My Blog

I have had some great experiences in this class this year. I have learned A LOT about computers, and technology that I didn’t know. There were a few things that I found extremely interesting, and some not so much. Learning how to write programs in Binary was cool, but I don’t think I’ll, hopefully, ever have to do that. I really did enjoy doing the HTML stuff… That was something I’ve never really messed with, and was fun to create my own webpage. Although if I ever have to make another one, I’ll just use a tool to help me create one because that just took way to long to do. lol

Doing the Scratch programming was one of the cooler things we done. Getting to make my own animation about non-sense was pretty entertaining if I do say so myself. I would have to say that was one of the most fun projects we had to do this year. Although the robots were pretty freaking awesome to play around with, was just to much of a headache to me. lol So unpredictable as to what they would do. Sure you can write the code to make it do what you want, but because of the terrain, or the lighting difference, or someone makes a loud sound, it completely do the opposite or nothing at all.  I guess I like to have complete control over what I’m doing.

Couple other things I found interesting were the videos on the AI stuff.. Ray’s views on the future were pretty wild, and may be plausible. Some of them I doubt will happen, but thats just my opinion.  Gaming week was pretty interesting. Amazing how far games have come along, and what we have accomplished with graphics over the years. The videos for that week were fun to watch. Learned a lot about a company that I play a lot of games from. =) WoW FTW! Overall.. This has been one of the most exciting classes I’ve taken in my college career! Gonna miss it… =(

I amazes me as to how far the video game industry has come.. From the simplistic Pong all the way to one of the largest played game of  the century World of Warcraft. Gaming has really been the biggest driver of technology, and will continue to be. People expect to just be blown away when they play a game that is so realistic, and so immersible  that you don’t even realize you are playing a game anymore. Games now days are just amazing. They graphics of todays games are what people used to dream about 10 years ago. I know myself as a gamer, I can’t wait to get home log on to a Virtual World and chat with people and embark on epic quests, and raids, and of coarse kill those alliance skums!!! Another thing that interests me is all the VR hardware that is out there. It would be so cool to have that hardware, and create my own world, and be able be in it! With just the wave of my hand I can create or destroy what ever I want…… Oh what joy that would bring me..>=}

AI week was interesting… The film we watched was interesting, and odd. Ray made some good points, and he has huge expectations for the future that I’m a little bit skeptical about. The whole plugging yourself into a computer, is a little much in my opinion… I just don’t see that happening anytime soon, nor do I think that will be a good idea… Once you start merging humans with computers you will eventually lose everything that is human. On the other side though, Ray has made some good inventions, that have helped a lot of people, and I think that is his over all goal in life, but I just think he takes it a bit to far… That is just my opinion, and something good my come of him pursuing that. It has brought us some good things so far, and he has been right about a lot of things. I just can’t believe that he is that obsessed about his dad! lol

OMG.. Robotics week was amazing…. That was probably one of the funnest things I’ve ever done. Those robots were the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even know you could get those!!!! I was so amazed as to what you could build with them, and what you could make them do. I was also amazed as to how much you really had to put into it to actually do what you  wanted it to do, and how unpredictable it was. You could program it to do one thing, and it might, most of the time it wouldn’t, do exactly what you wanted it to do. The predictability of robots is so low because you can never be really sure as to what they are going to come into contact with in the real world, and sometimes, at least in my case, it didn’t seem like the parts always worked out the way they were supposed too. But over all..  I had a blast that week, and I know what I’m asking for, for Christmas!!! =)

WATCH WHAT YOU DOWNLOAD!!!!! This week was all about security. Its amazing on all the different ways someone can access your computer, and get your information… I mean I knew a few ways but there were some that I had never heard of until now. My eyes have been opened to what is really out there, and what not to go to/open/download when I am out on the web… Most people now days know not to go into sites, or open emails that they are unfamiliar with, but it  seems as though the hackers are just making it harder, and harder to tell the difference between a legit site and a hack.  This was a very good experience for me, and really has helped me understand what to look for when I am surfing the web or just checking emails, and downloading programs… And once again…WATCH WHAT YOU DOWNLOAD!!!!!

The scratch programming was probably one of the most fun things I have done so far… It pretty neat that I could make a simple animation using some simple code. I also liked the way the code was presented to you. For a new programmer, that is the best way to learn it… The Randy Pausch video was a very interesting/sad/inspiring vid… Kinda makes you feel like a slacker in a way. Its amazing how much one person can do, and how many people he can inspire. I’ve heard of Randy from the VR stuff, but I really didn’t know all that much about him, and all that he has done in his life… It really sucks that someone of his talents had to pass at such a early time. That was probably one of the most inspiring videos I’ve ever seen, and might the only one I ever see…Its would be pretty hard to top such an awesome person, that had one of the most influential lives. Over all, that week was probably one of the best, and most entertaining weeks so far!

HTML was probably one of the most fun things, in my opinion, we have done so far… Making a  web page from scratch was very interesting to do, and I had a lot of fun at it. This was actually one of the skills I really wanted to know how to do so I could make my own web pages/site. One of the best things about HTML is the fact that is very simple to do, and just about anyone can learn it in a day or so. There was really nothing hard about it, once you got the basic layout of the page set up. Although the tables can get a  little confusing, especially when you accidentally put one inside another! lol.. But over all I had a great time building my web page from nothing, and I hope to do more in the future!!

Assembly Language is actually kinda neat. It’s simple to do, in my opinion, as long as you don’t over think it… The simulator was pretty neat, although you couldn’t do that much. I would really like to see what you could do if you could put more code into it. But I really enjoyed the simplicity of it, and its makes a good simple calculator. lol On the other hand it would take way to much time to have to code out entire programs with that… There is no way I could sit there and write for 3 hours what would take me half the time in Java, or c++… But its good to know the foundations of the computer programming languages… Makes your appreciate the languages we have now lol… Over all.. I give the Simulator 3/5 Epoints.. haha!

This is everything I used to build my own personal computer. The first thing I started with, was the mobo(motherboard)http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130252. This is the piece of hardware that will hold all of the other components. The next thing I picked out was the “brain of the computer,” you could say, the CPU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116076 Yes I didn’t get the biggest, baddest processor you could get, but for what I am doing this runs fine. Next on my list, was the memory I was going to put in it… I choose http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211450, because of the nice ratings it had. Only got 2gigs to start with, but I got another 2gigs later on. Thinking about getting 4 more in the future, since Windows 7 maximizes all of the memory you put in it. Next thing I looked at was a graphics card. This is where I spent most of my money.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130339 This wasn’t the exact one I wanted because the one I wanted went off sale the day I went to buy all of the parts >.<… This one was actually a little more expensive than I wanted to spend, but it was cheaper than the other one after it went off sale lol.  Next thing I got was the HDD(harddrive):http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136456 Next two things I had to get were the case, and the power supply.  For my power supply I went with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341019… Cheaper than the original one I wanted, but better. The other one had a pretty blue light to it. =) The case I choose was the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121096. Bought the nicest mid-tower I found, and had a cool LED fan on the front of it, along with the power button. Couple other things I have, those being input/output devices are, the mouse:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826153054; the keyboard:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126087; the monitor:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236102; and my speakers:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16836121044( Mine are actually the older version of these).

Now that I have pretty much explained all of the parts that are needed to build one. I believe its time to actually put it together… First thing you are going to want to do, is to put your mobo in to the case… You mobo and the case too, sometimes, comes with all of the bolts needed to mount it to the case. Make sure that every hole on the mobo lines up with the bolt slots on the case, and they are all fastened with a bolt. Now the next thing to do would be to insert your P/S (powersupply). (This step may be done before putting the mobo in. I just like to have the mobo in place first .)  Now after you have gotten the P/S in, go ahead, and get your HDD into place.. This component will go in the slots in the front of the case, and will be mounted by either two screws in the side, or the case will have some other type of mounting device. Next thing you are going to want to do is place the graphics card and sound card if you purchased those…(Note: Some motherboards will have built in graphic and sound devices, and the need for the cards is not necessary.) Next thing on the list is to place the processor on the mobo. Make sure you are placing this the correct way, by aligning up the notches on the CPU slot, and the CPU itself. Now place the heat sink, which is supplied with the CPU on top of the CPU, this will usually have four turn locks that lock into the mobo. Now that you have all of the main components into place you can begin to hook all of the P/S cables into the mobo, and other pieces of hardware.. The 24pin, the biggest cable will attach to the corresponding mobo port. There are some cables labeled PCI-E/PCI… Those will go the Video card, and w/e other pieces of hardware you might have. Next thing you’ll want to do is connect the power to your HDD, and take one of the sata/ribbon cables and attack that to the corresponding hookups on the mobo. Oops.. Almost forgot to mention what you do with the memory sticks… Those will go into the long slots on the mobo…  After you have hooked all of the cables that you need into your mobo, you can start the boot-up sequence, and start loading your OS! That is pretty much in a nutshell the basics to building your own computer from scratch..

Binary was an interesting subject… It amazes me how you can encode everything into two digits. Learned a lot of things i didn’t know before on binary. I knew everything on the computer was read as either one or zero, but I didn’t exactly know how it was put into binary. I also didn’t know there was a such thing as octa, and hexadecimal. So.. I learned a few new things this week, and I can’t wait to see what else I can learn next week on hardware!!