cgcurl's blog

Ok, my preconceptions of CSIT 1110 were quite negative. I didn’t believe that this entry level class could possibly provide me with anything I did not already know. This attitude is largely attributed to my professional experiences in the U.S. Army  where I was a satellite communications technician. My 6 year job was playing with satellites what could I possibly learn from such a basic, entry level course. Was I wrong.

I have learned more from this course than any other non-military course that I have ever taken in my life.  This is largely attributed to Dr. Brown’s unique teaching style. He really takes this subject passionately and one can tell that the education of his students is a major priority of his. I loved all the hands on projects that we had this semester. I also liked how Dr. Brown would get us started on the project and would offer help but largely let us figure out our problems on our own. This allowed me to learn with a hands on/ trial and error way.  Dr. Brown takes his class seriously and definitely requires his students to take it seriously. Nothing pisses me off more than people showing up late, talking in class, and playing on their phone. I guess it’s the military in me but I just want to reach over and smash them in the back of the head and tell them to get the hell out. That’s what we did in the Army. Luckily, Dr. Brown does not tolerate this bull### behavior in his class.

Leaving this class I have many new aspirations. I want to be a programmer. I want to be one of the best technology professionals in the field. To list all that I have learned would basically be listing everything covered during the course. Basically I learned a lot from every section. To conclude: I thoroughly enjoyed this class. I respect Dr. Brown very much and I hope that I have the privilege to take another course with him in the future.

It all started in the parking lot of a Wal-mart. The year was 1990 and I was 6. We had just finished shopping for groceries and were unloading the car. When dad told me it was time for a shot, needle type. I immediately went into a state of panic and began my attempt at negotiating my way out of the unpleasant event which entailed a lot of screaming and crying. My dad pointed at a brown paper bag and told me that his shot kit was inside and asked me to pull it out of the bag. I reached in half expecting a hyperdermic needle to stab me in the arm and grasped what oddly enough seemed to be a large, realatively heavy carboard box and I pulled it out. To my supprise it was a NES. My tears quickly dried I yelled in utter amazement and feverously helped my parent load the rest of the groceries into the car so I could get home as soon as possible and unleash the technological marvel that was the nentendo entertainment system. And so I was infected. I played the NES until my controllers were worn and the dust cover fell off of the console and two years later I got the Super nentendo then the sega genesis shortly after then the n64, Game boy and the PS1 the PS2, xbox, game cube, 360, wii, ds, psp and finally the Ps3. Game consoles and the virtual worlds they present have pretty much always been a large part of my life. Video games have their place in most of my childhood memories. Some say this is a bad thing that gaming has taken up such a large part of my life. And in certain situations I would say that I agree like when I would sacrifice my study time for game time. However, overall I would not trade these experiences for the world they have taken a major part in shaping me as a person. They have help my problem solving skills. They acted as a free babysitter at times for my parents. And they have even help a young Garrett and his little brother get through complicated family issues like divorce and parental arguments. Mario kart and 007 were much more interesting than listening to my parents dumb ass problems. So, for me and my life I can only reflect possitively on videogames and can proudly say that I am a Gamer.

So are we on the verge of creating our replacements? I think maybe.  If More’s law continues it’s historically proven trend then the technological advancements in 20 years will be 10 times more powerful than what we currently have. This will produce some very interesting machines. Machines that could rival or surpass their makers own cognitive abilities. Hopefully they do not decide that we are obsolete as is always shown in Hollywood. Having terminators walking the streets will not make for a very comfortable living situation. I propose that as we design these killer robots we also design killer robot drugs that the robots can get addicted to and we will control the supply. that way we will never become obsolete. We just need to keep the recipe a secret. We also need to install emergency shut off switches on their backs. Also if we initially program the robots to love human television shows then they will need us around to create these shows for their entertainment. These safety measures should be taken seriously because they could be what keeps us alive.

I am simply amazed at the current robotic technologies. We have created robots for basically every task. Our surgeons, military, warehouses are just a few areas were one will find robots being used. As technology progresses following Moore’s law in the near future we will begin to see a vastly larger presence of robots in our day to day life. We will begin to see home maintenance robots that will conduct basic cleaning and repairs. We may even have robot drivers bringing our children to school and walking our dogs. These tasks are not all that outlandish. Using GPS tracking and downloadable mapping systems that personal driver bots could analyze best possible routes and would have a real time connection to any possible roadway obstructions. As we fast forward I believe  the line that separates humans from robots will begin to vanish. We may replace certain parts of our biological anatomy for manufactured parts that are more efficient durable and most importantly replaceable/upgradable. If this trend continues at what point to we say that we effective created a new life form. Will we replace certain parts of the human brain to enable quicker learning and better more enhances perception.  Will we be able to download our memories and thoughts into a secondary storage unit to preserve our consciousness in case our physical body gets destroyed. I dont know but I think that it would be pretty freaking cool. One thing is for sure: the future holds some weird shit.

Hacking is something that I have always wanted to do. I like the idea of exploiting a system in order to get it to do something different than it was originally intended for. One hack I figured out was accessing an unsecured wireless router. Basically find a network that is not running any type of security and add your computer to it. This will give you internet access. Now find out the type of router that is being used on the network. Once that is done find out the gateway ip address by typing “ipconfig  /all” in the cmd prompt. Take this ip and enter it into the web browser. You should be at the login screen of the router. It will ask you for Username and pass. Normally if a person is not using any type of security  they will definitely not know how to access their router and change their user and pass. If this is the case then you can do a google search for the manual of the wireless router which will have listed the default user/pass. This is usually username-user  password-”nothing”. Now you have access to the router. I actually set up mac filter for one of my neighbors without them knowing, including my mac on the list of course.

Alice is a great program. I have not mastered it yet but have experiment and have a rough idea of what I want my movie to be about. A couple ideas have crossed my mind:

1)      I was thinking about doing a scene from Steven King’s A Dark Tower, a great series.

2)      Possibly a scene from A Clockwork Orange, other than 2001 Kubrick’s second masterpiece. ( was going to do 2001 but Dr. Brown stole my thunder)

This is what I’m mulling over now but my ideas are likely to change. I have found some pretty cool resources on Youtube.com I just searched for Alice videos and was amazed with what some people have been able to accomplish. Also, there are some video tutorials. I have not gone through then yet but plan to do so this weekend.

Off topic:

I had a nightmare with this blog last week. I usually like to wait until Sunday to complete my blogs so I have something to talk about. This has proved to be a very risky strategy to take considering that Sundays are apparently the unannounced day for site maintenance. That’s what I’m going to call it at least. So last Friday I wrote the blog then had to email to myself on d2l. I waited until Sunday, at 1000 pm, to decide to post then I found that the blog site was down. After waiting a while I decided to try again. Upon accessing the site I attempted to login. NO ACCESS. Apparently when you get those messages about changing your password they are very serious because you cannot reset your own pass the admins have to do for you and guess what? No one works on Sunday at 11pm. I’m not one for excuses which is not the purpose of the blog. Look at it as a warning to not procrastinate and change your freaking password when they tell you to!

I have learned a lot about the whole process of creating a web page and making it available online. I have never done this before and the overall experience has been eye opening. I was shocked at how much time can go into a page with such little yield. I spent about 3+ hours on mine and only accomplished little more than the requirements of the assignment. Color, links, text, organization, that’s about it. Makes me wonder about how much time is required to create a more complex site. I would like to eventually expand on the new knowledge but I do not think that it will develop into a passion. My passion has already been established. However, the overall experience has granted me insight into the attention to detail required for creating a page.

Now off topic. I am a self described music nut and every once in a while I will find a band/album which I have never heard before that completely consumes me. Mastodon’s Crack the Sky falls into this category. I have literally been listening to this album for like the last 2 weeks. Surprisingly, it has not worn out yet. Also, I just finished the first book from Steven King’s Dark Tower series. The series is very interesting and I thoroughly enjoy how King takes his time with painting the environments and situations. I would describe the series as being a mixture of The Lord of the Rings, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and a splash of Star Wars. I recommend it to anyone into fantasy.

This is actually my first introduction to HTML. I never thought that it would be so simple. I guess I always thought that HTML would be a complicated web page developing language that only after months and months of intense study would one master its complexities and be able to produce a simple page; boys was I wrong.

 After this weeks classes I relized that it is just a textual way to organize information on a page. Any more than that and one must delve into more complicated development tools like Java. I appreciate the reason Dr Brown gave us explaining why he has chosen to teach written HTML when one can simply just generate a page through different web developing applications. If an individual strives to master web development then they must start with the basics of html tagging.  

Now on to create my page.

The Pseudo Computer was a very interesting assignment. Initially, I was having trouble fully understanding the programming methods. Then I got drunk. Something about mixing alcohol with homework does wonders for me.  Not only does it boost my confidence in that particular subject but it also makes me want to share my findings with the world; hence my discussion board posting. Overall it really helped me to visualize how programs are processed. Maybe I should try my alcohol method next week during my public speaking class.

Now off topic a little bit. For a while now I have been preparing for the Comp Tia A+ technician certification. It is part of my overall goal of A+, N+ and CCENT by this next summer. Then I will move on to more certs next year. One thing I have found slightly annoying about my college experience thus far is the fact that I am taking A+ computer software but day one of the class we were told that if we planned on getting the A+ cert to not think that the class would prepare us for the test. So why call the class A+ Software and not Introduction to Software? I think that if the instructor’s were required to prepare the students for the A+ cert then it would be a worthwhile class. And why not make the certification part of the course? The course load would be heavy however, the class would be worthwhile. Oh yea, for those of you who are also preparing for A+ I found an amazing free preparation resource. This guy has made like 20+ hours of free videos where he teaches everything needed to know for the A+ and N+ Certs.

www.professormesse.com

Well, I am going to build a computer and not just any computer a super powerful one.  This is going to be an interesting venture. From the first step I am going to approach this assignment with the mindset that I have an unlimited budget and my focus will be in developing a freaking awesome gaming machine. I want this to be a beast, with overclocking capabilities, DDR3 primary storage, liquid cooling, and next to bottomless secondary storage. So to begin I will scour the galaxy then the internet for top of the line, state of the art components.

And thus the list begins:

1)      So to begin I will choose a main board:

ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131352

There are many reasons why I chose this motherboard I’ll list a few because I posted the link.

-          6×240 pin DDR3 primary storage slots

-          3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Expansion slots

-          Tweaking friendly

$359.00

2)       Next up CPU selection:

Intel Core i7 940 Nehalem

http://www.orbitmicro.com/global/bx80601940-p-9643.html?ref=base

-          Quad Core

-          2.933 GHz Operating Freq

$652.63

3)      And now keep things cool:

Zalman CNPS 9700

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118020

-          Seems to be pretty good according to Maximum PC

$58.95

4)      Primary storage is next:

Corsair Dominator-GT 6GB 3×2GB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145269&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Memory+(Desktop+Memory)-_-Corsair+(XMS+Series)-_-20145269

$222.00

5)      Now I am going to assemble the mobo, CPU and the heatsink because of the ease of assembly exterior to the case.

6)      Case Selection

ABS Canyon 695

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811215012

-          Looks cool

-          Designed for the perfect thermal solution

$499.99

7)      Insert assembled mobo into awesome case.

8)      Now onto secondary storage:

Western Digital Velociraptor

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322&cm_re=western_digital_velociraptor-_-22-136-322-_-Product

-          10000 rpm

$229.99

Seagate Baracuda

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

-          1.5TB Plenty for media storage and backup

$119.99

9)      Optical drive

Blueray Player

Lite on Black

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827248014

$199.99

10)    Install all drives into case

11)   Connect front panel connectors

12)   Install Power Supply Unit

ADS Tagan BZ Series BZ1300

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817814011

$500.00

13)   Install GPU

2x eVGA Geforce GTX 295

http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/EVGA_eVGA_GeForce_GTX_295/017P31291AR/10293971/froogle/

$1104.00

14)   Hook up power cables

15)   Put case together and install OS

That took a lot longer than I initially expected. I referenced to several online gaming computer forums and to the “How to build a computer” videos located in the course content. Also note that I did not include input devices I’ll leave that up to the builder’s discretion.  Oh, and I decided against liquid cooling it looks really cool but I have no experience installing a system like that and because this was a build for me I decided against it. In the likely event that I hook it up incorrectly I would have a liquid time bomb sitting in the middle of my super expensive machine. This was fun but I do wish it was not for pretend.

Garrett…   Out…