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| Dell XPS 13, 2015 Model (My New Baby) |
This is a long overdue update but I wanted to get at least a few things noted before I hit another week and get buried in my work again. I have been keeping plenty busy, putting in around 48 hours of school / homework this week and doing a few other things but not much else. I have also been feeling sick so some of my study time was spent just trying to turn my brain on. On Friday and Saturday night Glenn came over and we played some games on my projector in the living room. Both nights were a bit of a late start (between 8 and 9 starting time) so didn't do as much as on some other weeks. I put in a bit over 6 hours of studying Yesterday and made some progress in my mobile application development class as well as my Human Computer Interaction course. I didn't make the progress that I had hoped to but I did something and every little bit helps if that's all I can do. The other major diversions in my week were the Devotional on Tuesday (which I loved and was Valentine's themed but very light-hearted in nature) and my volunteer time at with Student Ambassadors. I'll briefly summarize both of those events because I don't think I have mentioned either before.
Weekly Devotionals:
Every week, at BYU-Idaho, there is a devotional on Tuesday afternoons. This is often a spiritual message, given by a general Authority of the church, and occasionally a faculty member (for instance, my operations instructor gave an address last semester), that lasts about 25 minutes. There are opening and closing songs, a scripture offered by a student, and prayer. While I was on my mission in Eastern Canada, I was introduced to speeches at BYU and really grew to love many offered by Jeffrey R. Holland. I told myself that, if I ever went to a church school, I would not discount the value of the opportunity which the weekly devotional created. A couple weeks ago, we had Elder Russel M. Nelson (known in the church as an Apostle and outside the church as a world-renowned heart surgeon) come to speak with us but he also announced the new president of BYU-I to resume his role sometime next semester. One of my first devotionals (last semester) involved hearing Jeffrey R. Holland speak to us and I took it as a tender mercy because his devotional addresses had inspired me to consider a church school roughly 8 years ago... among other factors. On that note, I will also add that I love being able to see a temple from multiple places on campus and as I am walking home each day. It is inspiring and a comfort to me honestly.
This week's devotional was a bit more light-hearted, as I mentioned, so there was a fair bit of sharing personal experience and laughter. One point that the speaker (Jack Fuller) made was about a girl that Jack had dated briefly and apparently missed an opportunity to kiss this girl. His parents were serving a mission halfway around the world and the one phone call that he had with them consisted of his father telling him that he needed to kiss that girl and he made his son promise that he would (never mind what her thoughts were on the matter). The phone call was cut off instantly and the connection was not made again. To shorten the story a bit, he told of how he was at an event, hoping to see this girl, and that she sat on a row in front of him with an empty space next to her at the end of the row. He changed his row to sit next to her and told us that this decision has made all of the difference in his life. His advice to us- "change your seat" to make things happen if they don't seem like they are happening already. I loved the thought and had experienced that thought in action before so I took it as a good reminder. For those curious about the rest of the devotional, I believe that you can listen to the rest of it here (The story I mentioned is in the first 5 minutes or so):
https://video.byui.edu/media/Jack+Fuller+%E2%80%9CValentine%E2%80%99s+Day+Resolutions%E2%80%9D/0_7q99y1ys/11602882
Student Ambassadors
The name seems to imply something major but I'll summarize this as what it means to me- an opportunity to provide service, to break away from the daily grind, and to step outside of myself regularly. In action, the service aspect and becoming like Christ are heavily focused on but our primary task is to call and Email students who were planning on attending the school. We were to see if they had questions about registering for courses, about the campus, about the student life, etc. Essentially, we are to become a lifeline to help ease the process of coming to campus for those students. It didn't hurt my incentives that I was, initially, the only guy in the group... but I have made many good friendships over the years through service and working together in such environments so I do think this would be a good thing for me. This week I actually reached someone who was planning on starting his registration process in the following week or so and I was able to send him several online resources to help address his initial questions. It's 90 minutes away from studies each week but I think the return will warrant the investment when all is said and done.
An unplanned Diversion
Late Thursday night, a friend of mine from back home gave me a call. She was having major doubts about dating and wanted to talk things out. I was able to give her a listening ear and also to share some things that I had learned from my own experience. It was gratifying to have a friend think enough of me to call me out of the blue and ask for advice. It was also humbling to know that my insight and experience could be of use to someone else. I have learned a lot through my own struggles and doubts but I have always found life's lessons more gratifying when you can share them with others and bless them.
Back to the usual... Becoming a programmer
After much internal debate, and discussion with others (including peers and instructors) I decided to make a purchase as an investment in my degree. I probably spent a bit more than was needful but I kept coming back to this device and, after 3 or so months of casual laptop shopping, I ordered the Dell XPS 13, 2015 edition. It arrived early Friday, I took it to class, my instructor looked at it with me and showed me a few things. I used it to study for about 6 hours on Saturday and am doing a good job so far of keeping it as a productivity machine. This laptop is fast, the screen is bright and wonderful to look at, the device is as small as the Chromebook it is replacing (still haven't decided if I will sell the Chromebook or keep it on hand) and yet the screen is a 13.3" in comparison to the 11.6" Chromebook. I searched for a while and was able to get the laptop for $130 off the asking price as well. It has been wonderful to work on and I am doing my best to put it to good use. So far, it suits my purposes quite well and adds a lot of convenience to my programming efforts (the Chromebook / Desktop combo required a lot of workarounds to get things to work). Before I dove into the meat of the matter, I thought I would break the news on my new baby.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/13/8030821/dell-xps-13-laptop-ultrabook-review
C++
This week has mostly been a continuation of our learning and discussion on encapsulation. (remember the example of the light switch- the other person only needs to see and operate the switch, not all of the wiring work that you did). We worked with a Date class and gave it Methods so that we could manipulate the data that it contained. Say I created an object of type "Date" called date. The object "date" has certain attributes such as a month, day, and a year (member variables). There are certain tasks that you can ask the object date to do. For example, we had the option of entering a new month, day, and year to replace the initial values of 00 / 00 / 00. We also had the option of displaying the data in multiple ways. We could display the date shorthand (02/15/2015) or longhand (February 15th, 2015). We have to write the code for each of these functions but the next programmer can simply ask the object to display the month, day, and year variable in whatever format was most desirable. The most recent assignment involved creating a "Vector" object to store the speed and direction something else is traveling. Unfortunately, this assignment took me over 5 hours to complete - I obviously took a wrong turn or two. This is to continue our learning of encapsulation but also to write part of the code for our "Lunar Lander" project that is due in the next few weeks. If I didn't already mention this project, here is the original that it is based off of:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9f/Lunar_Lander.png
Mobile Application Development
Sadly, I haven't had too much time to spend on this class. I spent about 4 hours trying to learn about Git and Github on Saturday. Sadly, I didn't get as far as I had hoped and didn't have the time to keep pushing on. I spent about an hour and a half learning about CSS also. In short, CSS is a language that tells our HTML webpages how to display the information that they define. It creates all of the nice spacing and color schemes that we have grown accustomed to when visiting a webpage. We can create some CSS code within the HTML document to setup patterns for a specific page or we create a separate CSS document that allows us to use the same formatting for every webpage on a website. A few years back, this wasn't possible and it took a great deal of effort to ensure that each webpage on a website looked similar enough to feel unified.
Designing Digital Systems
I spent about 4 hours on a lab, Wednesday night, because Monday is a holiday and we won't be having class before the next lab starts. I was quite exhausted by the time that I headed home around 8:00- especially when I woke up feeling wiped out from my sickness and planned on taking a nap when I got home. At that point I just stayed up and went to bed a little earlier. The lab that we did focused on using FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). In short, they are microchips that can do a great variety of things. They are "field programmable" because you can give them a new set of instructions on how to act by connecting them to a computer and using the proper software. In essence, one chip can be used and reused for different types of circuits. In a lab, where you are trying to learn about many functions that chips are capable of, this is a great resource. I'll also add that a "gate" is a type of chip that uses logic to determine an outcome (true or false) based on its inputs. Probably the easiest to explain is the "NOT" gate. Basically, when the input is true then the output is false. When the input is false, then the output is true. This is why these gates are also called "inverters." Other gates include AND (when all inputs are true, the output is true) OR (When at least one input is true, the output is true) NOR, NAND, XOR, etc. I could go into a great deal more detail but I'll say that a real world scenario would be something like: If your car is in drive and your seatbelt is not clicked in, an alarm will sound. In this case, you would use an AND gate and you would use an inverter on the seatbelt input because it is NOT true when the desired conditions are met. I'm sure this is somewhat gibberish but that's the best quick explanation I have for now.
Human Computer Interaction
We spent some time talking about prototyping this week. I have a project and a test on Tuesday so I will be hitting the books rather hard tomorrow, though I did spend about 2 1/2 hours on this class Yesterday. I will be designing a new interface for Windows Media Player that uses data from people I interviewed, and the current WMP interface as a starting point. We talk about such factors as how obvious certain controls are, how many steps it takes to perform a desired function, if all of the relevant information is visible to the user etc. I'll be sure to send on some of my work when I have more to share here but, for now, I'm still fairly early in the process- basically all 8 projects are one major project and this will be project 3 in the process. Our instructor is really intelligent and he used to work at Microsoft so we learn about features we didn't even comprehend on occasion- just another perk of the instructor.
This week...
The Story of Frank Cecil Okleberry Jr.
A few weeks back I heard from Linda Cavanaugh over facebook. She told me that she talked with Michael Higgins and he would love to do an interview with me. For those who didn't know (like myself) Michael Higgins was a buddy of Dad's when he was young. When Dad used to sneak out the window, it would be to hang out with Michael. When I asked Tom what kind of stuff they would do together, he told me that I could probably get a hold of Michael and ask him myself... now I will have my chance. Michael and I plan on talking tomorrow at 1:00 (thanks to my vacation day) so that I can get some details about the days of Dad's youth. I am excited. For now, that's about all I have to share on the coming week and this week for that matter.
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