Virtual Reality

My favorite virtual reality game is Modern Warfare 3. I have been playing the Call of Duty (COD) games for a while and the graphics on the game itself is just insane. I like to play it on the XBOX 360 and XBOX live. I first starting playing games online in 2004 with Halo 2. The game of COD can be rewarding and fun, but you can be sucked into it and lose track of time.

The great thing about online gaming and virtual reality is that you can meet a lot of people, some who can be friendly and some that are just plain jerks. I think virtual reality is great for people who play in video game tournaments like Madden, COD, and other games that actually use bragging rights and also can make you some money if you are really good.

A.I.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has come along way. The reason I say this is the invention of video games like Gears of War, Sims, and Sky Rim. The AI in their games are actually getting smarter than some of the older games we use to play like Atari, Nintendo, etc. I still remember playing Double Dragon and the AI is just standing there to for me to easily take him out with a jump kick.

It would be a scary thought if AI ever caught up to our level of intelligence.  This could be good thing and also bad.  Humans unpredictability is a good thing because not everything is black and white.  Those shades of gray separate us from AI.  Maybe in the future it could be just the like the  Jetsons.  The AI may be pushing the button instead of a human being.

Robotics Research

My research is about my son’s favorite transformer Bumble Bee. Bumble Bee can be classify as a transformer- a robot in disguise better known in Japan as a car robot. He is on the good side known as the Autobots.   Their rivals are the Decepticons. The leader of the Autobots is Optimus Prime and the leader of the Decepticons is Megatron.  When Bumble Bee is not a robot he transforms into a Camaro. Bumble Bee cannot speak due to his voice being damaged in battle and instead  uses his interautobot frequency. That means he can mimic sound and reproduce it while trying to communicate.

My theory alone of why he is a robot applies the three laws of robotics:

1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. For example, Bumblebee protects the danger of humans and earth from the Decepticons.

2  A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Bumble Bee takes orders from Sam Witwicky the boy he protects and become friends with during the three sequels of the transformer movies.

3  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Bumble Bee protects himself from the evil side of the Decepticons.

4  The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. This law alone confirms Bumble Bee’s classification a a robot because he protects human kind from evil ways of the Decepticons.

Bumble Bee is also a great example of cybernetics. The reason of this that he can sense his surroundings changing into to a vehicle in disguise, or transform back into a robot for when being threatened. Also he can make decisions of communication and his frame is built like an example of what an actual robot would possibly look like in the future. Also, when you see the videos and pictures below it proves why Bumble Bee is a robot or in his case a Transformer.

Resources:

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Bumblebee_%28Movie%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee_%28Transformers%29

Videos:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/aFYihNx149Q" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/2684424/great_transformers_breakdance.swf" width="400" height="345" allowfullscreen="true" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/_o1ymAwIsrw" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

[[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/t4XHtIuGvF4" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]


[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/CHLMcp5v8m4" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

Security

Security is a good way help minimize exposure of threats like identity theft.  It’s kind of like leaving your wallet on the counter of the grocery store and walking away.  You hope no one would steal your credit card and pay for their groceries, or take your license and try to buy a car, but there’s no guarantee.  Put your wallet in your back pocket and protect it and someone won’t have that temptation.  Same with your computer, except someone doesn’t have to be in the same country to try to steal your stuff.  Throw up a firewall and lock things up.  Speaking of protection, some people need to change there passwords and not use the same password for their banking account and their email account, and even their Facebook account. Check out this one hacker that got passwords to celebrities accounts (Hackerazzi) – here is the link: (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/hacker-glad-he-got-caught/) .

My opinion is that people need to be aware and stay safe.  I like the way that a hacker makes a company aware of their need to beef up their security by hacking into their company accounts.  Every company should have their own personal hacker on staff.  It would save them a lot of headache in the long run.  I thought Dr. Brown’s thesis of making a virus and how it easy it was to make one was very interesting.  That is pretty insane that anyone would want to do this to innocent people.  Some are not aware that they need virus protection to help protect what  they have that is valuable to them on their computer.  People need to wise up, there are some really savvy people out there who don’t have the same morals the rest of the world does.

Scratch 1

Since I started Scratch I have had plenty of ideas. Because I am a big Minnesota Vikings fan, I thought I would include them in my setup.   I wanted to make story of why the Vikings want a new stadium and are not renewing their lease at the Metrodome in 2012.  I like how you can include sound effects and put music in your game or story. I saw those examples on Scratch and some were very unique and some are funny.

The video of Randy Pausch was very informative of how groups of people can brainstorm ideas together and how to put a game or simulation in a virtual world.  My two favorites group presentations were Godzilla and Mr. Rogers.  The one presentation that had technical difficulties was kind of funny due to at that moment of time you can see that they were still using VHS. I also read that Randy Pausch and Steve Jobs both died of pancreatic cancer.  Ironic seeing they were both in the IT field. (http://superdupershark.com/blog/2011/10/15/of-symmetries-and-sign-offs-the-intersection-between-randy-pausch-and-steve-jobs/).

One thing I am surprised is really hasn’t been a good Godzilla game. If I am wrong let me know because I want to play it. Hopefully by next week I can complete my scratch project and put some voice interactions together and make it a little funny also.

HTML 2

I just finished uploading  my HTML to SSH (pstcc11.pstcc.edu/~c1110c20). I  sent the link to my friends at my old  job in Minnesota and they thought it looked nice. Hopefully, they are not sugarcoating it.   Many of them are Minnesota Vikings fans, so at least they liked the color. Getting my personal picture to export to SSH was very irritating.  I tried several times to upload them until I figured out if I just used Photo Bucket it would work just fine.

I thought it was a great learning experience how to handcode HTML. SSH was pretty easy when you had the instructions to make it possible. That SSH was almost the same process to me as going into the terminal on a Mac.  I became familiar with that when I added some plug ins on my apple TV. SKOL VIKINGS!!!!

HTML

HTML to me was very time consuming and tedious. The reason was the coding itself and remembering which paths and locations. The difficult part for me was loading images to the HTML.  I especially had to make sure the personal pictures were in the right path.  I was getting a little frustrated by it but overcame the problem just leaving them on my desktop.

This is my first time doing a HTML so it was kind of nice that I can actually do some hand coding and can of design it my way.  I like how those references help me to become familiarized on the way of setting a heading, paragraph, line break, and also putting a image in HTML. Hopefully, next week I can upload it with SSH or filezilla with no problems. I know little bit due to my 1720 software class lab assignment.  That should help me with this!

Assembly Language Simulator

When I got to this week, I was confused over this. I believe over-thinking was my problem.  I felt a little better once I found out I wasn’t the only one a bit confused.  Once I read the instructions on D2l,  it started getting easier each problem I did.  The lab that was included really helped me.  I thought the machine code to IR to memory was interesting.  It really showed how the process linked to each other.  Although this quiz was super hard for me, it helped me understand it even more due to some of the mistakes I made.  The dreaded first exam is coming so gotta go, wish me luck.  Hopefully I can put everything together with a little more studying!

Building a Computer

Here is my dream computer.   Section one includes the parts I would chose and section 2 describes how I would put my computer together and my reasoning for choosing those parts.   I am interested in building a computer fast enough to support my hobbies of gaming and home entertainment.

SECTION ONE

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 912 Mid-Tower Gaming Case w/ Adjustable HDD

Internal USB Extension Module: NZXT Internal USB 6-PORT Expansion

CPU: AMD Phenom™II X4 840 Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology Cooling Fan: AMD ATHLON64 CERTIFIED CPU FAN & HEATSINK

Motherboard: [CrossFireX] GigaByte GA-970A-D3 AMD 970 Socket AM3+ ATX Mainboard w/ On/Off Charge, 7.1 Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, SATA-III RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe X16, 3 PCIe X1 & 2 PCI

Memory: 8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/1333MHz Dual Channel Memory

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card Video

Card 2: AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 16X PCIe Video Card (Major Brand Powered by AMD)

Power Supply Upgrade: 800-Watts – XtremeGear Gaming Power Supply – Quad SLI Ready

Data Hard Drive: 80 GB Intel 320 2.5 inch SATA Gaming MLC Solid State Disk [+195] (Single Hard Drive)

Optical Drive 2: Samsung SH-B123L 12X BLU-RAY Player & DVDRW Combo [+61] (BLACK COLOR)

LCD Monitor: 22″ Widescreen 1680×1050 ViewSonic VX2268WM 3D

Speakers: Corsair Gaming Audio Series SP2500 High-power 2.1 PC Speaker System

Keyboard: Xtreme Gear (Black Color) Multimedia/Internet USB Keyboard

Mouse: Roccat Kone 3200dpi Pro AIM Laser Sensor Gaming Mouse

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)

SECTION TWO

My Steps and reason for building my computer

1. I would open side of the case and unscrew the screws that are holding it together.

2. My CPU and cooling fan (heatsink) would be installed on the motherboard.

3. Ram, video and sounds cards would be installed on the motherboard. Ram would go on the memory modules.  The two video cards would be connected on two of the PCIe connections. Asus sound card would be connected to the PCI slot on the motherboard that contains Dolby Digital Sound 7.1 and DTS, which I could connect to my home theater if I choose too.

4. I would pop the cage out of the front of the case to slide in my solid-state drive. I chose this solid-state drive because it has no moving parts, uses less power, and is more durable than an HDD drive. Also, I have room to put in another SSD but I thought the eighty-gigabyte drive would be good enough.

5. Since the front case is open I will install my Samsung Blu ray drive. I have a PS3 and a Sony Blu Ray BDS-570 player, which is 3D ready.  Blu ray has a very crisp sound and the visuals are amazing. I thought why not?

6.The 800-watt power case will be installed on the bottom of the case and I would plug the power supply to the motherboard. Why so much power? After doing the proper calculations, I would require at least 750-watts of power, so 800-watts would work out fine.

7.  Next I would start plugging in the SATA cables, 6 Pin PCIe, 8pin PCIe, 4 Pin Aux, 8pin Aux, and the 20 or 24pin P1 connector to the motherboard.  Vice versa with the components that only need to be plug in directly to the motherboard to communicate modular power.

8.  Hopefully, it will power up the computer and begin to install windows 7 home edition and the necessary drivers for my components.

9. After that I would try out the mouse and keyboard that I chose.  I would test the speakers for quality sound and the monitor for quality 3D picture.  If I don’t like them I would probably ask for a refund.  I do have a 46-inch Samsung lcd led tv and a Sony 7.1 home theater system, which I can connect to if money becomes an issue.

10. Lastly, I would start wishing Gears of Wear 3 would show up on windows.

Binary

Binary was a little confusing at first. Then after it was more explained on the notes and the comic that’s when it clicked. In computer “language”, base 2 is binary 1′s and o’s and hexadecimal is base 16 0-9 ,A-F. What also helped was software and hardware class explaining it. Binary was great to learn for the fact that if you are going into the career of being a programmer, this is what you will be using.

Also, what I learned from binary is converting. For example, binary to base 10, base 10 to binary, base 2 to 16, etc. That took me the most time to grasp and understand but learning is part of the fun. ASCII converting was interesting to me because of how it is figured in binary. Hopefully, I can remember the process of ASCII, binary, and hexadecimal down the road.