Outside Interests Can Help Your Computer Science Career

Outside Interests Can Help Your Computer Science Career

This is something that I learned in one of my introduction Computer Science classes, and something that I've especially seen throughout my schooling career. Many classes such as my Senior Project and Android development class allow students to create ideas and implement them. Here's some examples:

1. ARora (Augmented Reality Optical Assistant): This is part of my Senior Project. One of our team members, Taylor, loves reading old classic books. The challenge is that they're written in Old English, and he constantly has to look up words in the dictionary. So we're developing an application that allows you to view the book through your phone's camera, and tap on the word on your phone's screen to bring up the dictionary definition.

Example of ARora

2. ARiT (Augmented Reality Image Translator): Also part of my Senior Project. Matt, loves learning languages. In fact he got a BA degree in Arabic Studies. He remembered how hard it was when learning the language to carry a dictionary everywhere he went, and how hard it was to learn everything that was around him. This app allows a user to point their phone at an object, tap on the phone screen, and the app will tell the user what the object is in their chosen language.

3. Hiking App: One of the ideas for my Senior Project was to create a hiking app that showed trails, and would allow you to navigate without cell reception. We have some avid hikers and lovers of the outdoors in my group.

4. Restaurant Manager: A classmate of mine worked at a restaurant part-time, trying to pay their way through college. They came up with a cool software idea that would help staff know what tables were filled and how close to capacity the restaurant was.

5. Music: I love music. It seems that I'm drawn to project that incorporate music. I've created a Music-Based Authentication System, a Midi Musical Search Engine, and I've written various songs for games I've written for class.

Here's the latest song that I've written for JengaAR:

Quarter Note Triplet vs. 16th Note Music Pattern

Introduction

While recording at the studio this week, I was discussing with the producers about two common drum patterns, that people often get mixed up. It's a very subtle difference, but they challenged me to go home and to look at it more thoroughly, so I did. I created each drum pattern in MIDI and compared them.  I also wrote out the beat in sheet music to help me see the difference. In this article, I included an mp3 track of 4 measures of each drum pattern so you can listen to the difference.

1. 16th Note Music Pattern

Notice that each of the notes are eighth notes, and are aligned on a 16th note grid. Very simple beat.

2.  Quarter Note Triplet Pattern

The most interesting part of this is the kick drum in the first two beats, so I cut out the last two beats. Notice that the grid is locked on triplets.

3. Comparison of Beats on a 16th Note Grid

So I lay the two on each tracks next to each other to compare them. Lo and behold, they're different.

The top beat in green is the triplet quarter notes. Notice how the notes don't line up at all on the 16th note grid? The 16th note pattern is in red.

4. Comparison of Beats on a Triplet Grid

This is similar to the graphic above, except this is on a triplet grid. Surprisingly, the red 16th note pattern lines up within the lines.

5. Sheet Music Notation Comparison

I used TuxGuitar guitar tab notation to write this sheet music. It allows me to tab drum beats.

6. Conclusion

I love music and since I've started college, I haven't had many opportunities to nerd out and analyze small music details like this. I wanted to document what I learned, and specifically share this with my band, because one of our songs has a beat like this. We've been guilty of playing both of the beats in the same run through of the song. So hopefully this will help us pick one, and stick with it. I personally like the 16th note pattern better. I feel like it's heavier.