Category Archives: Classes

Link: https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalsounddesign

Taken: Spring 2013

Rating: 8/10 If you’re into sound and weird professors, this is your bag

Summary: The first few weeks of the class were about what sound/music is and how do humans perceive it. The technical level of detail made it feel like sounds were something that could actually be designed and figured out like an engineering problem. That discussion soon devolved into file formats and granular synthesis which were amusingly interesting, but not enough to hold my attention.

What I learned

1. Frequency response of the Human ear
2. Overtones

Link: https://class.coursera.org/hci-2012-002

Taken: Fall 2012

Rating: 7/10

Summary: Although I barely audited this class, the one lesson I picked up was far too valuable to get forgotten

What I learned

1. Prototype everything – use paper, smartphone video, fake responses, whatever it takes to get a real person to experience your product

Link: https://novoed.com/scaling-up-your-venture-without-screwing-up

Taken: Fall 2014

Rating: 5/10 2014’s start-up buzzwords, fresh outta Stanford

Summary: Like all popular business books, this course (directly based on the book by the instructors) contains a few nuggets that make you mutter ‘hmm’ to yourself and teaches you the vocab you’ll need to interact with MBAs for the next few years. The real value lies in the case studies and interviews. Each lecture has a section of interviews in which real people talk about how the lecture content applied to their businesses. These are extremely hit or miss. Unfortunately you’ll have to sit through all the misses to find the sections that will make you feel like you didn’t entirely waste your time.

What I learned

1. Management is necessary
2. Teams should be capped at 4-5 people
3. Ben Horowitz played football in high school

Link: https://class.coursera.org/startup-001

Taken: Summer 2013

Rating: 10/10 Would recommend, Have recommended, The recommendee took it and his life was changed (not a joke)

Summary: Best course ever. Hunker down, commit yourself to it and you will learn useful things guaranteed. The instructor took me from zero to roll-your-own crowd-funding site in a matter of 3 months. It was accessible, engaging and confirmed my suspicions that the software fueling internet start-ups is ever-changing and I shouldn’t try to keep up. But, most importantly, I learned that I can learn to internet if I need to. And if I have a problem that isn’t answered on StackOverflow, give up.

What I learned

1. Emacs
2. Javascript
3. Node.js
4. AWS
5. Heroku
6. Bitcoin

This class should be pretty awesome, but I think my hapkit ‘paddle’ is not perfectly circular so I’m getting all kinds of nasty friction when I push the ‘paddle’. I’m currently stalled with no clear path to picking this thing back up. If I get copious amounts of free time in the future I’ll put it all together and try printing out another piece, but until then it was worth a try.