Reflection, week after Spring Break

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So yea, Spring Break. While I told myself I'd be productive, I ended up doing no such thing. I mainly just sat around an relaxed, hung out with friends I haven't seen in a long time, and occasionally looked at some Discrete Math IT was a good break, and although I feel like I should have gotten more work done than i did, I had a good time. I'm happy to be back at school, even if the weather is completely ridiculous (Snow? Really?).

Now on the topic of my Unix class. All seems to be going well in the class, and I'm enjoying the material we are covering. I'm glad that we are covering GitHub, as it is a useful resource that I feel we should know how to use. It is excellent for collaboration between partners. We are also of course doing C programming in Unix, which is interesting and I feel we maybe should have been introduced to it earlier in the curriculum. We have a test coming up, which I feel should be quite easy, and I believe we have a project coming up as well. Speaking of tests, I have a test in circuits this Wednesday, which should be tons of fun. Kind of wish it wasn't so soon, since we just got back from break.

This week, man, this week

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So this week has been absolutely crazy with work and exams and such. I had three exams yesterday, back to back, and that was the opposite of a good time. I spent all week up till that point, plus the weekend, studying my butt off. Luckily the studying paid off and I'm pretty sure I wrecked all three tests (woo). (By the way, if you are looking for a great place to study at Tech with friends, 1st floor of Newman Library there is a room with whiteboard walls and multiple TV's that you can use, I highly recommend it) Unfortunately, I'm still a bit tired from it all and have a Microcontrollers project due next week as well as another exam in History. But hey, such is life, at least I got the bulk of my work done.

Speaking of the Micro project I'm working on, it's pretty darn fun, to me at least. I just finished my first revision of fully working code, and I have to say, it was a blast to program. Sure I ran into many... stupid errors, but hey that's how you learn so it's fine. I'm still trying to optimize my code as I feel it is far from fully optimized, and that could take longer than it took me to write everything! Either way I feel like I'm learning a lot and it's been fun from start to finish*.

* Some parts in the middle did suck, and I may or may not have wanted to break my Digilent board in half multiple times

This, that, and other things

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So yea, it's been another week. I've finally been able to go rockclimbing again since the weather has gotten a bit better and that's pretty awesome. I try to get myself to go once or twice a week, but with the recent snow I've been unable to drive myself to go (Curse my small car). Either way now that I'm able to go I have to balance my schedule even more. It seems that I'm always doing homework or studying or something to do with school, and even then I forget things. Like just this week I forgot to do a reading for one class because I was doing a reading for another class and studying for a test in another. Hell, it's no joke when they say engineers have no time for social lives, but it works out in the end. You have to put the hard work in now to get the future you want later. Also, as far as classes go I'm relatively enjoying all of them, no bad classes yet. The only one I forsee issues with is Discrete Math, and possibly Circuits because I just can't understand the teacher for the life of me. However, because I enjoy the classes it will be a bit easier to stay on track.

In other news, my laptop decided to corrupt itself earlier this week and I've just recently revived it. I decided to go with a Linux Mint installation along-side a Windows 7 installation so that I could use it for all my classes. Linux because its quick and I'm able to use it within my Unix class of course, and Windows because a couple of my classes such as Microcontrollers and Circuits require me to run software that only runs under a Windows machine. I'm just finishing up the Windows installation as I type this and all seems to be going well. It should be up and running for classes next week so that I can finally go back to digital note taking. Anyways, it's been a long day and I still need to get up at ~7:00 tomorrow to get on campus, so until next time, this is my blog, posting, thing.

First Post of 2014

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So here it is, my first post of 2014. Haven't posted on here since senior year of High School but hopefully that will change soon. SO I've been reading This book The Art of Unix Programming and so far it's been pretty good. It starts off talking about the Unix culture and how it has an "n associated design philosophy transmitted across generations of engineers". This is interesting to read as I believe that the culture behind a topic is almost as important as the topic itself. It is important for something to have a strong following and helpful base if it is to survive throughout the years. It is also important to have a strong culture in order to draw new people into it, to again keep it alive. I hope to discuss this aspect of Unix a bit more in my class, and if not then I hope to read about it in the future. The first chapter of the mentioned book also gives a brief overview of what Open Source is and how Unix is flexible and provides an environment to learn "good design principles and development methods" as stated in the text. Unix has paved the way for some features we see in our operating systems today, which is also stated in the text. It is a great environment to learn these skills in and I would recommend it to any C (or even other language) programmer.

Laptops

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So, as this will probably be my last ever blog post, and we are all going off to college, I thought I would do a post about laptops and how to choose which to get. We all know that a laptop is almost an essential part to any college career, but how do you know what to get? And how do you not break the bank? Well you just need to weigh your options. One of the main things you are going to want to think about is whether you want a laptop that will last you for 4 years, or if you want to get one for 2 years, and buy another one halfway through. This decision depends on your preference and financial status, but for the purpose of this blog, I'm going to gear most estimates towards a 4 year computer. In my opinion, to get a nice, long-lasting laptop for college, you are going to want to spend around $1,000. This will allow you to get the up to date technology, and keep your laptop up to date even 4 years from now. Whether you get a large 17+ inch screen or a smaller 14.3" screen is, again, up to you. On one hand a smaller screen will translate into a lighter easier to carry laptop, while a bigger screen will offer a nicer picture and may just please you more. Next, CPU, you want to make sure it is at least a quad-core processor, and I recommend at LEAST a 3.0Ghz clock speed, try for 3.3+ if possible. Also, if going the Intel family route, try to get a processor from the i7 family, rather than i5 or i3 (try to avoid i3). The next thing to look at is the RAM you are getting. For a computer to last 4 or more years I would recommend at least 8Gb, 4Gb at a minimum. You can never have too much RAM and this will keep your computer running snappy and able to handle newer programs for a longer time. Now, the graphics card, here you need to consider whether or not you want to play intense games on your laptop or not(By intense games I mean real video games like COD, Skyrim, or etc. not farmville). If you do then you are going to want to look for a laptop with a DEDICATED video card that has at least 1Gb of dedicated video memory, preferably a card made by Nvidia. If not, then you don't have to worry too much, however still make sure it has a dedicated graphics card, as built-in cards have poor power and will become outdated far quicker. Finally, the harddrive, if you can afford it try and buy a laptop with an SSD (Solid State Drive). These are the fastest harddrives you can get, and will make your system INSANELY fast. However, they tend to be rather expensive, and small in size, so they may not be practical for everyone. If you do get a laptop with an SSD you are probably going to want to buy a decent external harddrive to keep most of your data on. Otherwise, just get a normal harddrive, the matter son what you think you need, but I don't recommend anything less that 500Gb, and make sure the spindle speed is 7200RPM. And one final note, try and avoid purchasing a laptop before June. This is when the newest laptops will be released and discounts will be popping up everywhere. You will be able to find newer technologies and better prices, so just wait a bit and try and buy your laptop starting mid-June.

P.S. If any of my classmates have questions about laptops/computers for college, just ask me at school or anything, I'm glad to answer and help.

The Monster: GeForce GTX 690

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SO, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 was just released yesterday, and this thing is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. It has 4Gb of dedicated video memory, a power draw of 300W, and other ridiculous specifications (for a full list of specification click here. That't not all that makes this card crazy, the GTX 680 was said to be equivalent to THREE GTX 580's, and the 690 is said to be even better than that. This graphics card can handle absolutely anything you could imagine, and then some. The average person wouldn't even need a 6th of this card's capabilities, and even at that they would still have more than enough power. Now for a crazy card, you also get a rather steep price, if you want to get this card you will have to pay upwards of $1,000 for it. That's the same amount I spent building my entire computer, and my computer is a monster as well. And even if you were to get this card, you would need a bad ass motherboard and CPU to go along with it, so you could get the full performance. In the end, this thing is amazing and as they say on their website "The fastest graphics card in the world", although I have no doubt that relatively soon there will be a new "fastest" card.

Part 7: The Keyboard

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The keyboard is yet another aspect of your computer that you use everyday. As with the mouse an average computer user doesn't have to put much thought into purchasing a keyboard, as long as it types, it's fine. However, gamers take keyboard choice into serious contemplation. When gaming, normal everyday keyboard don't perform nearly as good as a specifically made gaming keyboard. The keys can ghost, response time isn't as good, keys can stick, and you have to push further to engage the button. Ghosting is a problem where multiple keys pressed at the same time cause some of the keys not to be registered. During a hardcore gaming session, this could cause you to miss out on critical actions. Gaming keyboards use special technology to prevent this from happening, allowing all key presses to be detected, no matter the amount. Another unique features of most gaming keyboards is the ability to record and play back macros. Macros are combinations or a series of key presses that when played back send that series of presses to the computer, adding like you pressed those keys. It is especially useful when you need to perform a series of events quickly in a video game. All these features is why gamers choose to buy gaming keyboards. Again, i like to buy my gaming equipment from razer, these keyboards being no exception. My favorite has to be the Black Widow because it offers all the features you could want, and is very comfortable to use.