I have resolved to helping my group members on our project and preparing to repeat the two classes from this semester. Next semester, there is only one set of related reasons that I can think of that will bring me out of hiding.
That is all.
-Brown
Archive for the ‘The Student’ Category
General Notice Pertaining to Cave Usage
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
Pre-post: Learn by Site
Sunday, March 25th, 2012I’m unsure of this title.
G² and White, since we’ve been sharing social/learning sites, I’m targeting you with this post. At this moment, I only intend to link to the sites; I may get more detailed later.
Coming soon…
- Quora
- Coderwall
- OpenStudy
- Khan Academy
- Stack Exchange (network of sites)
- Fitbit
- Fleetly
- RunKeeper
- Endomondo
- MyFitnessPal
BE-LE
Monday, December 12th, 2011According to my text (978-1-4496-0006-8), Big Endian ISAs is better suited for handling bitmapped graphics than Little Endian ISAs. Intel always uses Big Endian and Motorola always uses Little Endian. PowerPCs were Motorola units. Windows machines were traditionally Intel based. Apple was traditionally Motorola based. This might mean that Windows systems were more capable of handling bitmapped graphics than Apple machines.
Of course this is somewhat shocking to me since the Mac has been touted as being the choice machine of graphic designers. This could mean that the value is held elsewhere. One potential reason being that not all image files are use bitmapping.
Apparently the Windows BMP format was developed on a LE machine; it therefore needs to be converted in order to be read/viewed on a BE machines. Other formats are below:
Big Endian
- Adobe Photoshop
- JPEG
- MacPaint
- Sun raster
Little Endian
- GIF
- PC Paintbrush
- RTF by Microsoft
Dual Support (BE and LE) often via encoding an identifier in the file
- Microsoft WAV and AVI
- TIF
- XWD (X Windows Dump)
To be continued…
Clock Cycle Time
Monday, November 14th, 2011For the sake of memory.
Midterms, a long week, malware and Tron
Friday, November 4th, 2011This week semester has been insane. I started the semester by needing to rapidly recover the functionality of a failed computer lab setup as well as hunting a great deal of license information for various software packages. The labs were eventually functional. Unfortunately, this resulted in a very sparse study allotments. Computer Science being a heavy topic means that only a little studying results in a deficient understanding. I imagine that the grades of both of my midterms this week suffered horribly at my hand.
In other news, I am trying to figure out how to generate a password file for VisualSVN; I may have just found my answer. I had to generate md5 passwords earlier during the semester for another tool; this current need is very different. This research was quickly interrupted.
I somehow managed to forget to install a Windows Live Movie Maker in one of the labs. I’ve spent a good portion of this week muddling through manually installing the software via a series of *.msi files. This was very messy and though it installed the main program, several prerequisites were skipped which prevented the actual program from running. Windows Live Movie Maker is also dependent on Photo Library which would also not run without the dependencies. I eventually found info about a full installer for Windows Live Essentials which accepted switches that can be used to modify installation parameters from the command-line. In the words of Mayfield, “where do you learn that?” He is essentially inquiring as to where the info is initially publicized.
My command-line parameters for Movie Maker:
wlsetup-all.exe/AppSelect:MovieMaker/q/log:c:\admin\logs\MovieMaker.log /noHomepage /noSearch
The next thing is to update the hardware in one of the labs. I have a student tomorrow so we are going to rock off with new tech. Mayfield has volunteered to help me to get the systems setup on Sunday, we’ll see what happens.
One of the relatives called over the weekend about some malware on her system. These buggers are getting slick with the settings that they modify. IT folk gone rogue. This set modified the registry to hide nearly every user file and application. Some settings had to be manually reconfigured after the removal of the malware. One the the guys at my job reported a similar problem.
While that was scanning, I watched Tron: Legacy for the nth time. I noticed during the scene when Sam was looking for Zeus that Sam was mocked and attacked for being the son of the creator. Upon realizing this I recalled a conversation with The Pants about this movie being a metaphor for the coming of Jesus Christ. I initially didn’t think that it was. I still don’t think so for that matter. However, that depends on how knowledgable the filmmakers were on the topic. Jesus wasn’t targeted merely because he was the son of God. He was targeted because he caused a lot of noise (via people favoring and following him and such) in his era.
While I was writing this I should have been doing one of two other pertinent things. I need to prepare a lesson on Microsoft Access for Saturday and I need to read my chapters for school so that I don’t have a repeat performance of my midterms during finals week.
EOP
Gray locs
Sunday, October 16th, 2011A few weeks ago I had a conversation with someone about my study habits. He believes that I spend too much time dealing with school matters; apparently it is an unhealthy activity. He finished the bit by saying that I’d end up with gray locs which would need to be cut because they wouldn’t look right. I should have asked… I have no idea what is meant by gray locs not looking right.
Of course, this sitting in the back of my mind led me to consider vanity. Anyone who knows me knows fully that I have no opposition to gray hair… it happens. I think that it is more reasonable to accept the gray hair than cover it just to rediscover it when you don’t expect or desire to see it. This also led me to reflect on the view of vanity in my childhood. When I was a child, vanity was spoken against in the circles that I dwelled by way of my parental units. These days some of the people that I meet who have the greatest degrees of vanity are those I meet in church. That is just odd to me.
I don’t know what to say about any of this.
Ambitious Book-ing
Thursday, October 13th, 2011I think I may be overly ambitious. I’d like to know how you feel about this.
I’ve been using a site for bookish folks called Goodreads (thanks Laya). Earlier this year, I noticed a graphic advertising the 2011 Reading Challenge. The idea is simply that you set a reading goal for the year, you record your status on what you are reading and when you mark books as being completely read, your completion total increases. It isn’t a contest, just a means to inspire people to read more.
My problem was that I’ve gone for the span of several years without finishing a book; I’ve started plenty. I set a goal of 25 books for 2011, as of this writing I have finished reading 5. 
In truth, these 5 are a big deal for me but, I am still only 20% toward my goal.
Ok, the other problem is not a lack of books (not by far). I have a lack of time (sort of). I spend a great deal of time at my job performing various functions. I’m in grad school, taking two classes. I teach guide one class. I attend church and related functions, sometimes. I climb the rocks. I fix people’s stuff (I’m still trying to figure this out). I also occasionally try to finish the ridiculous stack of games that I’ve purchased from Steam sales. There is also the tech habit (which I should be able to integrate with the reading habit).
Oh, so reading has become a habit now. I’ve found that I can take advantage of the ride between campuses by using the Kindle app on my phone. The Kindle app also works well in bed with the lights out. Still, this only allows for brief periods of reading; it took me two days to finish the first chapter of The Hunger Games
I’ve been writing this throughout the day and am now tired and without recollection of how I intended to finish this post. My question to myself is: “Can I read 20 books by December 31st?”
Classroom to Office to Classroom
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011I have a desk.
Actually, I have several desks.
There is the one in my cubicle which exist for the sake of my hired position. Another exist in the office which is to accommodate my acting position. A plethora more exist in the various classrooms that I serve. I do not qualify to use either of my professional desks.
This isn’t a sob story of my work drama. The situation is merely that the nature of my work is often more suitably served in a computer lab than at either of my official desks. The problem is that there is another set of tools that I do not have access to by working in these computer labs.
This is a set of tools that I can access via certain remote access means albeit not easily or quickly. I lose quite a bit of time creating the connection to the remote resources. Moreover, since I do not work in a single lab and because I am often interrupted, I would often need to recreate these connections throughout the day. The really bad part about this is the my mind eventually came to reject the idea altogether and move toward working on issues that are directly accessible. I am an extremely mobile worker, within the scope of our complex; my work computer has become like a locking post with a single link chain.
I’ve made a decision which would typically offend my reasoning. I am going to have to duplicate a feature (software option). We have a issue tracking system at my job which is the primary thing that I am unable to access remotely. I am going to configure a web-based version for my group in order to make it easier to handle current issues.
Intro-CS Course
Monday, October 3rd, 2011I registered for a course titled Computer Organization and Assembly Language. This course is designed for non-CS/CIS bachelor degree recipients. Because of my coursework I was exempted from the course. I registered primarily for the assembly language content.
I learned two things upon entering the course:
- Assembly language will have little coverage and will be isolated to an emulator.
- The course covers a lot of material that I’ve been exposed to outside of my courses.
I can see how someone in my situation could see this course as being a waste of time. I intend to use the course to restructure my mind to have a frame like that of the computer scientist.
So far, the effort seems to be working. A slight side-effect is that the reconstruction of my mind has shifted a few resources away from information technology. As a result, talking to IT people has started to become difficult.
I wonder if I can be multi-lingual.
A new tech order
Monday, September 26th, 2011The new cool (to be purchased in the given order):
- Arduino (finally)
- iPad 2
- 30+ U server rack
- rack mountable server