Teaching & Programming

I don’t consider myself to be a great teacher.  I’m reasonably patient, but it takes more than that to teach.  In my Intro. to Software Development class we’re learning the Java programming language.  It’s an introductory course, so we’re not diving too deep into the language.  But I am having a blast!  I love this course.  It reminds me of all the reasons I enjoy programming.

We’re working with a partner on the projects we’re doing so far.  I have some experience with various BASIC languages and a very little bit of C++.  My partner doesn’t have that background.  Therefore, I’m at an advantage to him, and the excercises come more naturally to me.  But I want my partner to learn and not simply follow along.  I can do the work without him, but instead I’m choosing to have him write most of the code; after we diagram a sort of flow-chart for our program.  This should be a more fruitful learning experience for him.  And it’s the honorable thing to do, as opposed to me just writing all the code and dragging him along for the ride.

So, I’m a teacher.  And that puts me in a position of learning how  to better teach.  I have been attempting a technique wherein I ask more questions than I make statements.  I already know what code we could/should write.  If I ask careful questions, I find that I can encourage him to solve problems without giving up from frustration.  And, if he’s writing the code to make our work-flow work, then he should understand what it does.  It’s usually a slower process.  Indeed, I could have coded our last program in 10 minutes tops, instead of the hours it took to perfect.  But it was worth the time, because I helped make learning happen.

Network Classifications Are Getting Out of Hand

BAN, but not prohibition
CAN, without “-do attitude”
HAN, but not Solo
MAN, without landing on the moon
PAN, but not cooking stir-fry

No, faithful readers, these are probably not what you'd think.  These are classifications for networks and here's more of the boring details:

BAN is a Body Area Network, and refers to communication between devices actually worn on (or very close to) the body.

CAN is a Campus Area Network, and usually refers to connections between buildings, such as on the grounds of a university or corporate campus.

HAN is a Home Area Network, and it's just what it says—a network in the home.  It connects computers, printers, televisions, ????, other stuff...whatever.  Does anybody actually use this term?

MAN is a Metropolitan Area Network, a network ranging in size from a few city blocks to an entire city.  It's distinguished from smaller networks by the use of predominately fiber-optic and other high-speed links.

PAN is a Personal Area Netw-...you know what, forget it!  This is asinine.  There do not need to be this many classifications for networks, and all with mundane, repetitive names.

These aren't even all of them!  Don't forget about LANs (I like these—the “Local” variety—actually.  They bring back fond memories of playing computer games with friends over the network.), WANs (“Wide”...think: interstate or international networks), NANs (I'm Not A-goNna-go-there.  Don't even ask.) and SANs (Stone-Age Network...not really, but who cares).

Life is too short to worry about all these different terms.  If you're an average person, you're probably going to be just fine if you understand that a LAN is the network in your office building or your house and a WAN is the connection over a larger area.

3 Observations

Do you ever feel like plastic bag? Floating in the wind...NO!

At what point did a shopping bag, carelessly or otherwise discarded (and thereafter tarnishing the landscape) become so prevalent that Katy Perry can reference it in one of her songs?  Is it a sad commentary on our society that loose trash became a simile used to describe one’s feelings?

[Just to clarify, I’ve got nothing against Katy Perry—I never met her.  I am, however, greatly opposed to littering.]
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Oh hot damn, only buy jam.  Keep on eatin’ it, ‘til the A-M.

It’s called a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich.  It makes sense to put jelly on it.  But fairly recently, after buying more jelly, I noticed something that caught my attention.  Jelly is mostly fruit juice and corn syrup.  Not all jelly is like this, but I keep noticing it on different brands and flavors.  Anything called “jelly”, usually lists the ingredients: juice, corn syrup (often the high fructose variety), sugar and maybe a dye or two.  Now, I prefer something more substantial than glorified sugar-juice on my toast.  From what I’ve seen, jam is made with actual fruit in it.  That’s why, I’m only buying preserves or jam from now on.  If you care about eating real food, you might consider doing the same.
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Your money & my money!

I’m inclined to avoid lengthy, politically-charged discussions in my blog, as there are plenty of others from whom you can read thought-provoking analyses.  So here’s a quick, simple, concept to consider:

There is no such thing as government money.

There is only tax-payer money.  Money that's yours and mine!  In a model system, the only money the government has to spend is appropriated from its citizens using taxes.  Think about that the next time you hear about federal dollars, government spending, or “stimulus” money.  All tax-paying citizens should be more mindful of where every dollar of our money goes.

Backup Your Files

The following is a public service announcement from Grant:

Backup your files.

Okay, I suppose you probably don’t have to backup everything.  But it is wise to have your important files stored in more than one place.  You never know when your computer will be damaged or destroyed by an earthquake, tornado, flood, landslide, lightning strike, meteor strike, train wreck, pirates of the Carribean, massive fluctuations in The Force, orange juice spilled on your expensive-ass laptop, zombie attacks (maybe not that one, actually), attacks by Klingons, TERRORISM, roommate’s dog, anything involving Skynet, or the thing that happened to me—my parents replaced their computer and didn’t bother to ask if I had anything important saved on it.

As it turns out, I didn’t. **sigh of relief** At first, I was worried that I’d lost the latest revision of my resumé, because they have a printer, and I don’t; and that’s where it would inevitably be saved.  But I was mistaken—I still got it on my trusty flash drive.  Of course, that’s not the only thing that’s otherwise lost.  I used to live at home, and I used to use their computer more frequently and I think there was some music (yes, the legitimate kind) that I don’t have anymore.  Oh, well.  Learn from this—backup your files.  Do it now!

Fine, don’t do it now.  But take a step in the right direction by reviewing your situation.  If your hard disk drive quit working tomorrow, what would happen?  Would you lose anything irreplaceable?  As an example, I have a couple dozen vacation photos from a past summer that are stored on my laptop.  There are currently no other copies.  I trust in the reliability of its hard disk because I test it with specialized software semi-regularly.  However, I should make another copy somewhere else because my laptop could get stolen.  It’s not very likely, but it is possible; and it can happen to you.

So, when you gaze outside and see an army of rampaging killbots headed in your direction...think of me, and my vacation photos.  And shed not a tear, for each is surely lost.

Metablog Entry

It has been far too long since I’ve written anything here, (But what did you expect from the Prince of Slackers?) and I find myself very discouraged.  I need to post blog entries to complete this assignment, but I’m having difficulty selecting good topics, finding the time to write 200+ words about said topics, and so on and so forth.  My main problem stems from the fact that I want everything to be perfect.  I diligently strive to create high-quality entries which exemplify my taste for proper English (There, now I’ve done it!  People will start critiqueing my spelling and grammar and otherwise make my life miserable.) and I am never satisfied.

There’s more to my disposition, however.  I would like to keep a daily log (or journal if you will), of the non-web variety.  And I did.  Beginning in late 2009, I would write little notes on paper about my day, and what occurred.  I figured that decades down the road I would appreciate having those entries to help recall what life was like in detail, and how far I had come.  More immediately, it could also have the benefit of improving my working memory, which is not as steadfast as I would like.

My personal log quickly changed, though, from paper to digital documents; because I have difficulty hand-writing for any extended length of time.  Almost five years ago I injured my right hand (It was a stupid injury wherein I smashed the base of my pinky finger; and I don’t want to go into further detail.) and it’s never quite fully recovered, which makes writing uncomfortable.  But I can type like the blazes when I really get going.  Unfortunately, despite the change, my routine for writing in my log has slowly fallen by the wayside, as life and other endeavors have distracted me.  And I haven’t written an entry in several months.

How shall I write posts in this blog when I can’t keep up with my personal log, possibly the single most important written work I ever sought to create?

The Floppy Disk: Out of Retirement for One Day

This semester I’m taking Intro. to Software Development and it’s pretty fun.  It’s also tedious and stressful at times, but that’s not important.  Basically, the class is divided into teams of two, and instructed to build and program a 2-wheel-driven Lego robot.

That all sounds fine and good, and it was.  We had completed our first real programming assignment and even accumulated a sizable chunk of extra credit.  It was a good day, except for one small problem.  Each team member must submit their team’s source code file to the project drop-box online; and I didn’t have it.  I had an early revision saved, but my partner had the final version—from which our hard copy was printed and that actually ran the robot.  Of course, that day I was plenty busy and I didn’t get to submitting my files online until late in the evening, much too late to remedy my situation.  Instead of a glorious %130, I took a zero.  $^@%!

What I realized later is that I need a better, faster, method of transferring our work between the two of us.  At first, there’s only one file containing our source code, since we do our coding on one machine.  Except, we both need it to turn in later.  We have been using USB flash drives to make copies, but they’re kind of a pain.  First I have to plug it in.  Then, Windows searches for a driver.  After the driver is loaded, the file-system is mounted.  Do you see what I’m getting at?  This process takes too much of my time!  And when I want to remove the drive and go on my merry way, I have to waste more time safely ejecting the media, because that properly unmounts the filesystem.  If not, I could risk losing files due to read/write caching.  (As in, not everything may be written to the drive yet—I’ll get back to this.)

Enter the floppy disk—a throwback to the ‘90s, before WiFi, before iPhones, and when America Online was all the rage (I guess)—it’s a deprecated data storage device that’s flat, about three and a half inches squared, and covered with plastic.  It doesn’t hold much data by today’s standards—a little less than a megabyte and a half—but it works.  I used a floppy in my high school computers classes and didn’t run out of space, because written documents don’t occupy very much.  Also, it performs quite well for one important task: I can eject that thing from its drive on one computer and insert it into another SO FAST!  And I can do that because Windows doesn’t perform any write caching for a floppy disk.  There is no “Safely Remove Hardware” thingy to click on.  After the read/write light on the front goes off...IT’S DONE!

But the best part of this story is that I still have that same disk from high school in a pocket in my backpack!  So, last week—Tuesday the 15th, to be precise—when I needed to save my work, I pulled the old floppy out of my backpack and put it to use.  For the first time in about three years, I heard the ker-chunk inserting it into the drive, the whispering of the rotating media, the deep hum of control motors.  I was feeling nostalgic, playful, and maybe even a bit foolish when my partner looked at me with a perplexed smirk and said, “Is that a floppy disk?”

Yes it was.

And later, when I went to the computer lab to complete the last bit of the assignment and submit it, my fiancée had a similarly curious smile on her face when I pulled out the trusty floppy.  Then, tragedy struck—the drive in the lab computer I was at wasn’t working and I needed to relocate to another.  Thus, the Achilles' heel of the venerable floppy disk.  Their drives aren’t as reliable anymore.  I guess they just don’t make’em like they used to.

They really don’t.  Somewhere I have a few 15+ year old disk drives that are still rock-solid.  So, while I think the idea of using a floppy disk to save my work was inspired, it’s gone back into retirement.  But don't worry, now I’m almost neurotic about getting my copy of the darn source code.

Christmas Lights!

Saturday, I went on an adventure.  My fiancée and I drove to UNR and walked around campus.  But it was not an ordinary walk.  I was on a mission to find a most wonderful (for nerdy guys like me) place.  A place where, supposedly, unneeded used or sometimes new surplus electronic components are discarded.  So, I was possibly going dumpster diving.  There were two locations I was instructed to find.  One inside, probably in the basement of the engineering building, and the other an outside location near a “fenced area.”

Unfortunately, I didn't find both places.  I only found the dumpster outside, and it didn't contain what I was expecting.  Mostly it was full of larger equipment, beat up and weathered.  We saw parts of an old x-ray machine.  I did find something exciting, though—Christmas lights.  Silver and blue Christmas lights in a large bag, there were probably a couple thousand of them.  I pulled one strand in nearly-new condition and a second for spare bulbs.  But wait, there's more—an old chair.  “Who would throw away a perfectly good chair?” I thought.  My fiancée really liked the little chair, so we brought it home too.  But the chair is cursed.  It sheds this awful yellow powder everywhere.  I suspect the powder is crumbling foam, hardened over eons, from the cushion inside.  And that might be why someone was throwing it away.  So, we're not sure what to do with it.  We might get rid of it; we haven't decided.  It was a fun day.