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CS in Scotland
Friends,
Just wanted to say hi and let you know about the CS course I'm taking here
at Aberdeen, in case you're interested. It's an upper-level course on
computer graphics, and it looks to be very interesting. It was sort of
weird to go to the first lecture and be taught computer science by someone
wearing a tie, but eventually he started using phrases like "back of the
envelope calculation" and "costly operation" and making jokes that were
almost funny but not quite, so I knew I was in the right place.
All the courses here at Aberdeen are lecture format, no discussion, no
raising your hand to interject or ask about something you don't quite
understand. My CS prof is a little more loose, but the overall theme is
"be quiet and write down the pearls of wisdom dropping from my mouth."
Then we have the "tutorials" which are like lab sessions. It so happens
that for this class I have access to any one of 14 Silicon Graphics Indy
stations (named after various dinosaurs) and boy do they really hum. The
full color video camera mounted on top of each is a nice perk as well.
The syllabus for the course is as follows:
Week 1 output devices, X overview, Tcl/Tk overview
event-driven proramming, geometry management
Week 2 raster graphics, line primitive (3 approaches)
scan conversion, antialiasing, filling polygons/regions
Week 3 achromatic light; intensity, halftoning, dithering,
colour, colour spaces, colour modes, colour in *user
interfaces*
Week 4 vectors and matrices; 2D transformations,
viewing in 3D, coordinate systems, view plane
Week 5 view volumes, projection transformations,
polygon mesh, parametric cubic curves
Week 6 Bezier curves, Bezier bicubic surfaces,
control points, continuity,
visible surface determination, z-buffer algorithm
Week 7 illumination models and ray tracing,
interaction tasks and devices, pickin in 3D
Week 8 steropsis, animation, event-driven programming in X
Apparently we're doing all the programming in Tcl/Tk (which Sun is about
to re-release this year as "Java Application Command Language" to
replace/compete with JavaScript) and C in the X-windows environment.
Don't worry, I still prefer CS@EC to this mammoth school with a mammoth CS
department. The advanced technologies and wide variety of instruction
available are offset by the complete lack of personal attention and the
little things, like 4 pence per page for printing, lots of labs that ONLY
run Windows 3.1, and the building closing at 11 PM no matter who you are
or what you're doing.
Of course, that's only 6 PM at Earlham. Plenty of time.
Take care,
Chris
P.S. Yes, all the CS students here are just as hairy and greasy and
lacking in hygiene as CS students at Earlham, and they have funny accents
too.
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