking 21M.340, Jazz Harmony and Arranging. There are a number of reasons why I switched to this class, one of which being it didn’t conflict with my schedule. At the beginning of the term, pretty much the day before classes started, I found out that I had a rather-nasty scheduling conflict with my recitations that couldn’t be resolved easily. The jazz class that I switched into, however, fit much more nicely into my schedule. Additionally, my musical interest lies more along the lines of jazz/rock than classical, which is another reason for me to take this class.

So far, class has been awesome! Our first homework assigment was to write two blues songs, and our homework for next class is to write some more blues songs, this time with a “walking bass” line. Pretty fun! Class has also been fantastic; the professor is great, and we’ve listened to a number of neat blues songs in class. I think I’m really going to enjoy it this semester.

IAP is coming to a close for this year, and classes are starting up for the second semester next week! I’m pretty excited about the classes I’ll be taking:

1. 2.003 (Dynamics I) – this is my first mechanical engineering class! I’m really looking forward to it. I’m planning to minor in course 2. I got my textbook for this class a few days ago and started reading it, and I have a feeling that I’m really going to enjoy this class!
2. 6.004 (Computation Structures) – I’m also really looking forward to this class. Basically, we design and then program our own computer processor. Fun!
3. 6.005 (Principles of Software Design) – a programming lab. I’ve heard it’s pretty fun, and the projects we do sound pretty neat.
4. 6.006 (Intro to Algorithms) – also sounds pretty interesting. The textbook for this class is also really nice.
5. 21M.302 (Harmony and Counterpoint II) – A second-level classical composition class. I took the prequel last year during the spring semester, and liked it a lot.
6. Jazz Combo – I’ll be playing the piano again with a jazz combo through the chamber music society. Always a  good break from doing psets!

So, really looking forward to next semester! It’s going to be pretty busy, though. I hope I can manage all of those classes