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.

Update for the Week of Sept 9 - Sept 15

In this week, I am continuing with CS-169.2x - SaaS from edX, CB22.1x - Ancient Hero from edX, and Exploring Beethoven Sonata from Coursera.  I have also finished week 1 of Modern & Contemporary Poetry (ModPo) from University of Pennsylvania, which is offered through Coursera.

In the first week of ModPo, the discussion was around analysis of some of the poetries by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.  These two poets are presented as proto-modernists whose contrasting ideas have reverberated throughout the modern and post-modern periods, as will see throughout this class.

In the week 2 of Exploring Beethoven Sonata, the course covered Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.4, Op.7 as a reference Sonata for his first thirteen Sonata.  The discussion was on how Beethoven pushed the boundary of musical vocabulary of the time while largely staying within the Classical formal structure during this early stage of his career.

In Ancient Hero, I have started on the hour 1, which covers the importance of "kleos," which is translated as a glory or as a glory as it is transmitted through songs, in the Greek song culture and the importance of "hora," the hour.  I will have more discussion on this and the subsequent hour next week.

As for SaaS, I have completed lecture 11 - the first part of the week 6, which I believe is the last week of this course.  In this lecture, we went over the deployment strategy (such as automation and continuous integration) and importance of monitoring, as well as some of the tools you can use to deploy and monitor your product.

Update for Week of Sept. 2 - 8

In this week, I have started on two new courses (well, one is a restarting of a course) and getting into the last phase SaaS course.  I have started retaking Ancient Hero this week as well as starting on Exploring Beethoven Sonata course from Curtis Institute, which is available through Coursera.

In the week 1 of Exploring Beethoven Sonata, the course provided some background to Classical period, the musical environment from which Beethoven emerged.  In particular, the course covered some of the characteristics and interesting works of  Mozart, along with some biographical information about Bach, Haydn, and Mozart.

In Ancient Hero, I have completed Hour zero, which gives an overview of the course and guide on how to do slow reading.  It also provided some passages that are representative of various periods that will be covered in this course as the text

In SaaS, the course gave an overview of Javascript, with focus on jQuery integration in Rails.  It also provided very brief overview of how Javascript is starting to be used as server-side (node.js) and client-side (backbone.js, Angular.js, etc.) framework.

I had also watched a first two lecture videos of Accountable Talk.  Unfortunately, this course is not quite I had expected, so given the time constraint, I have decided to skip this round of the offering, but I am planning to take one of the future offering.

Update for the Weeks of Aug 18 - Sept 1

For these two weeks, focus has been on CS-169.2x: SaaS.  Specifically, I have worked on the lectures for week 2 and 3 of the course.

In week 2, the focus has been on refactoring code.  The course went over how to best refactor legacy code.  Following TDD and BDD pattern, the main point is to drive your refactoring through writing tests.  The lecture provided some examples and more in-depth coverage on how you can do this.

In week 3, the course covered helpful tips on working in a team (such as how to run meeting and benefits of pair programming) and provided brief overview of version control system, Git in particular.

Finally, the week 3 was due date for the second part of the first assignment.  This assignment was on simple exercises of refactoring and bug-fixing legacy code through writing tests.

Upcoming Courses for September, 2013

Here are some of the courses I am planning to take in September:

On Coursera:

• Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas (Starting on Sept. 3rd): I believe this is the first course offered by Curtis Institute on Coursera, and it is instructed by world-renown pianist Jonathan Biss.
• Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (Starting on Sept. 7th): Second offering of an excellent class from UPenn
• Accountable Talk®: Conversation that Works (Starting on Sept. 9th): A course from University of Pittsburgh that I have been awaiting for awhile.
• General Game Playing (Starting on Sept. 30th): One of my favourite courses from my university days was the Game Theory course, so I am looking forward to this course from Stanford.

On EdX:

• CB22.1x - The Ancient Greek Hero (Starting on Sept. 3rd):  I was actually taking the first offering of this course as I had mentioned in my previous post, but since I was behind on that and second offering was starting so soon, I have re-registered for this excellent course.