mclewis's blog

  I believe being in the CSIT1110 class has helped me a lot.  I currently work in the IT field now and have dealt with many different technologies but I never really knew which field I wanted to specialize in (programming, computer hardware, networking, security etc).  This class is a very good intro class because it covers all of the different ranges of technology.  It also drills down into each of the different area’s so you have a very good idea of what you would like to specialize in when you get out of school.

  I have always wanted to try programming because I believe it will help me automate things at work but never really had a starting place , this class helped me out with that.  It helps you appreciate all of the work your computer does.  A lot of people think you just open up your browser, type in a URL and then your computer just brings up the webpage.  There is a lot of things that your computer does in the background that people never really think about.  The programming and networking part of this class helped bring all of that stuff to mind.

  Overall I am very pleased I took this class and I think it has a great purpose for being an intro class for the CSIT program.  I really thought it was unique and clever how Dr. Brown used the comics to tie everything together, it helped me visualize everything that he talked about in class.  There are a lot of different aspects of technology that I have never thought of and this class really helped me wrap my head around everything.  I also liked the video’s Dr. Brown shared with us in class, I thought they were very interesting.

I have allways thought robots are interesting.  I enjoyed learning about the Lego Mindstorm robots but I think they could have made the software easier to use.  The mindstorm program was pretty easy but the program we used were you had to use code instead of a GUI I found very difficult to use.  Overall I think the robot project was very good.

I use to play second life a couple years ago.  At first I started playing with one of my friends who told me about it and it was pretty fun experiencing a virtual world together.  After a while it became very addicting and consumed alot of my time.  The most interesting part to me was the fact you can sell virtual land and turn it into real money which I thought was very neat.  I also started playing around with building virtual objects in a sand box which made it even more entertaining to me.

Some people do not understand all of the hard work behind making a website or webpage.  There is alot of thought and careful planning that goes into it everything from what software am I going to use to design this page with (if any) to what color schemes are you going to use.  Even though technology has evolved so much at this age in time with the fine tuning of webdesign software like dreamweaver or content management systems such as Joomla.  I believe a very basic low level webdesign class in high school would be a great idea for students especially considering how popular the web is, it would be a great thing for everyone to be able to voice their opinion over the web and contribute to the content on the web.

I think the whole idea behind AI is amazing.  The part I find the most interesting is about them trying to mimick the human brain and use robots for military purposes.  I believe as AI becomes more and more developed it will be a great benefit to the amry to use robots to fight wars instead of humans, which will in turn reduce the loss of human life on the battlefield.  In a way I believe that this is some of the thought behind the battle bots show where it will just be robots fighting against each other in the future instead of humans.  I also find it interesting that the game of Go has not yet been conquered by AI.

I think this weeks project is the most interesting project we have done all semester.  Watching the video’s about all of the advances in robotic technology was my most favorite part.  I also really enjoy working with the mind storms and all the sensors it has.  Even though this week was just an intro to robotics I think the people in my group will do a really good job on this.

Working in the IT industry I realize how important computer security is.  I have messed around with packet sniffers and brute force crackers, and backtrack for linux in the past so I understand the software side of it, but i do not completely understand the physical security side.  I believe physical security isn’t really brought up that often.  I do think some of the stories involved with famous hackers are interesting though and I really enjoy watching videos about them.

I believe to have the ability to hack something you truly do have to be a master in the technology.  Sure there is some software out now that makes it alot easier then it use to be but you still have to have a really good understanding of something to know how to manipulate it like hackers do.

My experience with Alice so far has been good.  It definitely seems like a good stepping stone for a beginning programmer.  I like how it ties in the programming code with something visual you can get immediate gratification from and see exactly what it is doing.  I think this will be a very fun exercise.

I did not have much of an issue creating the in class page using HTML.  I have had previous experience with HTML, I took a class in high school that involved matking pages in HTML as well as a dream weaver class in college that involved a little bit of hand coding.  I think HTML is a really good language to learn especially since we use it everyday when we are on the internet and most people dont really realize all of the work that your browser does in the background to encode the page you are currently looking at.  Website design has been something I have always been interested in since I was about 12 and have made a couple of web pages using different applications (frontpage, dreamweaver, joomla etc.) nothing to extensive though.

I believe my biggest issue with this lesson is memorizing the HTML tags.  I think I pretty much understand the layout(Head, body, Title tags etc.).  My biggest hurdle will be memorizing the (bold, italicize, insert image tags, etc.).  I think HTML is very interesting and something I really need to dedicate the time to become more familiar with.  I am looking forward to this next lesson alot.

Programming in machine language is a very different experience.  The hardest part is getting yourself to think like the computer (especially in the sequence that the computer does).  It’s hard to visualize how the computer works with the computer back and fourth between the RAM and registers of the CPU etc.  I definitely understand the importance of knowing how the computer talks with it’s different components all the way up to what we see on the screen.  Alot of people (myself included) take for granted all of the complex actions that have to take place behind the scene’s to make applications function.  The hardest part for me was grasping how the computer counts and having to store all the information, it’s almost like you have to baby the computer in everything it does.  It does not know any implied information like what we discussed in class.