Course Newsgroup:
The course newsgroup is uw.cs.cs486. Feel free to post questions there, especially those whose answers will be of general interest to the class. For instructions on how to read and post to a newsgroup, check out the FAQ maintained by MFCF.
Matlab:
If you decide to do the programming parts of the assignments in Matlab, the IST group maintains a nice set of online references for Matlab including a tutorial.