My Blog

I want to take this chance to kind of reflect and let you see how I have grown as a person “I think anyway”.

Week one: I was very nervous, scared and did not really know what to do.  My first blog entry was very short.  I am 43 years old, it had been 25 years since I was in school.  I am a very shy person, so it took me along time to warm up to the idea of talking out loud in class, talking to other students, and I was scared to death of talking to Dr. Brown.

Week two: a little longer blog entry.  I think this is when I started at least talking to few people that I had more than one class with.  I still wasn’t talking out loud much in class.  I definetly was still not talking to Dr. Brown much.  I knew about the 1′s and 0′s (binary), but I didn’t know how to convert them.  This was interesting because I always wondered how it worked.  Even though we didn’t do a whole lot with it, at least I know the basics.  That is always good, unless you never become a master of any skill.

Week 3:  Greatest week ever….. Something I had already done several times.  At one time I had built 5 computers for different people in my family.  I really enjoyed doing it too, some of them were before plug-in-play,  I had to set dip switches on the mother board to make the different hardware to work.  I didn’t care for this part very much.  But anyway, as you could tell my blog entry for this week was of pretty good size.  It was something I loved.

Week 4: I don’t really think I was feeling very well this week.  My blog entry was very short again.  The assembly language simulator seemed familiar.  I don’t really know why, unless it was the key words useed.

Week 6: my brother tried to get me interesteed in networks, but I just never could get interested in it.  I was really scared of trying to create a web page. I know mine was very generic, but it wasn’t to hard though.  I think I might eventually create a web page of my own.  I have really been wanting to start a business and I was thinking of having it partially web-based.

Week 7: this week we were talking about databases.  I didn’t really care for this week,  I took two years of data processing were we worked with databases, I would get so bored when we were working with them I would fall asleep in class and hit my head on the computer.  This was a very boring subject for me.  The side discussions were very good though, talking about facebook.

Week 8: this week was about programming. this is something I am very interested in.  I just don’t know if I am going to be a programmer, I am thinking more about being an analyzer instead of a programmer.  I love to trouble-shoot I love a challenge were I have to find the problem with something.

Week 9: I really don’t worry too much about security, I probably should, but it just seems to me like some people are just exploiting peoples fears about security, to make money.  I trust in God to take care of me and watch over all the things even on line.

Week 11: we worked with trying to program robots to do something.  This was an okay week, I finally got the finch robot to dance to a midi file.  I tried to put a video of it here on my blog, but it said it was too big and I never could figure out how to post it.

Week 12: Artificial intelligence, is it going to be terminator or Data from Star Trek?  I think everyone knows it is advancing, the big question on everyones mind I think is “is it going to be good and help us” or “is it going to be bad and destroy us”.

Week 13: This week we were talking about virtual reality.  I do think eventually we will have virtual worlds we can actually go into and not be able to tell that it is not real.

Week 14: we were playing aroud with trying to create our own virtual world and people or what ever this week and last week on the computer using Alice, Greenfoot, or Unity.  I wasn’t very good at any of them, but I tried.  Some of the guys in class I think were doing a lot better at it.  My friend Marci who was just auditing the class decided not to even try it.  It is not my cup of tea.

All in all I think I have enjoyed most of the class.  I have more enjoyed the discussions more than the projects.  I would recommend the class to anyone who wanted to learn bits and pieces about how a computer came about and the different hardware and everthing else to do with computers.

Thanks Dr. Brown for a great class.

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I don’t think I could ever create any virtual reality type games.  I might could be a designer, because I think I have quite a few good ideas for story lines and actions.  I absolutely love anything that has a good storyline and action adventure.  I felt kind of lost though playing around with Alice and Greenfoot.  I even tried to do something in Unity.  Unity was way beyond me.  Greenfoot, I don’t think I have enough experience with java yet to do anything with it.  In Alice a created a little scene of Eygpt;  there was a pyramid and a mummy comes out of it and starts chasing the Pharoh and Cleopatra,  the Pharoh says something about the mummy coming after them and Cleopatra says ”help me!” and that is it.

I don’t think it is going to be much longer before we have very advance virtual reality.  I think we will evectually have some kind of pods we can go in and join a virtual reality world of our choosing and create a story that we can be a part of.  If you think about it, 3-d movies was actually a step in that direction.  They started out not so great and then they got better, now we have 3-d tv’s we can purchase.

From the commercials I have seen on tv, the theme parks are really trying there best to get more attractions that are leaning more and more toward virtual reality.  They are trying to make people feel as though they are really a part of the action, adventure or story they are portraying.

In conclusion, this is not going away, and it is going to keep getting better and better.

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Virtual reality is a tool that I think could be used for many things.  I think it could be used to reabilitate people that have certain problems.  I think it could also be used to take vacations and not really go anywhere.  Like on the Star Trek show, where they use the halodeck to create and participate in stories and dreams of their wildest dreams.  If we could perfect something like that cave virtual reality we could have all kinds of experiences without having to go anywhere.  I remember one episode of Star Trek where they found these people in pods that had survived their world being destroyed and they didn’t even know what happened because they were in a virtual world.  Although it just so happened that the virtual world they had created was trying to kill them.  It would be nice to think though that if something ever happened maybe we could have something like that, buried deep enough inside the earth so that we would not be physically harmed and would enjoy being in a world of our creation.  Just as long as it didn’t try to kill us and we could leave when everything was safe on the outside.

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I truely believe that we are going to soon see robots with really close to human qualities.  You think about it though when shows like Star Trek came out, people back then beleived that we would alreaky have all of the technology on that show.  At the same time though things are progressing at an alarming rate, so we might not have much longer to wait.  My son would be afraid that something like the Terminator would come out of the artificial intelligence we create.  I would agree that there is too much of a seemingly one-sided research and progress being made.  It’s just like with security instead of just working on robots to do things that our military personnel did, we should also be trying to get some defensive plans to counter anything that is created.  It just seems that most people only think of one side of a problem.  Problems should always be looked at from every direction.  Cover all possible situations and hopefully nothing could go wrong.

I will be trying out the dancing finch in class Thursday.

I got the finch to dance to a midi file.  I recorded it, but I have not got it down to a size that will attach to my message yet.  If I don’t figure it out it won’t be on here.  I will try my best to get it on here.

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I started with trying the finch robot, but I think I would rather get with someone else and maybe try the lego robot.  I thought sense I was taking java that I could do something with the finch, but since I am not doing that great with java it might be better to try the lego.  I don’t know.  I am going to see if I can put something together here at home if I can and maybe I will still use the finch robot.  I will try to add some more comments after class.

I finally figured out how to get the dancing finch to work with a midi file.  I am going to use my laptop at the next class to try it out.  I tried it on the computers in class but there was no sound.  I don’t know if it really worked or not.

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I think our security is a very important topic, but at the same time I don’t think people should basically stop living their lives just because of some of the security issues we have in the world today.  My mother will not do online bill pay because she is scared to death that someone is going to steal her identity.  If these hackers want to steal someones identity they will find a way even if you don’t do anything online.  What she doesn’t realize is that she has credit cards that keep all her records online.  Almost everything you would want to know about someone, you could find somewhere online.  Look at Google maps they show pictures of you house, street and any vehicles that might have been parked there at the time the picture was taken.  So actually if you think about it they are really invading our privacy.  I usually try to just not think about it.  Sometimes what you don’t know don’t hurt you.  I use the online banking and the online bill pay, personally if I didn’t I would forget to pay my bills, because I have so much going on.  I just I hope and pray that no one ever steals my identity.  They wouldn’t be getting very much.  I don’t even have a home security system.  My grandmother has ADT and her  house was broken into.  I think it is really a scam, they call me every week trying to get me sign up with them and let them install their system in home my which they monitor.  Some of the monitoring systems they are coming out with now I think is a real invasion of privacy.

Down deep I am concerned about security, but I feel that there is really nothing I can do more than I am already.  But like I said you can’t stop living because of it.

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I have to be honest here between Java, English, and Music classes; I really have not had time except in class to do anything with it.  I wish I could quit work and stay at home on the weekend then I would be able to keep up a little better than I have been.

What I have done in the scratch, it is interesting enough that I downloaded it for my 10 year old son who is very computer savvy for his age.  I thought it might be a good tool for him to play with and learn some programming at the same time.

I am probably going to just use the cat sprite and have it ask your name and then say hello back to you then maybe tell you a joke or ask you some math questions.  Maybe make it for a kid to learn their multiplication tables.

I still remember having to say all of mine in front of the whole class in third grade.  Now they don’t really enforce them memorizing them, they let them use calculators.  I think that is wasting the minds of our children.  They should be able to do calculations even if they don’t have any technology around them at the time.  If you ask me, even though I love technology; I think as a society we are relying on it way too much.

My brother was a hacker and because of what he learned he was able to get a very good job without going to college.  But I have always felt it was wrong.  My brother doesn’t do it anymore for him it was just the thrill of seeing if he could do it.  He would get so excited when he could get into some system he wasn’t supposed to get into.

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I still have not finished my web page as of yet.  I am having trouble getting things were I want them to be.  I worked on it a lot during the lab this morning, but I still didn’t get it done.  I wished I didn’t have to work. If I didn’t, I would have plenty of time and I would be able to study and read a lot more.  I feel as though I am just barely getting by.

I understand the basics of the HTML and Databases, but I don’t really think I could use them well enough to do it for a living.

I use to have a Facebook account, but I quit when a lady at work said they took over $600.00 out of her bank account without her permission.  I was a little leery of them before that, but after that I had decided to go ahead and get off of it.  I was still getting e-mails from them, so what Dr. Brown said in class today is true, they never really delete everything. Which I think this should be against the law.  If you leave a place and tell them you want everything deleted, that’s exactly what should happen.

Also, in class today he was talking about the president not really making the decisions, I have felt that way for a very long time.  That is why I tell everyone, it really doesn’t matter who you vote in to office, you still have the same people giving him the information that he bases his decisions on.  In other words it doesn’t matter whether it is a republican or a democrat or even an independent, you still have the same background people who are actually manipulating all the decisions that the president makes.

I am glad it is spring break, maybe I will have time to breathe a little now.  I am going to try to do some extra reading and get prepared better for when classes resumes.

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I was very worried about having to make a web page. I thought it has to be hard.  But after just playing around with the HTML tags for just a little while, I found that it seems rather easy.  I have had to work all most all of the weekend, so I haven’t got to work on my web page much but I plan on working on it today.  I was planning to try and use some tags we didn’t go over in class.  But if they don’t work I will just use the tags we went over.  I would like to try some new things though.  I am the kind of person learns better by doing.  I never was very good at just reading and understanding or remembering.  That’s why I never really cared for English or History. That’s probably why I didn’t do as well on the test in this class either.  I don’t know why but I have always been really good with math and numbers.  On the other hand though if you ask me to memorize dates something happened, I can’t do that.  If I can keep an doing something like writing HTML eventually I will remember it.  I will post some more later after I have worked on my web page.

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I felt right at home with this simulator.  It seemed very familiar to me.  It must be really close to what I used in High School.  I am finding it very difficult to remember all the details of everything we are talking about, even though I am very interested in everything we are discussing.  I think if I was not having to keep up with so much at home, at work, and here at school; I could do a lot better.  If I fail this class or Java, I will take them again as soon as I can.  I am determined to get this in my head.  I am very interested and I used to know a lot of it when I was younger, but now I have so much on my plate, that I am choking most of the time. The simulator was easy, but I didn’t so well on the quiz because once I realized I had to use the simulator to do some of the questions I could not get into it to use it without closing the quiz.

I know that this is very short, but I can’t think of anything else to say.

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