Update for the Week of Sept 16 ~ Sept 22, 2013

This week marked an end of one course (CS-169.2x SaaS) and beginning of new one (UT.2.01x - Ideas of 20th Century).  As well, I have continued to work on CB22.1x - The Ancient Greek Hero (Ancient Hero) from EdX, and Exploring Beethoven and  Modern & Contemporary Poetry (ModPo) from Coursera.

This week I have completed lecture 12 and the final assignment for SaaS. Lecture 12 covered potential source of performance issues and some of the strategy to improve it (caching and adding indexes) and security issues related to a SaaS app and how you can deal with some of those issues with Rails.  For the final assignment, we are given a short task to improve database query performance by adding indexes and a short quiz on caching.

In Ancient Hero, I have completed the Hour 1.  In this week's portion of the Hour 1, the course covered importance of being on time (Hora) in relation to what it means to be a hero (with specific reference to Hercules myth as it was conveyed by Agamemnon and to Achilles) and how the word Myth (Muthos) in the Ancient Greek does not mean a fairy tale, but saying something for record.  Also, in this hour, it overviewed three movies (Tales of Hoffman, Blade Runner, and Chunhyang) that will be used as comparison points against Iliad.  As well, we are given a comparison between Roy from Blade Runner and Achilles.

In the week 3 of Exploring Beethoven Sonata, we are given coverage of Sonatas from the beginning of Beethoven's so-called middle period.  In particular, the lectures discussed Op. 26, which is closely associated with Chopin's Funeral March Sonata, Op. 27, No. 1 and No. 2 (Moonlight Sonata), and Op. 28 (Pastorale).   Through these examples, we are shown how Beethoven had started to clearly break away from the conventional form of the Classical period.

In the week 2 of ModPo, we covered some of the poems from 20th and 21st Centuries that are representative of  Whitmanian and Dickinsonian traditions.  In particular, we are given some of poems by William Carlos William and Allen Ginsburg as reflecting the ideas of Walt Whitman, and given some of poems by Lorine Niedecker, Cid Corman, and Rae Armantrout as reflecting the ideas of Emily Dickinson.

Finally, this week marked the beginning of Ideas of 20th Century course.  In this week I have finished first two lectures from the first section of the course, the section on the Enlightenment.  These lectures overviewed the Enlightenment period and covered some of the major political theories  that came out of the Enlightenment period.