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Academic update: Fall, 2010.

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

Final grades are in.

Who's awesome?

Yes, straight A’s, thank you very much.

A couple of folks have requested this, so here you go: my final paper on the 1979 Iranian Revolution, in PDF format. Note that this is the submitted version; I would feel as if I am betraying a confidence if I uploaded the version with the professor’s annotations on it.

For those of you who may be considering ripping this off and submitting it as your own work: hey, guess what? St. Ed’s subscribes to the Turnitin system! My paper’s in the database! You’re going to get kicked out of school!

Edited to add: Just so everyone is clear, I welcome comments on the paper, even if they are of the “that’s what passes for ‘A’ quality work at a major university today?” ilk.

Edited to add 2: And we have our first critic, Dr. Rael S. Gabriel, who uses the phrase “a long-running, slow-motion train wreck”. Thanks, Dr. Gabriel; your prize is in the mail.

Edited to add 3: Dr. Gabriel has clarified his remarks to state that he was referring to The Situation, and not my paper specifically.

Edited to add 4: Dr. Gabriel has further clarified his remarks to state that he was referring to the situation in Iran prior to the 1979 revolution, and not the “Jersey Shore” idiot.

Posted in History, School | 1 Comment »

Do Androids dream of electric apps?

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

As noted previously, I finally resolved the phone issue. (And AT&T can still die in a fire.)

The number one question I’ve been getting (replacing “Where did you get that shirt?” at the top of the charts) is: “How do you like your new phone?”

Answer: I like it just fine, but…below are some preliminary thoughts on Android (at least, as implemented on the EVO 4G; I do realize that some of these may be issues with the built-in apps, rather than the Android OS itself):

  • It is disappointing to me that the alarm built into the EVO’s clock app can’t be set to play arbitrary sound files as alarms. (I fall into Ihnatko’s 2% who haven’t seen the movie yet, but I love the story behind “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien“.)
  • Ditto that I can’t set an arbitrary sound file for text message notifications.
  • It is also disappointing to me that there’s no basic Notepad type app provided with the EVO. I’m sure there’s probably 300+ on the Android marketplace, but I needed to make a shopping list this morning and didn’t have time to sort through all of them. Any tips?
  • Integration between the built-in music player and the built-in navigation app is also a disappointment; the navigation app will pause the player to make route announcements, but you have to manually start the player up again, rather than it automatically resuming play.
  • On the plus side, the sound is great; I can listen to podcasts in the car without having to hook into my (currently non-functional) stereo system.
  • The on-screen keyboard is vastly better than using the keypad (even with T9) was on the T616, and somewhat better than the on-screen keyboard on the N800. However, I still have a lot of trouble hitting the correct key with my large-ish fingers.
  • One of the drawbacks of purchasing an Android phone is synchronization with the MacBook. If I had purchased an iPhone, everything would be simple (or at least, simpler). But, no, I had to be different and resist peer pressure… At some point, I suspect I will end up ordering this. (Right now – and I do realize this is a phone controlled setting – the MacBook sees the phone as a USB disk drive with photos on it, and automatically opens iPhoto. I can browse the Android file system and copy files to or from it without problems.)
  • Speaking of iPhoto, I’ve done almost nothing with the built-in camera yet.  I need to work on that.
  • The EVO’s calendar app has a noticeable lag; it takes a couple of seconds to switch to the current date when I bring it up.
  • If there’s a way to sync the EVO’s calendar app with Google Calender, I haven’t found it, and there doesn’t seem to be a separate Google Calender app (like there is for Maps, Voice, Earth, etc.). Do I need to grab some other calender app off the Android Market? (Edited to add 9/10: Okay, I think I’ve figured this one out. You can sync the EVO app with Google Calender, it just isn’t quite as straightforward as I was looking for.)
  • The EVO also seems to lag behind in changing screen orientation when I rotate the phone.
  • I managed to get the Android SDK and the ADT plugin installed without problems on the MacBook, but the ADT plugin won’t install into Eclipse on Project e. It looks like there are some dependencies that Eclipse can’t resolve, but I can’t figure out what those are. I may have to blow away and reinstall Eclipse (which isn’t a major issue; I don’t have a bunch invested in Eclipse on Project e).
  • I either need to dig out my old Java textbook, or see if I can find an updated edition cheap online.
  • Speaking of textbooks, and having nothing to do with Android in particular, I just paid $180+ for a damn textbook. This makes me mildly cranky.
  • My old T616 in the case fit neatly into the magazine phone pocket of my 5.11 tactical pants. The EVO? Doesn’t fit. Dear 5.11 folks: maybe we could think about redesigning that pocket to fit smartphones? (I wear 5.11 tactical pants (or, as some people call them, “a Kaiser blade Internet pants“), not because I’m a mall ninja, but because they are the most comfortable and toughest pants I’ve found. Plus they make it really easy to carry all my stuff.)
  • Battery life is…well, middling. I haven’t really tried optimizing power consumption, though, except for turning off WiFi and Bluetooth. (Hurrah for the EVO’s control panel that allows easy access to those settings.)
  • There’s a few applications I’m looking for and would welcome advice on finding in the Android market. The first one is a good WiFi scanning utility; ideally, it would have the ability to log access points with GPS coordinates, note if the points are A, B, G, or N, note if they’re open or closed (and if they’re WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc.), and write all this data to a XML or KML file. It looks like there are several apps in the market that meet these criteria, but I’m not sure which ones are good.
    The second app I’m looking for is a good vehicle management application. At a minimum, I’d like to be able to enter an odometer reading and number of gallons, and get a miles-per-gallon figure for that tank, as well as an average MPG for all tanks to date. It’d be spiffy if I could also enter a price per gallon, as well as other expenses (insurance, repairs, maintenance) and get a cost-per-mile figure as well.
  • I love the GPS Status app.
  • I’ve played a little with the Amazon Kindle app; so far, I’m more impressed with it than I am with the refurbished Kindle I purchased earlier this year.
  • The EVO’s screen is impressive. Much better than the N800’s. I haven’t done a side-by-side with an iPhone 4 yet, but I’m willing to bet it gives the iPhone a run for its money.
  • The EVO’s video player can decode H.264 video! (I haven’t done anything with the camcorder app, so I don’t know what format it encodes video in.)
  • Waiting for a sale on those 32GB microSD cards…
  • Edited to add: There’s also no general file browser app on the EVO.

Again, I generally like the phone; most of these are just minor quibbles that I can probably solve one way or another.

Posted in Android, asus_eee, Books, Geek, Kindleing, linux, Movies, netbook, Nokia, Pants, Photography, project_e, School | 4 Comments »

Academic update: Spring 2010, part 2.

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

The final grade is in for my “Implementing Information Systems in Organizations” (aka implementing and managing SQL Server 2005 databases).

I’m sorry, did you say something?

What was that?

You’re going to have to speak up.

Yes, that was an “A”. Yes, the streak is alive.

What’s next? Something called “Systems Analysis”, and a course called (no kidding), “Modern Revolutions” (which fills three out of the six hours of “Global Perspectives” I need to take before graduation).

This course is a comparative analysis of the problem causes, stages, and accomplishments of some of the most significant revolutions in modern times– such as the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian revolutions of 1917 and 1991, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the Eastern European and the South African revolutions of the later half of the 20th century.

Oddly enough, both of these are online courses, so I don’t have to go to either campus this semester. So much for that parking permit.

How far out am I? I sat down with my academic advisor earlier in the semester to figure that out. It looks like I need six hours of “Global Perspectives”, three hours of a literature or humanities course, three hours of an elective (I’m thinking about something related to law or the forensic sciences; if St. Ed’s offered a computer forensics course for credit, I’d be on that like Lindsay Lohan on a bottle of vodak), plus I believe one more in-major computer class after this one, and then the final Capstone course. At this point, I’m thinking four more semesters: Fall 2010, Spring and Fall of 2011, and then Spring 2012 for Capstone and graduation.

Posted in Geek, School | 2 Comments »

Academic update: Spring 2010.

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Grades are in for my advanced networking and computer security class.

Out of a possible 899.9 points, I got…899.9 points, and a final grade of 100.

This is a good thing, given my interests. Anything less would have been dishonorable.

Posted in School | 2 Comments »

Random notes: January 18, 2010.

Monday, January 18th, 2010

The New Jersey Nets are on a pace to win a grand total of six games this season. The NBA record for futility is the 1972-1973 Philadelphia 76ers, who went 9-73. Could the Nets beat the record? The NYT speculates.

I note this only because it will fill Lawrence’s heart with delight: Frank Gehry has withdrawn from the project to design a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.

Saturday’s Statesman has a longish article recapping the Triton Financial story, highlighting the firm’s ties to the Mormon church.

Church members and others describe the concentration of Triton executives and investors from the Mormon church as a possible example of “affinity fraud,” in which people looking for money often go first to those they know, either personally or through social organizations.

A $1,000 iPhone app that’s not I Am Rich.

Non story of the day: U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, so; I’m back in school one night a week (and not even meeting every night on the schedule). So blogging is either going to be light or heavy as I avoid schoolwork.

Posted in Apple, Art, Cars, Clippings, Guns, Loser, School | Comments Closed

Project updates.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Project e update: I took the machine up to 2GB of memory earlier this week; it turned out to be much harder than I expected, mostly because getting the memory access door off the machine took more effort than I expected.

I just finished doing a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on Project e; I went the clean install route, instead of doing an upgrade in place, because there were some things I wanted to clean out, and I didn’t really have a whole lot invested in the current system. (However, I didn’t re-partition and blow away /home.) So far, wireless seems much more stable; no connection drops yet. Ethernet just works, straight out of the box (no loading of modules) and Bluetooth seems to work as well, modulo some flakiness in listing devices.

This install also took more effort, and more time, than I expected. However, much of that was my fault; the process for creating USB install disks changed from 9.04 to 9.10, and the instructions on the Ubuntu website are not clear on how to do that under OS X. I ended up having to move the 9.10 ISO over to the netbook and use the USB startup disk creator to make a bootable flash drive. I don’t see this as an Ubuntu problem as much as a “thought I knew what I was doing, should have read the docs first” problem.

Question: does anyone know of a good Karmic-compatible eeePC tray utility, now that eeepc-tray has been end of lifed?

6.00 update: I’ve been tied up dealing with some personal issues that I don’t want to go into here (for reasons of other people’s privacy) and haven’t had as much time as I would like to work on this. I’ve gone through all of lecture 2, and I’m hoping to knock out the assignment and move on to lecture 3 this week.

School: Registered for CSYS 4334, “Implementing Information Systems In Organizations” (in other words, more SQL Server 2005) and CSYS 4330, “Advanced Networking/Network Security” next semester. That second one should be fun.

Posted in asus_eee, Bluetooth, Lazyweb, linux, netbook, project_e, Radio, School, WiFi | 1 Comment »

Academic update: Fall 2009.

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

I seem to recall mentioning previously that the semester had wrapped, at least for me.

Before I left for work this morning, I checked my email and found that one of my professors had posted the final grades in her class. Which is a good thing; after all, it isn’t like I’ve spent most of the past week and a half checking the grades online three or four or five times a day. At least, not only because of that class…

Short summary: A in the speech class, A in the SQL Server admin class, the 4.0 GPA streak continues.

(I’m still looking forward to reading the speech prof’s comments on my final presentation.)

Posted in Geek, School | 3 Comments »

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