December 12, 2010
Well, this is my final blog for the fall semester. I can’t believe I was able to do every blog, considering how much I detest writing. At the beginning of the year I actually thought I would probably end up skipping a few blog posts. I was somehow able to persevere and do every blog. Looking back at the earlier blogs I wrote, it was interesting to see how the class came full circle, from the creation of computers, to the present and finally what computers are capable of achieving. It is amazing to see how far technology has come in the last 50 or so years.
I really enjoyed learning about the history of computers, or rather the men behind the inventions and advancements of computers. I can not imagine the creativity and brilliance needed for some of these inventors to do what they did. One that really sticks with me is Nikola Tesla. The fact that he had the idea to transmit energy in a wireless manner was impressive. But he actually was able to do it in a small scale, and he did this in the late 1800′s. I still can’t fathom how he thought of this and accomplished it.
I am really excited about the future of computers. Just thinking how 20 years ago, almost no one one knew what the internet was and now we have touch screen phones with internet access is amazing. This is technology straight out of sci fi movies! If Moore’s law continues to hold up, the next 20 years will be mind boggling. Just watching the videos in class of the smart cars and the robots gives an inkling of what direction the world is heading. I know some people are afraid of change and especially advancements like these will scare a lot of people. My only fear would be, as far fetched as it sounds, is people combining AI tech with their bodies. I don’t mean like Star Wars where Luke Skywalker has a robotic hand that looks real. I am talking about where people do surgeries to create themselves as a more powerful version of themselves, in essence becoming half man and half robot as we see in so many dystopian movies.
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Filed by Leon Khan at December 12th, 2010 under CSIT1110
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December 6, 2010
I do play video games a lot. However I do not have much experience playing virtual games like World of Warcraft or others like it. It’s not that I would not like it, its quite the opposite. I have heard so many stories of people playing WOW and getting addicted it to. I could see myself having the same problems. Some of my friends already feel I am addicted to video games, so the last thing I need to do is get a new addiction. Although I don’t think I play that much. I usually play sports games like NCAA football and sometimes I will play shooter games. My favorite shooter game is Gears of War. Although its not a true shooter game like Halo. I am not a big fan of first person shooters.
I do play video games online, but theres not really much social interaction involved. I either play a football game with a friend, which means we will talk to each other. But if I play a random person, I never talk to that person. I am not really that interested in making friends in a virtual world. I don’t see anything wrong with it, just something that does not appeal to me.
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Filed by Leon Khan at December 6th, 2010 under CSIT1110
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November 28, 2010
Once AI becomes more advanced, the real world applications will be amazing. I am curious to see how the next ten years play out. Especially with all the bad drivers out there, I feel roads will be safer if certain people are not allowed to drive. Many people do overlook the fact that games have some great AI engines in them. Although I do not play many action games, I have found the AI in sports games to be pretty impressive. In Madden the computer usually calls the right play at the right time. Although it does make some decisions that are very questionable. I do have a fear that Microsoft Kinect will turn into Cyberdyne from the Terminator and take over the world.
We finally got the robot to move around and do certain actions, but not as effectively as would have liked. It was pretty impressive how much AI an old toy could have. It makes me wonder what is currently being developed right now that we are not aware of.
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Filed by Leon Khan at November 28th, 2010 under CSIT1110
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November 21, 2010
Working with the Mindstorms this week was pretty cool. I really do not see how a ten year old could play and program the robot. It seems it would be to complicated for a kid to program it. It was fun trying to program the robot to do different things. Unfortunately in our second class someone had taken apart the robot completely, so we spent the whole period trying to build the robot. By the team we finished building it, class was over, so we were not able to really do much with it on the programming side of it. Which was kind of frustrating since everyone else was able to do quite a bit with their robots.
I am impressed with the Mindstorm considering it is a toy but it has a pretty unique and complicated features to it. I never knew there were toys that were mini robots that could function on their own with sensors. Considering this toy is ten years old, I am sure there are a lot more complex ones out there.
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Filed by Leon Khan at November 21st, 2010 under CSIT1110
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November 7, 2010
When I was younger I used to always think being a hacker would be so cool. I loved the movies Sneakers and Hackers as kid. The idea of getting things for free(stealing) by using your intellect seemed brilliant. But over the last few years I have become to loath people who do this. It first started 3 years ago when my laptop was rendered useless by god knows how many viruses. I was really sad that I had to throw it away. Well I probably could have fixed the laptop, but it was already in bad shape before that and this was the tipping point. After that I have finally seen the other side and have lost all respect for people who do this.
Well I am still not opposed to people hacking a website to maybe make a statement, as long as they are not doing any real harm. It is scary what some people are capable of doing and are doing by spreading viruses.
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Filed by Leon Khan at November 7th, 2010 under CSIT1110
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October 31, 2010
This week we are using a software called Scratch that is a teaching tool to learn how to program. When I read this was the assignment last week I thought it was going to boring and tedious. I mainly had that reaction because I never heard of Scratch before. When Dr. Brown was initially showing us how to use Scracth, I still had that same reaction, especially when he said a lot of middle schools use this as a teaching kit.. I feel so ignorant looking back on it now, because I thought all you could do with Scratch was move a few objects around, but when Dr. Brown said you could make a video game out of it. That is when I really got intrigued, especially when I looked up examples online. This got me really excited on making a video game. So for the past week I have really enjoying the game I have been making, although it is time consuming, since I am having to learn how to do a lot of the things as I go along, I am really enjoying the idea of making a game. I plan to continue making games in Scratch, the goal of spending a lot more time than two weeks to see how far I can take it. Of course knowing me, I will probably get sidetracked by the next cool thing I discover and procrastinate on doing this. Here’s hoping I don’t.
The talk by Randy Pausch was really cool. I was really excited by the idea of combining Alice with the Sims. I think that would be really fun to use. I hope some of the people he mentioned in his speech carry on his work to make this happen. Although it is always sad to see someone pass away, you could tell Pausch had a very happy life considering he was able see so many of his dreams come true.
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Filed by Leon Khan at October 31st, 2010 under CSIT1110
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October 17, 2010
Well I just finished my first web page ever and it can be found here. It was pretty cool uploading a website I designed and the process was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. Who knew the whole process was pretty much just dragging a file from one folder to another. I am sure it is a bit more complicated behind the scenes, but on my end it couldn’t get any easier.
I do have more respect for people who do design web sites, I never realized how tedious and time consuming it is. Although it is pretty simple to understand the coding, it is far different than just clicking an icon to change the color as is done in most software’s. The page I created seems so simple after checking the source files from other web pages I usually visit. I was planning to copy some code, but quickly realized I had no idea what was going on in their source files.
It was pretty neat seeing SQL statements. As opposed to programming languages, which you have to learn to understand the coding, in SQL you can understand the code just by looking at it. It seems in SQL you just need to figure out the logic of how to write the statment, and the SQL statement is similar to it. I am kind of looking forward to taking a dabtabase class in the future for this reason.
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Filed by Leon Khan at October 17th, 2010 under CSIT1110
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Well, this will be my first web page using HTML, I did make one in a computer class in high school using MS Front Page. That was pretty simple as it took no real skill to make. Although using tags is not that much harder, it just feels a bit more tedious and time consuming. For instance, if I want to add tables, I have to add it, save it, and refresh my webpage. Of course it never looks perfect the first time. So you have to keep repeating the process until it looks right. Despite being tedious, once you make some progress it seems pretty cool, its far from being an annoying process. It feels like you have actually crafted something with your own hands.
The hardest part for me is the creativity part, I have trouble finding what to write for the webpage and how do to design it. I understand the coding, I just spend more time trying to figure out a cool layout. I did look at a lot of websites to get ideas, it seemed the ones I really liked were a bit ambitious. Especially the ones that used flash, I am sure to an experienced web designer, this is simple, but I have no idea how to go about this. Of course I only spent two minutes of research on it and gave up, so maybe I should have tried a little harder. I do have the overall design done with the pics and links added, now I just have to figure out what I want to write about. For me that will be the hardest part, since I am not a big fan of writing.
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Filed by Leon Khan at October 17th, 2010 under CSIT1110, Thoughts
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September 26, 2010
Well this week we finally learned about the simulator that I had read about in blogs from previous semesters. It seemed no one had liked the experience of learning how to use the simulator. I was a little worried at first but when Dr. Brown said former classes had to write programs and all we had to do was run the programs. I thought how hard could this be then. After Dr. Brown explained in class how the simulator worked, it looked like it was going to be a piece of cake. When I finally sat down to do it, it was far from being a piece of cake. I should have taken better notes in class! But after sitting in front of the computer for a while, by sheer force of repetition, I finally figured out how to run the simulator. Not saying I am in expert, but know enough to do it on the test.
I do see how the course is coming together. It makes sense learning the history of computer and some of the hardware aspects of the computer. But I am more looking forward to learning the software side of the computer. I just enjoy that more, and the hardware stuff kind of bores me. Maybe its just me, but I feel learning hardware you just have to memorize the functions of each part while on the programming aspect you can be creative on how you solve each problem.
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Filed by Leon Khan at September 26th, 2010 under CSIT1110
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September 19, 2010
I have never ever built a computer before and I always thought it was something that took a great deal of skill and knowledge. After watching a few videos of it online, I think I could actually build one on my own. I am sure I am simplifying the process and if I ever did attempt it, it wouldn’t work on the first try.
With that in mind, my goal is to build a computer that I can actually afford, and I hope to try it as soon as I have some money saved up. I plan to build a computer that I can hook up to my tv and watch HD movies. It will stay permanently hooked up to the tv. For this assignment, I have to buy a computer monitor, but if I ever did this on my own I would not be buying a monitor, since it would be hooked up the TV I already own. I also have a XBOX 360, so I have no desire or need to play games on my computer, so this computer is being built with that in mind. So I will splurge on the monitor but not count it towards my goal of $500 (the max price point I could afford). So here is the list of the parts I would buy and why:
Motherboard: I chose the GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard which can be found at Newegg.com at a cost of $69.99. I chose this, besides the fact it is cheap, it is meant for HD movies, includes HDMI and optical ports and I will have not to buy a sound or video card.
Processor - I chose the AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX635WFGMBOX found at Newegg.com as well at a cost of $99.99. I felt this will be good enough to play HD movies without any lag, plus it comes with a cooling fan. It also had very high reviews with particular emphasis from users who used it for HD movies.
RAM – For ram I have decided to purchase the AllComponents 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model AC2/800X64/4096-KIT from Newegg.com for $73.99. I feel that 4 GB’s of RAM is more than adequate, especially since I have never owned a computer with so much RAM.
Hard Drive - I chose the Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS from Amazon.com for $109.99. It might seem strange I spent the most on the hard drive, but I download movies and TV shows at a extremely high rate. The average 1080p movie is about ten to fifteen gigs and tv shows are 2-3 gigs. I would like to save everything I download. If I did my math right, I will only be able to hold about 200 movies. So I will probably need to add more memory in the future.
CD ROM – I chose the Samsung Blu-Ray Internal SATA Drive with Lightscribe SH-B083L/RSBP from Amazon.com for $77.95. Pretty obvious why I chose a Blu-Ray drive considering I have been harping on how my goal is to create a media center. I didn’t really need a Blu-Ray player since it still is expensive to buy or rent Blu-Ray movies, while it is free to download them. But this was too cheap to pass up. On a side note, when I selected this item in the beginning of the week it cost $69.99, for some reason it has gone up $8 by the time I sat down to write this.
Case – I chose the Cooler Master Elite 310 ATX, MATX Mid Tower Case with Window RC-310-SWN1-GP (Black/Silver) for $39.99 from Amazon.com. I selected this because it was still affordable but I like how it looks with the black finish so hopefully it will not look too tacky on my entertainment center. It also came with a fan.
Power Supply – I chose the iMicro IM400W 400W ATX12V Power Supply from Amazon.com for $19.99. Just looked for the cheapest one with at least a four star average of reviews on Amazon.
Keyboard and Mouse - I chose the the 2.4GHz RF Wireless Keyboard with Smart Touchpad Mouse for MCE Media Center Edition from Amazon.com as well for $28.41. I need a wireless keyboard, since I will be sitting on the sofa when using this. Plus I needed a mouse to to be built in the keyboard, considering it will be difficult to use an actual mouse from the sofa. I also like the idea of it being a touch pad, similar to a laptop which I prefer over an actual mouse.
HMDI cable – I need cable to hook up my computer to the TV. I would actually hook it up to my home theater system as opposed to the TV. Selected the 6 Foot HDMI Cable 1.3b 28AWG from Firefold.com for $4.99. I have always bought my hmdi cords from firefold.com after reading in a magazine a few years ago how they are as good monster cable(overpriced) in terms of quality. I agree because I have used both and have not seen a difference.
Ethernet cable – Just needed a cheap ethernet cable to access the internet. Ethernet Cable CAT6 – 6 ft Blue from Amazon.com for $0.95. Doesn’t get much cheaper than that!
So my total cost comes to $453.24 but with shipping and taxes it comes to $499.30. Whew! I just barely met my goal of $500 and selected all the parts on the first attempt, so I didn’t have to downgrade any parts I have selected. Of course some would say all my parts are downgraded. To each his own.
I still need to select a monitor, so I have chosen the ViewSonic VX2250WM-LED 22-Inch (21.5-Inch Vis) Widescreen Full HD 1080p LED Monitor with Integrated Stereo Speakers from for $169.99. It is a 22 inch 1080p monitor that has built in speakers, which I also would need if it was not being hooked up to my receiver.
This now brings my cost to $623.23 and with tax and shipping it becomes $684.82. Too pricey to just watch movies on a 22 inch screen in my opinion. If I were to ever build a desktop to be used in the way it is usually used. I would focus more on performance and speed as opposed to building a machine just to watch movies on.
Well that was that was the easy part, now I have to actually build a computer! First I would keep myself grounded by putting my hand in contact with a metal surface and touching the electronics at the same time. I would place the CPU in the socket on the motherboard and push the lever back in. I would then hook up the cooler which snaps on above the CPU. I then plug it into a spot reserved for the fan on the motherboard. I then put the memory in slots reserved for it on the motherboard. I then would attach the ATX back connector to the desktop case. My next step would be to place the motherboard in the case and screw it in, and making sure it is aligned with the holes on the ATX back connector. After that I would install the hard drive, by first taking out the drive cage from the case. After sliding in the hard drive, I screw it in the drive cage and slide the drive cage back in the computer case. Insert the Blu-Ray drive to the front of the computer would be the next step. I will now connect the power connectors to a tiny block which enable me to connect it to the motherboard. Then I connect the video, audio, and USB jacks to the motherboard. I will then place the power supply in the rear of the case and align it properly in place. After plugging in all the power connectors I will organize all my wires with zip ties and the desktop is ready. All I have remaining is to hook up the keyboard via USB, HDMI for my monitor, and plug it in. Install Windows 7 and I am ready to use my home made computer.
4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model AC2/800X64/4096-KIT
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Filed by Leon Khan at September 19th, 2010 under CSIT1110
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