Wrapping up the slog

Yesterday was the last lecture and tutorial of this compsci course.

I have many plans beyond this course, though.

Finals have not yet bore down on unsuspecting students.

For that I'm planning on going through my notes once more, reviewing and connecting the dots of computers and their relations with humans as well as noting the various Dr. Racket commands I've picked up throughout this course.

I have also printed out a couple past exams for this course from the exam repository. I think the first time I checked I found that they were written for readers of python, which I suppose they changed recently to Racket.

I am planning on continuing with compsci perhaps to get to know python before my introductory course load is totally full.

I'm glad to have been able to learn more about the nooks and crannies of computational thinking and I've gotten to know my computer and the internet a bit better. I'm still in awe by how people came up with this technology...

While I know the generations are becoming more and more computer oriented, I still don't consider myself born into the age of the interwebs. When I was young, my family didn't get a desktop (a giant one) until several years after my brother was born. I rarely had the chance to meddle with some at my elementary school. It was still very preliminary. However, one thing I've realized my brother and I are good at is figuring out these tech-y things work. We can quickly grasp how to function a printer, a tv, cable, video gaming systems, etc. maybe because we're more used to this type of machinery. Or perhaps because we're a native to the language.

But I am constantly learning everyday, as is every other native. We can find our technological preference, but there is still so much to be understood.

—V

Project 2 .fx

After my frustration with the other project, I moved on to the one involving colours.

I didn't even spend an hour on it and it seems close to completion.

When I first looked at the avg definition, it looked way too easy to just replace the 7 with an 8, and I eventually figured out how to define it to make an average of the colours after watching a racket video on working with colours. Also, I had created a document that listed a bunch of functions we used in class so that's how I figured out how to ensure that the numbers matched even when it was not exact.

Then, making the other check-expects for true/false avcols was not too difficult. It was just a matter of following the conditions.

Making a toggle definition was also just a matter of recalling past functions to incorporate into the new functions.

Eventually all 16 tests were passed, giving me a glow of satisfaction after having so many errors with the other one.

However, for some reason when I run the program it just states that all of the conditions were false... And I don't think that's supposed to happen... But I don't know how to fix it so I suppose I'll have to ask Danny or a TA.

—V

Project 2 musings: fractal

It's been a really busy time but I figured I should probably get started on the second project due in less than a week.

I spent four hours working on the fractal.rkt and took a really long time trying to figure out the definition. I checked and rechecked the bullseye fractal we looked at during lecture as a basis on how the fractal is supposed to look like, but in this one there were two variables: depth and radius.

The recursion itself wasn't too difficult to figure out since I had a reference and the 'else' for the condition was fairly straightforward. However, it was really confusing for me to figure out how to manipulate just the depth or just the radius.

Eventually I passed both tests for the definition of 'eyes'.

I thought the next part would be slightly easier since it was just creating conditions on what happens when each key is pressed and I thought it would be fine since I already figured out how to manipulate each variable... but I have yet to make it work.

—V

Technology Can't Replace Moments

It's that time of the year when the Christmas decorations are all out, it's freezing and snowing, and all you want to do is huddle with your family and friends. Unfortunately, everyone I miss during the holiday season is halfway across the world.

I remember the time my cousin started university. She had to buy these weird calling cards in order to call her parents since long-distance was so expensive. Nowadays we have technology to thank for minimizing that distance. But it's still not quite the same, is it? I mean, it is much better than nothing, and much better than before, but I still find it worth the large sum of money plane tickets cost to travel back home to spend a couple weeks with them.

Skype, wechat, and other video calling devices can give us visual and auditory input of the other person, but we lack that physical closeness you can only get from being in the same room. No matter how much you try to forget about it, there will always be a screen between you two.

Texting and emoticons offer no outlet of emotion; everything you type seems so much more insignificant. There is a limit to what technology can do for us. We'd be able to keep up with what they post online, but I'd rather spend a day talking about useless things than knowing the little details that happened in their life.

It's difficult to create a memory online. You might be able to keep a history of it, but it's just not the same unless it happened together.

It's also nearly impossible to avoid other distractions. Or maybe YOU are the distraction in their current life, interrupting meals through a ding on their phone.

Anyway, thankfully this period of distance will be over soon and we'll all be home safe and sound.
—V

PRIVACY; No Peeking!

While the internet is great at connecting individuals around the world, it is at the same time robbing us of our private information.

I've never had a dream of being famous. I value my personal space and privacy too much for that. I would rather be the paparazzi chasing down a lady running in high heels than the lady in high heels. I never envied people being showered with attention; microphones shoved in their faces. I like not having to worry about being followed places.

I don't even know if this blog can be traced back to me, but just in case I just sign with an initial. I mean, couldn't the style writing identify the writer anyway? That's how people find out when a paper's been plagiarized or written by someone else, I suppose.

Despite travelling to many places that require passports, I never really felt like I was exposing my information in doing so. I honestly never really realized how much the government knew about me. I hope that as long as I'm not doing anything crazy, there's no reason why there should be a spotlight on my personal life, right?

I recently got a credit card because I'll be living on my own and the limit on my debit card is relatively low. I've been really paranoid about giving out my information since. I haven't had to deal with telemarketers a whole lot, but since I got a new Toronto number they've become more frequent. Someone told me the numbers that start with (+866) are people trying to sell you things, so I try to just let them ring out...

When signing up for accounts on the internet, I often give out an alternative email in case they want to send me ads.

Then again, I don't really understand what anybody would get out of stealing my identity... After all, I am a debt-ridden college student.

Either way, hopefully the world doesn't end up like one of those dystopias like in the Handmaid's Tale by Atwood. We depend upon magnetized plastic cards to retain our wealth and information. Whoever controls that could potentially control everything. I also remember reading a novel about a world where everything suddenly transitioned into barcoding every human being. And then they started getting rid of people they deemed unfit for society. It escalated into terror very quickly.

On that note of pessimism, good luck with conserving your private life!

—V

Let it snow

While working on recursions I noticed how familiar some of the patterns appeared. When I was in grade 10 my math teacher showed us a few cool things about fractals. I remember a video of infinite zooming into the same pattern over and over and over. That is also apparently how snowflakes are. If we can look at one under a microscope we can possibly see that the pattern repeats itself on each of its tips. Now I can't wait for winter to come and see the beauty of snow.

Another holiday thing I wonder about is the light shows some houses in the suburbs put on closer to Christmas. How do they make certain lights turn on and off at certain times (sometimes in sync to music)? I feel like there must be something like programming involved...

On a separate note, I read somewhere that androids are dominating the smartphone market. Smartphones are technically really small computers, aren't they? I mean, if I don't have my laptop with me my phone can do most of the things I need... Plus calling and texting.

Speaking of touch screens... Would anyone prefer a computer with that ability? I feel like my laptop screen is too far to reach while my hands are conveniently placed at my keyboard and it leave ugly oily fingerprints all over. Personally I think I'll stick with my macbook. The battery life of the air is absolutely amazing.

I'd like to mention an application I've found very useful for my eyes. It's called "f.lux" and it sort of tints your monitor so that it's less of a harsh bright white. It can take some getting used to but I find my eyes feel less strained after using it.

However, it is a bad idea to use it while photoediting. Everything turns out looking really "retro." I've also been messing around with vectors on Adobe and it's quite a learning experience. Sometimes I wish I brought my tablet. It just makes things so much easier than using a trackpad or a mouse.

—V

Studying compsci through a microscope

I find that we, those with a minimal knowledge of computers and technology, often see things in a grand, overall view. The Internet appears to just be this big, vague concept that we type something into the long box at the top of a browser to open up a familiar webpage and do whatever it is we aim to do. I've probably never even seen a 100th of the internet. Probably much, much less. For my own purposes I check my email, Facebook, watch some YouTube videos, browse some news articles, and do some research on Google or Wikipedia. These are what you might call "mainstream" websites which are so commonly used. I have only seen the internet through these domains and it kind of scares me how much there is out there. With everyone who has access on this world contributing, thinking of it as a physical thing seems vast and undeterminable. Like, trying to place into perspective an obscenely large number or have a concept of the stars in our skies. As a user, I simple take advantage of the services the Internet can offer, but haven't harvested it as a money-making tool like big companies have. I imagine viewing the Internet as if it were a place we could visit. Perhaps, envisioned as a virtual world there are massive cities as the big name websites with connecting highways as links to other websites. Google might have pathways going out in all dimensions. I mean, people HAVE been saying that sometimes they have "lives" on the internet, be it websites, games, etc. It'd be cool to be able to see the internet in all it's glory.

Anyway, I also find I pay too little attention to the mechanics of commonly used technology such as CDs. All I ever try to do is not touch the bottom where it's shiny otherwise it may not work. I remember messing up VHS tapes as a child or when the machine messed it up and got this black shiny flat tape everywhere. It was magical how that black stuff turned into pictures and sounds of Bambi when shoved into the mouth of waiting box attached to another box called a TV.

On a different note, I found that most of the test was not too difficult, especially the binary and programming half, but one question about different browsers on remote sites on a computer using time splice in the 1960s kind of threw me off... I opted for the one point rather than no points. But I am pretty confident with the last half. It's very logical and reasonable and has a definite answer I can make sense of.

I also studied a lot about the actual computer architecture such as how the CPU interacts with RAM. My friend gave me a really interesting analogy of how it all works. So, the CPU is represented as a school that contains the main office (control unit) and classroom (ALU). The BUS (a literal schoolbus) travels the road (circuit) to a child's house (main memory) and picks up a child (an instruction). That's kind of how I imagine the insides of a computer now since before it was just this sort of vague "sldfkjslkfd" I couldn't visualize.

I was a little disappointed that it didn't appear on the test. Nor was there anything about memory storage. Oh, well.

—V