Udemy - Learn HTML5 from scratch

I've heard about HTML5 - but didn't really know what it was. So this sounded like a good course to find out.

Its fairly gentle as courses go, and all parts are explained well with all code written from scratch in front of you. It shows you how to do regular HTML first, before moving onto some of the advanced features.

So it starts with basic HTML together with inline styles, tables and input actions.

Then it moves onto CSS files and tailoring the result to look like what is required. It's quite fun to see the website evolving in front of you as you tweak padding, colors and so on.

Then it's on to HMTL5 new things. New tags, new form elements and so on. This is followed by graphics, video, geolocation, SVG graphics, mobile apps, caching and storage extensions. 

Its a very good overview, but you obviously need to know quite a lot of javascript (which isn't explicitly covered) to make good use of some of the new features.

Udemy - Introduction to Java Programming

So I was doing a bit of Android programming - writing apps and stuff.
I'd played around a bit with java when it first came out, but never written much in it. It's moved on a bit since then, so I thought I might catch up with it using this course.

I'd recommend the course for anyone who wants to learn Java. It's done at a nice slow pace, with lots of examples and takes you through each challenge showing how they would write the answer. This is always good - because normally people skip over the boring bits and head for the answer, missing out a couple of steps that you just can't seem to repeat at home.

Anyway - a great course, a little slow for me - it is meant for beginners though, so I skipped over some of the material and it was all very enjoyable,.

Udemy - Astronomy - state of the art.

Astronomy - State of the art

I spotted this course just moments before it actually started - well a day or two. I hadn't heard of Udemy before - so this was new.

It looked really good - it promised to cover a lot of areas - and I'm often concious that I only get to see stuff on galactic scales, and mostly theoretical - so this looked like it would be good for balance.

I have to say it was fantastic. You can take the course at your own speed. There was some initial attempts to have quizes as part of them - they had issues getting the system to work so they were shelved.

It really did cover pretty much the whole of astronomy, from telescopes, to planets, to stars, black holes, and galaxies to cosmology - and all stops in between in 77 chunks. It breaks down in the following topics.

• SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION
• Course Overview,
•  Description,
•  Introduction
• SECTION 2 EXPLORING OUR UNIVERSE
• State of the Art Observing, 
• Telescopes, 
• Observing Limitations, 
• Observing Solutions, 
• Adaptive Optics, 
• Space Astronomy, 
• Big Glass, 
• Gravity Waves
• SECTION 3 UNDERSTANDING OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
• Overview - Planetary Exploration
• Mars
• Mars and Water
• Mars Up Close
• Jovian Planets
• Solar System Satellites
• Titan
• Water Worlds
• SECTION 4 DISCOVERING EXTRA SOLAR PLANETS
• Overview - Extra Solar Planets
• Exoplanets
• Detection and Imaging
• Characterizing Exoplanets
• Kepler
• Habitable Zones
• SECTION 5 PROBING DISTANT STARS
• Overview - Stars
• Stars and Life
• Supernovas
• Pulsars
• Black Holes
• Testing Gravity
• SECTION 6 INSPECTING OTHER GALAXIES
• Overview - Structure & Evolution of Galaxies
• Milky Way
• Dark Matter
• Galactic Center
• Active Galaxies
• Structure Formation
• Dark Energy
• SECTION 7 EXAMINING THE COSMOS
• Overview - Cosmology
• Cosmology
• Microwave Background
• Big Bang
• Early Universe
• The Multiverse
• SECTION 8 UNCOVERING EVIDENCE FOR LIFE
• Overview - Life and Astrobiology
• The Unity of Life
• Extremophiles
• Exobiology
• Weird Life
• Drake Equation
• Communication

As well as videos, there were PDF's to read and slides available. Also supplemental audio recordings of the tutor, Professor Chris Imprey, interviewing other astronomers.

Towards the end of the course he also conducted some live sessions where we could send in questions either live or by email/twitter and he'd answer them live on video conference. They ranged from "Is there life on Mars?" to "What happens in a black hole?" and many others. Nothing seemed to phase him, and each question got a good 5 or 10 minute answer.

The course is still going - and anyone can watch the videos, read the material and take part in the interactive sessions. It's well worth it if you are at all interested.

Even better - after the quantum mechanics course I'd just taken, it was a complete relief to feel on top of a subject!

Coursera - Quantum Mechanics

A course on quantum mechanics! What am I thinking?

So I signed up for a course on quantum mechanics. I mean, how hard can it be?
Answer - *!?**!!* hard!

I brushed off my knowledge of imaginary numbers, I went through the introductory maths materials - they didn't seem too hard. OK - I struggled to remember complex conjugates, and one or two other things.

I thought there might be a reasonable introduction, and an explanation about things - which there was. However the learning curve was incredibly steep, and was sort of emphasised by the first homework.

Q1 For what was Albert Einstein awarded the Nobel prize?

• General Relativity
• The expansion of the universe
• The photo-electric effect
• Electron diffraction

OK - I actually knew that one - although it was in the course materials too.

Q2 Recall how the Schrödinger equation was motivated by the non-relativistic dispersion relation 
E=p22m. If we follow the same procedure for the case of a relativistic dispersion relation (E2=p2c2+m2c4), what equation do we arrive at? (For simplicity consider the one-dimensional case)

Ouch! The gloves are off! The lectures also had a grading system. No stars was for everyone, 1 star had some maths in it, two stars extensive maths, and three stars - mega maths. Most of the videos were in the 2/3 star range.

I actually enjoyed doing some of the integration - but realised I was gradually losing the plot as the course went on. I never really got a good handle on the bra-ket notation - I still don't really get it's power - I'm missing something I'm sure, but they didn't spend very long on it, and the books I got didn't help. Then it was onto Dirac deltas, Levi-civita notation and stuff about spin. By now I was really struggling with the weekly homeworks, and guessing as many as I was solving - I was no longer learning and close to drowning. I did think about giving up on the course, but I stayed the distance, and finished all the videos, all the homeworks.

This course had an exam - 1 chance at answer each question - 6 hour time limit. A couple of questions I could answer, the rest I guessed at, except those that required a numeric answer - which I couldn't do. I got 42% which I consider more than fair.

This gave me a total course mark of 72% - again more than I deserve.

So I probably got half way before I couldn't keep up, and for me it was hard to turn all that maths back into what it meant in the real world - even in the abstract. I guess that's not unusual in quantum mechanics!

G+C: Final

Well - just to complete this, I managed to complete the course satisfactorarily, in fact I got a distinction.

I didn't learn a huge amount, but then given I picked it because it was within my comfort level, that's hardly surprising. 

There are definitely a few down sides with this style of presentation. It's had to go at anything other than the pace the videos are delivered at - well that's not true - you can go slower by pausing them, but it's hard to skip ahead as you don't know what you might be missing. This isn't like skim reading hard copy where you can skip ahead and suddenly see something you think is important. 

Still - for the price - it is excellent value for money! :)

G+C: Module 7

So just one module this week, and quite grateful for the respite too. After the week was done, it was revealed that the instructor had gone down with a case of 'flu, and so was not available to record more videos.

This week was very interesting.
It started with some discussion of baryons, and where they are and what they're doing.
Then onto two videos on dark matter, the history and what it might be.
Then we worked on gravitational lensing, followed by a another on gravitational microlensing.
This week concluded with a module on dark energy.

So about 63 minutes in all. I got 8/10 on the quiz, so slipping from the original 10/10 days!

Interestingly they revealed some course stats today. The course started with more than 28,000 students registered. This is quite mind boggling. I'm use to a few hundred on the OU courses, maybe a thousand or two for the most popular. Apparently the drop out rate is very high - given you haven't paid for it, or anything like that, there isn't any penalty for dropping out. Coursera work on 5-10% making it through to the end.
This is a difficult course, with some quite scary maths in it, so if anything the drop out rate may be higher.

At nearly the half way point, there are more than 3,500 active users still present, so that's quite amazing.
Anyway - there is no wonder there are no written courseworks to be marked!

I'm quite staggered how popular this course in a rather niche subject is!

G+C: Module 5 & 6

So week 3, and this week there are some more topics introduced.

First it starts with one on Cosmological tests, how you can check what we work out. Then some tests in detail, such as the Hubble diagram, the Cosmic Microwave background (of course) and then source counts.
It wraps up nicely by look at the concordance model, where all tests are brought together to constrain various values. 54 minutes of video split across 5 topics.

The next module starts with the very early universe, talking fractions of a second after the big bang. Then some stuff of big bang nucelosynthesis, and a bit about inflation. Then more about the early universe, including recombination and reionisation.
Just 4 videos in this bit,  42 minutes, so just over an hour and a half total of videos.

The quiz was a bit harder, and I only managed 7/10 this time. One I think the question was a bit iffy, and a couple were just answers I couldn't find easily.

G+C: Module 3 & 4

Modules 3 & 4.

This weeks work is module 3, which is on cosmological models.

It starts by introducing the cosmological parameters, then takes us briefly through solving the various Friedman equations for different models. It then looks at the different cosmological models that arise from these, what sort of universe they predict, and what they would look like. Finally a quick introduction to distances in cosmology.

4 videos comprising 37 minutes

Module 4  is on distance scale, age of the universe and expansion
So it starts by looking at the scale of the universe, then starts with the cosmic ladder of distances, from parallax and upwards. This is followed by distance indicator relationships, and then a look at supernova standard candles. Then 3 more videos, on the HST distance project, estimating the age of the universe, and finally tests that can tell us if the universe is expanding, or light is just "tired".

So 7 videos in this section. 75 minutes in total.

This together with the module 3 videos I found quite a lot to squeeze into a week. It takes a while to get through all these and there is only so much you can take in in one go.

The quiz was a bit harder than last weeks, I had to go searching for some of the answers, another 10 questions, but I managed to get through them all eventually. Some I thought slightly imprecise, but anyway - all ok.

So onwards and upwards - next section is early universe stuff like the big bag, inflation and nucleosynthesis.

G+C: Module 2

The second module is all about basic cosmological stuff. There are another 4 lectures with embedded questions running to about 25 minutes in total.

It starts with some basic definitions, then discusses homogeneity and isotropy. Then some time spent on the expanding universe, and finally a quick derivation of the Friedman equations.
The questions I'm getting more use to and managing to cover OK. A few of them I have to think a little, but so far not needed pencil and paper, but that will probably change with the questions that are up coming.

So nothing I haven't seen before, but I struggled to follow the mathematical derivation - I have done it before so if necessary I think I could follow it.

So after thinking about it, I decided to tackle the questions. There were 10 multiple choice questions based on the text, and most of them were reasonably easy to answer. A few were more tricky, and I had to review material, but actually still nothing requiring pen and paper as yet.

G+C: Module 1

So - the course starts! First thing is it seems to go at quite a rate. We're expected to go through two chapters a week, and then answer a quiz on the topic. You need 60% to pass for each quiz. You get two deadlines to complete the quiz by, with only half marks available if you slip the first dead line. So the pressure is on!

The first lecture is a 15 minute video on the history of cosmology and some background material. The video is powerpoint like slides mostly with narration over it, and occasional inset video of the speaker.

I noticed some yellow marks on the slider at the bottom of the video, and found when it got to that point the video paused and you got asked some questions. You get instant feedback on these so it's quite interactive.
However some of the questions were suddenly a little heavy for late night consumption!
Quick, integrate between limits 0 to 1 e^x dx. What quantum jump gives the H-alpha line. I admit to having to google that one - I thought it was probably 3-2 but wasn't confident when it came to it.

A couple of things I did learn from this though, which I presumed I'd learn some new things.

• Bolometric output is the whole output of something. I sort of knew that, but it's not something that concerns me normally, but something clicked here.
• He went over Olber's paradox, and said not only did it apply to light, but also to gravity. You can recast the paradox into "why aren't we ripped apart by the total tidal force of the gravitational interactions?"

So most of it was a general introduction. The spontaneous calculus was a bit of a shock - but apart from that it was ok.

The next two videos were on more general history leading up to CMB and Dark matter and things like that, taking us up to the present day. These also had quizes in them, but I found them much easier to answer!

So that's module 1 done - about 45 minutes of video in all, with some questions thrown in. Not bad for the first day :) I need to do module 2 though before attempting the assessed quiz.

Change of direction

So I finished my OU degree, and I've gone into postgraduate studies in astronomy now. I did do one last OU course, SXP288, but really only for the residential component. The way education is funded has also changed, and this means the course fees have quadrupled. I can get some transitional arrangements if I was studying for another degree, but I think I don't really have time for that, and really I would only want to pick and choose which courses I would do.

So reluctantly, I've probably come to the end of my time with the OU, through pressure of time, finance and the changing face of education.

I'm learning a lot of new stuff in my postgraduate studies, and did 6 course last year local to the university, which I'll skip over. However chatting to a friend, she mentioned the new set of courses which are free through coursera.org - and I thought, why not give them a try, So here I am, signed up for something reasonably relevant - a course on Galaxies and Cosmology. Yes - I'm staying somewhat in my comfort zone, and partly worried I won't be able to manage it which would be embarrassing. I'm also just interested in what the format will be (this one comes from CalTech!) and how it will all work.

So slightly scary, but well worth the price!

SD329: TMA-4

The final TMA.

Three questions.
The first one is the big one though, as it has 50% of the marks. We have to write an essay, of no more than 1500 words(!) on mechanoreceptors and their use in proprioception. Also it needs to include body image and body schema. I don't like essays much. This seems to have been reflected in my marks, although I think I made a fair stab at it.

Question 2 - we look at some images of rat glomeruli, when labelled with radioactive substances, and look at the uptake when exposed to three compounds. We have to comment on the similarity and differences in the compounds, the patterns shown in the glomeruli, and then bring it together by saying whats happening here with known mechanisms of odourant coding. I found this one a bit difficult to answer well. Not really sure what was being looked for outside of the obvious.

Question 3 - pain - and how Ibuprofen, codeine and amitriptyline work, where they work and what side effects they have.

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SD329: Book 4 - Touch and Pain, Smell and Taste, Integrating the senses

The last book contains the final three blocks of the course.

The first block (block 5) is about touch and pain.
It starts by looking in detail at touch and the various sense receptors used to detect touch, pressure, and so on.
Then it looks at the integrated perception of touch, and how it is perceived. This is followed by the sense of proprioception - which is how you know where your arms and legs etc are without actually looking at them.
Its an important sense, as a video of someone who lost it shows, they are unable to walk or even sit in some cases.
Finally we look at pain, how it is sensed, how its passed and what various drugs can do to stop pain.

Smell and taste are block 6, and it seems there is still a lot to learn about the exact mechanisms that work here. It starts by looking at smell and how the structure of molecules and the sense of smell don't always seem to be correlated. Then there are the usual nerve pathways to consider, and theories on how exactly smell works etc.
Taste is similar in a way but much less complex as there are only 4-5 basic tastes.
Then a quick bit on combined taste/smell.

Then finally a rather short block on the integration of the senses. Things covered include the focus of attention and connection between sight and sound, and things like motion sickness.

Phew - another course that I've read to the end of.

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SD329 - TMA3

Course work 3. Three questions.

Question 1 is the biggest. In this we have to perform a home experiment, and then write it up as a proper experimental write up. The subject is the Pulfrich effect, which is an oddity in visual processing. You view a pendulum in this case or other moving thing using both eyes, but with one eye slightly obscured by a filter making the scene less bright. The brain interprets the slight lag in a similar way to seeing things moving in 3-d, so the pendulum which is swinging back and forth in front of the subject, starts to apparently take on a elliptical path moving closer and further away at the peak swing. What's more you can measure this using a pointer stick and work out where apparently the object comes to its closest point. From all this it is possible using a bit of trig to work out what this means in the delay in neural processing.  Myself and my daughter set this up one Sunday morning as my variation on the experiment was to see if the difference in ages affected the processing speed.

I used a tin of beans attached to the curtain rail, and a handy dog as backdrop. We were supplied with

Anyway - the experiment went ok, and the write up too. 1500 words or so with references and so on.

Question 2 is a short essay for the layman, describing visual processing contrasting bottom up and top down processing. This wasn't too bad, after the marathon first question.

Question 3 was much easier for me anyway - it was about focal lengths and whether a person was short sighted or not, and what was the nearest distance they could observe etc. Some basic maths and a few definitions.

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SD329: Book 3 Vision

On to the most complex of the topics - Vision.

To begin with it starts with an examination of light. What light is and how it is composed, and then how the eye interprets if. Looking at the science of colour and intensity. Colour is very much a product of how our eye perceives it, and we all see it slightly differently.

The continues by looking at the eye itself, the structure and function of the bits. All the bits that bring the image into focus, including some rather detailed physics of how the cornea is transparent despite being made of proteins. Also something about visual defects such as short and long sightedness, then onto the retina, colour vision movement and adaptation. There is a lot of processing done in the retina itself, to aid things like edge detection, colour constancy and other things - its a big topic.

After that we follow the signals from the retina to the visual cortex, taking in such structures as the optical chiasma, the lateral geniculate nucleus and ending up at the visual cortex.

Then its a case of looking (NPI) at visual processing, how we recognise shapes, scenes and people, including a whole chapter on recognition of writing. Lots of theories and experiments, but still it seems little in the way of solidly understood detail.

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SD329: TMA-2

The second coursework. I haven't finished book 3/block 4 - vision - its a pretty big subject as you might imagine.

So - what's in TMA-2?
Q1 is a research questions. It starts by asking "Can regular drug intake or exposure to chemicals increase the risk of hearing loss?". In particular drugs such as aspirin, paracetamol and the like. Can regular taking of these affect hearing? We are given a paper where there is a claim to that effect. We have to do lots of internet searching to find articles for and against the position, and to determine what we think about each source - how trustworthy it is etc.
There are three parts to the question focused around the two sub questions

1. Is there a proven link between use of either painkillers and hearing loss?
2. Is there any evidence that a particular group within the general population is more at risk or that a particular drug or chemical is any more, or less, risky?
We first have to compile our bibliography of information, together with criticism of the sources.
Then we have to argue to each of the sub question above
Finally we have to describe our search strategy - how we found the items, what we searched for etc.

For question 2, we have to write a summary of one of the detailed chapters in the hearing section. So condensing several pages and diagrams into 400 words.

Question 3 is about hearing directly. First we have to define pitch and intensity. Then we have to describe how both pitch and intensity are encoded, with two possible mechanisms for each.

I found this TMA somewhat easier, although the first question is quite open ended, depending on how much searching you want to do.
Anyway, much happier with the mark for this one, more up to my usual standard.

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SD329: TMA-1

Time for the first piece of coursework.

There are three questions on this.
It starts with the first question - where we have to write a brief essay (600 words) on the structure and function of the neuron. It's been a while since I had to write an essay, but the format comes back to me. We have to mention things like dendrites, axons, neurotransmitters and so on. All in just 600 words. It appears conciseness is a virtue in this course.

Question 2 is a bit about sensory inputs, and how they are detected, encoded and received. We also have to describe lateral inhibition.

In question 3 we are given a paper to read all about the McGurk effect, which you can see an example of here. There is a lot of detail in the paper, and several images of brains. We are asked a number of detailed questions on the scope of the paper and the results. By the end of this, I'm beginning to find I no longer wish to hear or see the McGurk effect again!

Anyway, first TMA posted, and a rather poor score for me. If we had a cat I would probably kick it.

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SD329: Book 2 - Hearing and Balance

Book 2, Block 3 is all about hearing and balance.

It starts off discussing what sound is, and how it is quantified. It looks at waveforms and analysis of sounds, and what filters do. So with the basics in place, the process of hearing can be discussed.

The next chapter discusses the structure of the ear. The three major components, outer, middle and inner. Also what are the vital parts of it, and what goes where. Several diagrams and more than a few Latin names for tissues.

Next we're on to how the sound is received and processed. How frequency is discriminated, how intensity is encoded. You have to remember that nerves only fire on or off, and so there are various schemes for encoding what you hear. Frequency or pitch can be encoded by phase locking to the signal and the nerve firing on every cycle. However this can only work for a small range, as the nerves themselves have a limited firing rate - therefore the position from cochlea to brain is preserved to allow placement to mark frequency. Similarly for intensity, although it all gets a bit complicated. Then there is the whole subject of processing - how do you know a sound is coming from the left or right, front/back, up down.

Finally as a wrap up to sound a chapter on the perception of sound.

All this is supplemented by another book full of essays about each topic that you are directed to read at the appropriate time, which go into far more depth on the subject.

The last chapter looks at the sense of balance, and how that works. Detection of being the right way up, and acceleration and how that is linked to other senses, such as turning your head towards a sound (very useful if you are potential dinner). It will come up again linked to vision where there is a special circuit to keep your eyes focused on something despite moving your head.

A very interesting book and topic.

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SD329: Book 1

Book 1 actually contains the first two blocks. That is:

Block 1 - Introduction to the senses 

and

Block 2 - The sensory nervous system.

The first block is a general introduction to the senses, it goes through the senses in overview and gives a taste of what will be coming up in the course. It coves a number of optical and other illusions that show how our senses can be fooled, a theme that reoccurs throughout the course.

Block 2 is more detailed, and goes into how the nervous system works. From the basic functioning of nerves and neurons, to the sensory apparatus that triggers things like touch and pain. It also covers the general layout of nerves in the body, what goes where, how they are interconnected. Afferent and efferent, which I'm destined to get mixed up through the rest of the course.
It then finishes with a chapter devoted to imaging the brain, which takes us through the basics of EEG, SQUIDS, PET and fMRI.  So Not a bad introduction, and a taste of what's to come.

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SXR208: Day 7

Day 7 - wrap up

Nothing special today except for a wrap up meeting in the hotel at 2pm. So a chance to catch up on sleep until then with no project reading to be done. I think by now we were all pretty tired, so the chance of sleeping in until late was good. We ventured out for some breakfast/lunch at about midday, I can't remember what we had.

Then we went to the bar area to meet up for the final briefing. Here we had to get the final details, and also let them know what project we were going to write up.

Finally a photo by the swimming pool - I don't think anyone had ventured into it, but it made a nice foredrop.

I could go on to tell you about the drinks in the local bar that night, the um slightly odd "live" music they had in the bar, and those people who stayed there till 4am and nearly missed their flight, but I won't bother.

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