jmdeldin

I found Lindsay I. Smith's "A tutorial on Principal Components Analysis" [1] really useful because it covers the mathematics behind PCA but gives enough linear algebra background for it to be understandable by those with distant or weak math backgrounds (e.g., me).

[1] http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc453/student_tutorials/principa...

This might be the first case of biomimicry on the front page :). This was one of the entries in our 2011 Biomimicry Student Design Challenge [1]. It's pretty exciting to see how far they've taken it from concept to funding [2] in a short amount of time.

[1] http://2011.biomimicrydesignchallenge.com/gallery (#38 -- 5 rows from bottom in center)

[2] http://ben.biomimicry.net/uni/2012/biomimicry-design-wins-bo...

I had something similar happen with Wells Fargo. Logged in and saw someone else's name, Florida purchases (I'm in Montana), along with a different account number, statement history, etc.

Naturally, I recorded this with Quicktime and then called WF. Their response: "It's not a big deal -- neither accounts can withdraw money." After repeatedly explaining how serious this is for identity theft, I was told to wait 10 days. Their solution was to shutdown my online account without notice. If no one can login, then it's safe!

It took over a month to get this resolved, and once I could download my statements, I "cancelled" my account. WF is like Hotel California though -- a year and many phone calls later, my accounts still aren't closed.

Why do you need to learn it in a week, especially at such a superficial level?

If you just want to learn the basics, it's pretty simple. You just need a compiler, a text editor, and some semi-decent reference.

Compiler: If you're on Windows, you'll probably want Visual Studio Express. Otherwise, you just need gcc.

Text editor: There are plenty of open source ones. Google for one available on your platform.

What to study: It's a fairly easy language to read if you're familiar with other curly languages like Java or PHP, especially if you're ignoring most of the standard library and OOP. See if your library has C++ Primer (Lippman) or any O'Reilly C++ books, or pick up one from this list (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-b...). Then just work through the first few chapters, solving each question/example. Otherwise, Googling "C++ tutorial" will help, but you might not get a complete answer.

This seems more cumbersome than opening AppleScript Editor, writing the following, and saving the script as an app.

  do shell script "my script"

Despite being an obnoxious language, AppleScript is pretty handy for distributing shell scripts onto non-technical users' machines.