A Briefer History of Time Part II

There is a  theory that the universe is forever expanding. Based on data scientists, have discovered that all the galaxies are moving away from us with the ones farther from us moving faster. Now we are not going to make the same mistake of assuming that we are the center of the universe again, but think of the universe as a balloon with dots on the balloon representing galaxies. As the balloon expands all of the galaxies move away from each other. Scientists believe that there are three different theories about what will happen as the universe continues to expand. They also have discovered black holes, which are places in space so incredibly dense that escape velocity to get out of its gravitational field exceeds the speed of light, so even light cannot escape. These black holes simply look like that, a black hole in space with objects orbiting the outside of the event horizon.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson believes that schools kill creativity. He explains in this ted talk that schools focus more on the academic subjects such as math, science, english, etc and less on the arts such as painting and dance. The most impacting story that he told during his talk was the one of the lady who choreographed Cats. She was considered a bad child and had bad grades in school because she couldn't stay still. The school told her mother that she simply needed to calm down, instead she simply needed to dance and emit her en ergy in the arts. Schools today don't focus on the arts because they feel like they will not be beneficial in the future.

David Hanson: Robots that "show emotion"

David Hanson has been working on creating robots that are capable of reading emotion and showing empathy. Over the past ten years they have built about 20 robots using frubber to create the face that can portray emotions. Here is a picture of one of the robots mimicking Hanson's frown,

The robots are able to respond to you as well as picking up and reading your own emotions. They are also working on an animated robot that can one day possibly be a companion for children. It is able to form relationships because of its perception of people and the natural form of its interface that allows it to interact with humans, so people can believe the robot is actually a person.

Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright

YouTube receives a hundred years of video each day. Every single one of these videos is determined if it matches any other type of video such as a TV show, music video, movie, etc. These videos have all copyright policies, either allowing or not allowing the video to be posted. The vastness of the files they must check to see of there is a match and the amount of videos being posted daily is an incredible amount of information, and youtube processes all of this information extremely fast. By allowing people to post other people's videos, the owner's of the videos can get free publicity, new audiences, revenue, and  recognition.

John La Grou plugs smart power outlets

John La Grou and a group of other brilliant people designed a smart plug, which will help prevent electrical fires from starting. There is an alarming amount of fires and injuries caused from electrical outlets. These are intelligent plugs that are able to determine if there is too much electricity flowing through the cord, which causes fires, and shuts off the flow of electricity. It also prevents children from being burned if they stick their hands in the socket because no energy will be generated in the socket until a smart plug is plugged in. These will reduce the costs and use of energy and also decrease fires and injuries due to plugs.

Stumbleupon.com

Stumbleupon.com is a fantastic website that I discovered early this school year. You create an account, pick topics that you find interesting or fun, and stumble. It attaches a stumble bar to the address bar on your screen and allows you to stumble upon countless websites, pictures, articles, videos, games, etc. You can also like or dislike a stumble, if you like it then you can go back to your account and actually see everything you have like in the past. If you dislike it, stumbleupon takes that into consideration when finding your next thing to stumble on. You can also narrow down your topics to one thing, such as humor, or as broad as all. Stumbleupon is very entertaining because you are able to discover things you would have never seen without it.

Calculator Part II

For the functions of the buttons the Calc engine is used. In the Calc engine we used preset mathematical buttons and applied them to what buttons we wanted to perform the function. Then we had to create private static final int such as MULTIPLY = 4, so when applying the function later we can use 4 to represent multiplying. We did this for squareroot and exponent. We also had to add the action listener to all the newly added buttons. There is also a series of long and complicated phrases and numbers to determine the text on the screen versus the last on screen and what needs to be on the screen. Then we added the operations squareroot and exponent to the list of operations and told teh calculator to get the function from the Calc engine.

Change in Google Apps

At SJA we all have a google apps account for our e-mail, but there shall be a transition from just normal google apps account to something including mroe of a google account as well. This will allow us to use our google apps accoung to access the same things that we could only access with a google account. This new google apps will function more like a real google account and you will be able to sign in and use programs like picasa web and blogger.

Value of Backing Up

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, my computer had to be reimaged due to virus attacks. Being the wonderful student that I am I had not back-up in quite some time. Fortunately I was able to salvage most of what I needed. I certainly learned that backing up is a neccessity to life and I must make a point to do it more often. Now while I saved most of what was important, I did not rescue the calculator that Nicole and I have been working on. But I did learn where this particular file was housed. It was not in the eclipse folder like I had assumed, but rather in workspace located in local disk D of my computer. I have now recently backed up all of my documents as well as the calculator and have restored the calculator back to its state before being obliterated by the reimaging.

Wiimote

The Wiimote is a cost effective way to create an amazing interective board. All you need is a hollowed out marker, LED light, batteries, a means of soldering, positive and negative wires, computer, and a wii remote. The infrared detection in the wii remote is projected onto the screen of a computer (or if you have a projector to go with your computer, the projected screen) and the infrared light on the pen is used on the computer like a pen on a tablet would be used.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ

A Briefer History of Time Part I

I am currently reading a Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking. He explains the early ideas about space and the universe, and one old woman thought that the Earth was a flat plate supsended in the air by an ininite tower of turtles. Now we think that that idea is completely absurd, but had we lived in that time we would not have been able to come up with a better answer. Once society had come to the conclusion that Earth was a sphere rotating in an orbit around the Sun in our lovely little solar system, surrounded by countless other galaxies in our vast universe, things became much clearer for everyone. Newton came along and gave us his theories on motion and gravity, which we all know by heart. Even with Newton's laws certain things were not explained and he had flaws in his logic. Einstein created his theories of special and general relativity, stating that both time and space are NOT absolute, as it was believed to be before. His theories also upheld certain factors, like Mercury's orbit, which could not be explained with Newton's laws.

Calculator Part I

Nicole and I are creating a calculator in this lovely class. We are using the prgrams java and eclipse to complete said project. The calculator is made using coding and crazy words that mean specia things, such as JFrame, JPanel, JButton, and JTextField. These create what you see when you open the calculator. We created Jbuttons for the numbers 1-9 and plus, minus, divide, exponent, squareroot, clear, multiply, decimal, backspace, positive/negative, and equals. We also had to label what would be seen on each of the buttons, so we entered for multiply in quotations "x". The quotations told the program to look at the x as a string of text and to treat as nothing more than that. The function of the button was covered in a different way (see Part II). We also changed the color of the button and are in the process of figuring out how to change the font.

Ueli Gegenschatz soars in a wingsuit

Ueli Gegenschatz soars in a wingsuit. Translation? THIS GUY FLIES. Ueli has been freefalling his entire life and started first with paragliding. From there he began skydiving, to skydiving with a board, to jumping off cliffs and building, to jumping off moving trucks and hot air balloons. The man has jumped off of everything possible. Then he began to wear a wingsuit, which sort of looks like a jumpsuit with flying squirrel flaps beneath the arms and in between the legs. If Ueli is able to get the right tension in his body he is able to soar through the air, having a forward rate of 110 mph and a falling rate of 45 mph. So he is traveling farther across than he is traveling down. Technically he is not flying, but he is as close to flying as a single human being can be without machinery. He is falling with style.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ueli_gegenschatz_extreme_wingsuit_jumping.html

Arthur Benjamin does "Mathemagic"

Arthur Benjamin is an absolutely phenomenal mathetician. He starts off his talk by squaring any two digit numbers, then three digits, then four digits. He then is able to determine the number that is left out of a seven digit number which is the product of a certain number and any random nuber. Then Benjamin rattles off the day of any date in any year. Such as August 12th 1923 was a.....? Sunday! It was crazy awesome. He then concludes his show by squaring a FIVE digit number. He does the process out loud so we can hear what is going on in his mind while he is doing this. He says that he breaks up the problem into three different parts and also has certain words to represent certain numbers. In this case he uses fishen and cookies as representations of some number that I am unable to determine. This man was fantastic and extremely entertaining.
http://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_does_mathemagic.html

How to Make a Potato Gun

First you need these materials:
4" PVC pipe
2" PVC pipe
4" female
4" plug
4" coupler
4" reducer

You take the 4" pipe and and cap it off with a 4" female pipe item, and then put the plug on that end to close the combustion chamber. On the other end of the 4" pipe you place the coupler and the reducer to make the pipe go from 4" to 2". Then place the 2" pipe or barrel through the reducer. After this you must glue everything into place with cement glue. All that is left now is to add the spark generator and you can put this anywhere on the side of the combustion chamber. Now you can place the potato in the barrel and shoot your gun!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykF3TUTI2hU

QR Codes

QR codes are matrix bar codes that are readable with smartphones, cameras, scanners, and mobile phones. They look like a combination of black and white blocks. QR stands for quick response. You can generate your own QR code that either consists of text, calls somebody, or a url. By scanning the QR code you are able to then decode whatever it means. It has become a new T-shirt or tattoo idea to get a QR code printed or tattooed on.

Click the link.
<img src="http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=12&d=This%20right%20here%20is%20a%20QR%20code.%20" alt="qrcode"  />

Portable Projector connected to the Internet Invention

The most amazing invention has been created. This portable projector type invention consists of store bought items at around 300 dollars. It includes a camera, a battery powered projector, and a mirror on a strip that is fastened around your neck. With different colored marker caps on your fingers you are able to use your own hands to control the projection. The device is connected to the internet from a phone. This device can recogonize the different colors on your fingers and projects whatever you are trying to do at the moment. For example, you can put your fingers in the very familiar frame of a picture and the invention knows this action and takes a picture of the scene in front of you. You can project wherever you have a flat surface. It also can gove you a review of a book from seeing the title page of it. Another neat aspect is you can draw a circle on your wrist and watch is projected with the correct time on it. This invention is still very much a working progress and all of the kinks have not yet been worked out.

The Cloud

The Cloud is a fairly recent addition to Microsoft. It is also referred to as Windows Live Skydrive, and it allows you to use the internet as a place to store and backup your files. You can add music, documents, pictures, and even video to your account on the cloud. YOu are allowed 25 GB for free to store your items. And the magical thing about it is you can access it from anywhere. All you need is the internet. You can save your English paper on your home computer and then get to school and pull it up on your laptop. You can also share with other people, sharing videos and pictures with family or a project with classmates.
The Cloud Commercial from Youtube

Bookmarks in Google Chrome

When using Google Chrome you have the option of having a bookmarks bar that conatins all your bookmarks and also and option to place other bookmarks in more specific folders in "other bookmarks." I find this ability to be quite wonderful becuase I am able to have easy access to my most visited websites as well as websites that I would like to save for later. But unfortunately I had my computer reimaged, so I lost all of my fantastic bookmarks when my computer was returned to me. When I opened up Google Chrome again however it gave me an option to save my bookmarks with my google account. "WHAT?" I asked myself. That's right. I could save my bookmarks, so I did. Now whenever I might lose my settings in Google Chrome again I will be able to retrieve all the websites I had saved previously. I am very much appreciative of the new aspect in Google Chrome.

Dan Phillips: Creative houses from reclaimed stuff

Dan Phillips has an ingenious way to reinvent old materials to build houses in an innovative and unorthodox way. For example he has used chicken eggs for a design on teh outside of a house by draining them and filling them with some sort of substance to keep them from rotting. He has also created stairs and a porch railing from old branches, a bathtub faucet from an old beer spicket, and a screen door as a sunroof/window type thing. He has a few different views as to how people today waste things. One: they have an idea in their heads as to what it SHOULD be and how it must be PERFECT. But Phillips concludes that repetition creates a pattern, therefore he repeats an odd architectural design, well then people will accept it as normal because its a pattern. Another view is if it is not perfect people will simply throw it away and not try to create something out of it. Phillips' creations make an ideal way to recycle old things in new ways.

Hillel Cooperman: Legos for grownups

Legos are a very popular childrens toy used by a countless number of kids.......and adults. As you grow out of child things, you forget about legos. BUT some adults have realized the amazing potential of legos. People have built absolutely stunning architectuarl scupltures out of legoes that far exceed the idea of a children's play thing. There are even conventions for people who have built works of art out of their legos. Also you are able to go online and CREATE your own lego design. As in you create some building you enjoy, a spaceship, a castle, whatever, and then you can just click this little button and you can buy the legos needed to make your own creation. And if your idea was amazing it can be turned into a product of legos and be sold in the stores as your own design.
Legos aren't just children's toys
http://www.ted.com/talks/hillel_cooperman_legos_for_grownups.html

Andrew Bird's one-man orchestra of the imagination

Andrew Bird is an EXTREMELY creative individual who writes and plays music. As the title of this post suggests he plays everything  that he has written by himself. His songs consist of various vocals, violin, and the xylophone. He uses a series of different electrical looping to play the song. Bird could start by playing the violin and then begin to play the xylophone, but because of his ingenious electrical looping the violin is still being played through the speakers.