Apr
30
Final Blog
April 30, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
When I read back over my blog posts, I realize how much everything has come together during this class. From Babbage to the present, computer science has come a long ways, it almost seems impossible for the time span. Alan Turing and John Von Neumann seem to come up more than the others regardless of the stage of computer science you are looking at, or even what class you are in. If it involves hardware and software, you’ll hear those names come up. When you think about though, we’re still using the same components Von Neumann described in 1945, and Turing put it all together in Colossus. Since then we’ve seen computer evolve, but the evolution has really been Moore’s Law with everything getting smaller, we still use transistors. Recently it was announced that a circuit had been developed that fit on one atom. Can you get smaller than that? Is there something beyond using circuits as switches?
Switches are the heart of the computer system, using binary code you a switch uses off and on states to pass electrical charges. Binary was a really hard concept for me to understand at first, but it may have been because I was getting it in 3 different classes. There are so many concepts to work base 10 into base 2, base 8, or base 16 and vice versa, that it’s hard to understand that every way leads to same answer. I really struggled with it, till one day in this class it just clicked. When it did, I was surprised at ho how easy it was. I have to admit though, I didn’t really see any connection of why we would need it today, till Networking Fundamentals got into subnets. Before you get to that point, you really want to understand binary, because subnetting puts it in whole new perspective.
When we had to do a blog on building a computer, I relied on my past experiences. I used the last system I built as my model, but I got started building computers when I worked for Dell building desktops on Lebanon, Tennessee. I worked there for 3 years, but only built computers for about 6 months, after that I was testing new builds or repairing them. Repairing new builds? Well yes. Dell uses an assembly line to manufacture computers, one build cell used to be two people building one computer. One person was responsible for motherboard, CPU, and expansion cards, the other person was responsible for all drives, and chassis components. It usually took less than 3 or 4 minutes to build one system, any time more than that and the team wouldn’t make production. Unfortunately that lead to a lot of systems that would fail during testing, and need to be repaired before the software was loaded. It was good experience, and I learned a lot from doing it.
Still with everything I had learned about computers, and my experience testing them, building them, and repairing them, I really had no idea how they understood what we wanted them to do. Using the Assembly Language Simulator helped bring it all together. Programming with the language, and seeing how the CPU processed it, stored it in memory, fetched it, and then stored it again, helped me understand what those positive and negative charges were doing. It really helped me understand the entire process, and gave me new respect for earlier programmers.
Building a website wasn’t new to me, I had built them in the past, but never using only Notepad++. I had always used a program such as Dreamweaver to build them. I understood some code, but not enough to build a site by coding it without using a WYSIWYG editor. I really enjoyed doing it this way, and I got my first taste of programming, and started to realize that I liked programming more than I thought I would. Using Scratch to program a game was where I began to get really excited about programming. I began to see the possibilities of programming as an individual, and realized that it’s possible to program small games on your own. When we got into robotics, I could see even more possibilities, and enjoyed it more. I can also see why the first and last parts of the software developing process are the hardest. Just coming up with ideas is hard, but making sure you can meet the requirements, then getting the testing adds even more difficulty. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas that I think I’ll work on this summer, and I’m looking forward to taking Java using the robots next semester.
Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality both bring a lot more to the programming environments. They have my interested peaked at robots that understand us without commands, such as facial expressions, or body language. This adds a lot of prospects to what robots can be used for. Virtual Reality adds even more, and brings up even more questions. If a virtual world is built right, you can be totally immersed in it, and add in Artificial Intelligence it becomes even more immersive. The lines between reality and virtual reality begin to get hard to separate, and the future should only make them closer to each other. Then we have to ask ourselves what is life? I’m sure there will be definition, but it will always come down the individual’s thoughts.
What is life to you?
Apr
23
Virtual Reality
April 23, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
When it comes to video games I pretty much run the whole time-line. By the time Pong came out I was already out of high school, I had it and played it continuously with my sister and best friend. I went from that to an NES, but by then I had other things to do, and never really got into it. Later I got my first PC, and started playing some games on it, and finally bought a PS3 later on. I played the PS3 quit a lot when I first got it, but today its used primarily to stream movies.
A few years ago I started playing a game that is now defunct, and it really wasn’t a game, it more just a 3D chat. I made several friends there, and one that was quite a bit younger than the rest of us kept urging us to try World of Warcraft with her. I remember telling her that I just didn’t have any interest in games like that, but she was relentless that I would enjoy it. I finally gave up and tried it, and the first day I was hooked. Later that day I told her when my trial was up, I was going to buy it, but I passed a Best Buy on my way to and from work, and stopped that next day and bought the Battle Chest with the original, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of Lich King.
I’ve worked extensively on my user interface in WoW, and have a three screenshots below. As you can see when I’m resting such as in a noncombat zone, there’s not much other than the chat box that shows up. When I’m in combat though I have a lot of items showing up. I just redid the UI not long ago, and I’ve not played much since, but I noticed when I did these screenshots I need to arrange some of my info better. This was done with virtually no LUA knowledge, just using other addons that are available.
I’ve played other single person games, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age II, etc. I always go back to WoW though, I think a lot of is the social aspect of the game. I worked some with Unity, mostly just doing the tutorials, and I did all the tutorials included with Alice. The more I do in this respect, the more I’m convinced that I would like to do this in the future. I may try to make some games for Android using Unity first, and see where that leads.
Apr
17
Artificial Intelligence
April 17, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
I began thinking about how Ray Kurzweil’s dream of living forever and seeing his dad brought back to life before. Is it possible that humans could live forever? Is it possible to bring people back to life, and set down with them for a chat? Can Artificial Intelligence change how we look at these possibilities?
Could a program not be programmed with the same characteristics of a particular person? Is it possible to achieve Kurzweil’s dreams in a virtual world using AI? How far away is the possibility of entering a virtual world, and setting down with historical figures for a chat? How far away is the possibility of entering a virtual world, and enjoying time with passed loved ones?
We don’t know enough about how the human brain works, we’re still learning, but where will that knowledge lead us? The secret to living forever may not be in vitamins, but in knowledge and technology.
Apr
9
Robotics are interesting, I’ve enjoyed working with the Lego system. Coming up with ideas isn’t that hard, but when you compare your idea to your restrictions, it applies another layer to the process. Can you accomplish your design with the parts and components you have available? I can see it would be easy to have a great idea, but continuously hit roadblocks with components. Then programming it do what you want it to do. How wide are its sensors? Can they sense anything that isn’t directly in front?
I have to agree with the presentations, robots are just now coming into their own. It’s exciting to think where they can go, and what they can be programmed to do. Of course there is a downside, how many of us are they going to replace? To what extent with they replace us?
Mar
26
I never really knew the history of hacking, and had always considered hackers as bad. Now I wonder without the original hackers, where would computers be today? When the first hackers got their first Altair reminded me of my first computer. It had Windows 3.0 on it, but I was still kind of asking myself what do I do with it. In the beginning I spent a lot of time in DOS even with Windows, and learned to write my first batch file, how to edit the autoexec.bat, etc. I still remember the Gorilla game that was in QBasic, you can still download that game on the internet.
The hackers today come in different types, those with viruses to just aggravate or harm a personal computers just because they can. Thieves that are out to steal people’s identities, and personal wealth. Even a government attacking another country, Stuxnet that slowed Iran’s progress on Nuclear weapons, while it was doing something needed, it was still hacking. Anonymous and other current groups sometimes have honorable causes, but they are lose knit groups with no leaders. The next virus that harms business and personal computers may not even come from one of the groups, but the individual(s) that created it can claim they are part of the groups.
Mar
18
Programming With Scratch
March 18, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
I have to admit I was having problems at first, I’d do just like in class, and nothing worked, then I went back and did the starter tutorials. That changed everything, turns out I was putting scripts in the wrong order. Now I’ve finally settled on a project, gathered my background and sprites, now I’m working on my scripts.
I’ll have to say implementation would be the hardest, coming up with a project was hard, just trying to think of one that wasn’t too hard, and still original. I can see why the first and last parts of the process are the hardest.
To expand on this, since I have my project finished, once I had my concept, sprites, and started entering the code things didn’t go as planned. I made the game just as I had, but when I started making my sprites display, I couldn’t really make them appear as I planned. So I did a search, and found someone else that had made sprites appear randomly at different times, I decided to use that for mine. However, that wasn’t the end of the changes. Once I had a finished product, I kept thinking of ways to make it better. The two main changes were adding the score and timer. The score was the easiest to do, but the timer was more difficult to decide how to make it increase one second at a time. Again, I found examples of how others had done it. After I was finished with those, I felt I needed a way to finish the game. Its a game, you need to win or lose. That required a lot of trial and error till I finally got it to end the way I wanted.
Mar
3
Building a Web Page II and Databases
March 3, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
Doing a web page from scratch using Notepad has given a new understanding of what goes into the coding, and how it actually works. I’d never given much thought to it, but I can see the problems with using static pages versus dynamic pages. Can you imagine a news site like CNN using static pages, it would be a constant headache uploading a new page each time there was breaking news. Or a commerce site like Amazon trying to determine what customers would want to buy before they uploaded the pages?
I have a new respect for the people that were building web sites before databases became so prevalent. I can see why content management systems are so popular like Joomla and WordPress. Unless you use a template built by someone else, you still have to code your site, and if you use a template you’ll still have to know some html and CSS, but it wouldn’t be as hard as doing it from scratch.
I may build a new site using Joomla or WordPress, it’ll be much easier to build my own template now, and I’d kind of like to see what I can do.
Feb
26
Building a Web Page
February 26, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
This wasn’t my first time building a web page, but it was the first building in Notepad++. The first program I used to build web pages was Netobjects Fusion, then I used Macromedia Dreamweaver after that. After Adobe bought Macromedia, I used Dreamweaver for a while, but eventually stopped. Partly because I wasn’t doing as much building web pages, but also because I started using Mambo then Joomla, and it was easier to use templates and simply make tweaks to those in Notepad++.
I did learn some coding using Netobjects and Dreamweaver though, there is always something that doesn’t look like you planned, and the best way I’ve found to tweak a site is to look at the code, and try to understand what is going wrong. That’s not the best way to learn coding, but it will give you an idea what it should look like.
When I started this project, I did something I learned a long time ago, sit down with paper and pen, and draw what you want the site to look like. Make sure you plan it out so it will fit browsers, even low resolution browsers, people will probably not scroll sideways to read your page. Next how many columns do you need? Do you need three or will two work? Do you want to put all your information on one page, or an introduction, and links to other pages containing most of your work? A good rule of thumb is to not make people scroll, up/down, right/left. You need something they see when they first enter you site that catches their interest, and makes them want to look at the other pages. There isn’t any need to have it where there is no scroll bar, but keep it small as possible to keep your reader.
Feb
12
The Assembly Language Simulator
February 12, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
The ALS has given me a better understanding of how the processor uses memory, the registries, and controls everything. I used errors to get an even better understanding, for example I tried to use a VALUE 15, to put a value in address 16. Of course I got out of memory error, but watching how it worked helped me.
Getting a better understanding of this, has given me a better understanding of how the data is transferred along the motherboard, from/to memory, and from/to the hard drive. It’s also given me a better understanding how the CPU controls everything.
Feb
5
My Latest System
February 5, 2012 | CSIT1110 | Comments Off
I built this system last summer, and it was actually my fourth build, I had built two for family, and two for myself. When I first start the process I look at CPUs first to determine which one I want to build around. The 2nd Generation Intel Core’s had not been out very long, and the new AMD’s were still being developed so I decided on the Intel. Once I decide on the type processor, I start looking at different speeds, mother boards, memory, cpu coolers, power supplies and cases. Once I have narrowed my choices down to a few, I start watching for sales, both Newegg and TigerDirect regularly have some nice discounts on items.
After comparing prices of CPUs I decided on the Intel Core i5 2500k, I wanted the unlock feature of the 2500k in case I decided to over clock, and the price was a much better than the i7 2600k. All the reviews of the processor were good except for the obligatory “It didn’t work, I’m going back to AMD.” When reading reviews, its best to try to consider the source, some are just not helpful at all. The price at the time was $224.99 with a discount of $20.00.
Next I settled on an MSI P67A-GD55 partially because of this review, but actually ended up going with a MSI P67A-GD53 which is the same mother board, but does not have the IEEE 1394 port on the rear. I didn’t need the Firewire, and Newegg had the GD53 on its Shell 
Shocker one day only for $99.99 after rebate. Like other manufactures MSI has gone to a clickable BIOS, which is nice, but they’ve also added a feature for one button overclock. While I didn’t use it to overclock mine, I did try it, and gave me a stable 4.2 GHz. It’s a nice feature if you don’t want to use the adjust, measure, and try method over and over.
Knowing that on the P67A motherboard, third party CPU coolers and memory with risers can
present problems, I looked at coolers next. I don’t like Intel’s new system for securing the heat sink to the motherboard, so I wanted to make sure the cooler had back plate. I decided on the XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V REV.W because of the ability to remove the fan from the cooler to clean it. The price was $52.99 with a $10.00 instant credit and a XIGMATEK 3.5″ Internal 75 in 1 Card Reader.
Next I looked at memory, and given the problems you can have with risers on memory on this board, I chose Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600. Kingston has a good name in memory, it didn’t have risers, and all the reviews were good. Looking at the prices today, I’m thinking of adding 8 more Gig to my system. When I built my system, the price was $84.99 for 8 Gig, today it is $46.99 for 8 Gig.
Next I wanted to settle on the video card before the power supply, I’ve always had good luck
with EVGA video cards, and started there. Since World of Warcraft is more CPU/Memory intensive than GPU, I chose the EVGA 01G-P3-1556-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti because it had all the features I wanted, and the price of $141.99 with a $10.00 rebate was reasonable. If I had it to do over again, I’d go with GTX 560 or GTX 560Ti, not because of my card, but I’ve found I could use more video for other games.
Since I had my video card, I had a good idea how much power I was going to need, and started to look at power supplies. I wanted to make sure it was modular so I’d only have to use the cables I needed, and it had enough power for the video card. The OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W had all the features I needed, and was decently priced at $74.99 with $10.00 rebate. It has 2 12V rails with 25A, so it has the power to go up a step in video card easily or even SLI with another GTX 550 Ti.
For a hard drive I really wanted to use SSD to boot from, but at the time they were selling for 
a little over $2.00 a gigabyte, and that put them out of my range. I’ll probably go back and add one later, but decided for this build to get a one Terabyte, 7200 rpm SATA. Name brand wasn’t that important, and Newegg had the SAMSUNG Spinpoint on sale for $64.99, it is 7200 rpms, 32 mb cache SATA 3.0 Gig/sec.
I only needed one optical drive, and I bought the LG CD/DVD Burner based purely on the price of $19.99. It has an SATA interface, and speeds of 22X DVD+R, 8X DVD+RW, 8X DVD+R DL, 22X DVD-R, 6X DVD-RW, 16X DVD-ROM, 48X CD-R, 32X CD-RW, 48X CD-ROM.
Next I needed a case to put it all in, and knew how much room I’d need, and I was going to use an ATX Mid Tower form factor. I was all set to get a CoolerMaster Storm Sniper, till I got a sale flyer from Newegg one day. In the flyer was a Sentey Black Box Series 4284 Version 2.1 for $49.99 with a $10.00 rebate. I had never heard of Sentey, but liked the look and design of the case, it had 4 120mm fans in it, and room for 3 more. I had room to route cables behind the motherboard to give better air flow, and the power supply mounted on the bottom which makes routing cables out of the way easier. Doing research I found Sentey’s site, and on it are some videos with one displaying the case I was looking at. All the reviews were pretty good, and I liked the washable filters and number of fans, so decided to give it a try, I’ve been extremely happy with it.
I used a keyboard, mouse, and monitor that I already had.
My monitor is a SAMSUNG TOC T260HD 26″ with 25.5 viewable, I found it on sale at Sam’s
Club for $249.98. I’ve had it several years, and never had any problems with it. If I ever do change, I’ll probably go with 32” 1080p television.
I use a Logitech G110 Black USB Wired LED Backlighting Gaming Keyboard. One of the main features I 
like is the fullsize function keys, and the backlit keys. I didn’t need wireless, and have had wireless keyboards do some crazy things when they get some interference. Price 64.99.
I also use Logitech for my mouse, the Logitech G9x. It supports two modes, and automatically switches dpi when I start a game as long as it recognizes the game. Price 64.99.
When building a system space to lay everything out is a key, I use the kitchen table which usually gets me a few frowns from others in the house. I start with putting the power supply, drives, and case fans in with no cables attached. Next I put the CPU, cooler, and memory on the motherboard, and put those in the system, then install my video card. Next I route cables from the power supply to the hardware with an eye on air flow. I normally do the front panel to the motherboard next, then SATA cables from the motherboard to the drives. In this particular system, Murphy’s Law raised its ugly head when I tried to put the side panel on. When checking the height of my cooler, I had forgotten to take into account the side panel fans, and the top one wouldn’t clear my cooler. I removed the fan, and used Velcro to attach the filter to inside of the panel. In the end I had to use three fans pulling air in, and three pulling it out, I’m still able to overclock to 4.2 GHz, with a stable and cool system. Total cost of the system was $754.99, and including the items I already had came to $1134.87.