First, it’s important to know what classes I need to take to graduate, and to create a list. When I was earlier in my degree, it was also important to consider which classes were prerequisites to which. The College of Computing has a handy list on their website. First, the core requirements are always good to have a look at; if you can knock out any of those, they’ll count if you switch majors, threads, et cetera. I always like to take at least one core req each semester if I can.

The next step in compiling your list of potentials depends on which path you’re on. If you’re on the “old system” (pre-threads) then go here to see the relevant “course plan.” If you are on threads, a study plan for your combination of threads is available here. For examining threads, I find their description pages to be relatively useful.

Now that you’ve got a list of potential classes (and for those of you on the old system, I recommend glancing at a couple threads – you may be closer to graduation that you realize), write it out simply. For example, I have this in a text file:

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS
MATH 3215 – Prob/stat
LCC 3401 – Technical writing
CS 4980 Research Project or CS 4911 Studio Project
—
OLD SYSTEM
CS 2200 – Assembly/C
CS 3510 – Algorithms
CS 3240 – Languages and Computation
—
PEOPLE THREAD
PSYC2015 – Research Methods and Practices
PSYC2210 – Social Psychology
CS3790 – Introduction to Cognitive Science
+ electives?
—
THEORY THREAD
CS3510 – Algorithms
MATH4032 – Combinatorial Analysis
CS3240 Languages and Computation OR CS4510 Automata and Complexity Theory
MATH4640 Numerical Analysis OR MATH4305 Topics in Linear Algebra
+ electives?

You know how many hours you’d like to take in a semester, so now that I’ve compiled this list, you now have to pare it down to what you’d like to take this semester. Obviously, the core requirements are more important, so I’ll add all of those to my priority list. Algorithms is in both the old system and the Theory thread, so it’s probably important as well. To round out my list of potentials, I’ll toss in CS 3240 (Languages and Computation), CS3790 (Intro to Cognitive Science), and PSYC2210 (Social Psychology) as they might fill in my schedule better than some of the core classes may. At this point you should also consult the prerequisite chart as it may limit what you can take. A class higher up the prereq food chain should be taken earlier on to broaden your options later in your degree.

My short list is now the following:

PROPOSED FALL SCHEDULE
MATH 3215 OR MATH/ISYE/CE 3770 – Prob/stat
LCC 3401 – Technical writing
CS 3510 – Algorithms
CS 4980 Research Project or CS 4911 Studio Project
OTHER POSSIBLE CLASSES
CS 3240 – Languages and Computation
CS3790 – Introduction to Cognitive Science
PSYC2210 – Social Psychology

At this point I like to fire up my favorite calendar application; I am most experienced with MS Outlook and Google Calendar, although I am sure others will work just as well. I like to go to OSCAR and look up all of the available times for each of the classes on my list and put them all on a calendar. I find using different colors important; in Google, this means using multiple calendars, and in Outlook this simply means changing the category for the event.

It is also at this time that you may wish to compile a list of available professors and ask around to your friends/mentors/advisors about them. They may not know, or they may have strong opinions on a professor. You should also check SGA Course Critique for class GPAs and feedback. Be especially cautious of classes with low GPAs (obviously) and high drop rates (not as obvious). It’s also helpful to Google the professor to find their website. Also be wary of the course feedback if the number of respondents is significantly less than number of students that took the class. Be concerned if they don’t have one, and be concerned if it’s difficult to read or hasn’t been updated since 1994.

So, I’ll show you how my calendar is doing; by the way, Fall 2009 starts on Monday, August 17, 2009.

It’s pretty crowded, but I can easily see some ways to weed it down. First, the different colors let me pick out which blocks belong to which classes. I really want to take algorithms, so I’ll copy that to my main calendar (Google) or change the color to my “normal” calendar color (Outlook). Next I had a certain statistics professor recommended to me, so I’ll copy his block to my main calendar and hide all the other ones of that class by hiding that Google calendar. Using this process of elimination, I arrive at a fairly good schedule for me:

I don’t actually intend to take all of those classes, though. It is always nice to have a few backups handy in case one of the classes you intend to take fills up before your time ticket begins. Once you’re satisfied with your list, look up each of the CRN numbers so that as soon as your time ticket opens, you can register for all of these classes at once.

If you want to skip past the part where I talk about the Christmas list, and get straight to installing your wiki, click here or scroll down to the “Installation” section.

In Defense of a Wiki

I’m rather familiar with the workings of a wiki from an editor’s perspective, which is probably why I thought of this idea. Also, I’ve seen a couple instances of people using wikis rather well in the workplace and at home. True, these are very nerdy people sharing these wikis with other nerdy people. I wanted to share my wiki with people who didn’t necessarily have computing knowledge.

A major feature I wanted was the ability for multiple relatives to collaborate on the list itself. That way, you can “give” one list to as many relatives as you want, and they could “claim” an item. At this point, if you want to edit your own wish list, you have to get someone else to change it for you. That’s not a problem for me, I can just get Hillary to fix it. A template-based solution might let you change the page without going back to it, but I didn’t try anything that complex because I wanted it extremely useable.

A List for Santa

The template I used for a Christmas list is here; sub in the recipient’s name for (name) and the correct pronoun for (him/her); or see it in action here:

This is a '''list of the items (name) wants for Christmas'''.
__NOTOC__
==Instructions==
If you decide to buy (him/her) an item, please '''mark it as claimed''':
#'''Click the [edit] link''' to the right of the item
#Change "No" to "Yes."
#Click save

===Notes===
*'''Claiming is anonymous.'''
*(name) will not look at this page (honor system)
*Please don't make changes to the page unless you are claiming/unclaiming or fixing a link.
*Priority is on a 1 to 10 scale.

==Items==
===Sample Item===
*Price: $99.99
*Link: [http://www.amazon.com/sample_item/ Sample Item]
*Priority: 6
*Claimed: No

Automagically hiding the TOC (thanks to the keyword __NOTOC__ was a personal choice. You might choose to link to another gift list (say, an Amazon wishlist), or simply integrate those items into this list.

Installation

Note that the rest of this article applies to wikis in general, and applies no matter what you’ll be using your wiki for.

Installing MediaWiki, the software in question, is extremely easy. It goes something like this, assuming you already have a webserver with php and mysql installed:

1. Download MediaWiki.
2. Unzip MediaWiki.
3. Put MediaWiki in a publically-accessible folder.
4. Open index.php in a browser.
5. Answer a few simple questions (wiki name, etc).
6. Enjoy.

That’s it. You don’t touch a scrap of html, php, or mysql to get your wiki running. For a slightly more detailed page on installing it under XAMPP and Windows, see here; for XAMPP and linux, see here; otherwise, see the offical installation help page. Also, Resonant has a fairly good installation and configuration guide.

Initial Configuration

Configuring a wiki is more difficult than installing it, depending on what you want to do with your wiki. The default installation is, given the nature of wikis, open for anyone to edit. The default installation doesn’t allow file uploads, and doesn’t have any of the useful templates and categories that I, for one, am used to using. The first step to configuring your wiki is to follow the prompt at the end of the installation and copy wiki\config\LocalSettings.php to wiki\LocalSettings.php. That file is what you will edit to change major settings of your wiki. You’ll probably want to replace the image in the top-left; either replace wiki/common/images/wiki.png with a better image, or change LocalSettings.php so that $wgLogo equals the address of your preferred image.

User Rights

I decided that I didn’t need all of the pages accessible to users. In fact, the only pages they needed to see were the pages I sent them. If you go to my wiki, you’ll discover that:

• You can’t do anything.
• You can’t even register
• This is fucking boring.

This is because I added the following code to my LocalSettings.php:

# Pages anonymous (not-logged-in) users may see
$wgWhitelistRead = array( "Special:Userlogin", "-", "MediaWiki:Monobook.css", "User:127.0.0.1" );
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;

Obviously, I also add the Christmas lists I’m hosting to the whitelist. Thus, users only use the pages they were meant to. That’s what I call secure. If you really want to play with a page on my wiki, you can read and/or edit this sample list. Georgia Tech students know George rather well. Perhaps they’d like to get him something?

However, these preferences aren’t for everybody. For a more in-depth approach to user permissions, see MediaWiki Manual:Preventing Access, or if your question isn’t answered there, try the MediaWiki FAQ or the section of Resonant’s guide. If you haven’t already figured it out, the more technical stuff is buried in a thousand pages spread across the internet.

Images

To enable image uploads, set the following in LocalSettings.php:

$wgEnableUploads = true;

To enable uploads of other than the default types, add the following to LocalSettings.php with your preferred set of types:

$wgFileExtensions = array( 'png', 'gif', 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'pdf', 'tif', 'tiff', 'svg' );

For more on image uploads, see Meta:Uploading Files. For more on SVG, see Meta:SVG image support. Unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to get ImageMagick to run, so I can’t advise you on that. Theoretically, I could upload an SVG image to my wiki and have it work just fine. But nooo…

Interwiki Links

If you don’t feel like creating a page for every general concept, then you can use InterWiki internal links. There are two types of InterWiki links: ones that serve to show the user that a version of that page exists in another wiki (perhaps a different language), and ones that send the user to a certain page on a different wiki. Use one while expecting the other, and you will be greatly dissapointed. The interwiki links that MediaWiki installs with are the first type; we want the second type. If you try to use the first type as the second type, MediaWiki just eats the text. You’d never know anything was there. So, off to install our own. Doing this was my first foray into mysql. So, since my copy of mysql isn’t in the PATH, I had to navigate to it to do this. However, depending on your installation, you may be able to just use it and not worry about that.

1. From the shell, enter: mysql -u root -p and type in the MySQL root password when prompted.
2. (optional) For a list of available databases, enter SHOW databases;
3. Enter USE wikidb; (where wikidb is the name of your wiki’s database)
4. (optional) For a list of available tables inside of wikidb, enter SHOW tables; (the one we’ll be dealing with is named “interwiki”)
5. Enter the following, assuming you want [[w:Wikipedia]] to point to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:

   REPLACE INTO interwiki (iw_prefix,iw_url,iw_local) VALUES
   ('w','http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1',1);

6. A complete listing of the interwiki links can be seen by entering SELECT * FROM interwiki; (although be warned, the list is rather long. You may have to increase the screen buffer size to see all of them. To do so, right click the title bar, click properties; it’s the second box under the layout tab.)
7. You can quit mysql by entering exit or quit.

That was fun, wasn’t it?

Conclusion

Hopefully, I’ve helped someone get a Wii, or at least, something they want. Let me know if you end up using this idea!