Peter J. Kootsookos

Peter J. Kootsookos

Need to do FUN STUFF! Oz/Irish/US engineer, currently living in the USA. Married, one dog 🐶, one cat 🙀, two kids, and three passports.

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Pages

Posts

Vegan Cookies

2 minute read

Published:

Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

Open exams and brackets

5 minute read

Published:

Recently, I was told by a senior academic that I should ensure that only about 25% to 30% of the students in my class should be awarded a grade of A, that 40% to 50% are awarded a B, and that the remainder should be C and below. This started me wondering: what is the right proportion per grade? And, once we decide that, how does a teacher achieve it?

Why is writing hard?

3 minute read

Published:

I’ve been trying to write each weekday morning this year. Things started off well, but now I’m finding it hard to find the time to write and even harder to find the topics to write about.

Starting projects

3 minute read

Published:

This semester, I’ve been taking the Capstone I students at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) through their paces.

Embrace cancel culture

3 minute read

Published:

Cancel culture is getting many headlines recently, so I thought I’d add my two cents worth to the discussion.

Meat loaf

1 minute read

Published:

I started with this recipe, but wanted to use fresh green leafy vegetables instead of the dried ones. I also wanted to give it a bit more bite, so I added some fresh green chiles.

Gray areas

3 minute read

Published:

I was struck by the similar topic areas in two different and disparate podcasts that I listen to.

Teaching Java and C++

2 minute read

Published:

The Data Structures course I’m teaching this semester is using both Java and C++ as the language of instruction. The students have more experience in Java than in C++.

Following instructions

3 minute read

Published:

One of my recent programming assignments in my Data Structures course included these instructions for an assignment.

Scaling applications

5 minute read

Published:

Cloud services make creating new, scalable applications very easy, at a cost.

COVID testing

4 minute read

Published:

COVID-19 is still running rampant through the United States, at higher levels than in the initial peak. So why am I OK with going back to in-person teaching?

Coding style

2 minute read

Published:

Coding style is a matter of taste.

Cybersecurity 101

3 minute read

Published:

An administrator of a large organization that I do some work for recently sent an email trying to find someone who’d made an inappropriate purchase. The email was CC-ed to over 190 people. So I thought I’d write today about some simple things that you can do with respect to email.

Analyzing queues

5 minute read

Published:

During my Data Structures class we are soon to look at the FIFO: a queue. So I thought it might be fun to look at some queuing theory, not the data structures but how queues are modeled.

Meat pies

1 minute read

Published:

Ryan Mason’s meat pies… modulo @kootsoop

Divide and conquer

4 minute read

Published:

Donald Knuth, is a professor emeritus at Stanford University in Computer Science. In text, he wrote one of the most influential series of books called The Art of Computer Programming. While he was writing those books, he discovered typography and text layout and wrote TeX, the “word processing” system that many computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers use for their writings — though I, like many others, use a simplified version of it called LaTeX.

Not a job

3 minute read

Published:

My previous post What I like in a job came to the conclusion that I like working remotely, I like working with people, and I like building stuff. Having given it a little more thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that What I like in a job is the wrong way to phrase it. It should be What I like in my professional life.

Groundhog Day

2 minute read

Published:

Today, February 2nd is Groundhog Day. Today, Punxsutawney Phil came out and saw his shadow, meaning that there will be another six weeks of snow.

What I like in a job

5 minute read

Published:

In my professional career, I’ve had many different jobs. I’ve worked as a lecturer (professor) in several different universities (ANU, UQ, UNewHaven, CCSU, Fairfield) in two different countries (Australian and the United States). I’ve worked in one large multinational corporation (UTC), as well as several start-ups (Mitec, MVT, emuse, Noster). In the non-profit space, I’ve been, until recently, an active volunteer with the IEEE. I’ve held the position of Secretary of three different geographical Sections: ACT, Queensland, and Connecticut. I’ve even held the position of Chair of the Connecticut IEEE Section.

Capstone projects

2 minute read

Published:

Capstone projects are a project that senior students (final year students) take on to showcase the skills they’ve learnt in their degree. Sometimes this is called Senior Design Project.

In-class exercises

3 minute read

Published:

Yesterday, I had my first class (times three sections) of the data structures course I’m teaching this semester at Fairfield. The class didn’t talk much about data structures, as it was mostly background and process related things. I like to spend some in-class time (“synchronous” time) going through part of the class syllabus, so that the students at least see it once.

Using GitHub Classroom

5 minute read

Published:

There is always a tension in academia, particularly in computer science, between teaching the theory and teaching the practice. Theoretical computer science is largely mathematical; practical computer science… isn’t.

MathJax?

less than 1 minute read

Published:

[a^2 = b^2 + c^2]

Oral exams

9 minute read

Published:

Yesterday’s post was about how my teaching has changed since the pandemic hit. One big thing that I’ve left out of it is my approach to midterm and final exams.

Changed my teaching

5 minute read

Published:

Today is January 13th, which makes it ten months since that Friday the 13th in March, 2020 when all the West Hartford Public Schools went online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19

2 minute read

Published:

COVID-19 Plot

Next Steps In Programming

3 minute read

Published:

What to do next?

These are some notes about exploring more advanced programming for those who have started programming and looking for more to explore. They assume that you’ve already learnt a programming language, have written one or two of your own programs and are wanting to know what to do next. This list is not ordered. Feel free to ignore any and all of it. It’s aimed to be a “recipe” book for what to do next i in programming.

Take A Number: First Use

1 minute read

Published:

Take A Number seemed to work pretty well in the lab on Saturday, the first time I’ve used it where I think it needs to be used.

Take A Number : First Cut

6 minute read

Published:

My first cut at Take A Number is now “complete” : as far as I can tell, it does what I wanted it to do. This post runs through some of the implementation details, and checks to see what else might need to happen to make this workable.

Take A Number: Requirements / OOA

2 minute read

Published:

During the lab classes I teach, I find it hard to give my attention equally to all student groups.

Cheat… ethically!

1 minute read

Published:

Apart from simple application to the tasks at hand, one of the prime problems I see in teaching students is their preconceived ideas about how things should be. This means, before they get to learn, they have to unlearn their previous ways of thinking.

portfolio

publications

talks

teaching

Signal Processing Courses @ New Haven

Undergraduate course, University of New Haven, EE, 2012

  • EE 6634 Digital Signal Processing I: Fundamental concepts and applications digital signal processing. (S14)

  • EE 635 Digital Signal Processing II: Introduction to adaptive filters. (F11, F12)

  • EE 649 Wireless Communications: Fundamental concepts and applications in wireless communications. (S13)

  • EE 670 Special Topics: Taught a digital signal processing lab using the TMS320 chips. (S12)

  • EE 653/CS 665 Digital Image Processing: Fundamental concepts and applications in image processing. (W12)

SW0400/0300/0201 Software Engineering Methods

Undergraduate course, Fairfield University, Software Engineering, 2017

Use of UML to capture software requirements and perform software design. SW0400 is the postgraduate variant. SW0201 was renumbered SW0300 the next time I taught this. (SP17,SP19)

SW0416 Mobile Application Development

Undergraduate course, Fairfield University, Software Engineering, 2017

Development of mobile applications using the cross-platform tool Xamarin from Microsoft. (SP18,SP20)

SW0421 Software Project Management

Undergraduate course, Fairfield University, Software Engineering, 2017

Tools and techniques for estimating, planning, and executing software projects from a project management viewpoint. Traditional waterfall and agile methodologies are taught, with an emphasis on traditional methodologies. (F17,F18,F19)

CET236 Circuit Analysis

Undergraduate course, Central Connecticut State University, Computer Electronics & Graphics Technology, 2017

Teaching introductory circuit analysis for DC and AC circuits. Ohm’s law, mesh analysis, nodal analysis, superposition, maximum power transfer, Thevenin equivalents, Norton equivalents, phasors, steady state, and transient analysis. (F17,S18,F18,S19,SM19,F19,S20)

CET497 Capstone I

Undergraduate course, Central Connecticut State University, CEGT, 2019

Working with Senior students to do the capstone / senior project. This is the first of two courses to do this. (S19,S20)

CET497 Capstone II

Undergraduate course, Central Connecticut State University, CEGT, 2019

Working with Senior students to do the capstone / senior project. This is the second of two courses to do this. (F19,F20)