The Third Bit

Prof. Sven Dickinson (acting chair of Computer Science at the University of Toronto) came in to talk to my undergrad software engineering class last Friday about life as a researcher. He made it sound pretty appealing, but his description of where his time goes made it clearer than ever that one of the reasons I’m not getting much research done is that I’m juggling too many other balls. This week, for example, I am supposed to:

• put together the final pitch to the department for a professional master’s in CS
• rearrange three chapters of the “CS-1 in Python” book (which is already up on Amazon, so we’d better get it finished)
• find projects for the 26 students in my consulting course next term
• write a final exam for the students in this term’s course (it’s due tomorrow, but that ain’t gonna happen)
• find money to keep the rewrite of DrProject on Django going next term
• review a chunk of Flash/Flex code to help a colleague decide whether or not to hire its author
• find (or invent) a coding scheme for scientific disciplines for the survey we’re running
• finish unpacking all the stuff in our new house (top priority: find the power cable for the TV that I so carefully tucked somewhere really clever)
• prep for a recruiting visit next Monday at the University of Alberta
• attend 11 meetings (so far—the number will undoubtedly grow)

The irony is, some of my colleagues actually think I’m good at time management and prioritzation…

Practical Programming, Uncategorized

Jennifer, Paul, Jason, and I have been working on a introductory Computer Science textbook using Python.  We’re in the last lap, but still haven’t chosen a name, so I’d like to ask for suggestions.  Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science is taken, as are Computer Science: The Python Programming Language, Problem Solving With Algorithms And Data Structures Using Python, and Python for Rookies; any other ideas?  If it helps, the distinctive features of our book include drawing examples from the sciences, and introducing GUI construction and databases as well as algorithm design and object-oriented programming.  Winner gets a free copy!

Practical Programming, Teaching

There’s a light dust of overnight snow on the streets this morning. Maddie’s upstairs playing “Climb On Mummy” while Sadie reads a magazine; seems like a good time to figure out my to-do list for 2008.

1. Make Maddie laugh as often as possible (on purpose or otherwise).
2. Do a major release of DrProject, and recruit at least 100 new users.
3. Do a much better job of teaching my courses than I did this past term.
4. Attend SIGCSE’08, ICSE’08, Agile’08, CAST’08, and SC’08. (I’m running a panel on “CS-1 for Scientists” at the former; I’d like to put together a workshop for the latter on Software Carpentry-type stuff.)
5. Do some interesting research with my graduate students in time for them to finish their theses by January ’09. I’d like this to be one of the big ones—after all, it’s one of the major reasons I came back to academia—but I’m pessimistic about my ability to stay focused.
6. Recruit and supervise four Summer of Code students from U of T.
7. Institute a professionally-oriented master’s degree in Computer Science at U of T. (We have a strawman proposal, and will be doing a market survey early in January to tune it.)
8. Retire the server this site is running on, and move to some kind of hosting service. (This’ll mean moving StreetKnit as well.)
9. Finish and publish the “CS-1 in Python” book that we’ve been working on since early 2006.
10. Go to B.C. for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary.
11. Lose 15 pounds (there’s a family history of heart disease, so the weight I’ve put on in the last 18 months is more than just a matter of vanity).
12. Write a children’s picture book equivalent of Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. (I figure if I start now, it’ll be done in time for Maddie’s fourth birthday.)
13. Arrange at least one good demo by a U of T student at every DemoCamp in 2008.
14. Take Sadie somewhere nice for her birthday. Just the two of us—oh, and a cellphone, so that she can check in with the babysitter at regular intervals .

Practical Programming, Uncategorized