Arnold Rosenbloom

CS Educators

• Please let me know (mail arnold@cs.toronto.edu) if there is interest in an advanced CS session for CIT this summer. If so, UTM will hold only the advanced session, the introductory session will be on StGeorge.
• Notes from BEIT 2003
• Computing Insights For Teachers (CIT)

CS Students: Things of interest

• Seen walking the halls at UTM ... Programmed control of cellular function: An in-cell disease prevention device. We are the hardware, the genetic code is the software, we are also now becoming the programmers!
• Eric points out... http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKnDgT73v8s Google's Rob Pike demoed a new programming language called Go a couple of days ago, looks pretty interesting. In particular, the communication channels (through which you can pass other channels). The client/server demo (around 40:00 in the youtube video) shows off a simple multiplexed server which makes use of channels (the request simply contains the response channel that the server should write to). Cool!
• If you read a lot of stuff on the web, you might be interested in what Cameron found...(apply it to gutenberg for example). Here's a great site a colleague of mine stumbled upon: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ [lab.arc90.com] It generates a bookmarklet that will take a largely text-based site and present it in a more readable way.
• The Pixar Story (can be found on google videos as well).
• Pirates of Silicon Valley
• Indoor Autonomous Helicopter
• A lot has been made lately about the validity of Darwins ideas on evolution. If you are interested in the debate, you might as well understand it straight from the source. You can find Darwins Origin of Species at gutenberg.org. Basically, most of the important ideas can be found in the first few chapters (as an ogg audio).
• There will be a "Home Made" PEY Info Session directed towards MCS students. The goal for this session is to provide more real and personal information about MCS PEY experiences. This session will mainly be for the 1st and 2nd year students who are interested in the program as well as the 3rd years who are preparing to go out next year. The main attraction will be the appearances of students who just returned from PEY and internships. They will be sharing how the process really works in detail and what the students can expect mainly in terms of: **The types of jobs offered and how to decipher what job descriptions really mean **How interviews work **Anything else they feel is relevant. :) There will also be time for question and answers. WHEN: Thursday, Octobre 8th, 2009 @ 5:15pm WHERE: Student Centre Room 280 (Across from the Board Room) Food/Refreshments will be provided for the event. Best Regards, --UTM MCSS
• Adwoa is working on her PhD, here is a link to her discussing some of her work with the Queen.
• Three career related events...the first is... Visit our Events Calendar (www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/calendar.html) to check out all the Employer Info Sessions here at U of T Mississauga and at the St. George campus. Don't miss out! Pre-registation required for all events. All sessions, dates, times, locations are subject to change please check for updated information via www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers (click on Events Calendar). Upcoming sessions include: Nexos Voluntarios Friday, September 18, 10 am-12 pm Professional Experience Year (PEY) Friday, September 18, 1 pm-2 pm Shaw Communications Tuesday, September 22, 5 pm-7 pm TEKsystems Thursday, September 24, 12 pm-2 pm the second is ... EA Games will be doing a presentation on Tuesday Sept 22 at 1:00pm (in SF1105) to all Computer Science students who have an interest in the gaming industry. Learn what it?s like to work as a Software Engineer at this leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless devices and the Internet. In 2009, EA had 31 titles that sold more than one million copies, and the top three titles that each sold more than five million copies include FIFA 09, Madden NFL 09 and Need for Speed Undercover. the third is ... Want to work for the GOVERNMENT? What: Government of Canada GTA Career Fair When: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Time: 9:30 am <96> 6:30 pm Who: Promoting several different career areas Visit www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers and click on Events Calendar for more details!
• In case you did not know, bowling is happening tonight... MCSS Welcome (Back) Event -- Bowling Night We would like to invite you to the first event of the year. The UTM Mathematical and Computational Sciences Society is holding a Bowling Night on Wednesday September 16th 2009 from 6-8pm. This event will be held at Classic Bowl located at 3055 Dundas St. West, Mississauga (5 minutes away from UTM). Rides will be provided (See Below) --RIDES-- We will be providing rides to and from UTM and Classic Bowl. We will pick up anyone who needs a ride in front of the RAWC at 5:45pm. If you will be needing a ride - please email us at miladkayali@utoronto.ca - If you need specific arrangements for a ride (ie. You have class untill 7pm), please include that in your email. There will be free food provided. Please RSVP by e-mailing president@utmmcss.com
• An apology for Alan Turing
• Some things our students have been up to...
  • Michael Ignatieff visiting Daniels startup (client outlook) (see 1:10).
  • Fighting for freedom in Iran, interview on CBC, full interview, lotfan.org
  • James is working on his PhD after quite a few MSc publications.
  • Andy discovered the first Haar Wavelet on a solid sphere
  • Stefan, having finished his MSc, presented at and won a best paper award at GECCO 2009. His research was on Search-Based Software Engineering
  • Daniel finished his MSc on Expansion, Random Graphs and the Automatizability of Resolution.
• An interesting game I played with my kids. Take a pair of words and look them up (google). You may (probably will) find something interesting. for example, my kids suggested 'toenail' and 'printer'. The result ... a toenail printer.
• Since so many of you seem interested in starting a business, here are some interesting articles... Startup Mistakes, Top 10 Geek Business Myths
• Please see ta ads for this term
• Eric says 'codepad.org is a godsend'.
• Analysis of the development of a BlackBerry App
• tiddlywiki a single page, html/javascript based wiki.
• What I told my CSC148 (Introduction to Computer Science) students after they completed the course...

  You may think that you have feedback from 148. That the mark you have is a full characterization of your first year experience. The real picture is a bit more complicated than that. The average student comes into CSC148 with a few disadvantages. Most of the work you have had to do in the past was scaffolded for you. Much of what you produced in the past had little meaning. My goal in CSC148 was to change that. To let you know that 'there is something to understand', to give you an opportunity to know when you understood something, to let you see that there was something you could do about a problem, that you could assert yourself. Solving problems is not easy, but this is OK. The fact that you may have been ill prepared for this is irrelevant. The fact that you took up the challenge and came out the other side with a changed attitude, with a new frame of reference, knowing when you don't understand and knowing that you can do something about it. This is the most important part of your first year experience. I saw the start of this change in many of you. Making this change is difficult, it involves your participation (remember how I tried to get all of you involved in class investigations!). It involves your effort and motivation (some of you really cared whether your TreeDict performed well). The process is messy. I did not want to lay everything out for you, instead, I wanted you to have to look around, think critically, investigate. I chose to come to class with problems 1/2 solved and then investigate them with you, so you could see the reality of a human investigating a problem. From now on, you are an active participant in the game of life. You can change your brain. Whether you know it or not, this is the change I saw in most of you. The abilities you will have as a result of your education are hard to come by but useful in the extreme. I just wanted you to understand what happened to you in your first year of University and why. See you next year! Arnold

• http://fossfor.us/
• Natasha points out Microsoft Learning Plans. These are a quick way to pickup Microsoft Technologies (given that you know a related technology). Examples are ... "migrate from php to asp", or "java to c#".
• Natasha also points out an article in Info World. She wonders...

  The argument is that, often students are graduating with expertise in only one or two languages and not enough variety in their programming language arsenal.  While it is true that from a software engineering perspective, it's the more abstract skills that will get you from design to ship-ready, how important do you think it is to pursue breadth (of hands-on experience)  in the early stages of one's career?

  I think that at UTM, we give students a firm foundation in basic principles and then give students an opportunity to see that they can pick up new technologies. For example, in CSC309, students are exposed to sockets and multithreadded programming in Java, Ajax applications (Javascript+PHP), perl, XSL, CSS, Servlets, JDBC and Postgresql. In some years, we have also done Midp, Android, ASP.NET (with VB), SQL Server. I believe that this is only possible because we actually did get the foundations right. We have it covered!
• From a UTM CS graduate... Want to develop a brochure style company website for $500. I am looking for MS Access / VBA developer(s). Please contact Peter Weinwurm at weinwurmjr@live.com
• nerdkits
• True believers: The biggest cults in tech
• Prof. Petersen points out PHP on Windows, the Ultimate Coder Battle
• 25 Chips that shook the world (no not Lays and Hostess!).
• THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS
• Thoughts on math and cs education
• Invalid Proof Techniques
• online lectures
• The following paragraph was extracted from http://www.tweenbots.com/ I found the paragraph entertaining to read!!

  The Tweenbots unexpected presence in the city created an unfolding narrative that spoke not simply to the vastness of city space and to the journey of a human-assisted robot, but also to the power of a simple technological object to create a complex network powered by human intelligence and asynchronous interactions. But of more interest to me was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people's willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining it's destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot.

• Joel on Software is an interesting read.
• What the future looks like
• From your Career centre: Spend a Year Getting Experience & Getting Paid Professional Experience Year (PEY) Info Session Monday, March 30, 12 pm - 1 pm Council Chambers, SE3130 Register @ www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers The Professional Experience Year (PEY) internship program allows students to apply their knowledge in a 12-16 months project-based professional internship. The length of the placement offers students enough time to be involved in large-scale projects, build relationships with employers and reach professional accomplishments and milestones. Students who elect to participate in the program make industry contacts, gain valuable career skills and obtain significant professional experience before graduation. Attend the PEY Information session to learn more about valuable 12-16 month PAID internships for students who are currently finishing 2nd or 3rd year. Sign up & learn more on our Events Calendar!
• David Broad, a security analyst at Bell, will be on campus Monday March 23 at 2PM. He's giving a seminar for our undergraduates about computer security in industry and how students should prepare to enter industry. David Broad "Computer Security and Your Education" When: Monday, March 23 @ 2:00 p.m. Where: CCT 2160 Refreshments will be provided by the MCSS. David will be around for an hour after the talk if any faculty or students want to chat with him one-on-one.
• The MCSS has organized a seminar with Tom Kralidis, who is organizing a code sprint in Toronto this spring. He'll be talking about the open source community in Toronto, the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, and the role of computer science in geographical industries. Talk time: Friday, March 13 from 1:30-2:30 Location: SE 1143 Refreshments provided by the MCSS!
• Filed under its hard to think of something completely new: I thought of this for a CSC148 challenge question, would you believe that someone has already done it! Spell with elements. Put a few elements together, see what you can get... (images from www.periodictable.com)
  
• Eric points out that expect and tcl/tk are good tools to learn. While were at it, why not learn sed as well.
• Adam (a team lead from CSC490 last term) has the following to say about working in groups. Subject: Reflections on CSC490 Hi Arnold, I realize it's been a while since we last spoke but my current experience in one of my courses reminds me of when I took CSC 490 last year. If you can recall, I worked in a group of twelve students on a web application for aggregating and delivering events. This semester I'm taking the compilers course, CSC 488, but this time we're working in groups of four. I've found that groups of four are much more manageable and as a result, 1-2 hour meetings are usually enough for everyone involved to resolve any issues or propose any ideas they may have about the project. Whereas in a larger meeting, there are usually only a few active participants and someone has to take up the task of playing "round robin" to keep things going. This is usually what ended up happening not only in the 490 group meetings, but also in the team at IBM where I did my PEY; in both cases it made the meetings seem not worthwhile for the majority of those attending. Notwithstanding, working in a group as large as the one in 490 was a valuable and unique experience. It was my first chance to take leadership of a large software team, and I learned a lot of things about group management and project organization. I think that if I were to relive the experience, I would try and divide the group into two or three smaller teams, just as how I divided the larger project into several independent sections. Part of the problem with larger meetings was that many members had to stay and listen to discussions not relevant to what they were working on. Smaller meetings would have let each team focus on the component they were responsible for, and hopefully would have reduced the problem of the few team members that slacked by making them more accountable. Communication between groups could be facilitated by having a member of another team sit in on each meeting, or by having one person attend all meetings to ensure that individual teams remain coordinated. These meetings could then be followed by less regular summary meetings in which each team presents their work so far to other teams in the group, as a preparatory step to the monthly group presentations that were done in class. Managing a group of this size demanded most of the time I was able to devote to this course, leaving not much time for any actual programming on my part. However, the size of the group was a benefit here, since I could delegate all of the programming to the programmers, and focus on keeping the team running. Alternatively, management duties could have probably been divided equally between two people to allow them to have some time for programming. Another error I feel I had made was arbitrarily reassigning people to other sections of the project. I felt that those team members had finished their task and that by moving them to another section I could keep them interested in the project. Instead, it would have been better to capitalize on the experience they already had from working in that section by finding ways that they could improve or extend it. Moving a team member to another division adds time overhead as the programmer must learn how to work with a new code base and programming tools. I think I've learned that it's best to keep a programmer in the same area unless he or she explicitly asks to work on something new. Consequently, my experience at U of T has given me an unexpected, but welcome breadth of opportunity to study how to effectively work in a large group. From being a programmer on a team of ten at IBM, to leading a team of twelve, and finally to working as part of a team of four; understanding every side of the process is key to becoming an effective programmer. Thanks and regards,
• Biological Engineering
• Should Cable companies worry about Boxee and Miro and Netflix?
• My famous quotes (at least I hear myself saying them all the time)...
  • Pay now or pay later, sooner or later, you will pay.
  • Believe that there is a simple, clear, concise solution and then look for it.
  • If you do something, something happens, if you do nothing, nothing happens.
  • Are you more afraid of others knowing that you don't know or of not learning?
  • To solve a problem: Know what you know, know what you don't and figure out you can cover the difference.
  • To solve a problem: You are part of the problem.
  • There is always evidence.
  • If you can't explain it, you don't understand it.
  • I never said it was easy.
  • Never avoid the opportunity to do the right thing.
  • Indiffence is the mark of confidence.
• On programming, trying and failing and why it is necessary.
• See how your programming language stacks up! For performance (time) GNU g++, Java 6 is close behind (off by a factor of 1 to at most 3.7). See the benchmarks. It is not a high price to pay for an enterprise class language, that performs almost as well as a systems programming language. Ruby and Python are way down the list for some benchmarks.
• Wayne points out walkscore.com
• xkcd
• How to Suck at Information Security
• This is what I have been pushing for at UTM for some time, it is why I hold lectures and tutorials in 1158.
• CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
• Ashwin points out The Daily WTF
• Baby born free of cancer gene, interesting.
• Mark Russinovich's technical blog covering topics such as Windows troubleshooting, technologies and security. Sysinternals
• arstechnica's Guide to Virtualization part 1 and part 2
• An interesting approach to funding free webhosting. Basically, in return for participation on their forums (which were funded by ads) they will host your website. Something like experts exchange.
• Karen Reid points out poptech.com, kind of like ted.com.
• Lots of interesting stuff on Slashdot today, including ... Stroustrup on CS education, Higher Order Perl is available for free download, Cameron points out Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa. By the way, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is online as well as lectures
• Math cheat sheets
• Zoetrope, adding the time dimension to the web.
• File this under...if you do something, something happens... (take advantage of it!!)... MCS Funding to attend CUSEC Interested in attending a software engineering conference run by and for Canadian students? Looking for a job this spring? Want to see Richard Stallman give a talk about copyrights? CUSEC is coming up in January, and the MCS department is offering a travel assistance grant to the first four students who commit to attending. What: CUSEC (the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference) Link: http://2009.cusec.net/ Date: January 22 - 24 Location: Montreal Funding support: $150 Expected cost (travel, registration, hotel): ~$300 Yi Xu, who attended last year, has agreed to organize the UTM contingent. Please contact her (yii.xu@u) or Andrew Petersen (andrew.petersen@u) with questions and to register interest in attending.
• UTMs own Ioan was awarded the Samuel Beatty award.
• The story is that of three groups to be picked to represent the Games Programming course to UBISoft, two of them are from UTM.
• The art of Con games part 1, The art of Con games part 2, Why People believe strange things
• See if you can make it down to StGeorge for Ravins demos. He has inspired many grad students, is involved in many cool projects and with many organizations. It is worth while seeing what he, his group of grad students and his colleagues are up to. In an effort to increase awareness amongst all communities within the department of the exciting activities going on in our various research groups, we are hoping to periodically have research groups host an open-house to showcase their work and labs. The Systems and Networks Research Groups have very kindly volunteered to kick this off. So, please join us on Tues, 25 Nov 2008, from noon-2pm in BA5180, and see their very cool research and lab space first-hand. It'll be a great opportunity to get to know what your colleagues work on, and you might even get some free pizza! Please note that this invitation is intended for *everyone* in the department: staff, undergraduates, grads, and faculty. I'd appreciate it if you could help pass the word amongst the undergraduates.
• PEY Registration has reopened for CS students. Your deadline is Oct 24. If you are interested, (and you should be!!) see the invitation. Attention: All U of T Computer Science Students PEY Registration has been reopened to Computer Science students. We anticipate a high demand from Employers seeking Computer Science students, such as IBM, Adexa, RIM, The National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group, BMO, Scotia Capital, Environment Canada, CompuCom, Microsoft, and Red Hat. For 2008 -2009, the average PEY Salary for Computer Science was $42,000. Who Can Apply & How? U of T Computer Science 2nd & 3rd year students CGPA (Cumulative GPA) minimum 2.0 and in good academic standing International, Canadian Citizen, Landed Immigrant PEY Application Deadline Friday, Oct. 24, 2008 Review the application form below for details What is the PEY Internship Program? The PEY internship program allows students to apply their knowledge in a project-based professional paid internship for the duration of 12-16months. This length offers students enough time to be involved in large-scale projects, build relationships with employers, and reach professional accomplishments and milestones. Students who elect to participate in the program make industry contacts, gain valuable career skills and obtain significant professional experience before graduation. The PEY program is focused on the individual development of each student. It is an intense program that requires commitment to participate in individual and group sessions. Students will develop skills in: articulating their experiences connecting job opportunities with their skill set and interest preparing targeted resumes and cover-letters conducting effective interviews & negotiating job offers How long is the Internship? The PEY internship is 1216 months in length and can start anytime between May and September. To effectively participate in the program, students should be available at all times during the recruitment period.
• File under If you do something, something happens, if you do nothing, nothing happens..., in CSC490 last year, Anna introduced the class (including myself, which is why I love these classes) to JQuery. Now... Microsoft and Nokia Adopt OSS JQuery Framework. Love to be ahead of the curve! By the way, this was just one small example, we also covered android, facebook applications, google widgets, j2me, GPS+google maps, ...
• Steve points out that Greg said this is a neat game, and here are some more.
• Global flight activity, kind of neat!
• Sue points out reCAPTCHA and games to harness people power.
• The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time
• Pitching to VCs for those that took my csc290 last year.
• Android Challenge Gallery
• From Paul, at IBM...you might want to check out an IBM career information session... Hi Arnold, I hope all is well. I graduated from UTM in June 2006 with majors in CS and Commerce. I thought I would touch base with you and give you a heads up for your students regarding a career information session being held Monday September 15 at 5:00pm down at St. George. I am sure the career centre will have more information on the event. I will be saying a couple words about my experience so far at IBM. There are a number of positions both in CS and Consulting if you have any students interested in jobs. The website to check out would be ibm.com/start. If you could pass this along to any interested students that would be great.
• From your career centre...2nd and 3rd year students should not miss it!!! ... note that we will be holding the PEY information session at UTM on Monday, September 15 from 10-11am in Room SE3130.
• DNA as a molecular program
• What you get from a UTM degree. Especially a CS degree.
• Argument vs Contradiction
• On the PNG Image vulnerability (see preamble, for 'night before christmas', its funny), and other 'songs'
• An interesting bulletin board exchange: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy read the whole thread and then decide.
• A good microprocessor course
• Game boy advance development, GBA development tutorial or xgame station build your own games.
• For CSC290 students...The Prosecutors Fallacy and How reliable is DNA in identifying suspects?
• Important Publications in CS, ACM Classic Books Series
• Clay Shirky on Institutions vs. Collaboration
• Naturalmotion.com
• Interested in working on a summer or fall project? Shafique Virani from The Department of Religion and Historical Studies have a potentially interesting, crossdisciplinary project. Here is what he had to say... There is a language known as Khojki that is almost extinct. I've been cataloguing and preserving the Khojki manuscripts and printed works that have survived. I'm looking for a student who could help to research and design a Unicode font for typing in this script. We could even put forward a proposal to the Unicode consortium for this. The script itself is quite logical and in many ways is similar to Roman scripts like English. However, one of the challenges a programmer would face is that non-initial vowels are super-added to consonant characters, not unlike what happens in South Asian languages. The second part of the project would be to train an OCR reader to recognize the script. The university's 492 class, or one of my Independent Studies classes, may be an ideal forum in which a student could work on this project, gaining course credit while at the same time learning a lot and adding an unbeatable accomplishment to a resume. I did advertise for something like this in the current round of Research Opportunity Program selections, but it fell under the rubric of Historical Studies, and so I doubt very many computer science types would have seen it. If you are interested, please let me (or him) know.
• What can you do with Javascript? Check out ironbox
• Interested in TAing at UTM? Fill in our Online TA Application Form!!!
• Programmer Competency Matrix
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Continuously Variable Transmission invented by Leonardo Da Vinci
• Interesting...Where the Hell is Matt
• Camspace
• xkcd.com
• Anti patterns and YAGNI
• Dean Kamen's Robot Arm
• Wayne points out... Edward Lorenz, the discoverer of formal chaos with his early 1960's paper on chaos in a simple 3D model of the weather (now called the "Lorenz Equations" and resulting in the pretty figure called the "Lorenz Butterfly"), died on 16 April this year. However, he was also a philosopher, and noted how the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, coupled with the chaotic nature of complex physical systems, implies the existence of strong non-determinism in the world, and thus free will on a short timescale. An apt quote from his last book is, We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, because we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.
• Eugen makes the following points... Just visited your website and saw some of the updates, it's so true. There is a lack of qualified people in the field right now, good programmers are hard to dig out. I've dealt with companies who used outsourcing firms and they keep coming back to local native-english speaking professionals, even if they charge a lot more. Also, I know that you've been saying this for a long time but only now do I realize the importance of networking. Many people in the cs program don't network enough in the fields that they want to go into. Volunteering, posting on forums, freelancing, befriending big names in the industry, visiting conventions is very much worth it. Undergrads tend to think that no one will talk to them but I found that it can't be further from the truth, people higher up in the foodchain love ambitious university students because chances are that those same students will be joining them up there in a few years and being good to them will pay off, especially if the undustry is not very big. While working at RIM during PEY a few years back I ended up making friends with one of the most knowledgeable search engine experts (almost by pure chance) and 2 years later another company in a similar field ended up offering me a 65k/year position pretty much fresh out of university on his word alone, they didn't even ask for a resume before the interview. As you said, the market is hot - but it's hard to get a job if no one knows that you are out there and companies get too many resumes to just notice people. I just now realized that much easier it is to stand out amongst the grey mass if you go out and talk with people. :) By the way, freelancing in vertical markets is smoking right now. Most programmers on the internet have zero self-discipline and companies that need specific stuff done fast are willing to pay a premium. :)
• There seems to be interest in hiring some of our Information Security Specialist Students. Please let me know if you are interested in a position. If you did exceptionally wel lin 347, it might still be worth it to email me.
• A student describes how he went about exploring the link distance between Wikipedia articles.
• Contact me if you are interested... We are looking for a 2nd year/3rd year computer science student who wants to do some J2EE/java work. Java experience is required but we can train the J2EE efforts. Pretty simple stuff really. I am looking for someone who is talented, motivated and smart but social. We are a video game company so someone who enjoys video games would be a plus.
• Demand for IT Workers Won't Meet Supply, High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers
• Peter is now working for Toolbox Solutions. He has a summer position open. Please let me know if you are interested. He said it is probably best for first/second year students.
• The peoples Archive
• From slashdot...Most popular programming languages (Java is #1)
• GRAD BLITZ 2008: Put Your Degree to Work! May 6 - May 8 www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/grad2008.html Plan to graduate this June? Make sure you take advantage of all the services the Career Centre has to offer, including Grad Blitz 2008! Mark this series of special events, workshops and employer sessions on your calendar designed to help you land a great job and start your career down the right path. Space is limited, so sign-up early @ www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/grad2008.html
• If anyone is interested, a recruiting company contacted me about a C++/Python position they have not been able to fill.
• Billy says 'I got the job!'. Seems like the market is hot!! I hear lots of the same from my CSC490 students. Startups, going back to PEY positions, people going to RIM, Microsoft, IBM, ...
• Cameron points out the 'cool' Johnny Lee TED Talk on Wii Remote hacks. Both the hacks and the comment about communicating results via youTube are interesting. Here's the guy's project page if people want more details on the source downloads.
• For current UTMCS students: The following are some really good approaches to working at home
  • On your current system, run VMWARE. You can now create Windows and Linux Virtual Machines. Ubuntu is a good choice for Linux. We have licenses for Windows XP Pro.
  • Dual boot your machine (to run OSX/Windows/Linux)
  • Run Cygwin (runs under Windows, install X and openssh). This will allow you to easily connect to our lab systems (with real X windows). If you run Windows, you probably want cygwin installed in any case.
• The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information
• Trust me, doing interesting/difficult things is worth it. Here is what Daniel had to say about our projects at UTM... I graduated from UTM in XXX XXXXX. I recently got a job with XXXXXXXXX and I would like to just let you know that people here were very impressed with my CS projects (such as Intelligent Scissor, Image Mosaic, Background Detection and etc) that I had done while taking your classes such as CSC 309/ 320. Even thou the projects seemed very hard back when I was in University looking back at it right now they were great projects to work on and the result were very impressive and I can say without a doubt they were the most exciting projects that I worked on during university and even after I graduated. Thank you for your great assignments and classes it really helped me advance my career.
• From Yahoo: This article makes an interesting point about the state of medical research. Doctors wary after cholesterol drug flop. You might be interested in looking up medline and taking a look at the latest in medical research. Be critical!
• Programming Quotes
• Life is all software
• Eric just sent an update (he has too many opportunities!!). Here is a piece of advice he left with me... If there's one thing I've learned so far, it's to avoid writing code which you "might need later", because you'll inevitably have to rewrite or heavily modify it because the circumstances will almost certainly have changed. In other words, if something is under-specified (which happens often), don't write it until you actually need it.
• On Hacking (and Pablos Holman)
• You definitely should check out PEY (Professional Experience Year)...UTMCS students have historically had a very good presence in this program. The Professional Experience Year folks are having another great internship info session on Tuesday, March 18 from 12 pm - 1 pm in Council Chambers, SE3130. You can register for the session at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers.
• Funny math stuff...division, math problems
• CS Enrollment increases, Jobs increase by double digits
• Apple applies for a patent on Shadids CSC492 Project
• James's CSC492 Project has been re-implemented in Nissan's Data-Dense Dashboard
• Farhangs CSC492 Project has been re-implemented by Ford and Microsoft
• Your Career centre is up to some more interesting things. They now have a new Job Shadowing Program, the application deadline is Feb 29. Check it out.
• Omair (UTM CS grad) points out that Microsoft to give students free developer tools
• Just for fun, I decided to compare Java, Haskell and Ruby on simple functional task. I wrote methods/functions which compute the set of all permutations in a given list. For what it is worth, here they are... # Haskell ############################################################### import List perms:: Eq a => [a] -> [[a]] perms [] = [[]] perms xs = [ (x:y) | x <- xs, y <- perms (xs \\ [x]) ] # Call with # perms "abcdef" # C ############From Mike################################################ #include <stdio.h> char *strcpy(char *dest, const char *src); size_t strlen(const char *s); char *strndup(const char *s, size_t n); int len; void perm (int i, char str[]) { if (i == len - 1) { printf ("%s\n", str); } else { char c; char _cpy[len + 1]; int j = i + 1; perm (i + 1, strcpy(_cpy, str)); while (j < len) { c = str[i]; str[i] = str[j]; str[j++] = c; perm (i + 1, strcpy (_cpy, str)); } } } int main (int argc, char **argv) { char str[] = "abcdef\0"; len = strlen(str); perm (0, str); } # Ruby ################################################################## class Array def perms return [[]] if self.empty? results=Array.new self.each { |x| (self-[x]).perms().each{ |y| results+=[y+[x]] } } return results end end # call with # ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f'].perms # Java ############################################################### import java.util.ArrayList; public class ArrayList2 extends ArrayList { public ArrayList2 perms(){ ArrayList2 results=new ArrayList2(); if(this.isEmpty()){ results.add(new ArrayList2()); } else { for(Object o:this){ ArrayList2 thisMinusO=(ArrayList2)this.clone(); thisMinusO.remove(o); for(Object perm: thisMinusO.perms()){ ((ArrayList2)perm).add(o); results.add(perm); } } } return results; } } /* Call with ArrayList2 a=new ArrayList2(); a.add('a'); a.add('b'); a.add('c'); a.add('d'); a.add('e'); a.add('f'); a.perms(); */ # Perl ############################################################### #!/usr/bin/perl # sub permute { my @items = @{ $_[0] }; my @perms = @{ $_[1] }; my $permutations = $_[2]; unless (@items) { push @$permutations, [@perms]; } else { my(@newitems,@newperms,$i); foreach $i (0 .. $#items) { @newitems = @items; @newperms = @perms; unshift(@newperms, splice(@newitems, $i, 1)); permute([@newitems], [@newperms], $permutations); } } } # Call with my @permutations=(); permute(['a','b','c','d','e','f'], [], \@permutations); foreach my $k (@permutations) { print "@$k\n"; } The conclusion...Ruby seems to be a nice compromise between OO and Functional programming. Ruby has a good list handling paradigm, code seems clearer than Java, but this is at the cost of type safety. Ruby just needs list comprehension like Python and Haskell. Ruby designers seem to have made some very good choices during language design.
• From a UTM CS grad... I am looking for a programmer with Visual Basic and GW Basic experience. I have a project available and I am seeking a programmer to help me out with it. Please let me know if you are interested!!
• Steve Jobs Commencement Speech
• I have been contacted by a company interested in hiring a recent UofT Comp Sci graduate with a background in Python and C++. The position is fulltime, downtown. Contact me if you are interested.
• Interesting: "An expert is someone that knows how to apply minimal effort for maximal effect" - ME "Simplicity means the achievement of maximal effect with minimum means." - Dr. Kowichi Kawana
• Here is an interesting challenge: Using the language of your choice, write a program which allows two humans to play connect 4 against eachother. Your program should be text based, after each turn, display the board and then ask for the next players move. Your program should understand the rules of the game. Your goal is to create the shortest program possible.
  
  Now create a second version where one human plays against a computer strategy.
• Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s: In an interesting turn of events, the following TED Talk has become reality.
• How to write unmaintainable code
• Dot Com Bubble (funny)
• Google Lectures on Distributed Computing Light viewing.
• *Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference* CUSEC is the Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference, run by students, for students. It is the premier event for Canadian undergrads interested in Software Development and Software Engineering. The conference runs January 17-19 in Montreal (QC) and will include industry speakers, as well as academic speakers from a variety of Canadian universities. Come out to meet your fellow students in a fun, exciting, and intellectually stimulating environment! Short-budget? No Problem! The MCS Department will sponsor the first 6 students to register with $150! This is your chance for a cheap road trip to Montreal before the Winter semester really heats up! For more information visit http://2008.cusec.net When you are ready to register, please contact cusec@cs.toronto.edu. They are organizing UTMs presence at CUSEC.
• Software is Hard, Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering
• Ubuntu Security
• Example of vulnerability of portable computing devices iPhone
• Google is offering $10M for great applications written for their new mobile platform. Just in time for CSC490. See the Android demo.
• The Career Centre will hold its annual employer fair, Career Expo, on Wednesday, October 31 from 10:30-1:30 in the Recreation, Athletics & Wellness Centre (RAWC). Students will be able to network with representatives from approximately 50 organizations representing a wide range of industries, and learn what skills, experience and education are required for opportunities after graduation. Current students in all programs and years are welcome to attend, as are recent UofT graduates from within the past two years. A valid UofT student TCard is required for entry. For more information, please visit http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/expo.html
• Former fraudster Frank Abagnale offers IT security advice
• An interesting article on evolution also see the bottom re: some help with writing some javascript to demonstrate some of the ideas.
• An interesting CSC347 related comic (thanks Patrick).
• Some interesting wallpapers
• For your career centre... PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS FAIR Wednesday, October 3, 2007, 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. @ the RAWC (Recreation, Athletics & Wellness Centre) Featuring over 90 professional schools and graduate programs including: Graduate Studies, Teaching, Law, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Medicine, Social Work, MBA, Optometry, Rehab Sciences, and many more! Participants from: UofT, Queen's, Ottawa, McMaster, UBC, Alberta, Western, etc, plus schools from the U.S. and overseas. Valid UofT Student ID required for entry. Complete information and participant list at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/prof_fair.html
• Prof. Andrew Petersen is our new UTM faculty member. He is currently teaching csc108 and can be found in SE2036E, next to Prof. Craig and Sills. If you get a chance, you should stop by and say hi, ask him what he is interested in, you may be doing a 492 with him one day. He said he is looking forward to meeting you!
• Andrew (our new faculty member) points out... Google and Specialized are searching for the brightest engineering minds on earth for the first ever Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest. I've also attached a poster that you can forward along for promotion. We're asking your students to invent and build environmentally friendly, zero-emission machines that transform human pedal power into a new and useful purpose. After they build it, they film it and post it on YouTube by Sunday, December 15th. The Grand Prize for the most innovative submission will be $5,000 and a Specialized Globe bike for the winner(s). The inventors behind the top 5 runner-up inventions will also receive Specialized Globe Bikes. This is an opportunity to flex your school's inventive muscle and have some fun doing it. And perhaps even help save our planet, one pedal stroke at a time. For an example innovation and contest specifics, please visit innovate-or-die.com.
• Randy Pausch's last lecture and what Cameron had to say about it (below) I definitely recommend people set aside some time to check it out. It's fairly long (clocks in around a couple of hours,) but it's worth it. I think anyone who watches it will walk away with some new insight on life, careers, family, etc. and ways you can better yourself and others in these areas. Just based on the lecture alone, you can tell Pausch has enjoyed a great life, so the advice he provides on living carries a lot of weight. This is further evident by the fact that he does not seem overly worried or consumed by the fact that he is soon going to pass away.. a sign I think that he has very little to no regrets in life. It would be great if everyone could feel this way later on in life. In a largely materialistic driven society, this lecture is a nice reminder that there's more important things to life than making tons of money, owning nice things, etc.. So for these reasons, I think people should take a look.
• History of Hacking
• From your Career Centre GET EXPERIENCE FAIR Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. @ the RAWC (Recreation, Athletics & Wellness Centre) Formerly the Volunteer Fair, the Career Centre has expanded this event to include many additional ways for students to learn about opportunities to gain valuable experience, and get involved on campus or within the community, including: On-Campus Involvement Volunteer Opportunities Research Opportunity Program Internship Programs Work-Study Opportunities On-Campus Job Information International Experience Featuring over 45 participants! Valid UofT Student ID required for entry. Complete information at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/get_experience_fair.html
• Want a job at Microsoft? Microsoft will be recruiting at the University of Toronto on September 19th and 20th, at the University College building on main campus (St. George).
• Learn about PEY Professional Experience Year Information Session for Computer Science Students Friday, September 14, 2007, 12:00-1:00, Room SE1104 Attend the this session to learn more about valuable 12-16 month PAID internships for students who are currently entering second and third year. Sign up via our events calendar at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/calendar.html For more information about PEY, please visit http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/workpey_internships.html
• An interesting account of the discovery of a log space algorithm for undirected connectivity.
• Greg Wilson (cs on StGeorge) is one of the authors of Beautiful Code. This had received rave reviews and is considered a must have by coders and managers. Check it out.
• World-renowned activist and free software developer Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, will speak on Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks on Thursday, July 5, at 5 p.m., Matthews Auditorium (Room 137), Kaneff Centre, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Rd. N.
• Hoa sent me the following job opportunity (from the UTM career centre, go there for more details), interesting... # Skills: Analytical # Communication # Computer # Creative Location: Scarborough Compensation Range: From: $ 65000 To: $ 75000 Overtime pay and bonuses Position Duration: Permanent Position Start Date: Immediately Position Description: Innovation, product development and an eye for detail have made Epson Canada a leader in the image capture and image output industry. Offering an extensive range of award-winning products including top performance printers, scanners, multi-media projectors and digital cameras, Epson lets its customers present their ideas in clear and vivid colour. We are looking for an Image Processing Researcher with a strong C Development background. The candidate will be working in the area of Object Recognition with a focus on Face Detection/Recognition problems. They will need to develop algorithms which will be usable for Epson's various products. Excellent research skills are a must, with good implementation ability preferred.
• Ricky sent me the following opportunity. It looks like a great chance to get some web development experience... Opportunity The web developer(s) will get the opportunity to design a community website that is expected to have over 5000 hits per days, and over 10000 members. Additionally, the web developer(s) will get the opportunity to work in a flexible and friendly enviornment and gain mentoring by industry professionals. The web developer(s) will get the opportunity to work and gain expertise on the latest technologies. Requirement The website will include the following: - Dynamic interface using latest Web 2.0 design elements and technologies such as AJAX - Blogs and event annoucement that can be re-used in a newsletter format - Interactive forum areas with integration to social networks such as Facebook, Digg and Flickr - .NET / J2EE based component that will enable member registration and access to elements such as photo gallery Besides this, the web developer(s) should be creative, team-oriented and eager to learn. Compensation YUVA is a community/social organization. Hence, we will not be able to offer a industry standard price for the web development services. We are looking for someone who is eager to learn and gain experience in the field of web development under capable mentorship. Additionally, we will provide compensation based on proceed from successful events that will be organized by YUVA. Contact Contact info@yuva4u.com with your resume.
• rec.puzzles archive or at faqs.org
• Jobs and Gates interview
• Scratch, interesting stuff from slashdot.
• Interested in CompSci research, wondering how to get started? Well, here is one way to get an idea about what people do research in... Take a look at ACM Crossroads and their back issues as well as other ACM jouornals. Your utorid should get you access to them as well. Lookup "ACM" or "Journal of the ACM" in e-journals on the uoft library website.
• The Myth of High-Tech Outsourcing A new report finds that U.S. demand for IT professionals in 2006 reached levels not seen since before the dot-com bust.
• The (misguided) pursuit of happiness from TED Talks (below).
• Matt contacted me about the following position... "Senior Software Engineer" position for a software company in Burlington. The following are the specs: - A 4 year degree in Computer Science (or equivalent) is a must - 4+ years of experience in C, at the system level , on Unix and Windows, is a must - General SysAdmin knowledge is a must - Strong knowledge of at least two of the following is also a must: C++, TCP/IP, threads, client-server and inter-process communication, java, storage management, database administration, GUI design and implementation. - Other important skills include: good written and verbal communication skills; enthusiasm to learn and to make and meet objectives; motivated, effective, and responsible team player; good problem solving capabilities; good analytical skills
• I was contacted by a company interested in hiring a UTM CS grad to take a leading role in the companies move into web technologies. The successful applicant will continue development and support of their web application. The technologies involved include Servlets with Struts, JSTL, Hibernate. An initial contract can be arranged to train the individual on the technologies and on the existing applications.
• Sohaib recently contacted me about the following job opportunity for new UTM CS graduates. Let me know if you are interested.
• localhost80.com is a collection of pointers to web development docs.
• Scott points out TED and especially TED Talks
• Feynman on the Pleasure of Finding Things Out
• PEY INFO SESSION PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE YEAR (PEY) INFO SESSION For students who did not sign up for PEY in September and wished they had, now is their chance. For the first time, PEY is admitting 2nd and 3rd year students to the PEY program for the second round of job postings and interviews which will continue to run until September. An information session will be held at UTM on Thursday, March 22 in SE3129 from 11:00-12:00. This is now listed on our events calendar. No advance sign up required. A Resume and Cover Letter Session will be held by the PEY staff the following week for those who will be applying to the program (Thurs Mar 29, 11:00-1:00, SE3140). PEY offers 12-16 month internships to students who are currently finishing 2nd or 3rd year. This program would be of great interest to Computer Science students, as Computer Science and Engineering are the primary focus of the program, but Commerce and Management students are also welcome to attend as there are usually a limited number of opportunities for these students.
• From a Washington Post article titled How to Keep America Competitive by Bill Gates This issue has reached a crisis point. Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees.
• From slashdot...advice for those starting up
• Radek points out that Summer of code is on again!
• Mike points out some really cool 3-d face morphing (related to our csc320 project) at this link
• Microsoft will be at UofT Feb 21, 22 and needs resumes in by Feb 15th. See the note.
• Greg Wilson points out this neat video about Web 2.0
• CS Games are approaching, should we send a team? The 5th CS Games are being held March 9-11, 2007, and the deadline to register your team is FEBRUARY 1st! The CS Games are an exciting North-American inter-university competition directed at challenging and enhancing skills in the fields of Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Software Engineering. They pit the world's future innovators against each other, in the spirit of friendly competition, with the goal of providing them an excellent opportunity to develop both their technical and social skills. For your university to participate, all you need is a team of 7 to 10 undergraduate students interested in the areas listed above. Last year's event was record-breaking, with 313 students hailing from 24 universities. We expect this year to be no less exciting!
• From Robert at CUTC... As an aside, so far CUTC has been pretty good. We just had the TechExpo and I had the chance to talk to quite a few people at several companies (including Microsoft and Nortel) and passed out my resume to a few of them too.
• Great Introduction to Complexity Theory notes.
• CUTC is happening Jan 11-13 at the Hilton in Toronto. It is a great chance to network, get a taste of industry, see some interesting speakers. As well, we (UTMCS) will be funding $75/person for the first 20 UTM CS students attending. Please let me or Zia know asap if you are attending.
• OpenMosix is a Linux kernel extension that turns a network of ordinary computers into a supercomputer for Linux applications.
• You might be interested in a new course offered at UTM CSC411 Machine Learning and Data Mining. See What is Datamining and CIO's perspective on Datamining.

  A description of the course can be found below, the field is relatively new, with many interesting results in the recent past and many new tools coming online that make use of them (SQL Server 2005 for example).

  Machine learning research aims to build computer systems that learn from experience. Learning systems are not directly programmed by a person to solve a problem, but instead they develop their own program based on examples of how they should behave, or from trial-and-error experience trying to solve the problem. These systems require learning algorithms that specify how the system should change its behavior as a result of experience. Researchers in machine learning develop new algorithms, and try to understand which algorithms should be applied in which circumstances.

  Machine learning is an exciting interdisciplinary field, with historical roots in computer science, statistics, pattern recognition, and even neuroscience and physics. In the past 10 years, many of these approaches have converged and led to rapid theoretical advances and real-world applications. This course will focus on the machine learning methods that have proven valuable and successful in practical applications. This course will contrast the various methods, with the aim of explaining the circumstances under which each is most appropriate. We will also discuss basic issues that confront any machine learning method.

• Your CSAE is organizing trips to CUTC and CUSEC, please register asap to get the earlybird rate. As well, the department will help fund your trip to the conference (details to appear).

  Note from Zia follows...

  Regarding CUTC, It would be great if you can post about it on your website. Please give the link to this pdf file: http://www.cutc.ca/2007/files/CUTC2007_DelegateGuide.pdf Also please add: "The early-bird registration price is $100 CAD, if you pay before /*Monday, December 18, 2006*/ . If you choose to pay after this date, the fee will be $120.00 CAD."
• Dave and Eric are concerned about the first year Java vs Python debate, as a result they pointed me to this link.
• Check out the StGeorges CS Undergrad Announcements
• Robert pointed out that ... the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Grad School Info Session will be held Thursday November 23 (this Thursday) 3:00 Faculty Club room Find out all about grad school, what you should have, what you can expect, what it's all about. Have your questions answered here. This is a student organized event. There will be representatives from a number of universities, including the St. George grad-school coordinator.
• Cameron had this to say about unit testing in VB.NET
• Some interesting talks can be found (online) at TVO PI including a lecture on Turing and Godel and another one on Quantum Computing. Very entertaining!
• Sue thought you might be interested in the Computer World Salary Survey there is also more here
• What math courses should CS students take?
• Farhang points out...Sun Opens Java
• From Igor (StGeorge CS)... Hi everybody. On Saturday, our teams competed in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition regionals, and we won! Our two teams took first and seventh places, beating Waterloo and over 100 other teams from Ontario, and 3 US states. So if you see them in the halls, make sure to congratulate them. They put in countless hours of practice. Toronto 1: Sean Henderson, Frank Chu, Mohammad Moharrami. Toronto A: Siavosh Benabbas, Devin Lui, Devon Liu. The final scoreboard is here: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~gvcormac/ecna06.html Toronto 1 will go to the finals in Tokyo in March.
• Just wondering, who is graduating in November?
• A Puzzle: A flower bed takes up an elliptical plot exactly 100 square feet in area. It is bordered by a rock garden 4 feet wide, which is in turn surrounded by a path 4 feet wide. What is the area enclosed by the widest ellipse?
• Mike (from UTM obviously) worked on Frysk with RedHat while on PEY.
• Interesting list of points outlining why hibernate is a successful project. From the hibernate site... Hibernate is a powerful, high performance object/relational persistence and query service. Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following object-oriented idiom - including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and collections. Hibernate allows you to express queries in its own portable SQL extension (HQL), as well as in native SQL, or with an object-oriented Criteria and Example API.
• Pat says...(when asked about whether he has done some course study...) Not yet, I've been swamped with lots of other work unfortunately, I miss work at Red Hat, evenings and weekends were not spent doing work then :P.
• Atif says... If I can pass one piece of advice on to your students it is never to do job just for money... pick a career you like. If you love what you do, you will excel no matter how difficult the challenge. If you hate your job, all the money in the world will not make waking up in the morning meaningful.
• stats in the news
• Youssef pointed me to this Really neat tool!!
• More from your career centre... Career Expo The UTM Career Centre is hosting its annual Career Expo on October 25, 2006 from 11am-2pm at RAWC (new athletics centre, adjacent to the South Building) Take the opportunity to network with professionals from a wide range of employers about typical career paths available in their organizations. Learn what skills, experience and education are needed and get a head start on finding your ideal career. A variety of organizations will be present, including: - Canadian Security Intelligence Service - City of Mississauga - GoodLife Fitness Clubs - Ingram Micro - Ontario Forestry Association - TD Canada Trust , RBC Financial Group ...and many more! Go to the following link for a full list of participants, and check to see which organizations are accepting resumes: http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/expo.html
• On Tuesday, October 3, 2006, the Public Service Commission (Federal Government) is conducting a Post-Secondary Recruitment Information Session from 12-1pm. Sign up via http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/
• Google's presenting on StGeorge (learn about wireless@google and about working at google) Tuesday October 3, 2006, 1180 Bahen Center, 5-7.
• csc407 and 347 notes have been moved to their web pages (see bottom of this page)
• You might want to think about attending. I will see if I can get money to help you (our UTM CS students) attend.
  • The ACM Student Computing Conference in October
  • CUTC in January.
  • CUSEC in January.
  • Free Software and Open Source Symposium in October
• From your career centre... Professional Experience Year Just another quick reminder about the Professional Experience Year info session taking place next Thursday, September 14, 2006 from 1-2pm @ SE1130. The PEY program would be of especially great interest to Computer Science students. Sign up for the info session takes place online, and more information is available on this website: http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/workpey_internships.html GSES GSES (Graduating Students Employment Service) orientations have begun. There are some very good postings for Computer Science students already listed that they may not be aware of, including Google, Microsoft, Accenture, and many more. Once students attend an orientation session, they are able to search through the listings and find applicable postings.
• Geography has a work/study position available for this term. Contact me asap if you are interested in working on Object/Relational database and web development while working towards your degree.
• Contract job available for exceptional csc309 students...contact me asap if you are interested. We need a programmer ... good with Perl/PHP ... or good with Java (JSP, JavaBeans, JDBC, Tomcat). Good in both would be awesome. This would be a 2 month 9am - 5pm contract.
• The Career Centre is hosting an upcoming Information Session about the Professional Experience Year, which might be of great interest to Computer Science students. The Information Session will be held during the first week of classes, and registration will close the week after. Here is a little blurb about the event, which I'm hoping can be distributed within your department so that it may reach your students. Professional Experience Year Attention: Computer Science, Commerce, and CCIT students. Attend the PEY Information session to learn more about valuable 12-16 month internships for 2nd and 3rd year students. Info Session: Thursday September 14, 1:00-2:00 @ the South Building, room 1130. Sign up online. For more information, please visit http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/workpey_internships.html
• be SMART check the health of your drive.
• Exercise: Explain why this works.
• Interested in TA ing at UTM?
• Read Patrick Smith and Greg Lapouchnian's Red Hat Magazine article on Developing web apps: Spring is here
• Comming to the grad BBQ today, I am.
• Piccolo Very interesting alternative to Swing (from Dave Beckford) Piccolo is a toolkit that supports the development of 2D structured graphics programs, in general, and Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUIs), in particular. A ZUI is a new kind of interface that presents a huge canvas of information on a traditional computer display by letting the user smoothly zoom in, to get more detailed information, and zoom out for an overview.
• An amazing optical illusion Keep your mouse off the image, and stare at the dot for a few seconds. Then, without moving your eye from the dot, move your mouse over the image. You'll see a beautiful, vivid, color image, until you move your eyes away from the dot, revealing that the image is pure black-and-white. (from Wayne Hayes)
• For returning students, do some web development at UTM, summer job.
• The internet is broken
• Abdul suggests doing design patterns in C++ for csc407, what do you think?
• The Complete, Unquestionable, And Total Failure of Information Security
• Cool from Greg Wilson
• How to become a hacker
• A question to UTM CS students...Assuming that UTM CS had additional money to do this, what would you like to see happen? Some ideas follow... A CSC lounge, group trips to conference such as SIGGRAPH, having courses available over the web (available on all campuses), better computing facilities, more help in theory courses and MAT102, move to laptops for all students (and away from the labs), money for csc492 projects, setup upper year mentors, a few CSC gatherings (lunches), bringing back UTM CS alumni ...
• Funny for Software Engineering types: requirements? (from Greg Wilson).
• Hot off the UTMCS group, Google Web Toolkit
• I have a database/web design project that needs to be done over the summer (csc343/csc309 top students??). If interested, please contact me asap. This is a 8:30-4:30 job on the customer site fo pay. More details follow... Ability to design and develop HTML/ASP web pages, with the following skill and knowledge: Knowledge of designing, implementing and maintaining company database[s]. Identifying data sources, constructing data decomposition diagrams, provides data flow diagrams and documents the process. Writes codes for database access, modifications, and constructions including stored procedures.
• Sue says... I am not sure if I remembered to let you know - probably of interest to students, who are probably too busy! Full information at: http://www.sun.ca/emrkt/en/mpi "Overview: MPI (Message Passing Interface) Join us for a FREE one day workshop that will provide participants with basic MPI skills in "parallelizing" their code for multi processor clusters running under Linux. " Date: Wednesday April 19th, 2006 Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm Location: Sandford Fleming 10 King's College Road Room 1105 Toronto, Ontario Canada
• I would like to post a bit about what you are up to now (current UTM CS students). Please send me some notes, you are an inspiration to others!!
  • Bogdan says... Hello Arnold, first of all I would like to say thank you for teaching a hands on web development course. I learned a lot this semester and its been really fun. Now I had 4 interviews related to 309. Two for ASP and two for PHP. I didn't get the job for the asp because, well we didn't learn it, even thought I kept telling them I could learn it in a couple days, guess I wasn't convincing enough. But good news is, I got one of the PHP jobs. Doing web development php and mySQL online store type of thing called osCommerce, from home on contract basis for the summer. Going great so far, I like it a lot. Sadly not a single JSP/servlets interview... So I began to wonder why were so many people using PHP which seemed to lack all these fancy features of java/asp. I asked during one of my interviews and the answer I got was that PHP is open source, licencing is free. There you go, teaching php this semester was a great idea it got me my first DEVELOPMENT job and I am really happy about it. THanks again, and see you on the exam.
  • Sukhmeet is deciding about job offers, Microsoft or U of Alberta (with a scholarship)
  • Two UTM groups (Dave and Scott) were in the top 6 (out of 30 groups) at an IBM design competition. Scott and his group won second place. Daves group consisted of Eric Palmitesta, Matt Arduini, David Nowak, Jacques Waller, Paul Wellman. Scotts consisted of Scott Hyndman, Xuan Le, Rowell Cruz, Ulysses Pabuna and Joshua Sumali
  • Chris is continuing his work with a consulting company, he is now somewhat of an expert in .NET. Talk to him and Lilian about Ajax.
  • Vivek had more job offers than he could easily decide on, he finally chose...
  • Abdul has to decide between an MSc offer from U of Alberta and ...
  • Natasha is working on a web project with Psychology (exposed to lots of neat technologies) as well as working on all her other courses.
  • Last term, Daniel, Scott, Adrian and Ryan won (together $6000) in awards for development of open source projects related to their CSC492 projects.
• Interesting connectivity and file synchronization solutions hamachi.cc and foldershare.com
• Interested in a short (2-3 week) MS Access contract, contact me.
• More job stuff!! Junior Programmer Position Available (Downtown Toronto) Premier provider of assurance, reporting and analysis tools for the accounting industry seeking a full-time junior software programmer. This would be an ideal position for a recent graduate. Expected start date ASAP or for qualified candidates graduating this year a summer start date can be negotiated. EXPERIENCE Degree in Computer Science or equivalent with programming experience. RESPONSIBILITIES Developing a web-based content management system based on the open-source Plone application. The work will be primarily development with some functional and user interface design, code reviews, testing and documentation. REQUIREMENTS Strong object oriented design/programming skills Knowledge of Python, C++, CSS, HTML and Javascript Knowledge of HTTP, Linux, Apache, PostGRES, security and database concepts an asset Good communication skills A desire to take part in the full development process starting with the design of application features SALARY Commensurate with experience.
• Raheel said... CSAE (Computer Sceince Association at Erindale) is looking for the following positions to be filled for the next year 2006-07: President Vice President Public Relations Finance Director IT Analyst Events Coordinator Internal Affairs Marketing Director The last three positions were introduced last year. Hence its important that we fill atleast the first 5 positions. Please email us at eccsae AT utm dot utoronto dot ca by March 15!!! with your Name, Student number and prefered email address. In the event that more than one person is interested in some position, we would resort to elections, though it hasnt happened in previous years(lol). Why should you consider becoming an exec: - Networking, Networking, Networking....you probably have heard it many times from career centre. This would provide you with this oppurtunity - You can put that on your resume and perhaps your resume wont go in that thrash bin - when the employer ask you "describe a suitation where ......" perhaps you wont have to say "hmm haaan hmmmm", instead you would be able to talk about your CASE experience!!!!
• Note funding change The following are going to be funded by the department ($90) for the NBTC (see below)
  1. Daniel
  2. Arvand
  3. Hoa
• Yulian asked me if you would like to be an ambassador for the following conference... by the way, the first 5 UTM attendees will be funded ($90) by the department. National Business & Technology Conference 2006 Date: Friday, March 3rd, 2006 - Sunday, March 5th, 2006 Location: 130 West Event Centre Link: http://nbtc.ca Want to get involved in a truly memorable experience? Want to network with industry professionals and meet other outgoing students? Want to hone your dynamic skills and broaden your horizons? Then take part in the 2006 National Business and Technology Conference. This year, NBTC presents two full days of amazing seminars, workshops, the A-List discussion panel, a recruiters fair, a mysterious hypnotist session and much-much more!! NBTC 2006 is the link, connecting the two worlds of business and technology. Also, don't miss the opportunity to network with representatives from RIM, Workbrain, CIBC, PWC, TD Securities, Infusion, Deloitte, IBM and many others... The tickets are $90 and cover everything including all events as well as meals during the entire conference. To register online, please visit us at: http://www.nbtc.ca/delegates.php See you at the conference! A +++
• Greg Wilson had this to say... Last Monday, TUCOWS (http://www.tucows.com) hosted the third in a series of DemoCamps here in Toronto, in which people can show off early versions of new software, and get feedback from fellow developers. It was a lot of fun, and there were a lot of good conversations in the bar afterward. DemoCamp 4 is being held from 6:30 to 8:00 on Tuesday, March 28, in the MaRS building at College and University. If you'd like to attend --- or better yet, if you have something you'd like to show off --- please sign up at: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/TorCampDemoCamp4
• Saira has created a yahoo group called utmcs. Many UTM Comp Sci alumni are joining, join for advice from former students, see whats going on in industry, make some connections, see if there are job opportunities etc.
• Some interesting free MS PowerToys for your Windows box. (See the Virtual Desktop Manager)
• A UTM Alumni (took csc343 and csc309 with me) sent me a note about a position at her company. If you recently graduated and are interested in a DB/web development position, contact me.
• Interested in a summer internship at IBM, see this and this.
• If you are interested in working on a project designing a game (paid) send me an email.
• If you are interested in working on a project using piccolo contact me.
• Ruby vs Java vs Python
• Consider attending the waterfall 2006 conference (ok, not really)
• We are looking for an exceptional Java developer (UTM Comp Sci Major or Specialist) to work on a paid research project. If interested, contact me asap!!
• CIS Enrollments
• Do what you love
• Jolt Awards Finalists
• Check out IBMs extreme blue initiative
• Go and get a scholarship!!
• Your Career Centre wants you to know about these great job opportunities!
• The following individuals will have the department contribute $60 to their CUTC conference attendence. You should register asap, or let us know if you will not go so we can give the spot to another individual. By the way, cutc.ca says that they are running out of spots, so register asap!! We have 4 more spots available as well.
  1. F. Robert Liu
  2. Mike Cvet
  3. natasha d'silva
  4. Omar
  5. Stefan
  6. Daniel Kozimor
  7. Nurdin Premji
  8. Arjun
  9. Annie
  10. Victoria Lee
• Are you up for a scholarship? Check this out.
• Andres and Matt corrected me about the Terminator picture, Andres created it, Radek added the 309 exam caption.
• The CUTC conference is comming!! Our department usually funds a few students for the conference. Let me know if you are interested (email me Subject: cutc).
• Sun Microsystems is having two free events for UofT students and faculty on Monday, December 5'th 2005. The first one is from 1-3pm on a new operating system feature called DTrace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTrace), which allows real-time debugging of applications on production systems without impacting system performance. The second event is from 4-7pm on cutting edge features in Java, OpenSolaris and Swing. There is free food in the second event. Both events will be held in SF1105. You can register at: http://ca.sun.com/en/events/edu-techdays/ All registrants will get a free T-shirt and placed in a draw for prizes (I think the prizes might include an IPOD nano!).
• Interesting ads for group 11 in csc408 can be found here and here. Students in 408 have to swap code partway through the term; part of each team's mark depends on how many other groups pick up their work.
• Rob and Nick (putting up UTMCS.NET) are interested in your opinions.
  • What kinds of things do you want to see on this site, FAQ, student profiles, contact information for past students, my website organized.
  • Suggestions for good Wiki and Forum software (ie phpBB)
• An interesting article from Radek He made the terminator picture of me above while taking csc309.
• Some interesting presentations on Friday (especially if you are thinking of taking csc309) When: November 25, 2005 Where: NE228 Time: 12 - 1 Duration: 2 presentations @ 20 min each Theme: Developing web applications ---------- Nathan Duthoit's presentation: AJAX Abstract: "One of the main buzzwords in the web development community this year, AJAX is being seen as the next approach to web development. It is gaining popularity as it is being adopted by major players in the industry such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft. We'll see how AJAX works (using Google Suggest as an example), what are its main advantages and limitations and where this new approach is going." Nathan Duthoit is a fourth year student at the University of Toronto at Mississauga working towards a Specialist in Computer Science, Information systems option. ------------ Raheel Ashraf's presentation: Tapestry Abstract: Nowadays there is a need for web frameworks that could allow developing dynamic, robust, highly scalable web applications easily in a short period of time. Tapestry is one such solution that is aimed at answering some of the issues and problems with creating web applications. In my presentation, I would discuss the ideas and concepts behind this framework and would demonstrate how it's different from other popular frameworks out their. Raheel Ashraf is a fourth year student at the University of Toronto at Mississauga working towards a Specialist in Computer Science, Software Engineering option.
• Robert and DoAnh are moving to complete UTMCS.NET. The aim is to create a mechanism for UTM CS students to communicate with eachother. Here are some interesting questions we could ask of graduated students...
  • Should I go to grad school, teachers college or work in the real world?
  • Where are you working now, and are you looking for a new great hire?
  • What was your first job?
  • What kind of salary should I expect?
  • What kinds of questions should I expect on an interview?
  • What technologies, concepts, communication skills, coding skills, testing skills etc. should I have?
• Interested in TAing at UTM? See our online TA application form
• Just saw Philips, Mohammed and Emad at Tim Hortons, they are doing very well, working on .NET, Hibernate, building testing frameworks etc. at companies like Bell, and the Royal Bank. They said they would be willing to come back and talk about their experiences (both at UTM and outside). Stay tuned, I hope to get others to come back as well.
• If you are on StGeorge on Tuesday Nov 8, you might want to check this out!! Tony DeRose from Pixar will give a Distinguished Lecture at StGeorge on November 8. Title: Math in the Movies Abstract: Film making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer graphics and computational physics. This talk will provide a behind the scenes look at how fully digital films, such as Pixar's "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles", are made, with particular emphasis on the role that mathematics plays in the revolution. Bio: Tony DeRose is currently a Senior Scientist and lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. From 1985 to 1995, Dr. DeRose was a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. In 1998, he was a major contributor to the Oscar winning short film "Geri's game", and in 1999 he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award.
• More for your career centre Launch your career today with Business Objects, the world's leading business intelligence software company. Business Objects - Technical Evaluation Session Friday, November 4, 12:00-1:30pm Location: Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, Room GB244, St. George Campus * This will be the only technical evaluation session at U of T this fall. Are you looking for a rewarding work experience in a fun and flexible workplace? Are you analytical, self motivated, and do you enjoy working in a team environment? Are you a quick learner that is eager to apply your knowledge in a company that produces world-class software? If you say yes to all of the above, Business Objects is definitely the place you want to be! We are offering you a chance to write our technical evaluation at the following time: Friday, November 4, 12:00-1:30pm Location: Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, Room GB244, St. George Campus This will be the only technical evaluation session at U of T this fall. Future technical evaluation dates have not been confirmed yet. You could win a portable USB hard drive! Who can attend: Students from a technology-related field that are in their last year of studies. This evaluation will consist of 2 parts, 16 multiple choice questions and 3 coding questions. The multiple choice questions are evenly distributed across 4 major areas (4 questions in each area): a.) OOD/OOP b.) Distributed Systems c.) Multi-threading d.) Software Test Fundamentals The coding questions can be written in either Java or C++, and will cover topics such as searching, string replacement, and object oriented programming. Please bring a pen or pencil, as it is a written evaluation (no other support/reference is allowed - no text books or calculators please). Please email Natalie Brooks at natalie.brooks@businessobjects.com to sign up for this technical evaluation. Your email acts as an acceptance and confirmation of your plan to attend. For more information or to apply for these positions, please refer to their posting on the Graduating Students Employment Service - see job order 2006.GS.0184. Web: http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers Please note: the deadline to apply for these opportunities is November 3, 2005.
• Interesting
• Interesting reading on .NET and whether Intellisense and generated code are good things.
• To: Computer Science Students, University of Toronto From: Microsoft Re: Graduating Year, Summer and Internship Positions Did you go to Career Information Days on the St. George Campus and meet a Microsoft employee at the booth? Did you give them your resume? Well a funny thing happened to your resume on the way to Microsoft. It got stolen. Seriously. We know U of T is full of extremely talented students, but in the war for college talent, we had no idea how cut throat things would be. This hasn't happened before on our watch. Be flattered no Waterloo resumes have ever been stolen. We want to make sure that you are considered so please re-send your resume in soft copy to UofTres@microsoft.com and we will look for appropriate positions for you! AND to make it a bit more compelling, we will be giving away an Xbox 360 to one lucky student who submits their Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Engineering Science or Software Engineering resume before November 1st. The winner will get an Xbox delivered to them after the official release date of November 22. I can't wait to hear from you and good luck in winning the Xbox! Lisa Barnicoat Microsoft
• Take a look at The Solaris 10 University Challenge
• Software engineering and the Gun Registry
• Check the site below for important news from StGeorge CS... Check out the new website: http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/uga/ which will be the place to go to find out about matters of importance to undergraduates in Computer Science, including research opportunities, career events, scholarships, administrative deadlines and social events. We hope that this website will reach more students than the newsgroups ut.cdf.announce and ut.cdf.general. This is a work in progress, so please bear with us as we iron out the wrinkles. Your feedback is welcome.
• Subscribe to the following... Subject: Fwd: CS Undergrad News -- no more emails (fwd) People can subscribe (volunarily :) by sending mail to ugstudents-subscribe@cdf.toronto.edu and replying to the confirmation email (which might wind up in the user's spam folder, depending on their settings and spam control product.) Regards, lloyd
• If you are interested in getting UTMCS.NET off the ground (put up a wiki etc.) please let me know. Over the past few months, a good number of people have expressed interest.
• A reminder from your career centre Electronic Arts Information Session Wednesday, Oct 19, 5:00-7:00 p.m. New Location: SE3129 (UTM) More info/sign-up at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers IBM Mock Interviews Tuesday, Oct 25, 1:00-4:00 p.m. Open to all students. Reserve your space today. Limited spaces still available! For more info/sign-up, please contact the UTM Career Centre. Gaining Experience (Part-Time Opportunities) Do you know of students looking for career-related part-time work experience? Current opportunities advertised through the Career Centre include: Linux Accessibility Webmaster, University of Toronto; PC & Website Support, St. George Career Centre; Software Developer/Documentation, Web2XML Inc.; Technical Support Representative, Carson Dunlop & Associates; Programmer, A&M Human Resources Consultants; and more. Students can find complete details about these and other opportunities at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• Great stuff from your career centre Microsoft Oct 12, 2005, 5:00pm - 7:00 pm BA1160 (St.George Campus) Disciplines: Graduating students in Computer Science and Computer Engineering only. Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan Oct 11, 2005, 5:00pm - 7:00 pm Faculty Club (St. George Campus) Disciplines: Technical - Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Mathematics only. Electronic Arts (this session will be held at UTM) October 19, 2005, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m., UTM Faculty Club Interested in a career as a Software Engineer or Computer Graphic Artist? Electronic Arts (EA) is the world's leading independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software for personal computers and advanced entertainment systems. Sign up/more info at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/events.html IBM Mock Interviews Tuesday, Oct 25, 1:00-4:00 p.m. Limited spaces available! Don't miss your chance! Pre-requisite: Effective Interviews workshop. Don't miss your chance to get a practice interview with a representative from IBM. To apply for a mock interview with IBM, please call Corinne Furtney at 905-828-5264 or drop by the UTM Career Centre. Spaces are limited so please apply ASAP. Please note that you must have attended an Effecitve Interviews workshop to qualify for a mock interview with IBM. If you have not yet attended the Effective Interviews workshop, you may register for the session at the Career Centre on Oct 19 to qualify. Sign up/more info at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/events.html Current Job Postings Visit http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/ to view the latest career postings for graduating students including: Microsoft, IBM, Workbrain, Telus Mobility, Accenture, Google and more. Not signed up to access graduating year postings through GSES? Don't miss your chance to apply! Please visit the Career Centre for more information.
• A message from Jakub...(he is now working at http://www.phenogenomics.ca Thank you for all your help in my job hunt. I got the position at the Toronto Centre for Phenogenomics. We are running DB2, Java, Dreamweaver, SOFIA and Eclipse to create a huge database that will be running on the super computer. It's my first programming job, but I am starting out as a Senior Web Developer with a salary to match the job title. Thank you again, Jakub
• Interested in the ACM Programming contest, see this!!
• Microsoft, Software Engineering and Longhorn
• Undergrad announcements DCS StGeorge
• Software engineering essays
• More from Gagan... Hi Arnold,
  
  I had to wait for at least two months before I started getting some kind of response from the employers after applying to jobs. At the end of the half summer session I started applying to jobs posted at the UOfT career center and monster.ca and it wasn't until beginning of August when i got few interviews (at Bell for Test Analyst, Infusion for Jr .NET Developer, and one of them was from AzoogleAds for PHP Developer). Few days after the interview at AzoogleAds I got the offer. I never ended up going to the Bell interview because it conflicted with Infusion at the same time on Friday I remember. I tried to change the timings for the bell interview but they had only one spot left at 1:00 on Friday at the same time as Infusion. I ended up going to the interview at Infusion (a bad decision on my part because a week following the interview on Monday i a got call from the HR Manager at Infusion telling me that they going on a hiring frezee and plus the interview at bell was a direct referral from Omair Butt who at the time was working at Bell).
  
  The real world is great. Demanding but its great. At job you learn things at much faster pace. In real world you can't delay things as you can delay an assignment at school and choose to do it three days before the due date. Everyday you have responsibilities you must get them done as early as possible because new problems and tasks keep piling up. Thou I still sometimes don't have much to do but things are slowly picking up as i get more responsibilities.
  
  As i mentioned before AzoogleAds is rapidly expanding. Everyday they are hiring new people and interviewing lots. I would recommend who ever is looking for a job to visit their career center page (http://www.azoogleads.com/az/new/careers.php?l=Toronto) and apply for jobs that appeal to you. They are looking for few PHP programmers with MySQL experience. I would recommend anyone who has some exposer to PHP and knows JavaScript through out, to apply. Thou its not listed in the job description but if you are familiar with AJAX and the MVC model, you will have an edge over the other candidates because one of the projects they are hiring for right now is based on these two concepts, the Model-Viewer-Controller and the AJAX programming paradigm. I remember reading on your page that you are thinking of teaching MVC in 309 and I think it's a great idea.
  
  Gagan
• Gagan reports back from the real world...
  
  Professor Arnold,
  
  How are you? The fall session had started. I assume you must be busy with coordinating your courses. How did the CIT go this summer? I know, there was a big interest among teachers in that and I saw good attendance there the day when I was there.
  
  I thought I should email you to let you know what I have been doing last few months following my end of Summer school and my undergrad at UTM. A month and half ago, i found a job opportunity at a small but rapidly grown company name AzoogleAds as a Jr. Developer. AzoogleAds is online Marketing and Advertising company have been ranked number by media experts all around North America. They use to PHP5 and 4 for their in house software development, services and customer products. My job is part programming and part development/management. In nutshell, I am responsible for ensuring that daily click reports and other reports are downloaded and fed into the database. I basically wrote a utility using PHP CURL library which downloads these reports from a third party server as CSV, parse the files and feed them into the database automatically. We keep getting new reports and formats every day so i have constantly adding and updating my script. Other than that i am also involved an other project and help other developers in minor debugging, fixes, testing and and small functionalities time to time. Its a great position and the company is great in terms of pay and benefits. The coworkers are also very helpful and friendly.
  
  One thing that i have realized over past few months when I was initially applying for jobs is that you shouldn't very picky about what job opportunities you get. What i mean to say is that there aren't too many jobs out there and you should seize anything that comes your way, be it development, programming, testing, consulting or even desktop support. I would like to let my fellow graduate students who are looking for jobs and students who will graduating next year and will be looking for that perfect development position they been dreaming of after graduation is that don't limit yourself to just pure programming position. What I have noticed that people graduating from UofT computer science have a mentality that thay are only good for development positions and anything which is not development is of lower grade and should not be considered. Other non development positions like Consulting, Support, Testing, Customer Service and Technical writing are equally challenging, well paid and recognized. I remember there was big discussion about whether a testing is worth considering for someone who graduated UofT or not. The thing we have to realize here is that most of are fresh graduates with virtually minimum or no experience at all. Employers are not looking where you graduated from. In fact they are looking for whether you can meet their demands and be an asset to the company and at the same time contribute to the company through ever spectrum not just your technical skills. That's why they have such competitive and hard interview process. So, what ever opportunity that comes along your way you should definitely consider it because once you are in the industry you will learn more about the inner working of that particular industry and over all and will get more opportunities along the way and foresee new opportunities and can plan you future accordingly. But first you have to start somewhere and so don't be afraid to start at the bottom level.
  
  Anyway, I must get back to work now. I constantly check your page and try to keep myself updated with news and development at UTM.
• Raheel is back and says the CSAE (Computer Science Association of Erindale) needs your help...(you can contact him at Raheel Ashraf

  rahil

  .

  ashraf

  @

  gmail

  .

  com

  ). We are looking for the people to fill up the following exec positions for CSAE club: IT Analyst Events Coordinator Public Relations We need these positions filled ASAP. We need dedicated and hard working execs!!
• 1. *Professional Experience Year (PEY) Info Session @ UTM Monday, September 19, 1:00-2:00 Room SE2080 Check out http://www.peyonline.com 2. **Career Information Days - Information Technology Day Wednesday, September 21, 11:00-3:00, University College - St. George Campus *This annual event allows students to meet with representatives from more than 20 organizations interested in Computer Science students in one day. UofT STUDENT ID REQUIRED. Organizations participating in the I.T. Day include: Microsoft, Research in Motion, Epson Canada Limited, Accenture, Exxon Mobil Canada, Aegon Canada Inc./Transamerica Life Canada, General Motors of Canada Ltd., ALT Software Inc., IDEE Inc., Altera Corporation, Infosys Technologies Ltd., Aversan Inc., Infusion Development Ltd., BMO Financial Inc., JMP Engineering, Business Objects, KOEI Canada Inc., Canadian Forces, CGI Group Inc., Electrovaya, Symcor Inc., EMC, Telus Mobility, Toronto Public Library, Evertz Microsystems Ltd., Workbrain Inc. Complete details on the Career Centre web site. 3. There will be another Information Session for upper-year (non-first year) UTM CSC students on Wednesday, September 14 at 1 p.m. in Room 1157. At this session, instructors of courses new to Erindale this year will speak for about 5 minutes about their courses: Engels (384F), Rosenbloom (407S), Bonner (411), Saroiu (458). There will be a preview of the proposed Specialist Program in Information Security and its associated courses. Pizza and pop are planned.
• PEY IS COMMING!!! Don't miss this!! Professional Experience Year (PEY) Info Session @ UTM Monday, September 19, 1:00-2:00 Room SE2080 PEY is a great opportunity for UTM students to be placed on 12-16 month PAID internships after their second or third year. The program allows you to gain valuable real-world work experience and many employers look for PEY experience when hiring graduating students. The average salary for placements is approx $37,500. Don't miss this session, the only one to be held at UTM. Note: the deadline to apply for PEY for 2005-2006 is September 23, 2005. Questions? Please contact the Career Centre at 905-828-5451 in Room SE3094.
• Software Design/Evolution:
  • Cameron adds more
  • Cameron points out Big Ball of MUD
  • Greg Wilson points out what Joel has to say about it
• Here are some things I am thinking about for CSC320, CSC343 and CSC309 this year!! If you are interested in a particular topic/assignment/tool etc. please email me asap and I will consider it!
  • csc320:
    • Assignments: Create a tool for development of images for web development. Creating repeating backgrounds. Cutting up images for image maps. Using GIS data create maps. Create something similar to MS Photo Story.
    • Content: For the previous few years, we have used Java. Do you want exposure to VS.NET? Talk about 3D graphics. Increased focus on simulation.
  • csc343: Add in Object to Relational Mapping technologies (Hibernate, middlegen, hbm2java), allow use of SQLServer as well as Postgresql for backend database. Talk a bit about tools such as MS Access (linked tables is a neat thing).
  • csc309: Remove GUI programming from this course (now in csc320). Add in MVC frameworks and associated tools (Struts, JSTL etc.) used in enterprise class web applications. Add in ASP.NET.
• Farhang points out that the topcoder competition is on again!! have a look
• Here is what Cameron says about learning PHP... Hello! I've recently started doing some PHP development and have been looking into the various new features available in PHP5 (improved OO features, exception handling, etc..) I've come across a lot of bad PHP sites, but recently I have come across http://www.zend.com/php5/index.php. You may want to share this with people interested in learning PHP (and more specifically, PHP5). For people new to PHP, I recommend reading some of the latter articles in the "Absolute Beginners" section (the beginning artcles aren't too informative for people with a decent amount of programming experience.) The beginners section also has some articles on design theory and patterns (and how they apply to PHP.) I also recommend checking out some the "In Depth" articles I've also found a page for a PHP Unit Testing framework (http://www.phpunit.de/en/index.php). I haven't given this a try yet, but hope to test it out over the next week or two. Just from glancing over the webpage, it appears to have a similar structure to JUnit and CPPUnit. See you in the Fall,
• The Cartoon Laws of Physics
• The week of Aug 8, I am holding CIT at UTM (we teach the teachers Java for one week). I am looking for some help, if you are interested, please contact me!! These are paid positions (3-4 hours/day). Take a look at the CIT Website for more on the session. You are also welcome to volunteer to help for a couple of hours (let me know when).
• Interested in TAing at UTM, apply online at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~arnold/ta/taform/. Don't worry about the deadline, we are still looking at applications, we just consider those before the deadline first.
• Andres points out Hi Arnold, I found a pretty cool link ''www.maps.google.com'' that you may want to add on the 'Misc' portion of your homepage. With this tool you can zoom right into any region of the planet using satalite imaging. Have fun! -Andres
• Here is an interesting Game that learns (or nerogame.org)
• If you are interested in one of the following opportunities, please contact me... > Want to forward this to your advisors, recent grads? > > 2 Internships: junior test analyst and junior programmer > The information is at www.careeredge.ca > anyone interested needs to register at www.careeredge.ca and apply there > > comp is $1667/mth > 6 month internship > possiblity of FT after > > they get 3-4 weeks of training that is paid for > Deadline is June 24. and another one COOP 4 Month Programmer/Analyst Intern position (Paid) at Canadian Tire Starts September 2005 Must haves: Strong VB 6, MS Access, SQL, substantial experience writing DB apps with VB 6.0
• Here is what Sajid said about 309 and work... Hi, I am working for a company who wanted me to design a beauty equipment website for them. They wanted a web site which will be easy for them to maintain. So I gave them what they wanted. I designed a website, using servlets and database. It was very similar to the CBC website project that we had worked on. Basically, whenever the company wants to update the webpage they will just go on the control website where they will be able to add and remove information out of the pages. I used JDBC, to add and remove all the pictures from the data base, and used CSS, XML, and XSL to design the outlook of the page. Your courses really give us a boost and experience which prepare us for the real world. Keep up the good work.
• Below is what a couple of UTMCS alumni had to say about my Advice to a student on taking a tester position (also below)... I was just checking out your website and I saw your note about taking a tester position. I agree with you 100% with this statement. As you know, I started out on a 6 month contract with COMPANY X as a Database Analyst. I left X to pursue a full time permanent position at COMPANY Y as a QA Analyst. What was worse was, they had me do manual software testing. The work consisted of mindless clicking that anyone who can read could have done. I had experience creating automated test scripts and assumed they would put me on the Automated test team so it would have been a little more interesting. I was going to use this as a foot in the door to get into consulting. I ended up hating it so much I came back to X. Right before I took the QA position, my old manager at a previous company I worked for as a tester during my summers even tried to talk me out of it. From my personal experiences, I would suggest avoiding ALL software testing positions period. Since I had the software testing experience as a student, I found when I graduated, that was the only position anyone wanted to give me. I was really fortunate to be able to return to X. I'm currently fulfilling a 1 year contract here, doing the same work as before, but I do find it interesting at least. Being on a project team, there are new problems everyday that I am asked to solve using Access and Excel Macros. I found it quite fascinating how much can actually be done in Access and Excel. Anyways, hope all is well with you. And a response to the above from yet another UTMCS student... I've been reading some of the discussion on your webpage re: software testing positions, and I thought I'd share my opinion on the subject. I'm basing my opinion on your initial comment and the recent comment from a former UTM student. I think it's wrong to completely avoid all software testing positions. I think it's the responsibility of the student to ask questions during an interview to find out what type of testing a company actually does and the type of testing the individual will be doing. That is, know what you're getting into. There are many different styles of testing (unit testing, acceptance testing, regression testing, GUI testing, etc..) Even each specific category has it's own style. I don't think software developers should settle for positions which involve them simply reading over a list of requirements and clicking some buttons here and there to make sure some system conforms to the requirements in front of them. For example, if a position says an individual will be involved in writing acceptance tests, find out if it is simply a matter of following a set of instructions or whether it involves writing code and test suites (using FitNesse, for example.) I don't think there's anything wrong in accepting a testing position if it involves coding. A testing position which occurs more on the development side than on the user/business side can give good insight into the development cycle and code base. This extra insight can help prepare you for a transition to development. However, I do not think a developer should accept this type of role for the rest of their life (unless this is what they want.) If they wish to become more involved in the development process, they should express this interest and take initiative (in the form of extra work, side projects, etc..) If you prove to your team that you can be a valuable asset to any development project, you will most likely become more involved in such a project and perhaps eventually become a full time development member. So in summary, I just wanted to say: - Ask questions during interviews to find out exactly what you'll be doing in a job. - Learn exactly what testing is and what it can often involve. Find out about different styles of testing, etc.. If you're unfamiliar with testing, try joining an open source project at http://sourceforge.net/index.php or somewhere else just to get a feel for it.) - Don't accept a testing position as a long-term job. Use it to build a foundation you can use to move onto something more involved with development. I know a lot of people have difficulties finding their ideal jobs after graduation and often settle for these type of positions. People reading this in their 2nd or 3rd year should seriously consider taking PEY to increase their chances of getting the job they want after graduating. And another response Arnold, I do agree with you whole-heartedly but I don't necessarily agree with the UTMCS Alumni who suggested to avoid ALL software testing positions period. It's all about doing the right things and doing the things right. A new graduate has to take every opportunity he/she comes across and to use their good judgment. To do the right thing is to asses an opportunity^Òs prospects and with careful planning can lead to something better. During an interview ask what industry standard/de facto technologies will you be using? Will you be working within a team-based, collaborative environment? Will there be opportunities to move around within the company? Will this experience prove to be valuable within a particular vertical industry? etc. To do the things right once you are hired is to extend your experiences by taking other opportunities that you were not initially hired for and to improve the business within the company as you were suggesting i.e. Be proactive. Here's a concrete example why no new grad should avoid all testing positions without at least assessing the opportunity: A QA Analyst can interact with the development and architecture team to define test plans to ensure that business requirements are met. The QA may create a test harness for the exploration and measurement of performance and scalability of web applications using load/stress testing tools such as Empirix eTester. The QA may be exposed to writing test cases for functional/regression testing and automated black-box testing using Mercury Interactive automation tools like Test Director, Win Runner, and Load Runner which are industry de facto testing tools. My previous company hired new grads with comp sci / engineering backgrounds and this is essentially what they were exposed to do. Fortunately, I was hired to do enterprise development as they threw me into the lions den i.e. the learning curve was steep during the first 6 months. However, I have seen new grads with comp sci/eng from both QA and even Graphic Design who moved to development. An engineer doing graphic design you ask? In today^Òs saturated industry, new grads cannot afford to simply dismiss anything without having a second thought. A QA can definitely lead to junior development roles and subsequent higher level jobs such as junior performance engineer/analyst which are in demand in the financial and telecommunication industries. The PE would essentially improve the behavior of software as is it being developed i.e. response time optimization, I/O tuning, caching, application server tuning and performance testing by applying testing methodologies with emphasis on improving and ensuring optimal application performance and memory consumption characteristics in addition to all the things a QA would do as I^Òve mentioned above. There was a new response in your website. He was essentially saying the same thing and I totally agree. I hope I have shed some light to the students. Original advice... Advice to a student on taking a tester position...

  Please DO NOT be satisfied with a tester position (even if you take it initially). You are far more than that. You are at least a developer out of UTM and more after. Take opportunities to show the company that you can develop, write testing software even though they don't ask for it etc. Look around for other opportunities to improve their business, even if they don't ask, take opportunities to be in on meetings etc.

• If you are interested in working on a game, funded by the department, please contact me.
• Some things I am working on this summer (clearly, this is too much for one person, so definitely not all of it will happen). I post this to hear some of your thoughts...
  • REDO THIS WEBPAGE!!!
  • Obtained utmcs.net, I want to use this as a mechanism to keep former students in contact with our current students and UTM. The goal is to let students know what works, where they are headed (I have lots of email from former students saying...we did the right thing here, the wrong thing there), present possible opportunities for employment, opportunities for previous students to give us updates on industry and the connection to what you learn at UTM. It can also be setup to allow students to post online resumes, code examples and applications.

    Here is one of the things I was thinking when I reserved utmcs.net... When I trained in Karate, I saw the blackbelts in class. Even if I did not understand what in particular the days training was going to accomplish, I knew the quality of students that resulted from the training. Unfortunately, you do not have this advantage as a student in University. That is, once students at UTM are through the program they leave and you no longer have them as role models. I hope (if I have time/help) to develop utmcs.net to reconnect students with their peers.

    Work to be done here is to setup a webserver and Wiki or some other software, contact former students.

  • Look into obtaining funding for some UTM projects (Microsoft, Eclipse grant from IBM, ITCDF, NSERC)
  • Move everyone in 3rd year to Eclipse and expose everyone to VS.NET, C#, introduce subversion and Trac for project management.
  • Write description for two new courses: 1) Computer Security (software, system, network, cryptography) and 2) Game Programming (how to, graphics, story lines, engines, programming a particular platform XBox?). I will probably have some csc493 students work with me on the first incarnations of these courses (interested?)
  • Running Computing Insights for Teachers, I typically need some help with this!!
  • Prepare for the first offering of csc407 at UTM. Since it is being offered concurrently with csc309, we may tie some aspects of the courses together (see J2EE and Design Patterns (Thanks Farhang for the reference))
  • Collaboration with CCIT on a music related application. There is a possibility for a csc492 project here.
  • Collaboration with Physics on the development of a microscope and viewing software.
  • Take on a few contracts, or give them to some of our exceptional students. I have already passed some on to some of you.
  • Thinking about Problem Solving sessions, Tech Sessions and a Technology Group for first term. The Technology Group will be a group of students and faculty that meet each week to discuss Computer Science and Technology. Each week, one or two members of the group will discuss/investigate some topic. Interesting topics (on the applied end) include: J2EE, Struts/Servlets/JavaFaces/Tapestry, Aspect Oriented Programming (AspectJ), how to use Trac and subversion, an indepth tutorial on Eclipse, XMLBeans, Hibernate, writing test suites, .NET (and languages), MS Access, programming MS Application (ie Word, Excel), Web Services, a contest: Microsoft vs Java for a particular application, a review of a complete real world project and how it was done...
  • I am also exploring a few technologies and deciding whether to introduce them to 309... what do you think (something would have to be removed from 309, what?)? Management: - All assignments submitted via CVS or Subversion - All projects maintained on Trac - Use of Eclipse encouraged (for the Java sections) Course Content (will need to remove something): - Adding Struts+Hibernate to the Servlets section (not Tapestry, not Java Faces) - Some exposure to SOAP and Web Services - Exposure to Microsoft technologies
• Google has introduced its Summer of Code program, why not try it!!
• Comments on the difficulty of my courses ...

  The courses I taught you at UTM are difficult, the result of this is confidence. You know you can get through my courses, you know how to research and understand problems and tools, you know how to work on large projects in a group, you have produced software you can be proud of, you have real experience with current concepts and tools. You understand the theory and its application in the real world. I know, I was out in the 'real world' before comming back to UofT.

  You should know that, while I set high standards, I do try to help students achieve. My goal is not to fail students, but, ideally, to produce students that understand at a high level. I feel that our approach should be to set the bar high and then do everything we can to help students get over the bar.

  By setting high standards, I have tried to lay a fertile ground for you. The students that passed through my courses before you are capable. The result is that employers know UTM as a source for exceptional employees. UTM has a great reputation across the campuses and in industry. This helps you, this helps the students that come after you.

  I could show you a mailbox full of comments students have sent me after going through my courses. All say that I did the right thing, you don't want University to be easy, you want it to mean something, and it does.

  At the end of the day, I need to know that you understand the material. In a perfect world, the mark that you get in the course reflects your demonstration of this understanding. We try as hard as we can to achieve this.

• The following job opportunity may be of interest to you, contact me to let me know... Position: Developer, 3 month contract, reports to CTO Role: Develop plug-ins for web applications in Eclipse. Should have developed at least 2 plug-ins. Skills Required: Eclipse, JAVA, C++. Ability to work independently and within tight deadlines.
• Microsoft will be comming to UTM on Thursday April 7 ( I know you will be swamped). They will be here to talk about .NET and to collect resumes. If you can spare the hour, you should show up.
• If you are interested in grad school, take a look at the grad school info session on StGeorge
• You can find a Web Developer job opportunity here.
• You can join SIAM for free.
• If you are looking for Tech Sessions, click here
• Phillips went to CUTC this year and posted the following summery of Joel Spolsky's talk. Interesting reading.
• Your career center needs your help: please contact Joan McCurdy-Myers jmccurdy@utm.utoronto.ca if you can participate... From: jmccurdy@utm.utoronto.ca This Friday we are interviewing a number of candidates for a short-term Job Coach position (to start in February). We are looking for someone with industry experience either in IT/Computer Science or Finance. As part of the selection process, candidates are to make a short presentation targeted to Computer Science on How to Break into the IT Industry. I am looking 6-10 students to whom the two candidates with IT background would make their 10 minute presentation. There would be about 5 minutes for questions from the students. So the time commitment from the students is 15-20 minutes. The times for which I need student participation are: 9:00 nooon If students could email me if they can attend either or both of these times, I'd really appreciate it.
• Job opportunity: UTM Career Centre Work Opportunity Description Organization: WORKBRAIN Various Positions: Associate Technical Consultant, Java Developer, and Associate Functional Consultant Web Site: www.workbraincareers.com Service: Graduating Students Employment Service Date Listed: Jan 6, 2005 Job Order Number: 2005.GS.0209 Number of Positions: 4 (Full-time, Permanent) Position Start Date: May 2005 ABOUT WORKBRAIN: Ranked #2 on Profit Magazine's annual hot list of Canada's top emerging growth companies, Workbrain builds innovative, web-based Workforce Management software that optimizes the deployment and management of large, complex workforces for maximum profitability. Workbrain^Òs solutions are now recognized as the industry standard by providing instant cost savings and productivity enhancements to Global 2000 companies, including such household names as L^ÒOréal USA, British Airways, REI, Toronto Police Services, and Russell Corporation. ON-CAMPUS INFORMATION SESSION: February 1, 2005 from 5-7pm. Location: Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, Room GB202. Sign up online by logging in to your Career Centre Online account, then choose "St. George Events" on the left sidebar. MORE INFO/APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS: Login to your Career Centre Online account at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers and search for job order 2005.GS.0209 in the Graduating Students Employment Service (GSES). Other current postings with upcoming deadlines include: - IBM Extreme Blue Internship, IBM (Summer) - ERS Consultant ^Ö Security Services, Deloitte & Touche (Graduating Student) - Global Intern (India), Infosys Technologies Limited (Summer) - Various Technical Positions, Microsoft (Full-Time & Summer Intern) - Student Technology Assistant, UTM Library (Part-Time) More information on the Career Centre Online at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers Adrian Berg, Marketing & Community Relations Coordinator Career Centre, University of Toronto at Mississauga Tel: 905-828-5477 Fax: 905-569-4315 E-Mail: aberg@utm.utoronto.ca Web: www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• Technology Sessions, starting Spring 2005, see the web page at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~arnold/techSessions/ It is actually going to happen this year!!
  • How I contributed to the development of one of the worlds most advanced microscopes (collaborative work with Physics using VolumePro 1000, VisualStudio.NET, C++, MFC, OpenGL)
  • How to use Visual Studio.NET and C++/VB to develop applications.
  • How I ported OpenGL to the GameBoy Advance to bring 3D animation to a computationally limited device (C, C++, Gameboy Advance programming)
  • How to voice enable an application, or adding a speech UI to an IPOD. (Java, XML+Voice,IBM Websphere Studio)
  • How I wrote a complete E-Commerce/Cellphone application (with Nokia, Rogers, Moneris) or How to write a GUI based cellphone application. (Java, J2ME, Servlets, mySQL, online payment solutions, XML,...)
  • How I built an electronic dashboard for a Toyota or Building and interfacing hardware to your computer (parallel port programming, hardware development, C device driver programming)
  • What are enterprise applications and J2EE and how do I use it in the real world
  • What is life like at RedHat (or where is the world going and what should you know about it).
  • Using .NET in the real world. What it is, how it is used and what you need to know about it.
  • How I am bringing freedom to the internet (Internationalization, client server application development, project managment, Java application development)
  • How I am developing the next generation of great CS students and Computer Scientists or How do I know if I should go to teachers college after finishing my BSc in Comp Sci.
  • Contracting, Systems analysis and Design in the real world.
  • Pursuing higher education, or what life is like in Grad School, how I got in, how I knew it was/was not right for me.
  • Programming handhelds and databases (Palm Pilot application development, Microsoft Access development)
• Rahil points out that the CUTC Conference is happening again this year. Please see his document about the conference and attending.

  NEWS The department, together with SAC and the CSAE will now be able to fund 20 students at $60/student. Please get your name on the list below by contacting me asap!! To be covered, your name must be on the list below and you must be registered with CUTC (on their website). Early registration means lower conference fees. Register early. To get an idea about what this is about, see Omairs review of the 2003 conference (or in html).

  Here is what Bilal had to say about attending CUTC

  Hi Arnold, As a result of attending CUTC, I had a chance to engage in a conversation with Alice Thomas, the VP of E-Business Solutions for CGI. She mentioned that CGI would be hiring a bunch of new grads during the summer months and because of her insight, I paid close attention to their website, applying to almost 10 new positions each week during April and May. If I had passed on the opportunity to attend the conference, I would have never known about the opportunities at CGI, and as a result, wouldn't of been hired. I *HIGHLY* recommend 3rd and 4th year students to attend the conference. Regards, Billal

  So far, the following are being funded by the department and CSAE/SAC for CUTC

  1. Omar Beidoun
  2. James McCrae
  3. Shadid Haque
  4. Farhang Farid
  5. Pat Smith
  6. Sazzad Kamal
  7. Sani Hashmi
  8. Abdul Yousuf
  9. Kianoush Forooghi
  10. Philips Benjamin
  11. Albert Wong
  12. Emad Butt
  13. Ranbir
  14. Stefan Gueorguiev
  15. Tamam Khadduri
  16. Saeid Kalhor
  17. Zia Malik
  18. Roger Toma
  19. Hamdan Ahmad
  20. Victor Anjos
  The following will be moved to the above list as members of the above list drop off. Waiting list
  1. Hop Ho
  Rahil also sent this note from the CUTC organizers about payment... If you know anyone who doesn't know how to pay (i.e. they lost the link in the original email sent after registration), just go to http://www.cutc.ca/2005/delegates/registration/payment.php?confirm=#### where #### is their delegate ID. If they also don't know their delegate ID number, send me (jasper.yeh@cutc.ca) their name and email (that they signed up with!), and I can look them up. If all else fails, they can simply pay registration@cutc.ca and then (please!) email me the transaction ID, name of delegate, email, etc. If there's absolutely no way to pay by PayPal, then yes, cheques can be mailed to: Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference 160 Columbia St. W. Suite 206 Waterloo, ON N2L 3E3
• If you are interested in mathematical typesetting your documents, you could take a look at these few documents I put together.
• CCIT may be interested in hiring you (an upper year CS student) for a TA position. Please see their job ad.
• Many of you have interesting experience, valuable to others. I know a few of you have J2EE experience, Visual Studio .NET experience, cellphone programming experience, game programming experience, Access programming experience. I have often thought about holding Tech sessions, or at the very least creating a directory of students with their experiences (so other students can contact you). Please let me know if you are interested in participating.
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is a very good idea to go to PEY. Cameron has just emailed me a great note regarding pey. You can find it here. Many students that have gone to PEY have great jobs. It might also cause a career shift, for example to teaching comp sci instead of development, a move to development instead of analysis and design or vice versa.
• Raheel points out that the CUTC Conference is happening again this year. I will be looking into funding for conference attendees (from our department). Early registration means lower conference fees. Register early. Last year we sent 12 students. To get an idea about what this is about, see Omairs review of the 2003 conference (or in html).
• Just in case you don't know, we have two labs, one in ccit and one in the basement in the south building. The names of the labs are CS Underground and CS Tower.
• Cameron reports back from industry below, he has some advice for you if you want to use Eclipse with C++... Hello! How are things these days? My work term is going great; I'll have to fill you in with all of the details some time. I've recently been looking into C++ GUI development on Windows. I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg to obtain Visual C++, nor did I really want to use that as an IDE. Using Visual C++ as an IDE is probably the only part of my job that I hate. Saying that, I started looking into various cross-platform C++ GUI frameworks. I took a look at the Fox Toolkit, QT, and wxWidgets. I ended up picking wxWidgets because their framework has been in development for the past 12 years, and it has a good reputation online. I really like using Eclipse with Java, so I wanted to use Eclipse with C++. So began the 5 or 6 day long adventure while I actually tried to get everything compiled and running. I kept running into these road blocks. I was very disappointed in the lack of online documentation when it came to configuring Eclipse, MinGW, and wxWidgets. When I finally got it all working, I wrote everything up in a large document and put it online: http://howtos.mrcam.org/guides/development/cppguiprogramming.html You might want to mention this to people, just in case they're interested in C++ GUI development (without resorting to Visual C++.) I know the past week would have been much easier if I had this type of document near by. The only reason I wrote the document was because if I had to do this again in a month, I'd most likely forget everything I discovered this past week. I hope others can benefit from this page aswell. -- Cameron
• If you want a tutor, you could consider contacting Youssef Aboul-Naja [youssef@yaboulnaja.com] (416) 305-9687
• If you took 309 or 320 last year and have any comments about the texts, languages used etc. Please let me know (arnold@cs.toronto.edu). We are choosing texts for the upcomming term.
• Problem Of The Week (feel free to send me some)
• Problem Solving Sessions will be held in CC1140 on Tuesdays from 12-1 as outlined below...
  • October 12: We will hold a session today at 12.
  • October 4: How to approach problems (for those that missed the September 21 session).
  • September 27: Reasoning and how to develop it (12-1), How to understand a definition (2-3)
  • September 21: How to approach problems
  • September 14: Reasoning and how to develop it
• More great stuff from your career centre!! CAREER EXPO @ UTM Wednesday, October 27, 2004 - 11:00-2:00 UTM Student Centre 35 participants including: GE Canada, CGI, RBC Financial Group, Dell Canada, Toyota Canada, Daimler Chrysler Services Canada, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Ontario Internship Program (includes Information & Information Technology and Electronic Service Delivery programs) and many more! Complete details at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/expo2004.html Students in all years are encouraged to attend. ---------------------- EMPLOYER INFORMATION SESSIONS: ST. GEORGE CAMPUS Dress for all sessions: Business Attire. No sign-up required. DELL CANADA - Tuesday, Oct 19, 2004, 5:00^Ö7:00 p.m. Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, GB 202. Discipline(s): All. ELECTRONIC ARTS - Wednesday, Oct 20, 2004, 5:00^Ö7:00 p.m. Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, GB 202. Discipline(s): Computer Science and Engineering. MICROSOFT - Thursday, Oct 21, 2004, 5:30^Ö7:30 p.m. Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King^Òs College Road, SF 1105. Discipline(s): New graduates in Computer Science and Engineering. More information and updates at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers Adrian Berg, Marketing & Community Relations Coordinator Career Centre, University of Toronto at Mississauga Tel: 905-828-5477 Fax: 905-569-4315 E-Mail: aberg@utm.utoronto.ca Web: www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• Professional Experience Year Information Session @ UTM Monday, September 20, 3:00-4:00 in Room SE2082 PEY is a great opportunity for UTM students to be placed on 12-16 month paid internships after their second or third year. The program allows you to gain valuable real-world work experience and many employers look for PEY experience when hiring graduating students. The average salary for Computer Science placements is approx $38,000. Organizations that have participated include: IBM, RIM, Epson, ATI, and many more. Don't miss this session!! Note: the deadline to apply for PEY for 2004-2005 is September 27, 2004. Questions? Please contact the Career Centre at 905-828-5451 or drop by SE3094. Adrian Berg, Marketing & Community Relations Coordinator Career Centre, University of Toronto at Mississauga Tel: 905-828-5477 Fax: 905-569-4315 E-Mail: aberg@utm.utoronto.ca Web: www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• Physics will be posting a couple of work-study projects and we (CS) will be collaborating on a project with them. Brief details follow:

  Physics has purchased a couple of very interesting graphics cards. These can do volumetric rendering of three dimensional datasets. They are interested in generating a dataset which simultaneously captures different views (not in the sense you are probably thinking) of the same object.

  For this project, you will be working with VC++ under MS Windows, you will learn the API for the VolumePro1000 (including data formats) to modify an existing application so that it can take advantage of the information now stored in your generated datasets.

  If you are interested in this opportunity (as a work-study or 492 project) please contact me (arnold@cs.toronto.edu) or Virgis Barzda (vbarzda@utm.toronto.edu).

• A student is interested in getting some help with csc350 this summer, let me know if you would like to help them. I have posted an extract of their message below... I am a fourth year Computer Science student and have a deferred exam in CSC350 in August. I needed some help in the course and I was wondering if you would be able to recommend anyone who might be willing to tutor me? I would really appreciate it if you could let me know as I needed some help for a few sessoins.
• Got some interesting 492 projects going on this summer. Check them out below.
• I am forming some connections with Biomedical Communications. and already have connections with Forensics. Let me know if you are interested in visualization, volumetric rendering, simulation, modelling etc. especially in the context of a 492 project. One possibility is modelling, visualization and classification of fingerprints.
• If you have an interesting website, I would like to know about it. I will be speaking with potential UTM students on Sunday June 6 and want to show them just what we can do. Remember, bringing great students to UTM increases the value of your UTM degree. If you are interested in attending the session (12-3 Sunday June 6), please let me know. New students may like to speak with you.
• We submitted a proposal for 3 work-study positions for next year. Keep this in mind for next year.
• Next year, we will be offering an internship course (under CSC492 initially). This course will place you at an employer parttime while you study at UTM. The difference between this and PEY is that internship=part time and credit (so you pay for a course) and it has some deliverables attached to it. PEY=full time, paid for a year (or so) with no credit attached. If you are a Math/CS student and are interested, please let me know.
• Our performance in PEY is (on the surface) on par with StGeorge. I would guess that some of the 'StGeorge' students with PEY placements are actually former UTM students so that we actually place above StGeorge, but hey, I teach at UTM.
• You may be interested in the topcoder competition
• Please announce to graduating students ASAP. Thanks! Important Update: Career Centre job postings for graduating students Electronic access to GSES - the Graduating Students Employment Service - ended on Friday, March 12, 2004. If you are graduating in June 2004, you can now sign up for RGES - the Recent Graduates Employment Service! RGES allows you to access full-time postings for up to two years following graduation. As of March 15, there are currently 205 job postings listed in RGES. These include: - Jr. Technical Analyst/C++ Programmer, PROCOM - Analyst/Hacker, OPENFLOWS NETWORKS LTD. - Solution Analyst, WORKBRAIN - Foreign Language Intelligence Analyst, COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY ESTABLISHMENT - Business Software Consultant, BLUE LINK ASSOCIATES LTD. - and many more updated daily! To sign-up and get access to RGES, attend one of our 50 minute "Now That I'm Graduating, What's Next?" sessions on Wednesday, Mar. 17, 1:00-2:00 or Tuesday, Mar. 23, 5:00-6:00. Additional dates/times listed at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/events.html PLEASE NOTE: there are some remaining postings on GSES with deadlines after March 12. These include: - Software Developer, LIBERATE TECHNOLOGIES - Software Engineer, ALTERA CORPORATION - E-Commerce Application Developers, DSR INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES - Actuarial Associate, MUNICH REINSURANCE CANADA BRANCH (LIFE) - and others! Although electronic access to GSES listings ended March 12, copies of these remaining GSES job postings have been printed and are available for viewing by graduating students in the UTM Career Centre, Room 3094 South Building until Friday, March 19 (all jobs listed in GSES have deadlines set for March 19 or earlier). Questions? Please drop by the Career Centre in SE3094, or call us at 905-828-5451. Adrian Berg, Events Coordinator & Webmaster UTM Career Centre - Room 3094, South Building Hours: M/W/Th/F 10-4 and Tuesdays 10-7 Web: www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• SIAM very generously offers free memberships to students who are enrolled in a SIAM Academic Member Institution. UofT is a member. To find out more about this offer, see the webpage http://www.siam.org/students/index.cfm Look under the heading "Join Us".
• The deadline to submit applications to the Ontario Internship Program is January 30!! Take a look and submit ASAP if you are interested.
• More from your career centre The IBM Extreme Blue summer internship program is looking for talented computer science, engineering and MBA students for Spring 2004 opportunities! The complete job posting can be viewed on the Career Centre Online; see job order 2004.SR.0091. Deadline to apply: Saturday, Jan. 31, 2004. IBM Information Session -- Tuesday, January 20, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Bahen Cente - BA 1190, 40 St. George Street, Toronto. A message from IBM follows: Dear Students, We are now kicking off internship recruiting for the new Toronto launch of the Summer 2004 Extreme Blue Program. Extreme Blue provides you with an opportunity to start something BIG! You'll participate on a cool project designing and developing the next generation of IBM products and services, while working on an innovative team of students and IBM technical experts in a dynamic lab environment. Our mission is to be a leading project and team-based vitality program for developing talent and innovative e-business solutions worldwide. Opportunities within this program are extremely limited- we are looking for the very best and brightest in the country! Below, please find a brief job description. Much more information can be found on our website at www.ibm.com/extremeblue, or by searching for us on the web (IBM Extreme Blue). The IBM Extreme Blue Canadian Recruitment Team Career Centre Note: the job description can be found online at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers NEWS FROM THE UTM CAREER CENTRE Position Title: Various Software Development Internships Organization: MICROSOFT Date Listed: Jan 8, 2004. Deadline Date: Jan 23, 2004. Number of Positions: 60. Position Duration: Summer. For more information, including job descriptions, skills required, and how to apply, register online with the UTM Career Centre at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers and view job # 2004.SR.0082 Summer Job Fair - Wednesday, January 14, 11:00-2:00, Student Centre Come in out of the cold... join us at the Summer Job Fair on Wednesday, January 14, 11:00-2:00, at the UTM Student Centre. Speak with reps from 26 organizations and learn about a wide range of summer opportunities! More information at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/summerjobfair.html
• Your Career Center pointed this out to me... Take a look at the Wireless Innovations Contest First impressions really count. Especially when they lead to prizes, notoriety and fame. Here's a chance to get your newest ideas in front of some of the industry's leading companies. As part of the 2004 Wireless Innovation Contest your latest creation will be measured up against applications from commercial and student developers from Canada and the United States. Nokia, TELUS Mobility and WINBC are hosting the 2003 Wireless Innovation Contest. Developers will face-off in the following categories: 1. Games and Entertainment: must be cool 2. Business: an application that is designed to solve a business need 3. Public Sector: an application designed to meet the needs of Health Care, Goverment, Educational Institutions, etc. 5. Collaboration: an application that resulted from the collaboration of two or more businesses or organizations 4. Student: student entries must fall into one of the above four categories, but will be judged against other student entries only. The Application must be a new or recently developed (an original commercial release of less than six months) application using PCS, WiFi, Bluetooth and/or any other industry accepted standard in a connected wireless environment. Enter today. It's time to be seen as the genius you really are.
• Here is what a StGeorge student has to say about UTM's CSC program... I must admit that after viewing your web page, the learning experience that UTM students have in 309 (and even other courses like their 492 projects) smashed a lot of preconceptions I had about the UTM campus. Some of the opportunities at your campus don't even appear to be offered here at St. George. Are any of those 492 projects you offer open to St. George students?
• Omair points out that the CUTC Conference is happening again this year. Our department is willing to fund the first 12 CS Students (Ian Graham has boosted the offer!!!) at $60 each to attend (you pay the remainder of the expenses). To get an idea about what this is about, see Omairs review of last years conference (or in html. By the way, early registration (at the cutc website) is up until December 8,2003 at $114 late registration is $125. Please contact me if you want to attend.

  Attendees, please attend the conference and bring us (Rajni in 4004) your reciepts.

  List of departmentally funded CUTC attendees this year follows...

  1. Saira Qureshi
  2. Billal Qureshi
  3. Dave MacDonald
  4. Fadi Mutlak
  5. Youssef Aboul-Naja
  6. Charles Chan
  7. Cheryl Low
  8. Farhang Farid Modjtahedi
  9. LAKSHMANAN VIVEK
  10. James McCrae
  11. Aamir Hussain
  12. Mina Matta
  In the event that any individuals above do not want to attend the conference, the following individuals will replace them in order). Of course, you can still attend the conference, you just won't get $60 from the department towards attending.
  1. Diana Wudom
  2. kozimor
  3. Jamil Ali
• Your career center is doing great things...here is another opportunity... New graduating year work opportunity for Computer Science students! Service: Graduating Students Employment Service Position Title: Programmer Analyst - New Graduate Organization: TELUS MOBILITY Deadline to Apply: Monday, December 1, 2003 Position Summary: TELUS Mobility "IT University" is an 18-month work program in which you will rotate time in various modules in two IT tracks - Information Systems Development or IT Operations. This program is designed to give you the best-on-the-job training for a career in Information Technology. Upon the completion of the program you and your mentor will choose the best area to apply your newly acquired skills. As a new member to the Information Systems Development team you will participate in e-Business application and systems design, development, testing and implementation of projects related to the support of all Business initiatives, including e-Business enablement of most functions. Sounds exciting? These are some of the cool tools we use: Web Logic, iPlanet, Borland, Corba, Message Broker, Java, C++, Perl, SQL, RDMS, Oracle, J2EE. Position Start Date: June 1, 2004. For more information, including a complete position description, qualifications and method of application, login to your Career Centre Online account at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers and view job order # 2004.GS.0205 in the GSES. Forgot your CC Online password? Drop by the Career Centre in SE3094 or call us at 905-828-5451. Adrian Berg, Events Coordinator & Webmaster Career Centre, University of Toronto at Mississauga Tel: 905-828-5477 Fax: 905-569-4315 E-Mail: aberg@utm.utoronto.ca Web: www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• Below you can find some ON-CAMPUS opportunities... Position #1: Student Technology Assistant: Website Project - UTM Library. Hiring rate: $12.00/hour. Up to 15 hrs/week from Jan 5th ^Ö Apr 30th, 2004. Closing date: November 25, 2003. Skills: Solid web skills (e.g., website design, XHTML, Dreamweaver, Javascript, and CSS); Working experience with CGI (Perl); Experience with FTP and UNIX; Working knowledge of Windows; Experience with Netscape and Internet Explorer; and, Familiarity with Oracle databases an asset. Position #2: Student Technology Assistant: Instructional Technology Support - UTM Library. Hiring rate: $10.00/hour. Up to 15 hrs/week from Jan 5th ^Ö Apr 30th, 2004. Closing date: November 25, 2003. Skills: Solid web skills (e.g., website design, XHTML, Dreamweaver, Javascript, and CSS); Experience with FTP and Unix; Working knowledge of Windows; Experience with Netscape and Internet Explorer; and, Familiarity with interactive instructional courseware/ technologies (e.g., WebCT, Flash, Camtasia, RoboDemo) an asset. GET MORE INFO, including a position summary and how to apply, via the UTM Career Centre web site at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers (login and look at job order numbers 2004.PT.1439 and 2004.PT.1440). Closing date for applications for both positions is November 25, 2003. Other part-time positions currently listed at the UTM Career Centre include: - Game Programming Instructor - REAL PROGRAMMING 4 KIDS - Programmer - PETRO-CANADA - Network Support Analyst/Graphics - COLLEGE COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS and more. Let us know if you need help registering or forgot your password! Career Centre @ UTM, SE3094 email: careers@utm.utoronto.ca tel: 905-828-5451 web: www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• Interested in security and cryptogrphy?
• UTM INTERNSHIP FAIR - WED NOV. 19, 11:00-2:00, STUDENT CENTRE Come out and learn about internship opportunities offered in Canada and overseas, including: U.S. Commercial Service I.E.Canada/Canadian Association of Importers & Exporters NRC Science & Technology Internships Florence Art Lectures (includes web design) UT Fellowship in Advancement Student Work Abroad Program and more! After the fair, stay for the Internship Panel from 2:00-3:30 in the Student Centre Boardroom. Panelists include representatives from Canada World Youth, Career Edge, UT Fellowship in Advancement and the Ontario Legislature Internship Program. Or attend the Biotech Human Resource Council Info Session from 2:00-2:30 in the SC Meeting Room. More information or sign up for the panel or information session at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/intern.html
• Whats happening in this image?
• If you are interested in tutoring a student in Python, please contact me.
• Interested in developing for the new Nokia mobile devices? Checkout www.forum.nokia.com. You can get SDKs, emulators etc and start Java development of the next killer application now. Interesting stuff, glad you learned Java eh? Let me know if you are interested in a 492 project based on this.
• Your career centre wants you to know... Career Expo, to be held at UTM on Wednesday, October 29, 11-2, Student Centre, features over 25 organizations that hire students and recent graduates for IT roles including: - BMO Financial Group - Canada Customs and Revenue Agency - Ontario Internship Program - Canadian Security Intelligence Service - RBC Financial Group & RBC Insurance - ING Canada... and many more!! Students will have the opportunity to speak one-on-one with representatives of these organizations to learn about what types of career paths are available to them upon graduation, what skills, experience and education employers are looking for, how they usually post opportunities, etc. Students in all years are encouraged to attend. More information is available at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/careerexpo.html
• Your CSAE (Computer Science Association of Erindale) is having an orientation Wednesday, October 15th, 2003 at the presentation Room, Student Center 6 p.m. You can find out more about this here. I am going.
• Your career centre is interested in you knowing about these IBM Internships. It is a good idea!!
• Some interview questions thanks to Asim.
• Here is the official PEY page at the UTM Career center
• Here is another Job Opportunity
• Take a look at my summary of the PEY information session
• Yet another job op >The Hospital for Sick Children is a pediatric academic health sciences >centre affiliated with University of Toronto. > >The Online Family Health Centre, a new initiative of The Hospital for Sick >Children, has an immediate opening for an experienced programmer to >complete a short-term, task-based contract. The successful candidate will >have advanced Java programming skills with experience in developing custom >Java exits for enterprise applications. Experience with content management >systems, in particular, Percussion Software's Rhythmyx, would be an asset. >The vendor has estimated that development of the custom exit will take >approximately 70 hours. The contract will likely require three days work >on site, but the balance of the work could be completed off site. > >E-mail applications including curricula vitae are invited from senior >students, graduate students, alumni, and faculty members. > >Please respond to: Dr. Ross Hetherington > Managing Director, The Online Family Health Centre > The Hospital for Sick Children > ross.hetherington@sickkids.ca
• The career center sent the following to me...it may be of significant interest to you... MICROSOFT - GRADUATING YEAR AND SUMMER 2004 OPPORTUNITIES Microsoft is now recruiting University of Toronto students for various Software Development positions, both full-time and summer. Information Session (St. George Campus): Tuesday, September 30, 2003, 7:00-8:00 p.m. Location: Bahen Centre, BA1190, 40 St. George Street, Toronto. For more information, register/login to the Career Centre Online at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers and view Job Order 2004.SR.0008 (summer recruitment) or Job Order 2004.GS. 0070 (Graduating Year Recruitment). Graduating but can't see the full-time jobs for graduating students? Sign up for the Graduating Students Employment Service - dates listed online at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers PEY (PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE YEAR) INFO SESSION @ UTM 12-16 month paid internships for those that have completed two or three years of their program. Don't miss their Info Session at UTM: Tuesday, Sept. 30, 12:00-1:00, Student Centre, 2nd Floor Boardroom. Sign up at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS * Federal Government Post-Secondary Recruitment Info Session - Tuesday, Sept. 23, 12-1 and 1-2, Student Centre 2nd Floor Boardroom. Sign up at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers * UTM Volunteer Fair - Wednesday, September 24, 11:00-2:00, Student Centre * Professional Schools Fair - Wednesday, October 1, 11:00-2:00, Student Centre More events, resume critique sessions and job postings at www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers
• OPPORTUNITY If you have taken CSC309 and are looking to gain some experience (put some more lines on your resume). Please contact me. I have a temporary, voluntary (no $) position for the Mississauga government. The basic project involves creating a web front end to a collection of Access databases. High level information is displayed on the initial page and (depending on the users choices) more refined information will be displayed. The technology you will be able to place on your resume includes ASP, Access, SQL, IIS.
• For UTM programs, you can use CSC369 in place of CSC468 if you wish.
• UofT has paid for you to access a hugh collection of Journals. You should take the opportunity to browse through these by going to the UofT library site. Of particular interest to us is Communications of the ACM and IEEE Computer.
• Clubs week is this week (10-4 Monday to Thursday in the student centre). You should go and check out all the interesting clubs (especially the CSAE, your computer science association).
• If you can't take csc207 (which promises to be a very interesting course), grab and read a copy of 'The Pragmatic Programmer' by Hunt and Thomas an excellent book (suggested by Prof. Craig). Better yet, do both.
• Personal Servers
• Unbelieveable UTM Student webpages
  • Gagandeep developed online timetabling software using PHP, mySQL and Javascript, take a look at it here just put in your schedule and it generates a timetable for you. Neat stuff!!
  • Take a look at what Najeeb did after csc309 (note that this is in PHP with mySQL backend, neither studied in csc309!) amazing web based application
  • Dave MacDonald
  • James McCrae
  • Mat Baptista's Ballhockey website lots of 309 stuff PHP + mySQL + CSS + javascript, all written from scratch
  • Kirill's site
  • Hoa helped to create the Department of Italian Studies Website from his email to me about it... There's lots of php, mysql, css, javascript. Even though you never taught us php but 309 was a big help enabling me to explore stuff like php.
• What some of you are doing now!!
  • Shadid is now a Lecturer at Brac University. He passed on other offers to secure this position. Apparently the interview experience was quite intense (3 different interviews, including presentations etc.). He aced them all (as I expected!) and impressed them with his GoBlue project. In fact he obtained this position over some stiff graduate level competition. Congrats Shadid!
  • Maroquine is using her csc320 experience developing medical imaging software. She will be Assisting in the design of imaging studies Developing new Imaging software tools Analyze functional and structural brain imaging data Stay tuned for a sample of her work...
  • Andres was working overseas, but is now back contracting with Petro Canada
  • Matt is one of the Canadian IT leads for DuCharme, Mc Millian and Associates
  • Radek caught up with me in the following note...(quite a character)... Hi everybody: as most of you know, I played more than my fair share of poker in the past year or so. Despite making thousands at it, I got interested in poker writing even more. My submission for the upcoming volume "Poker and Philosophy" was narrowly rejected even though the chief editor loved it.... (Ahhh.... my first rejection slip... I was pissed only for couple of days.) The good news is that I got hired as a columnist for ITH, one of fastest growing poker communities in the world, run by Matt Hilger (poker pro and author, finished 30th at last year's WSOP for a cool 80k payday). My first article is up. See http://www.internettexasholdem.com/. I write and post under the name "Bohemian". Other news: teacher's college is almost over (there IS a god!). Can't wait. Heading to Miami Beach for two weeks after that, and then maybe to Vegas in June to play in event #5 in the World Series of Poker ($1500 US buy-in). Should be a great summer. To those of you who don't keep in touch: how are you? What's happening? Hope all is well at your end, R.
  • Saira sends the following update... Hi Prof. Arnold I thought you might know students who would be interested. I've been meaning to send an update on how things are on the job front but things have been quite hectic on this end. I'm currently working at Millenium Research Group (http://www.mrg.net) as an IT Analyst. Mostly designing and administering databases (MSSQL, MySQL, Access), creating statistical online surveys (PHP, JS, etc.), website development and having to create tools in VB and C# to work around Microsoft. I also did some in house application development in C# using .NET tools and just recently completed and deployed a web-based, php application for managing contact information within the company. Hope everything is going well at Erindale. regards, Saira
  • Barnaby, Daniel and Zubair will all be going to grad school next year all got into UofT for MSc, Zubair additionally applied to and was accepted into Stanford, decisions, decisions!!
  • Sobia got hired at Charon Systems which is a division of Bell Canada. She is working on citrix.
  • Chris took an extended contract position at www.unislumin.com doing C#, ASP.net and crystal reports development he will return next year to finish his BSc.
  • Ricky finished his MSc at Queens had offers from Yahoo.com but decided to develop Java applications at WorkBrain
  • Patrick was offered a fulltime position at Microsoft at the same time he was offered a PEY position at RedHat.
  • Cheryl is working at the CIBC, she is already involved in a large (nationwide scope) project as a database analyst.
  • Earl is now working at BCE in IT.
  • Last year Andre was working at Petro Canada writing .net (web based) applications
  • Francisco was once again admitted to teachers college. This time he decided he would take them up on the offer. Some of you can already credit Francisco with teaching you 343 and 350 last year.
  • Timon is now working at OpenText under C++
  • Cameron also got a PEY placement. He will be working at IntelliGauge doing C++ development. Here is the job description and consequently what the employer thought of Cameron... Here is the job description: We have challenging work using the latest development tools. You can participate in all phases of the software development cycle. Our current development environment include: C/C++, C#, .NET, Visual Basic, ASP, SQL/SQL Server, Windows NT, UML notation, distributed and relational object modeling techniques. ******************************************* You must have an in-depth understanding of at least ONE of our development environment, and you should: be self-motivated and able to manage your time with minimum supervision, have strong technical and analytical abilities, be team oriented, have good oral and written communication skills. Cameron says the following about the interview... The interview was mainly composed of C++ technical questions (about 90% technical, 10% HR related questions.) I found the knowledge I gained from reading 'Effective C++' (ISBN: 0201924889) was a big help. They were also very interested in my past TA experience as well as the last assignment we had in 309.
  • Billal is graduating and is very happy to be headed to CGI
  • Vivek had to choose between RedHat, ATI and a company that does circuit layout (NP complete stuff). He chose RedHat and will be part of the team working on an open source implementation of Java.
  • Farah, Atif, Caroline and ... (oh now I forgot her name!!, I am getting old!) have been accepted into teachers college.
  • Adrian B. (and a bunch of others (Zubair,...)) just got PEY appointments. Adrian says 309 was the key! Some more about PEY...(from a letter from one of you)... Zubair -- DB2 Kernel Dev -- IBM (Operating System Services team) Adrian -- IT Specialist -- IBM Daniel -- QA Specialist -- CyberMation Dave -- Software Dev(J2EE etc) -- WorkBrain Neeraj -- Software Dev -- HoneyWell These are the ppl I know from erindale and there is still second and third round, still to go. Overall for the jobs that I applied for useful courses/skills were: C/C++ CSC 343 (e.g. Nomralization/Anomalies JOINS etc) CSC 350 (e.g. determining number of bits for int on a system, using C , no sizeof allowed etc) CSC 309 (e.g Synchronization,threads etc) CSC 209 (Unix system calls) CSC 369 (OS concepts) Problem Solving skills, very helfpul overall, infact one of them asked me how do you approach problems and ofcourse your problem solving section was to the rescue!
  • Ramy and Lawerence are Working at Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd as IT Analysts
    • Working on a rollout project for XP
    • Providing support for end users
    • debugging vb scripts
  • Atif and Adrian and Zain took advantage of PEY last year (2002) and went to RIM, IBM and Epson (respectively). Along with the work experience, the full time job offers, the money, they say that it is a good way to figure out if this is what you really want to do with your life. Finally, just the interview skills you gain from the PEY interview process is worth the $40. Some of the experience they gained included:
    • Programming
    • Testing
    • Communication/Soft skills
    • Project management, reports
    • UML, Design
    • Research
  • Mohammad is finishing off his degree and working for Forensics building some web based applications using PHP, Oracle and dealing with some security issues.
  • Charles is working on completing his BSc as well as working on Bioinformatics in a StGeorge lab. He is working on mySql, perl, VB and understanding the human genome and genetics.
  • Edward landed a 3 month Systems Analysis contract with Rogers. The position is convertible to a full time position. He credits 340 and 343 for giving him the proper background for the job.
  • Farah is teaching computer science at Georgian college (starting off with three courses first term!!).
  • Jun completed a very successful 492 project in parallel computing (with me). He now uses his knowledge of network programming/309 at OUK. This Japan based company writes code at all levels (hardware, device drivers, up to front end web based applications) and Jun has been working at all levels and is currently working on embedded systems using IrDA.
  • Mike is working for Fourth Wall Media (an interactive ad agency). He is doing backend db/php work for tracking ad campaigns.
  • Tasso has been contracted to produce a website (front and backend) for the Ontario Association of Mathematics Educators
  • Omair is continuing with Ontario Power Generation
  • Phillips and George are both software developers at IBM under PEY
  • Caroline is persuing the Early Teacher Program and is loving it, she is now teaching Computer Science at a local high school.
  • Ricky and Radek got into grad school
  • Ali and Nelson got into grad sdchool
  • Elga and Francisco were admitted to Teachers college
  • Sobia worked at Alias for a summer job
  • Sadia is a programmer/analyst for the finance dept at NYGH. One project recently had her writing an Access application for use in the Stones/SARS Toronto conference. Previously, she did a Palm pilot contract for UTM and an Access contract for a hospital.
  • Enrico runs a thriving tutoring business and is looking at teaching at Seneca
  • Guna is working on a voice over IP application (for contract) and running some websites (123lance.com)
  • Andrew is working for 3dna.net (3d desktop)
  • Laurence is working as a developer at Intelliware (J2EE applications)
  • Moeed is now working for TAPE educational services (and says the pay is good!!), he is customizing a Learning Content Management System. Previously he was working for Sociology producing web based applications as well as maintaining key servers at UTM and will now be doing more contracting for them.
• You can read about disks in the ACMQueue.
• IMPORTANT StGeorge has in place a mechanism for reserving space in their Comp Sci courses for UTM Comp Sci students. There are now spots in 'lots' of StGeorge upper year Comp Sci courses available for you.

  One of your colleagues recently got into ece385 but not csc378 at StGeorge, he is still trying and was told to speak with the undergraduate office if he has not been admitted by Sept 17. Please keep me up to date on problems getting into StGeorge courses.

• Congrats!!

  For those of you that graduated a few days ago. I am sorry that I missed the graduation (thanks Edward, Sobia and Sadia for reminding me about what I missed) You all know that I take great pride in what you have accomplished. Missing your graduation was missing my graduation. I have gotten to know many of you and realize now that I won't have you knocking on my door every couple of days. I am really going to miss that.

  I know that you are all now in a position to take hold of your lives (I have posted some of your accomplishments below (please send me more updates)).

  Most of you are now starting to realise that the trials that I put you through in my classes were actually worthwhile. You have everything to be confident about, make sure that you enjoy life.

  Because I like standing in front of you and talking, here is some of my famous words of wisdom:

  • Those that are happiest, know what they have. Make sure that you enjoy what you have, believe me, people get older, things happen. If you don't believe me, go visit your grandmother and remember, she was once your age and also wasn't going to get older.
  • If you do something something happens, if you do nothing, nothing happens. Get out, take opportunities (because of the things they will lead to and the things you can't even see them leading to).
  • Enjoy your work. I do and it makes all the difference.
  • Turn off that voice in your head that yells doubts and insults at you. It does not help.
  • Don't give up on your ideals.
  • Listen to your intuition, it sometimes can tell you a lot about a situation even though you can't back up it's conclusions with solid reasons.
  • You can understand anything you want. Use this power to your advantage, think and understand.
  • To Understand: Know what you know, know what you don't, know how to cover the difference and then cover it.
• You can find the genetic code for the virus related to SARS here. To understand what this means, you may want to pick up The cartoon guide to genetics
• If you are planning on taking 238 or 364 in the near future and are interested in some practise exercises and discussion, please contact me. I already have a group of students working on this.
• The utm cs web page, with more content to come.
• You can find a really good tutorial on relativity linked here
• You can read about my PhD supervisor in Time magazine (Steve Cook, see him in csc364 or csc438 on StGeorge). He received the Turing award for his work on NP (csc364 is his course).
• You can read about Charlie Rackoff's work in this paper. He was a co-originator of the important concepts of "interactive proofs" and "zero-knowledge proofs", for which he co-won the 1993 Godel Prize. He was also on my PhD committee.
• In general, it is interesting to take a look at the famous people in our (UTM, StGeorge and Scarborough) department.
• CS HELP Center
• Consider attending the CUTC conference in 2004.
• Consider reading slashdot.org
• You may want to join a project at sourceforge
• Things I would like (given time) to see happen at UTM.
• UofT and Programming Contests (tryouts etc)
• ACM Programming Contest Problems
• ACM Programming Contest
• Computer Science Education
  • If you are a UTM student interested in teaching CS/Math (ie in highschool) I am interested in hearing from you. Please send me or Jeremy Sills (sills@utm.toronto.edu) an email.
• Problem Solving in Computer Science
  • Important (to me): Give me some feedback! If you attended these sessions, please send some feedback (to arnold@cs.toronto.edu). I am interested in the usefullness of the sessions, how you used it, if it worked for you, topics you would like covered for upcomming sessions.
  • Answers to questions such as 'Should I attend?, What's the point?' appear here
  • Sessions
    1. There is something to Understand Friday Sept 27 1-2 in SE2072 (NOTES)
    2. How to write a program, solving a problem using software Friday October 11 1-2 and 2-3 in SE2074. NOTES)
• Technology Sessions
  • Held if there is sufficient interest and participation Please suggest topics you would like to see as well as topics you can present.
  • What is Linux
  • How do I program a palm pilot
  • How do I program a blackberry pager
  • How do I write code for Gameboy Advance
  • What is Visual Basic
  • What is .NET
  • What is MSAccess
  • What is Direct X 9.0/OpenGL

Courses

• CSC492 Projects (consider taking one of these)
• CSC347 Fall 2008
• CSC343 Fall 2008
• CSC148 Spring 2009
• CSC290 Spring 2009
• CSC309 Spring 2009

Misc

• Current Satellite Images
• Weather forecast

Mailing Address