The Day of the Books
Yay, books! We’re at our grandparents house at the moment, and this morning we went out for a walk along the canal. Along the way we stopped off in Carnforth, and went in the café, as is compulsory with Granje & Grandad. Grandad and me then went into an amazing second-hand bookshop (well, 2nd hand upstairs anyway), of a first and second floor, that is advertised as containing over one-hundred thousand books! It was very nice inside with lots of little rooms and corridors stuffed full of books in every available place. However, the fantasy section was a dissapointment – we had to ask to find it because there was a whole section of the place that we had totally missed out, and when we did found only two TSR DnD novels, and both Dragonlance, which I’m not interested in. This was a shame because I was looking for some Forgotten Realms books because I thought that that would be the place to fine them; obviously not.
Thisafternoon while Annie & Granje did homework and baking we went to Lancaster University’s library. I couldn’t believe the trust given to visitors – one can just walk straight in with no cards or checks what so ever. At my mother’s university library, you need an ID card to get through the front door, which is an interesting comparison. Although the campus, which was basically a self-contained town (more on that later) was not very nice on the outside, the interior of the library was well-lit and furnished with a brilliant selection. My grandfather went off to religion and philosophy, while I moved to computing where I began to search several books on BASIC to find programming exercises to practice on my calculator.
My grandfather commented on the fact that the university hadn’t done much for the city because it was so remote and out of touch with what was going on. Student accomodation was being thrown up all over the place, and as such many of the learners don’t have to leave the campus at all. This means that it isn’t really Lancaster University at all, and I agree that this is a serious disadvantage that can’t really be resolved at this stage. The university only has one campus, by the way, and we drove round it before leaving to discover the sheer size!
I’m having quite a bit of trouble with this programming. I’m trying to produce prime numbers in the simplest code possible, using this pseudoformula; can you help?
If int(I/L1(J))*L1(J) Then Prime
Can’t help you with your formula code, but…
Student residences (dorms) are common at most US universities. The administrations of these schools feel that living on campus promotes more academic and social interaction among students, adding to both their learning and development as people.
My own university only allowed a small number of students to live off-campus, and you had to have a very good reason to do so – ie. you were married, or had kids, or had a health problem, etc.
I think living where you go to school is a good thing. Some of the best “learning experiences” I had took place outside the classroom – discussions about literature over lunch or dinner in the dining halls, midnight philosophy sessions in dorm rooms, that sort of thing. It forces you to take your learning out of the classroom and into your life. That doesn’t happen if all the students leave campus when classes end.
Not to mention the fact that you don’t have a chance to create close friendships with fellow students if you only see them during classtime. By living with them, sharing meals, and socializing with them, you get to know them so much better. The best part of my university education were the friendships I made during those 4 years – friendships that have lasted for 28 years (and counting….).
I would choose a residential university over the alternative any day.
Incidentally, the brit term for what laurie calls a residential uni is ‘Campus university’ – I must say I never found them as attractive as the ones with accommodation actually among other people in the outside world – my feeling was that a campus made you a little too insular. I find looking out over Fulham Road really restores my sense of perspective, so I stand by my position. OTOH, I do have 3 othe people on my course down my corridor, so I do get quite a lot of the ‘out of classroom into life’ thingy. And admittedly, I’m not the most social of people (this is partly influenced because I don’t actually enjoy getting drunk all that much, which is the IC social default), but I get my social circle from my societies.
However, I have a friend who goes to a campus uni (Warwick) and she absoutely loves it, and says it’s great.
I’d comment on your pseudocode, if it made any sense to me. What does it do?
Oh, and cool sounding bookshop.
word veri: swrqbrpz
Kvetch wrote:
I must say I never found them as attractive as the ones with accommodation actually among other people in the outside world – my feeling was that a campus made you a little too insular.
If there’s no interaction between the campus and the town, it would be too insular. My school and the local village board go to great lengths to provide both students and townspeople with contact points – the college has a tutoring center for the village kids, and a Big Brother/Big Sister mentoring program, all campus events (sports, special lectures, theater, movies, etc.) are open to the public, campus facilities can be used for village events, the only daycare center for miles around is on campus and staffed by student volunteers (with appropriately qualified supervisors). Many students get part-time jobs at the village shops and restaurants, go to church services in town or volunteer with the fire department and ambulance crews.
This isn’t the case at all schools – my school and the village were founded at about the same time (village: 1805 – school: 1812) and grew up together. Because both the village and school are small (3000 village residents, 1600 students), they rely on each other in ways larger schools and cities wouldn’t.
And just to show Kvetch that the IC “social default” isn’t unique, the most popular school/village contact points were/are …… The V.T. (Village Tavern), and Don’s Rok (a snarky pub). This, even though we had a perfectly fine pub right on campus……
It’s certainly not the same in the UK, laurie. Although the first years generally get accomodation, after that they are forced to move out into residences across the city/town. This is what I was really getting at, because all the new houses can’t have just been for the first years because there were too many of them (buildings). I think that a good balance of togetherness and community-esque (?) is good; most student houses near where I live have about seven people in but they can be on totally different courses I think. I’m assuming that they decide who to go with during the first year.
Kvetch, the code is supposed to check if a number is prime:
i = number being checked
j = position in L1 previous being checked (eg {2 3 5 7 11 13} is the L1, divide it by the previous to find)
if int(i/L1(j))*L1(j) == L1(j)
THEN i is prime
Got the forumula out of a book in the uni lib.
I’ve been trying to copy it onto qbasic in order to use the debugging system to weed out the problem.
I see – it is a version of Erastothenes’ Sieve.
You need to check that condition for EVERY entry in the list, not just the last one (as I think your code might be doing). Post a copy of the real code you are using.
Unfortunately, it is checking every condition – j cycles through the list in a nested loop.
test comment