jshanks's blog

This semester in my CSIT 111o i had a great time.  There were many opportunities to learn about computers.  I thought there were a sufficient amount of resources and material provided.  Most of the assignments were ok.  I really hated the alice assignment.  And the Darwin Pond seemed really dumb too.  The alice program could have been a little more user friendly.  Even though the actual program wasnt the instructor’s fault.  I feel that a better program could have been chosen.  I did like “The Last Lecture” video. I think that video should be shown to all students.

I think these blogs were awful.  The blogs was very unstable  and i typed multiple posts, only to lose them when I clicked publish.  With me working full time and going to school full time it was hard to find the time to post a blog. Then if i ever did find the time, the blogs would be down.

I liked the text book.  I thought it was very creative and seemed to get the point across.  After I read the first chapter I thought I was going to have a problem reading it.  Then by the third chapter I had began to like the book.

Overall, This class was very good and I am glad I took it.

The lesson on artificial intelligence was very cool.  It is looking like the dreams of some people are becoming a reality.  AI has come a long way in the last couple of years and I think it will continue to to go.  The most intriguing thing to me is the fact that one of these days a robot will be able to scan the internet and learn from it.  That is  a little scary though.

This week we got to play with the lego mindstorms robot kit.  My group didnt have a problem installing the software and getting the robot to do the first example.  We decided to modify the code a little bit and try to make the robot do something different.  We did a few things but run out of time.

Programing the Pseudo-computer was really easy for me. I have never programed in machine code or assembly language, but I have done some programing in C++. I wish the Pseudo-Computer had a better loop function but I realize that that was to make us have to solve a problem.

LIST OF PARTS

Thermaltake Armor Series Va8003 Black Full Tower Case – I chose this case because it has a lot of extra room to fit more drive later.

EVGA 141-bl-E769-A1 LGA Intel Motherboard - I chose this motherboard because it would hold my CPU and had nine SATA ports plus the external one.

Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz – Fastest on the market nothing else to say. Read the rest of this entry »

To start off, this week I moved to the front of the room. I had a hard time hearing what was being said in the back of the room and half of the time didn’t know what was going on. I immediately noticed a difference.

I understood everything that was being taught. I really like the examples with actual numbers. That helped me understand better. I thought it was converting the numbers was going to be a really complicated process. Now I know it is really simple.

I liked the voltage example. I didn’t understand how a circuit could be open and then closed. that example really helped me.

My name is Jeremy Shanks. I am a starting freshman at Pellissippi State Community College. I graduated from Sweetwater High School in May of 2009. I enjoy working with computers and hope to someday start my own computer company. I like to play tennis. I am looking forward to trying out the indoor courts here on campus. I currently dont participate in any websites.