Coursera and MOOCs

Today I'll be posting a short review about Coursera.org, an online learning platform which is offering a wide variety of MOOCs (which stands for massive open online course) by teachers of some of the most prestigious universities around the world. There are currently 429 courses to choose from (most of them in English), and the number keeps rapidly growing. And they are all completely free! I won't go into any further details, you better see it for yourself. Take advantage of this huge opportunity!

whoami

As the natural born procrastinator I am, this blog is one of those projects I've been eternally postponing, so as a part of a self improvement plan I'm trying to follow, I've finally decided to start. After feeling numb and sleepy during the whole day, I've just been struck with an astonishing motivation and inspiration wave, which will probably keep me up until too late. So, like my friend Dexter used to say (Michael C. Hall's voice in my head)... Tonight's the night...

Nobody needs to worry anyway, I'm just starting a blog, I'm not even remotely considering to become a serial killer...

Since I'm not a native English speaker and even though I'd like to consider myself quite good at it (I was about to say proficient, but it sounds like too much), if you happen to find mistakes of any sort in any of the blog entries, I will actually appreciate any comment pointing them out. I consider making mistakes one of the most powerful ways to learn. I tend to mix American and British spellings, usually on purpose, but I guess that doesn't count. My native language is Spanish by the way.

All this introduction is just in case anyone bothers to read this first entry, but these will be the three main purposes of this blog:

1 - Given it's name, you can guess I'll focus on posting science (mainly computer science) and technology related material, sometimes as articles written by myself, sometimes as information digests from other sources.

2 - Improve my writing, since I've just come to realize that even though over 90% of everything I read or watch everyday is in English, this is an area of my learning process that I've never cared too much about, or at least haven't exercised enough.

3 - Serve as some sort of journal to keep track of what I'm doing.

I might also include some other topics like:

- Music and music theory.

- Sound theory and music production.

- Vehicles and engines.

Why these topics? Well, I shall now honor the title of this post and tell something else about me. I'm a computer science student (systems analysis actually). I'm a self taught musician with notions of harmony, orchestration and counterpoint. I play electric guitar and I slam a MIDI keyboard once in a while. I use to listen to metal (mainly technical death metal to be more specific), classical music and jazz, but I also like many other different genres, including some electronic stuff. A couple of years ago I took a two years sound engineering course, so I'm also an occasional music producer. Finally, for some unknown reason I'm a massive petrolhead (AKA car enthusiast) since I was a teenager, maybe because of the influence of some videogames like the Need for Speed saga, so I might even post something related to sports cars, engines, etc.