I've decided to restructure a bit. I spent quite a bit of time in the library today looking for a suitable textbook on Databases (in preparation for the seminar I'm taking next semester) and not really finding one. As it turns out, though, the third volume in Knuth's Masterwork is on sorting and searching, which is relevant. So I'm going to set as a new goal to have volume three finished by the end of the break (January 8). And I'll take the other two more slowly after that. The preface says that it's mostly stand-alone, so there shouldn't be a problem reading the volumes out of order.



I won't set a specific reading schedule - just say "by January 8." In the meantime, I'll read 20pp. a day of Dr. Purdom's book to keep in shape for is advanced class instead. The only course page I could find for his advanced class was from 1999. Assuming he hasn't changed much since then (and that's a very safe assumption I'm sure...), the textbook will be the same book we used in the intro course. I guess we'll just finish chapters 6, 7 and 8. We covered the first five chapters in the intro course.





 

OK, well, obviously I didn't meet my stated goals on this blog! So I'm going to have to start over. I do want to read Knuth's Masterwork, but I think the pace I set for myself last time is simply too much. So here's how I'll do it this time. I'll try to have the first book finished by mid-January - which means reading at just over 10 pages a day. The second book I'd like to finish by the end of February, and I want to be done with all three by the end of the semester. I'm taking Advanced Algorithms, so this will work out nicely for that course. And at 10-15 pages a day, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to stick to it this time. It's a realistic goal, but it still requires some discipline to do the reading every day.

I'm taking a much-deserved end-of-semester break through tomorrow (actually, I have to drive to Indy and gather some information on a programming project, so I will be doing SOME work tomorrow!). When that ends on Monday, I'll take up posting to this blog daily. Stay tuned!