Weeks 6 Fall 2011 
26sep11



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\maketitle

\section{Monday}
\subsection{Use the sign-in book.}
Please put the date, your name, and time (either in or out) into the 
red 3-ring folder near the phone, when you visit the lab after hours. 
This device not only indicates lab usage to the Department but helps
in securing the lab. If you find anything amiss, call or email me. 
\subsection{Census}
Please fill in and edit the census filecard. I have added new questions
on the Subversion, and on Aszgard. It's hard to keep track of where everybody
is, and this does help.   


\subsection{texPad deconstruction of some code}
Use it, it's useful. Above is an example of what I mean by 

\textit{Deconstruct some code  and reconstruct in mathematical notatation.}

When you use texPad to prepare such a short piece, be sure to save the
code in the  left window  for reuse because
texPad does not save anything. You can use a simple bitmap editor to 
doctor the output into 
Heart of Sinwheel .
\subsection{texWins}
I hope the texWins session was helpful. You'll need LaTeX for your final
report. No harm to give it a try now with something short but mathematical,
time permitting. For instance, you have all the the pieces for reproducing the
document titled "Heart of Sinewheel" in the texPad exercise could be 
assembled into a LaTeX document now.
\subsection{Winaid and the mvc98 compiler} 
The winaid.zip package contains the mvc98 compiler. This is useful if 
you wish to compile OpenGL code on PC and don't already use a compiler
with OpenGL libraries attached to it. Ask questions on qa.math is probably
quicker than me trying to anticipate them with lengthy instructions. [You 
must be getting tired of instructions.]
\subsection{Python Tutorial for novice programmers}
The Tuesday 3pm tutorial is on this week.
\subsection{Aszgard Tutorial for advanced programmers} 
I'll keep answering questions as they arise. I expect to be at ISL
on Thursday this week. If you have something to test in the Cube, put it
into the repo. Even if you can't be there, I can try it out in the Cube
and let you know how it works.
\section{Wednesday}
\subsection{The OpenGL Geometry Pipeline}
This is a general lesson and demo on how OpenGL works, and why it is
interesting from a mathematical as well as graphical viewpoint. This is
the first of 4 or 5 such lessons, probably one per week. It's the heart
of the course. Everybody can get something out of these. I'll give an 
outline and references.
\subsection{The Zipper}
We have a problem for which there is only an awkward solution. As we 
noticed on Monday, no known browser is willing to download an entire 
folder of files from a website, you have to downlod  each one separately. 
This perversity is probably some misguided security issue, or more likely,
a commercial hedge against downloading entire websites. But for some 
students, downloading is not an easy operation, and downloading is an
unwelcome distraction. 

The obvious solution for this is for me to .zip up desirable
 directories (aka folders) which you can then download. This procedure
is slightly complicated in that folders under version control contain
files that can corrupt your versioned folders. So such directories must
first be purified of such contaminants before being zipped up. In the
newly created folder named "zipper", there are such bundles for the 
programs Stan Blank uses in his notes. There will be more as needed.
There are also files ending in .toc (for table of contents) rather
than in .zip (which are compressed archives). The .toc files just tell
you what's in the .zip files. They are useful for finding stuff.
They also guarantee the purity of the .zip files. If the .toc shows
names with ".svn" the .zip archive is not pure and has to be handled
with care. You can always examine a .zip file with the unix command
" unzip -l foo.zip > foo.toc ". Then foo.toc will show the names
of files in foo.zip. 

On a PC you can use a cmd shell for this which was 
"prepared" by winaid. Or you can use a shell prepared by Aszgard.
There are probably GUIs that do the same thing.  

\section{Friday}
Your miniproject is due (or, at least, a very substantial part of it!)
Details will accumulate. The code desconstruction (Monday) is possible
for everybody to complete at some appropriate level.

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