![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Secretive Serpent
Izzie must be a most mad and masochistic creature. Not sufficient to be engaged in a battle with a toxic toad, the serpent refused to abandon her Camp Nano plans to devote resources to the war of words at work. On the one hand it was rather draining but on the other the determination to continue was a way to stop her meddling in sacred territory. To chicken out would have been to let her win. She had to make do with second best by taking over half of the 54,000 word count.
But there’s more. This serpent is a glutton for punishment. A certain cat introduced Izzie to a feast of freebies in what can only be described as Hogwarts for wannabee geek and freaks. No magical ability whatsoever is required just the desire to learn stuff for the sake of it.
Still not quite worked out the business model of this most marvelous Magical Academy
This is no fluffy bunny new age stuff but seems to be proper courses with real homework and very well structured lesson and course materials.
Managed not to be too greedy and signed up for only four courses. But one just happened to start during the last week of Camp Nano
Lazy Izzie figures that it should be no problem at all to slack off until Monday 3rd September and then do a big catch up. Skimmed through the slides and pdf files and was surprised to discover how much of it seemed to be indecipherable gibberish that made sense only to geeks or geniuses. Turned out that the lecturer’s spoken comments on the course videos were the key to decoding all those creepy mathematical magical formulae.
That was when the proverbial really hit the fan. Not being a creature who does much lurking over at Youtube or watching music or movies online, had no idea just how completely and disgustingly sucky our Vodafail ISP could be.
With snappy zappy speeds of around 10kbps sometimes dipping down to half that and around ten 20 megabyte videos per week, it was going to take a good five hours just to download the infernal things. Had already discovered that trying to make sense of the lecture slides without the running commentary was not a serious option.
But worst of all while the stupid Portkey was proceeding at this pathetic snail pace it was near impossible to visit any other web pages. Everything was taking forever and half the time there’d be those infernal DNS and all sorts of other FAIL messages
It was like being transported back to the dark old days of dinosaur dial up. In some strange way the exhaustion and frustration of the world wide wait is much more tiring than doing real physical work like digging holes or lifting boxes.
Three evenings of this was enough to turn Izzie into a blubbering wreck. But then the little green light flickered and the voice of reason said that learning is supposed to be fun and the difficulties should be in the message not the medium. No point in getting into a murderous rage or risking a stroke for something that is just supposed to be a sort of Sudoku on steroids. And anyway now that it has been confirmed beyond all possible doubt what a useless bit of shit the little black wifi dongle is, then the only logical alternative is to just download the stuff at a snail’s pace, not bother with the assignments and wait for the course to be repeated in some six months from now.
Like with the recent encounters with a certain toxic toad, learning to let go has certain side effects. It switches off the primitive irrational fear motivated brain cells and lets the useful problem solving ones return.
But there is a certain human trait shared by this serpent that the elusiveness and seeming impossibility of a goal is precisely what makes it desirable no matter how useless and pointless it may be in the grand scheme of things.
The solution turned out to be reasonably simple. Simply got a bright shiny new usb storage stick and tried downloading the videos during the weekly visit to Petunia’s place. With a much more civilized speed of 200kbps it took less than two minutes per 20mb lecture.
Still a week behind with the downloads but figures that the time in the Lair is better spend watching the ones we have over and over rather than wasting time trying to add new ones to the stash and being unable to do anything else at all during the process.
Apparently it is useful to have some familiarity with discrete probability for the crypto course. Still not taken a proper peek at the refresher video. Been too busy catching up with all the other stuff. But it was sort of spooky. Such a sense of deja vu. For the last time that Izzie had anything to do with this kind of maths was back in September 2001 in Goblin College.
There was a mid term statistics exam on Saturday 8th September. The organizers stuffed up big time. Not only were they late opening the hall but when the lecturer announced the house keeping matters at the start of the exam (which included an extra ten minutes to compensate for the stuff ups) the microphone went into a serious feedback loop and howled like a rabid werewolf.
Even the geeks and nerds got rattled by that. Had every intention to put in a formal complaint about this series of stuff ups. But the events of a few days later proved rather distracting and put this trivia into its proper perspective.
Everyone else makes a big deal about tenth anniversaries. Izzie goes for elevenses and sixes. There is a cycle of 6,11,6 and 5 years making a total of 28 years where the days and dates repeat. There is a bit of a twist with January and February sometimes due to those pesky leap years. That means that only the intervals of 28 can be guaranteed to be identical.
There is something about an anniversary occurring on the same day as the original event that invokes the first one more powerfully. It feels sort of the same
And there were just so many creepy things to remember from 2001. But the toad has been keeping the Izzie so busy in the present that we have been deprived of the depressing indulgence in remembering most of them. Maybe that is a good thing and maybe that is part of the attraction of the distraction of all those interesting online toys.
In the meantime, there’s lectures to watch and puzzles to solve. Still waiting for the Eureka moment where all the pieces of the jigsaw finally fall into place
It is so so true what a certain Cat has observed. The very fact that some new stuff to be learned is ‘insanely challenging’ is precisely what makes the end reward so great if one can persevere and finally put two and two together.
And it's not like Izzie will ever use this stuff. It is maybe a harmless way of harnessing the hunting and hoarding instinct.
*slinks off to sign up for more hairy scary courses^
But there’s more. This serpent is a glutton for punishment. A certain cat introduced Izzie to a feast of freebies in what can only be described as Hogwarts for wannabee geek and freaks. No magical ability whatsoever is required just the desire to learn stuff for the sake of it.
Still not quite worked out the business model of this most marvelous Magical Academy
This is no fluffy bunny new age stuff but seems to be proper courses with real homework and very well structured lesson and course materials.
Managed not to be too greedy and signed up for only four courses. But one just happened to start during the last week of Camp Nano
Lazy Izzie figures that it should be no problem at all to slack off until Monday 3rd September and then do a big catch up. Skimmed through the slides and pdf files and was surprised to discover how much of it seemed to be indecipherable gibberish that made sense only to geeks or geniuses. Turned out that the lecturer’s spoken comments on the course videos were the key to decoding all those creepy mathematical magical formulae.
That was when the proverbial really hit the fan. Not being a creature who does much lurking over at Youtube or watching music or movies online, had no idea just how completely and disgustingly sucky our Vodafail ISP could be.
With snappy zappy speeds of around 10kbps sometimes dipping down to half that and around ten 20 megabyte videos per week, it was going to take a good five hours just to download the infernal things. Had already discovered that trying to make sense of the lecture slides without the running commentary was not a serious option.
But worst of all while the stupid Portkey was proceeding at this pathetic snail pace it was near impossible to visit any other web pages. Everything was taking forever and half the time there’d be those infernal DNS and all sorts of other FAIL messages
It was like being transported back to the dark old days of dinosaur dial up. In some strange way the exhaustion and frustration of the world wide wait is much more tiring than doing real physical work like digging holes or lifting boxes.
Three evenings of this was enough to turn Izzie into a blubbering wreck. But then the little green light flickered and the voice of reason said that learning is supposed to be fun and the difficulties should be in the message not the medium. No point in getting into a murderous rage or risking a stroke for something that is just supposed to be a sort of Sudoku on steroids. And anyway now that it has been confirmed beyond all possible doubt what a useless bit of shit the little black wifi dongle is, then the only logical alternative is to just download the stuff at a snail’s pace, not bother with the assignments and wait for the course to be repeated in some six months from now.
Like with the recent encounters with a certain toxic toad, learning to let go has certain side effects. It switches off the primitive irrational fear motivated brain cells and lets the useful problem solving ones return.
But there is a certain human trait shared by this serpent that the elusiveness and seeming impossibility of a goal is precisely what makes it desirable no matter how useless and pointless it may be in the grand scheme of things.
The solution turned out to be reasonably simple. Simply got a bright shiny new usb storage stick and tried downloading the videos during the weekly visit to Petunia’s place. With a much more civilized speed of 200kbps it took less than two minutes per 20mb lecture.
Still a week behind with the downloads but figures that the time in the Lair is better spend watching the ones we have over and over rather than wasting time trying to add new ones to the stash and being unable to do anything else at all during the process.
Apparently it is useful to have some familiarity with discrete probability for the crypto course. Still not taken a proper peek at the refresher video. Been too busy catching up with all the other stuff. But it was sort of spooky. Such a sense of deja vu. For the last time that Izzie had anything to do with this kind of maths was back in September 2001 in Goblin College.
There was a mid term statistics exam on Saturday 8th September. The organizers stuffed up big time. Not only were they late opening the hall but when the lecturer announced the house keeping matters at the start of the exam (which included an extra ten minutes to compensate for the stuff ups) the microphone went into a serious feedback loop and howled like a rabid werewolf.
Even the geeks and nerds got rattled by that. Had every intention to put in a formal complaint about this series of stuff ups. But the events of a few days later proved rather distracting and put this trivia into its proper perspective.
Everyone else makes a big deal about tenth anniversaries. Izzie goes for elevenses and sixes. There is a cycle of 6,11,6 and 5 years making a total of 28 years where the days and dates repeat. There is a bit of a twist with January and February sometimes due to those pesky leap years. That means that only the intervals of 28 can be guaranteed to be identical.
There is something about an anniversary occurring on the same day as the original event that invokes the first one more powerfully. It feels sort of the same
And there were just so many creepy things to remember from 2001. But the toad has been keeping the Izzie so busy in the present that we have been deprived of the depressing indulgence in remembering most of them. Maybe that is a good thing and maybe that is part of the attraction of the distraction of all those interesting online toys.
In the meantime, there’s lectures to watch and puzzles to solve. Still waiting for the Eureka moment where all the pieces of the jigsaw finally fall into place
It is so so true what a certain Cat has observed. The very fact that some new stuff to be learned is ‘insanely challenging’ is precisely what makes the end reward so great if one can persevere and finally put two and two together.
And it's not like Izzie will ever use this stuff. It is maybe a harmless way of harnessing the hunting and hoarding instinct.
*slinks off to sign up for more hairy scary courses^
no subject
I start to hate the theoretical questions (like, A is a secure PRF, which ones from the list are also secure PRFs?) It doesn't look like anything to use in practice (the author repeatedly stresses that one shouldn't invent their own algorithms, unless they're experts, because it's so easy to make mistakes). (Maybe you have a higher threshold for useless knowledge ;) I much prefer the questions where you need to calculate/discover an answer, or questions that require simple logical thinking (like the DVD one, and the ones about splitting keys). The programming assignments #2 and #3 are a lot easier and straightforward than the 1st one, so while it's nice to know I'm done, the sense of achievement is not as high.
But yes, perhaps it taps into the hoarding instinct ;) Just checked the list of the courses again, and there's still a lot more I'd like to take... But not now, unless I drop out of some of my current ones :) ("Web Intelligence and Big Data" sounds a likely candidate, as this course has been a mess so far, a lot of ambiguous/unexplained statements and technical errors in homeworks, yet almost none of the complaints on the forum are being addressed.)
no subject
Was supposed to be at the third attempt on the first homework by now but most definitely not in the mood after that drama. But was delighted to find that the serpent instinct instantly knew what to do with those dvd node thingies without even having watched the relevant material. Pity the two relevant questions were only worth 0.40 points. Strange how the tests do not have a total of ten
Wanted to sign up for one of the basic Python programming courses but it starts in the middle of the 'intro to mathematical thinking' course and would end up right in the middle of November. A bit of a no no. So found a shorter one in January for making silly games in Python
A lot of the Crypto students are saying the course should be spread out over a longer time especially for the ones who work full time. But aside from being so intense and compressed it does seem very well organized. Did notice how the questions stay the same but they change the order of the multiple choice answers. Got the bank employee question right the first time based on actual logic and reasoning and just went and mindlessly picked the answer in the same position next time around. It was only later with other questions noticed that the answer order had changed. So next time will need lots more Constant Vigilance ;)
4.45 out of 8.45 is still pretty sucky. Maybe having to struggle is a good lesson for a certain serpent
no subject
Meanwhile, here's a very short crash course in Python you can take in your spare time: http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class so you know what you're getting into. The best thing about it is the semi-interactive exercises - there's a system to check that your scripts produce correct results! And you can also have a look at their provided solutions and compare with yours.
LOL, the DVD question really stumped me in the beginning. (And no, it was not mentioned anywhere in the lectures, it's just logical thinking). Maybe you are better in this stuff. Yup, one needs to pay attention to every single detail with the quizzes. If you did the encryption thing (attack at dawn), the actual codes are also changed from one attempt to another, so you can't just copy/paste the answer.
no subject
Decided to just bite the bullet and use our last two attempts to get it over and done with. Went from a so so score of 4.78 right up to 7.45! Went and used the very first random guess from question two and ticked only one box like the very first attempt. Every single effort at improving on this one just dropped the score dramatically
There were a few questions where a process of elimination from earlier attempts led to the correct answer. (3 and 9 come to mind)
But the one pissy little question that means more to this serpent than all the other put together was "Attack at dawn" Got the hint from the bit in the video about Bob and Eve. Obviously all the geeks went and played with their Pythons and other geek toys. Poor ickle Izzie had to resort to using an online ascii/hex/binary converter and do the damned thing by hand. Lucky it was only the last three characters and was hoping that the quotation marks were NOT part of the message.
That alone was sufficient to want to find more efficient ways of doing things. Had to break each byte in half when writing it down as it was just murder for these ancient eyes trying to line up those zeros and ones in order to process them properly.
One little bit out of line cost us the first attempt (ended up with a 13 instead of a 33)Logic dictated that the time would be better spent watching the next set of lectures. But serpent persistence and irrationality insisted on hexing that hex message
Just as well they did not change the code for Izzie. Will not ever be doing that again the long way. Had never known until doing this course that there was ways of encryption that did not involve substitution where the alphabet is concerned. It was such a novel concept.
Now must get back to the remaining three attempts left for the second week's homework. Izzie is such a sad sad snail. This time might try the novel technique of actually understanding some of the more esoteric concepts
no subject
For the questions with ticky boxes, usually exactly half of them have to be ticked ;) So the process of eliminating the wrong answers is a bit easier even though the answers themselves are changed.
First time, I painstakingly made screen captures of all the results, and it was a pleasant surprise to see that it's all saved automatically on the review screen :) (A not-so-pleasant surprise at another course, where only the answer you selected is saved, and no explanations whatsoever.) But it makes sense to save them locally anyway, because if you'll ever want to review the material after the course is over, the lectures may still be available, but not the homework and the reviews.
no subject
Will be doing a big snatch and grab at Petunia's place tomorrow evening. Still only half way through the DES video. Was pleased to spot that the standards agency was trying to do things on the cheap.
You said you used programming in the first sets of questions. Was that "Attack at dawn" one of them? Looks like we are both doing the same Python course in October - the one from Rice university
Wouldn't it be dead boring for a geek such as yourself?
Turns out another one on the list - Computer Science 101 is being presented by the same guy who does the Google Python stuff. Not taken more than a quick peek yet. Still got so much catching up to do.
no subject
Don't know about the Python course - on one hand, I might be better off learning by myself, but on the other hand, structure and framework are much more motivating. (After all, Python is around for years, and I've never had any slightest motivation to learn it until seeing it in the context of the Coursera courses...)
Actually, maybe for you it would be better to start with "Learn to Program: Fundamentals" on Sep 24? It's also Python for beginners, you can take both of them together.
no subject
Started today with the plotting and planning but it will still need a good hour or two per day slaving over a hot keyboard which cannot be spent playing with pythons
Looks like we have a similar mindset needing to use real life examples and numbers and using those to extrapolate the theory. Monty Hall comes to mind. The Izzie needs concrete examples and while a lover of patterns, trying to express them with those abstract terms just does the old head in. Never mind the 'n-1's just give us some proper juicy numbers