The Perils of MATLAB and Online Education

As I have mentioned before, I am taking classes through extension at UCI. These are online classes and some commentary is below.

C Programming for Embedded Systems
One of the first things that comes to mind is to compare this to a class I took in the spring of 2008; there are a lot of parallels. When I started taking Cosmology and High Energy Astrophysics, I was excited. I liked the teacher's style of bringing in results from different studies, the grandness of the topic, and the anticipation I would be learning amazing things. This continued for the first three or four weeks.

In my current class, I really liked my teacher's practical approach. He extended a well known quote:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. If [you] teach about the science or theory of fishing prior to learning to fish he will starve before he will learn.

Since I have completed one of the three weeks of instruction for this class, I can now offer some feedback.

In both of these classes my great expectations were dashed. In Astrophysics, the professor repeated himself a lot. He talked about the expanding universe and used the balloon analogy a few too many times. I remember sitting in class and not taking any notes for 40 minutes because everything was in an earlier lecture or common sense for anyone in upper division Physics. Talking about relativity can be good, but giving the same lecture multiple times to a bunch of people who already know the theory helps no one.

The teacher in C is talking about the general uses of C in embedded systems but has provided few specifics. He talked about the scope of variables, but has not broken any new ground that a basic knowledge of C would not cover. Our only assignments so far have been to introduce ourselves to each other and to list ten things around us that have embedded chips in them. While this is a nice embedded systems are everywhere activity, it is a poor substitute for actual coding.

I hope my misgivings will prove unfounded, but the class may end up being a disappointment.

MATLAB Madness
A situation came up with MATLAB. It revolves around the statement x = 7i/0. When a complex number is given to MATLAB, it will display its real and imaginary parts in the form A + Bi. In the notes, the program returned x = NaN + Infi. This means the real part is not a number and the imaginary part is infinity. However, when I entered the equation into MATLAB, I got x = 0 + Infi. I think my answer is better. I do not see a real part to x, so I do not see how it is not a number. In all this confusion, I completely missed that both of the answers are mathematically incorrect; division by zero is never allowed.

I only noticed this when a fellow student pointed it out in one of the forums. I joined the discussion, and it looks like MATLAB versions 2009a and 2010a display this differently. The teacher did not weigh in on the discussion.

Speaking of my teacher, he is not inspiring confidence. However, this could be a side effect of my teacher not being into teaching.

In our last assignment, there were eleven questions. Four of them were based upon his notes, while the other seven were based upon the notes of a professor. One of my teacher's problems was incomplete. It said "Create surface and mesh graphs for the function " but did not provide a function. When a student posted in the forum asking which function to use, he was met with silence for four days. When a reply was finally posted, it was the original student saying he was not provided a function and came to the conclusion the question should be disregarded.

Back to the notes comment above. For last week, the PDF file with notes for the week was 101 pages long. Of these, our teacher wrote 24. The rest were from Edward Neuman at the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. These notes on MATLAB and Linear Algebra are available for anyone to download and view. They are good notes and I would recommend them. However, when the majority of notes for a week and the homework are straight from someone else concerns about a teacher should rightly develop. I am a fan of citing more knowledgeable people when possible, but this goes too far. As I said before, I don't think my teacher is into teaching.

I will not let the fact my teachers are less than stellar interfere with my own effort and learning. I still have to work hard and understand everything as well as I can. Learning is my responsibility, teachers are only there to help me.

In light of my 13 day post hiatus and the content of this post, there is something I should say. I have never used academic responsibilities as an excuse for my lack of blogging and I will not start now.

A Colorful Book

I have been away from blogging for what seems like a long time. While it has been 13 days, that is still enough time to draw concern in the comments section of the last post.

When I was at the library six weeks ago, a book in the new book section caught my attention. The cover had a blue background with the title Golden Bears in gold lettering. The subtitle of the book was A Celebration of Cal Football's Triumphs, Heartbreaks, Last-Second Miracles, Legendary Blunders and the Extraordinary People who Made It All Possible. I immediately grabbed this book written by Ron Fimrite and checked it out. You can find it on Amazon if you like. As an aside for the one reader who might not know, all the teams of the University of California, Berkeley play under the title California. It was the first and for a while the only public university in the state.

At first I was less than excited about the book; it was 517 pages long. I decided I would read the parts that were interesting, but not feel compelled to read the entire book. I started reading it one day. At the end of that day, I had read over 100 pages. The book was well paced and did not become bogged down in retelling every detail.

The book is more than a history of the football team of the University of California, it touches on many other areas. It covers the history of the school itself and talks about Wheeler, a new place called Memorial Stadium, and the game of football being classified as too dangerous to be played. I enjoyed learning about Andy Smith and the Wonder Teams. I have heard them spoken of with admiration and awe, but I did not know about their original exploits or how Smith was recruited to be their coach.

Below are a few words from the book (23-24) that might inspire you to pick up a copy.

...the flights of fancy of Lawrence 'Pete' Kaarsberg, a back with another apt sobriquet-'Kangaroo.' When confronted with a tightly bunched defensive line, the agile Kaarsberg simply jumped over it. When greater altitudes were indicated, his teammates took hold of special straps he had sewn into his uniform trousers and hurled his 145-pound frame over the line. It goes without saying that Kangaroo Kaarsberg's antics led to several rule changes.

Through characters like this, the book brought me into the times it described. Pick up Golden Bears, read a few parts, and enjoy the trip.

Movies on the big screen and graphing on my computer screen

I think I set a new record for seeing movies in theaters. In six days last week I saw four movies.

• Monday She's out of my League When I first saw the trailer for this movie I knew if I saw it it would be because I was watching it with Larry.


• Tuesday The Book of Eli This was at the dollar theater. They have a special where movies on Tuesday night are half price; the ticket only cost one dollar.


• Friday Shutter Island We saw it at The Block and ate Krispy Kreme Doughnuts afterward.


• Saturday Date Night This most recent release on the list is also the least impressive. Afterwards, the In-N-Out on Bristol was frequented which reminded me of high school.

This all started because my friend Larry said he wanted to do some things and the best we could come up with was seeing movies. Since his quarter at UCI (our quarter at UCI now that I am taking classes through extension) just started, he wanted to hang out and do fun things before the work piled up. I saw the first three movies with him and some other people while the last one was with Aden and Dave.

Graphing in MATLAB
On Sunday my first MATLAB assignment was due. One of the questions ended up with this as an answer.


Launch of the Labels
A few days ago I decided to start using labels for my posts. After adding labels to many of my older writings and changing the layout of the posts to display their labels, I had no success. After searching for solutions, I found one that said to click "Revert widget templates to default" in Layout> Edit HTML. I had to click it a couple of times, but now the labels are up and running.

There are two divergent approaches to take to tags (or labels as Blogger calls them).

1. Tag as many different topics as possible. This means an author will come up with new tags all the time even if they are only used in one or two posts.


2. Only create tags for large groups of posts. This means posts will have vaguely descriptive tags, but when a reader looks at all the posts under a specific tag he will find things he might like but would have never searched for directly.

Tags can be used in either extreme or somewhere between these two views. I think tags are only useful when they connect a reader with other posts that might be of interest. For example, I could go tag happy and list the name of every movie I mentioned in this post (4), the places I ate (2), my new record (1), UCI class (1), MATLAB (1), programing (1), graphing (1), my thoughts on blogs (1), and even a tag about tags (1) for good measure. However, I do not see myself mentioning some of the tags (the 4 movies or the record) ever again. What I do say about some of the other topics (like MATLAB, programming, and graphing) is so tangential it offers nothing a person would ever want to seek out. Of the 13 tags I just listed, over half of them would be dead ends.

Tagging anything and everything possible reminds me of people in high school (1 more tag for high school) who would highlight most of the lines in their textbooks. Overusing highlighting or tagging undermines its purpose in calling attention to important things.

If you have not figured it out by now, I favor the minimalist approach on tags.

I have new pants

I have had five appointments since my last Apheresis update.



Each of the cups is from a different appointment I had to donate platelets. The books they are on top of have been sitting around my room. In the background are red sweatpants I received in the mail earlier this week. I got them for being an Apheresis All-Star from my donations last year.

Now for some short commentary on the movies I saw during my appointments.

• District 9 After a few years, people (even with scores of aliens to work with) still can't learn anything about an alien ship over Johannesburg.


• Zombieland A great example of what to do and not do in a zombie situation. Beware of dangers like having your hair brushed over your ear.


• Everybody's Fine Obviously nobody is fine, but everyone has some issues.


• Up in the Air I kept expecting Clooney's character to be fired.


• Angels & Demons Did anyone think of turning off the electrical grid dozens of sections at a time instead of one by one?

When I went to my Up in the Air appointment, there was something new. A plastic shield was placed between my finger and the medical person for the iron test finger stick. I asked her if they had any problems with blood splatter and she had not heard of any. This first time a splatter shield was used also happened to be the first time my finger had to be pricked twice to get enough blood for the iron test. As always I had enough iron.

Anteaters and the Matrix Laboratory

I have a question for you. Why are these anteaters happy?



Their names (left to right) are Giant, Zot, Peter, and Ants.

These anteaters are happy because last week I started taking a class at the University of California, Irvine through their extension program. The class is MATLAB for Engineers. It is the first in a series of classes I am taking toward a certificate in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Systems Engineering. This certificate program is different from a masters degree program. There is no application process. I simply sign up for the classes and start taking them. As a member of the Cal Alumni Association I get 10% off one class a quarter; these savings pay for more than half of my lifetime membership dues.

This first class I am taking covers the computer language MATLAB, which is short for matrix laboratory. The syntax is designed to make linear algebra and matrix related calculations quickly. My exposure to MATLAB was summed up in my introductory forum post for the class

Hello everyone,

My name is Chris and I have a little experience with MATLAB. I used it to measure nanoparticle movements and compute their velocities. The program had been written by someone else and I never had a need to modify or understand the code.

I am currently seeking employment and taking this class so I can understand any MATLAB programs I come across in the future.

In my short use of MATLAB so far it is a great language. I wish I knew it when I was taking linear algebra for the first time.

The Fullness of Grace

The first thing I want to do is recount the entire Easter Vigil from last night. I started to, but then I realized how difficult it would be. The Easter Vigil is the celebration the night before Easter and it is the biggest and most elaborate mass of the year. It took about three hours. Check out the Unnamed Geniuses for talk of the Catholic Easter Vigil; they give it a good treatment. If you have any questions I would be glad to answer them. For this post I will focus on explaining the events around the sacraments.

The use of light is very important in the Easter Vigil. To start, everyone gathers outside the church in the dark of night. A fire is started and the Easter candle is lit. The Easter candle is a big candle almost six feet tall. Everyone follows the Easter candle in procession into the completely dark church. As everyone enters the church, they carry a small candle which was lit from the Easter candle. It symbolizes the light of faith in God they received at Baptism when they entered the church. The Elect (the people preparing for Baptism and other sacraments) did not have candles (or in the case of Philip, was not supposed to have a candle).

How it started and we got here
My involvement with RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) began in September. At the fellowship I was at they asked for people to be involved as sponsors for RCIA. There were a couple of teenagers in the program and the team was looking for younger people to sponsor these young people. I signed up and was assigned to Philip, who is 18. Since September, I have been walking with Philip in his journey to join the church. (This is the point where it would be very helpful if I used labels and tags for my posts. I could say check all the posts labeled RCIA and see the entire story.) At this stage in his journey Philip a member of the Elect, since he has been preparing to receive Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion at this Easter Vigil. After Baptism, he will be referred to as a neophyte or new member for a year.

In my last post, I explained how earlier in the day I pieced together the fact I was going to be Philip's Godparent and sponsor. It turned out my reasoning was correct and I was both his Godparent and Confirmation sponsor. Anyone who wants to can now correctly refer to me as a Godfather.

Baptism
After the Elect followed the Easter candle in procession around the church, the water for Baptism was blessed. Those to be Baptized were then asked some questions and responded with "I do."

Do you reject Satan?
I do.
And all his works?
I do.
And all his empty promises?
I do.
Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth?
I do.
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, Who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
I do.
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?
I do.

Each of the people was immersed in water three times with the pastor saying, "I Baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." After Baptism the Elect become members of the church and are properly called neophytes. While the neophytes were changing into dry clothing, their Godparents gathered at the altar. Instead of joining them as I should have, I went back and sat down in my pew. Luckily, as soon as I sat down the person in front of me drew my attention to my mistake.

The neophytes were then dressed in white robes as a symbol of their new and spotless nature after the cleansing of Baptism. Each of them received a candle from their Godparent that was lit from the Easter candle. The neophytes went among the congregation and lit everyone's candle in the church. This symbolizes how their faith will be a light to everyone.

Confirmation
Confirmation is based upon Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles. As the neophytes stayed around the altar, the candidates were called forward with their sponsors. After answering the Confirmation questions, which are the same as the Baptism questions, they all received Confirmation. The priest anointed the forehead of every person with chrism saying "[Name] be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit." He then shook their hand saying "Peace be with you." Nearly 30 people received this sacrament.

Eucharist/Holy Communion
The last part of initiation for these people was receiving Holy Communion. After Confirmation the mass ran like a normal Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Afterwards
After the mass there was a reception. All of the people who went through first sacraments were surprised to find a poster welcoming them to the church and a bag of letters of support and congratulations from people in the congregation. A little girl came up to Philip and told him how she had prayed for him by name every night before she went to bed. This seven year old girl was preparing for her First Communion and had never met Philip before.

Before this, the most moving moment of the evening had been the first Baptism of the night. It was a person who used to practice Judaism. In embracing Jesus, he found the completion and perfection of the faith he grew up with. However, this acceptance is viewed as a rejection of Judaism.

That art project I mentioned earlier can now be explained.


Art and me is a bad combination. However, finding clip art and mounting it on colored paper is something I can pass off as a creative enterprise. The RCIA team took scores of pictures over several months for these posters. The sponsors were in on it from the start, but it was a complete surprise to the sponsored.

How Long?
I have an answer for you. Twenty minutes.

Now the question: How long after a young man's first mass as a full member of the church does it take for someone to tell him he should be a priest? A lady who met Philip at the reception said she would pray that he becomes a priest. For all she knows he could be a mass murderer. If I remember correctly, it was Sidney who said he wanted a workshop at church on ways to tell vocation recruiters no.

The Sunday catechesis will continue through the Easter season to Pentecost.

Happy Easter to all, and to all a good night!

The penultimate post on the Elect

The RCIA process is on the cusp of culmination.

I went to the Holy Thursday mass. At the start, three people (including Philip whom I am sponsoring) from the congregation brought up three oils. These were blessed on Monday at the Chrism mass, where the bishop blessed all the oil that would be used in the diocese for the coming year.

Each of the oils has a specific use.

• Oil of the sick - This is used to anoint the sick.


• Oil of catechumens - Everyone who is Baptized and people preparing to enter the church are anointed with this oil.


• Chrism - This is used in Confirmation when a person is sealed with the Holy Spirit.

This morning, the morning of Holy Saturday, the day started with an 8:30 prayer service which included the Ephphetha Rite. Translated from the Aramaic or Greek (not sure which), Ephphetha means "be opened." Before the Rite was a prayer service which was very similar to the Liturgy of the Word at a normal mass. After a short homily, the priest called the Elect forward. They recited the Nicene Creed with the congregation and then father touched all of them, making the sign of the cross on their ears and mouths. The priest prayed the Elect would be open to hearing and proclaiming the Word of God.

After this there was a practice for the Elect, Candidates, and their Sponsors and Godparents. We walked through what would be happening at the Easter Vigil tonight and who would stand where when. We worked out who would be walking around with candles in the dark, how to Baptize people by immersion, and where to get them ready for the next part of mass quickly. When to say Amen, I do, and Peace be with you.

All of this brought me to thinking of the time I made my first Communion. I was in the second grade and one of eighty people preparing for the sacrament. We had a week or two of in church practice of standing, sitting, receiving, and processing. We even had crackers so we could practice correct form in consuming the Eucharist. In fact, every sacrament I remember making for the first time had a lot of practice. These people tonight are getting three of them and they have not had even a third of the practice I went through for just one sacrament. Even so, I think everything will work out well, even though there will be open flames handled by nervous people wearing robes.

Clarification
There is one thing I have not made clear in my RCIA posts. When I started the sponsorship of Philip in October, he already had a Sponsor and Godparents lined up. I was not there in a direct role like all the other sponsors, but only to attend the classes and teachings with him. At the start of Lent, Philip said he had other people (family members I understood) who would sponsor him. At first I was a little miffed that I was doing all the actual work and someone else would step in at the last minute. Then I thought about why I signed up for the program. I wanted to help someone who did not have anyone else to be there for him.

You need to understand, this was my mindset for the past 6 months. Today I asked Philip who would be coming to the Easter Vigil. He said he thought his sister would come but he was not expecting anyone else. Combining this with the absence of anyone else at the practice today, my reasoning leads me to say I will be his Godparent and Confirmation Sponsor. If so, I would be honored. However, finding this out the morning of the sacraments is unconventional.

Last night I was working on an art project, but more on that later. Tonight the Elect and Candidates will all receive Confirmation and Eucharist, while the Elect will also receive Baptism. The Easter Vigil starts at 8 and after the Vigil and reception I hope to be home a little after midnight.