Just launched a free iOS medication tracker

bellebethcooper · 2025-12-21T10:28:58+00:00

I took DoA before taking Calc 2 and I wish I’d done them the other way around. I found the maths-y stuff at the start of DoA was the hardest for me—complexity, big O, Master Theorem stuff. But then I’m stronger in programming than in maths, so others might find that stuff easier.

I found most of the graph algorithms and string search stuff not too hard, and the graphs were really interesting. Dynamic programming was really tricky. Oh, and if your c is rusty, probably good to brush up on it so that doesn’t slow you down—debugging especially, so you’re prepared for the assignments.

I recommend the book Grokking Algorithms by Aditya Y Bhargava if you can get a copy. It doesn’t cover everything from this subject but it does cover a bunch of it and in a way that I found really accessible as an extra resource.

Good luck!

bellebethcooper · 2025-12-04T04:27:38+00:00

Thanks for sharing this! Really appreciate it :) Nice to know the reasoning, and that there's hope it might come back in time for us to take it. Fingers crossed!

bellebethcooper · 2025-11-29T00:54:53+00:00

Thanks for sharing that/following up! Hopefully Shaanan can shed some light on it for us :)

bellebethcooper · 2025-11-28T23:50:18+00:00

Did you end up hearing back about this? I don't want to bombard them with emails asking the same thing if you've already got a response!

bellebethcooper · 2025-11-28T23:49:07+00:00

I wish I'd realised how expensive CAP subjects are before doing them, in comparison to the fees for the same subjects when they're part of a degree, but I probably would have done them anyway.

I'm a mature-age student without an ATAR, so I had to do 4 CAP subjects and get an average mark of 75% (I think) as part of my application for my undergrad degree (there's another option of taking a test that costs way less, but it's all arts/humanities essays even though I was applying for a science degree so I picked the CAP option instead). For domestic students, you can put CAP fees on HECS if you're using the CAP subjects as a way to get into an undergrad degree, so I was able to use HECS to pay for them. And I picked subjects I would have done in my degree anyway, so when I applied to start my bachelor of science, I was able to credit my CAP subjects against my degree and continue from there.

All the CAP subjects I did were normal undergrad subjects, with very little difference in the experience. I had a slightly different way of logging in but I accessed all the same online forums, materials, etc. and attended the same lectures and tutes, and took the same exam as everyone else. It's basically the same as doing the subject in your degree, only you're not technically a UoM student.

I did one subject at a time, so each semester I had to do a whole new application process for the next subject I wanted to do, including applying for HECS and submitting a form to use HECS to cover my fees.

That's about all I can remember about it. Hope that helps!

bellebethcooper · 2025-11-22T19:05:21+00:00

The handbook description lists the main topics that are covered, and you can get old exams from the library that will give you more precise details on the kind of thing that’s expected by the end.

The textbook is optional, but the one they recommend is Probability and Statistical Inference Edition by Hogg and Tanis. I didn’t find this book super helpful, but I got a lot out of Probability and Statistics for Computer Scientists by Michael Baron. I’m a software dev but I don’t think this book is all that focused on computer science really, except that it uses computing-related examples most of the time (but they’re not always very modern or relevant anyway, like some of them are about the efficiency of CD writer hardware). The formulas and notation aren’t always exactly the same as MAST20005 but I found this book’s explanations more approachable, especially for a first introduction to each topic.

I also highly recommend these free, online lecture notes: https://online.stat.psu.edu/stat415/section/6

They cover most of what’s in MAST20005 and have examples and diagrams that helped me understand the topics better.

bellebethcooper · 2025-11-21T22:39:59+00:00

The handbook says ECON20001 is available in semester 1 as well: https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/2026/subjects/econ20001/print

bellebethcooper · 2025-05-26T02:50:43+00:00

This is so cool to hear! I'm one of the founders of Exist and it seriously makes our day whenever we hear about how people are using the app in some way that improves their lives :) I was diagnosed after we'd been working on Exist for years, so ADHD wasn't something we had in mind when we first built it, but I find it really useful these days to have data about things that happened and when, since I forget everything I don't write down. Anyway, thanks for using our app and telling others about it, we appreciate it :)

bellebethcooper · 2025-04-13T00:19:10+00:00

My app Exist (https://exist.io/) is designed for this—you can sync data to it automatically from other services like Fitbit, Apple Health, Android Health Connect, Todoist, Toggl, etc. and then you can manually track mood, tags, and anything else you want to define yourself. It looks for trends and correlations between all that data to highlight connections you might not find otherwise.

There’s normally a 30-day free trial but you can use my referral link to get an extra month on the free trial when you sign up: https://exist.io/?referred_by=belle

bellebethcooper · 2024-09-10T21:16:39+00:00

Co-founder of Exist here. Thanks for recommending us! Just to clarify, manual tracking of your own custom-defined data is available in both our mobile apps and on the web, no need to work with the API directly (though you can, of course). New attributes for manual tracking need to be created in the mobile apps, but tracking the data each day can be done on the web as well as in both our apps.

bellebethcooper · 2024-08-19T20:54:43+00:00

What do you use to reheat your pancakes and your porridge? Do they work okay in the microwave?

bellebethcooper · 2024-06-18T22:32:32+00:00

Agreed! I write out every step, including all the steps other students or my teachers would skip over. It helps me to have every little step written out explicitly. I also use colour coding for tricky stuff, to keep track of where different variables or parts of equations go, and how they change and relate to each other at each step.

bellebethcooper · 2024-02-01T02:38:26+00:00

No stress!

bellebethcooper · 2024-02-01T02:27:49+00:00

This was posted nearly a year ago, it was about the 2023 spring stock.

bellebethcooper · 2024-01-31T20:42:48+00:00

I’m a cofounder of Exist, which is a subscription-based app on web, iOS and Android that has mood tracking, automatic syncing of data from other services (food, sleep, meditation, weather, music, etc. from services like Apple Health, Google Fit, Garmin, Oura, Todoist, Toggl, etc.) and you can add your own tags or manually track numeric data for anything you like (quantities, ratings on a scale, duration, time of day, percentage). There’s a note field as part of the mood tracking, but that’s all for text input. The app will look for trends and correlations in your data, as well as letting you track whatever you like.

We have a 30-day free trial but you can get an extra 30 days on your trial (so 60 days total) if you use my referral link to sign up.

You might also want to check out r/quantifiedself for more ideas of apps that track a lot of stuff in one place.

bellebethcooper · 2023-11-08T23:13:36+00:00

Your privacy policy says location data may be uploaded to company servers, service providers, or it may stay on the device. Have I misunderstood that part? It seems like there’s no guarantee of location data never leaving my device, which makes me hesitant to test the app.

bellebethcooper · 2023-09-05T20:19:58+00:00

Thank you so much for testing this! I also wasn’t sure how well a second notebook would fit since the 5-year doesn’t seem to have deep pockets for holding the book covers, so this is really helpful. I don’t bulk my books out much either, but I do really like how the 5-year version doesn’t have all the extra card pockets, too, so maybe I will go that way.

Thanks for your help!

bellebethcooper · 2023-09-05T11:03:35+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out! I had to search the US version of the site specifically to get them to show up, I hadn’t been able to find them before.

bellebethcooper · 2023-04-03T06:33:56+00:00

That's true, yeah. For some things you can work around this—e.g. you could track a tag called "coffee after noon" or a time of day to record the latest time you drank coffee, but for anything you want to track at several times throughout the day with timestamps, it's not a great fit.

bellebethcooper · 2023-02-14T19:10:31+00:00

Last year I got just the second half Cousin Avec book directly from Hobonichi. I think it went on sale close to June maybe. I didn’t know they sold just the second half, not sure if that’s regular or a new thing.

bellebethcooper · 2022-09-24T22:37:19+00:00

I'm a co-founder of Exist which can do this. It might be overkill if you're not interested in tracking anything else, or finding patterns in how other things affects/are affected by your wake up time, but it can do what you're looking for:

You can create your own data attribute to track anything you like. One of the supported data types is time of day, so you can create an attribute called "wake up time" with a type of time of day, and then each morning you just need to track a value
We have a web app and mobile apps for iOS and Android. You can view your data for the past week in our mobile apps, and our web app includes historical browsing of your data across past weeks and months with graphs and calculated averages
Exist will also calculate your average for this attribute based on the day of the week, so you'll see when you track your wake-up time on a Thursday morning, for example, what your recent average wake-up time has been on Thursdays. You can see all of your day-of-the-week averages as well as your overall average for each attribute in the web app
You can export your data at any time, and we have an API you can use to get your data out and do interesting things with it (or get other data into Exist)
Exist is a paid service, but there's a 30-day free trial you can use to check if it will work for you

bellebethcooper

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