COMP6021 Class 04.1

[No recording of today's class. Sound too bad]

We played Hangman to illustrate the point that letters in English do not occur with the same frequencies.  We looked at how compression can be used to represent information using fewer bits.

We looked at Huffman's algorithm for devising optimal variable length codes.

To be honest, the video I made below says it better than I did in class anyway. (I hope my best work isn't behind me!)

Video on Variable Length Codes

I gave students an exercise to complete in time for the next class.

SOFT6002 Week 03

We discussed the assignment a bit and assigned students to groups. But it's not really a group project.

We covered the Ecological Theory of Perception (slides W03-L2) and Graphical Coding (W04-L1).

You should have two sets of slides per week. If you are missing any please let me know.

SOFT6008 Class 03.4

Attendance was poor today. I'm told there are some pressing social engagements this week.

Students worked on checksum calculations. We'll be another week at least at those. Perhaps even longer.

Someone figured out the French checksum calculation. It is different from how I described. So if you are tackling that, talk to me first.

COMP8035 Classes 03.2 & 03.3

I brought peper copies of journals again. But they weren't as popular as the last day. I met with most students. From what I can see students are certainly looking in the right places for their research. Journals are very different from random webpages found online.

Most students seem to have a few ideas for the research paper now. That is how it should be.

So, so far, so good.

COMP6021 Class 03.4 & 03.4

We attempted to do an experiment to see how many bytes are required to store a Japanese character in UTF-8 but could paste Japanese into any of the text editors. 

Students did an exam question on decoding UTF-8 and then encoded a message. 

SOFT6008 Class 03.2 & 03.3

Students started coding the Luhn algorithm. Some finished and moved into other checksums. 

COMP6021 Class 03.2 - 日本語 and 💔

We continued our looked at Unicode. We looked at how writing works in Japanese, and briefly mentioned Emoji.

SOFT6008 Class 03.1

We looked a a variety of different check sum calculations.

It looks like my understanding of the check sum used on French ID numbers may be incorrect. Someone is going to figure that out for me.

Writing Workshops

A series of English Academic Writing Workshops will begin today, delivered by Helen Breen. These workshops are free to all students.  The workshops will be held in B231, as follows:

http://alc.cit.ie/resources/reportwriting

 

·         Tuesday 17th Feb Using online referencing and e-books, room B231, 1-2pm

·         Thursday 19th Feb Online resources to help your writing, room B231, 1-2pm

·         Tuesday 24th Feb Most common writing errors, room B231, 1-2pm

·         Thursday 26th Feb Critical thinking skills, room B231, 1-2pm

 

·         Tuesday 3rd March Using online referencing and e-books, room B231, 1-2pm

·         Thursday 5th  March Online resources to help your writing, room B231,1-2pm

·         Tuesday 10th March Most common writing errors, room B231, 1-2pm

·         Thursday 12th March Critical thinking skills, room B231, 1-2pm

 

 

 

 all students are welcome to attend free of charge

COMP8035 Class 03.1

I brought some paper copies Communications of the ACM and IEEE Computer to class with some  articles marked. Students passed these around. Electronic versions of these are available as PDFs from the CIT Library.

I also met with each student to discuss ideas for the blog posts and the research report.

COMP6021 Class 03.1 - I ♥日本

We looked at UTF-8.

I gave students a UTF-8 message to decode. 49 E2 99 A5 E6 97 A5 E6 9C AC
I think they got the hang of it.

01001001 11100010:10011001:10100101 11100110:10010111:10100101  11100110:10011100:10101100

I  11100010:10011001:10100101 11100110:10010111:10100101 11100110:10011100:10101100
remove markers for leading and continuation bytes 

I  0010011001100101 0110010111100101  0110011100101100

I 2665 65E5 672C

I ♥日本

HCI Week 02

All talk.no lab. Did up to (&incl) Gestalt Theory.

I misjudged the time. The travel clock I had was an hour fast since daylight savings time! But nobody seemed to mind.

SOFT6008 Class 02.4

We looked at user input validation and checksums.

We looed at code for mobile phone number validation and the Luhn credit card algorithm.

In the next lab class students will start coding the Luhn algorithm. I advised students against look up solutions online. It's best to start with a clean slate and a blank sheet of paper.

COMP8035 Class 02

I met with each student and talked through some ideas.

All the students who were there seem to be on top of things. But the main output for this module is the research Report at the end. So all efforts should be considered as stepping stones on the way to that.

COMP6021 Class 02.4 - Zombies, Semaphore & ASCII

We looked at some solutions for the traffic light zombie code and considered some advantages and disadvantages.

We looked at Braille, Semaphore, ASCII, DOS Code Pages, and extended-ASCII

Next up: Unicode

COMP6021 Class 02.3 - Negative Numbers

We played Binary Bingo, but the winner wasn't aware that he had won.

We looked at One's Complement and Two's Complement representations of integers. I explained why they were better that sign & magnitude representations. We looked at using offset binary for awkward situations.  I briefly mentioned IEEE Floating Point, but we won't be going into that. 

We began our look at representing text. I outlined the problems facing Outpost 19 after an attack by the zombie hoard, and asked students to devise an efficient communication system for the traffic lights. 

SOFT6008 Class 02.2

I asked students to continue working on the phone cost calculator.

And then the slot machine exercise.

These images might be useful

COMP6021 Binary & Hex Tutorial

This video is a great refresher if you've forgotten how binary and hex work.

COMP6021 Class 02.2 - The Sock on the Door

This was, in fact, our first class.

I introduced the module and talked a little bit about the assessment.

We look at how bits can be used to represent different numbers of things or state, depending on how many bits there are.

We looked at how bits can be used to represent positive integers, and represent integers that may be negative (sign & magnitude)

Slides:

Next up: two's compliment

SOFT6008 Class 02.1

We took our first look at the Document Object Model (DOM).

We looked at how to do rollovers. I showed students the coins toss game working and asked them to work in pairs and speculate what the code might look like.

Next up students will be expected to extend the coin game and turn it into a slot machine.

Slides:
JS02s.pdf

Examples:
Rollover
Coin Toss Game