[Insert Title Here]

At least, regarding my CSIT1110 class.

So here we are. I… will be the first to admit that I didn’t learn as much in this class as I had hoped to, but that doesn’t mean that the class was any less enjoyable. I was challenged, eventually, even if the challenge for me was to interpret pictures and finicky image based interfaces.

Seriously, however, as a whole, this class was a rewarding experience. It should be a required class for every major, I believe. Too many of my peers don’t know the first thing about computers, and they’re content to leave it that way. Offers to help them learn are met with “but I’m not a computer person” as though that makes up for it, somehow.

I’ve never heard anyone say “I’m not a telephone person” or “I’m not a television person” as excuses for not being able to operate those devices. I’ve also never heard anyone say “I’m not a car person” as an excuse for why they can’t drive, or why they don’t have a car. These things are basic; something our society (quite reasonably) expects everyone to be able to do.

And yet so many people out there simply can’t use a computer, for whatever reason.

“I’m not a computer person” simply isn’t a good excuse anymore. You probably have more devices that use a computer than you do devices that don’t.

Did you know that the World Wide Web is basically the most powerful information tool ever available? It’s true. In a matter of seconds, you could look up a book even if you didn’t know the author or the title. If all you knew was a couple of words from the book… if you had them in the right order, you could probably get the one you wanted. You can find an address just by putting in a phone number (if it’s publicly listed). You can find the latest news, much faster than you would see it on TV or in the newspaper. You can get the answer to almost any question you can possibly think of, if you know how to use the right search terms. There’s so much more to the Web than Facebook or Twitter, and it’s a shame that more people don’t realize that.

It’s important that people, particularly students in my age group, understand the devices they live and work with. It’s simply not possible to work in an industry that doesn’t use computers anymore, and as such, understanding them (or at least, understanding the concept) is a positive thing.

There isn’t any magic or mystery to the way a computer works. It’s not difficult to understand. It shouldn’t be intimidating. Most of all, however, working with computers should be something that you can enjoy, or even look forward to. They’re a tool, but a tool with more potential than people often give them credit for.

If you’re reading this, I hope you approach this class with an open mind, even if you come into it knowing a bit more than your peers do. Trust me, it’s worth your time and you’ll be better for it.

- Jillian “Dakhath” Tidwell

Share This

Or: Why WoW is a Waste of Time and–
Fine. I won’t bash WoW.

When you say “virtual world”, most people are going to think of something like the Sims, or Second Life, or WoW. Really, though, the idea of a virtual world has been around for longer than the graphics now used to render them.

As long as we require the virtual world to be a simulation of some kind, rather than a collaborative writing effort, then MUDs were one of the earliest interactive virtual worlds, in a sense. I mention this because I do, sometimes, still play a few MUDs. They have so many features and users now, that it’s easy to forget that it’s just text based.

I’ll never forget my first MUD, either: Stick In the Mud. I started playing when I was probably six or seven. I don’t remember all that well. My first character, of course, is long since gone, but I can include a “picture” of my current character:

Is this experience rewarding? That’s an interesting question. I don’t think the grinding alone is rewarding, no, but the opportunity to interact with a virtual community (such as my role playing forum) is. Often, virtual communities are more tightly knit than “real” ones: The response after Lord Devil/Quatloos’ death in the Elder Scrolls modding community is more than proof of that. She wasn’t the first the community lost, either, sadly… Grumpy, one of the first modders to really come up with a useful companion script, was one of the first deaths to impact the community. People are, in fact, still using his work.

Share This

And Artificial Intelligence

Working with the lego mindstorm robots was actually somewhat intimidating, at first. I’m not generally fond of group work, and once again I found myself facing a program that assumed I didn’t communicate with words. What is up with the picture only interfaces that are becoming so popular, anyway? I can’t be the only person out there who has trouble with this, right?

Anyway, moving on: Once I found somebody I could work with, the project was much easier. (Especially since I’m not much for building things, either.) The program wasn’t very easy to put together in their software, but the idea was easy enough to come up with.

As for what I thought of artificial intelligence? It’s such a shame that we aren’t able to do a better job with it yet. Video games, in particular, could benefit from computers that had even a portion of “normal” human intelligence: MGS3, Guard Fail

Share This

I’m determined to have a blog entry for each and every week.

Problem is, I don’t know what in the world I can say about robots. I’ve been hung up on this for a while now and I have decided that it’s best to simply move on.

Although the BOFH series has covered robots recently.

Share This

Again for the sake of completion.

So, this is another topic that I knew a little bit about before we covered it in class. Malware removal was a part of my job, back when I was working with my mom… and it’s something that I’ve still had to do a lot of recently.

The first malware that I learned how to disable and remove was the Sasser/Blaster worm, waaay back in the early days of Windows XP. Most people will remember that one as the one that would shut your computer down automatically. It sounds rather harmless compared to some of the things you might encounter now. In fact, one of the most common (and most damaging) malware on Windows systems today is part of a family of rogue antivirus/antimalware software. It has a bunch of different names and even typically comes bundled with other malware. Usually, it goes by Antivirus (Windows Version) (year) or something to that effect.

Getting rid of it is a pain. The best way to prevent an infection like that, of course, is simply not to surf the web at all… but this is not practical for most people. Since ad networks are a common source of infection, it’s better to run a secure browser (that is, not Internet Exploder (er, Explorer)) along with extensions for it that improve security, such as Adblock and NoScript.

Share This

I’m mostly including this for the sake of having everything complete. I… oh I hate to be so incredibly negative all the time on here, but here goes: I didn’t like Scratch very much (does this surprise anyone?). I’m not, by nature, a visual person, and so the idea of drag and drop programming makes it more difficult for me to work.

Additionally, I found the interface difficult to work with because of the limited view area and the fact that the scroll wheel didn’t work to move around in that view area… among other things. I’d often end up clicking the wrong thing because it would be “helpful” and try to assume what I was trying to do.

Good for beginners, I guess, although I really prefer something like RPGmaker for that.

Share This

With a bonus helping of SQL and Databases!

“Describe how your view of the web has changed through creating an HTML page from scratch and uploading it to a web server.”

Oh boy. My view of the web hasn’t changed at all, as a result of this week’s assignment. I already maintain a website for a local business, so uploading via FTP is nothing new to me. It was nice to have the opportunity to review, I suppose, and I did get to create a new background that I’m actually rather fond of:

I also had the chance to try a few ideas with JavaScript, though I only went with one of them in the end.

It had been a while since I last worked with SQL. A couple of years ago I worked for a company that specializes in POS software for school cafeterias on their help line. Now, in theory, I never should have needed to work with SQL… but in practice, all of us did; the support team was so small (and the developers group even smaller!) that sometimes it had to happen. Part of the training for this job was a crash course in how relational databases work. Had there been any gaps, what we covered this week would have filled that in for me. This topic is an important one to understand since so many websites out there use databases. Sure, in most cases you can’t actually fix the problem, but knowing the cause removes a lot of the mystery for your average user, and that’s a good thing.

Share This

I probably should have posted this last week.

This really probably should have gone up a week ago. The problem was, I honestly couldn’t think of what to write for this one. Sure, we had the HTML assignment but I didn’t learn much with this one. Uh… if I had to say something, though, I guess I wish that tables hadn’t been introduced as a way to create a page layout, since there are better, faster ways to go about that… and ways that are, in the end, more flexible.

I have two certifications in web design (useless, I should add, since I’m not going to finish that particular degree program). I know how to use WYSIWYG editors, but I generally don’t. Notepad++ is my friend. It is, of course, what I used for the page this week. My JavaScript textbook also came in handy when I found myself trying to figure out why a certain variable was null (and it was an obvious answer, I feel silly).

Share This

Assembly Language Simulator and Other Things

This week was, of course, the week we used the assembly language simulator. My experience with it was limited, because I didn’t interact with it more than once or twice to see how the idea worked. It’s a much better way of explaining the concept than a picture would have been, at least, and it made the idea very easy to understand.

I have not yet really needed to “construct a mental model” for the concepts we have covered since the concepts were already familiar to me. However, the class does sound like it will only get more interesting from this point on, and I look forward to that. I don’t anticipate trouble with anything, even if it’s a new idea.

Share This

Because I totally haven’t done this before.

So, since this is all just in my head, I went with no budget at all. What I have chosen (based on currently available components), and why:

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Motherboard + AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Quad Core Processor

This is a fairly recently released motherboard. It has USB 3.0 support as well as support for SATA 3. Both the L2 and the L3 cache are fairly large, which means better performance (to a degree). It supports a lot of memory and the bus speed is also quite high. An important consideration here is that this board is “Crossfire ready”, meaning it supports two video cards. I chose Crossfire instead of Nvidia’s SLI because Crossfire cards don’t have to be identical (although the cards used in this system will be). The processor that comes bundled with this motherboard is currently one of the best on the market.

Asus EAH5770CuCore/2DI/1G Radeon HD 5770 Video Card

1GB of memory on the card, and I will be using two of them. This should support the next Elder Scrolls game, which would be an important consideration for me if I was actually building this system. Bethesda has a long history of taxing current hardware with their new releases in that series. I did, however, consider something like this.

Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1600C9 XMS3 8GB DDR3 RAM Kit

Two of these, for a total of 16GB of RAM. This is the fastest speed that the motherboard supports without overclocking, and the most memory as well.

Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1

I’m interested in the fact that this solid state drive supports SATA III (that is, 6GB/sec). Since it has no moving parts, it’s a faster alternative to other types of hard drives, and it makes a good operating system/boot drive. It is a 2.5 inch drive, and the case I have chosen does not have a bay for it. An adapter would be necessary.

Seagate ST32000641AS Barracuda XT Hard Drive

Two of these as well, for a total of 4TB of storage. Once again the 6GB/sec interface is important here. In case you were counting, I can still add in 3 more SATA devices.

Memorex 32020019439 24X DVDRW DVD Writer

I actually already have two of these. It’s a decent choice for a CD/DVD reader/burner and using two leaves open that last SATA header if I ever wanted to add in something like a Blu-Ray drive… which I do not, at this time.

Silverstone Temjin TJ09-SW Silver Aluminum ATX Case

I’ve actually had my eye on this case for a while. The cooling fans that come with it might be enough, and I have extra fans already in case it’s not. Other cooling might be required for the hard drive, memory, and video cards, but that’s an option that I won’t cover here.

XION Power Real XON-1100P14HE 1100W ATX 12V v2.2 / EPS 12V v2.91 / SSI 2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Power Supply

This system is going to need a lot of a power – the tool on Newegg estimated at least 650W, and that was just with one hard drive and no cooling fans being considered. A power supply like this one leaves me room to change things around without having to be too worried about it.

ASUS VH202T-P Glossy Black 20″ 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor Built-in Speakers + Logitech Black Wired Illuminated Keyboard combo

This combo has both a display that works for my setup as well as a very nice keyboard. That it is wired is an important choice, as this means better response when gaming (wireless keyboards tend to have limited repeat which causes problems). This mouse would be a nice way to round off input.

Share This