I just learned about a cool tool to teach with.  It’s called Screenr and it’s a pretty easy way to make screencast for all you Web 2.0 people.

Basically Screenr is an easy way to record what ever is happening on your computer screen, including narration, and send to everyone following your Twitter feed and also save it to the Screenr website for viewing at a later time.

Now here’s the where the magic happens.  If you have a tablet PC, you can record everything you right down on your virtual whiteboard as well as everything you say and then send it to all of your students so they can review everything you discussed in class.  That is simple amazing.  I got the idea from this screencast.

Well there you go.  Put that in your knowledge pipe and blow it.

Here is an excellent tip taking advantage of the highly useful program GNU Screen.

http://agentzlerich.blogspot.com/2008/07/using-gnu-screen-with-gnome-terminals.html

Once I found out about Screen and learned the interface, it has been immensely helpful, from having multiple game servers running in different screen sessions to being able to work remotely without fear of being disconnected in the middle of doing something.

I know all of you have been updating your feedreader constantly to see if I had posted anything.  Well to tell you the truth I forgot which button to press on my control board to update my lifestream on the intertubes.  Today I was inspecting my control board and saw this dusty button and wondered what is that for, so like a good scientest I closed my eyes and pressed it and here we are.

I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been working on.  I’m taking a system archetecture class which is really neat.  It’s interesting learning all of the things you can do with 1s and 0s.  The premise of the class is we are going to learn how to design these circuits and eventually put them all together to make a programmable computer.  We use a program called Logisim to design the circuits.

Here are some of the circuits I’ve designed.

Full adder

This one will take a two 1-bit numbers and add them together and if both numbers are 1 it will have a carry out, which is helpful when adding multi-bit numbers. With Logisim once you design a circuit, you can use it in another circuit.  That helps when designing complex circuits. By using divide and conquer, if you break a complex problem into simple steps it makes problem solving a whole lot easier.  With the adders, I had to eventually design a 16-bit adder, which was easy by first designing a 1-bit adder and then incorporating that chip into a 4-bit adder and then incorporating that chip into a 16-bit adder.

4-bit adder

16-bit adder

I then used the 16-bit adder chip in the design of an Arithmetic Unit, or AU, which is one part of the Arithmetic Logic Unit, or ALU for short, a very important part of a computer.

Arithmetic Unit

This unit can do more than add. It can subtract, increment and transfer.  I won’t go into the complexities of those operations, but if you are interested here’s a tutorial on doing 1s and 2s compliement arithmetic.

I bet you can’t guess what is the other part of the ALU? That’s right it’s the Logic Unit, or LU.

Logic Unit

It was a whole lot easier to design than the AU.

We put these all together and what do we get?

Arithmetic Logic Unit

So that’s what I’ve been working on for the past few weeks and I see that this post has grown rather tall so I’ll end it here. 

Until next time, stay frosty.

Well I’ve done it. I’ve finished my fourth and final project. You may have noticed there was not a post for my third project and that’s because it is just awful. Basically it is a remake of my second project with networking added. Let me just say it did not go well. Luckily the professor was still impressed.

Now this final project might blow your socks off, so be sure to have your seatbelts fastened before playing it. Here’s the link.

Now understand, I only worked on this program for a couple of days so if it zigs when you zag don’t get upset. I’m lucky I demonstrated it before this guy did.

I just wanted to write a quick post about some new music I just found. You should check it out.

http://marcospcmusica.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/amigaos-un-disco-de-musica-libre/

It’s all free music and is very good in my opinion.

Yay! Project 2 of my masterpiece is finished. You can play this unbelievably awesome game. Just download and extract and start with “python main.py”. Like my former friend, future enemy mentioned in my last post you will need pygame installed to play it.

Finished my first project for my Game Development class. Here it is if you want to run it. Of course you have to have python installed. Just untar it, run python main.py and prepare to be awesified.

My friend pointed out a tiny little thing you must do to run the game. You must have the pygame module installed to run it, but hey any serious gamer should already have that. Ha ha ha.

Man! I’m so glad I’m keeping up with this daily posting.

Let’s see. The story so far…

Finished the book Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Which is ironic because I finished another Gibson book, Neuromancer, almost a year ago exactly. I guess I can update my reading pace from glacier to snail. I want to expand more on Pattern Recognition in a later post, but for now I can say it was a good read. Slightly science fiction, slightly not.

Watched Fools Gold(2008). It was not quite as bad as the rating it got. It’s just sort of your typical romantic/adventure movie and Matthew McConaughey gets hit in the head a lot.

Watched Charlotte Gray (2001). A very interesting tale of a lady who volunteers to be a courier behind enemy lines in occupied France during World War II, in hopes to find her lover who was shot down. It is not a sappy romantic drama, though I do find it hard to believe she would take this risk for someone she recently met. I suppose the story is a little hard to grasp, because so many awful things happen and yet has a fairytale ending, but that’s crazy, liberal Hollywood for you.

Finally watched Alien Vs. Predator Requiem (2007). Which was just awful, but that’s okay because I expected it to be, so shame on me. So if you like implausible storyline, even on the Predator or Alien homeworld, I would recommend watching it. Though I would not recommend watching this, if you have a tendency to scream at the tv screen. Your vocal cords will walk out on you.

Gosh. Where do I begin. Well I’ve done a whole lot of pills that have given me all kind of thrills since my last post, so let’s jump right into it shall we.

First a recap of movies I’ve seen…

Watched Heaven (2002). It’s a drama about a lady (Cate Blanchett) who is out for revenge against the man who sold her husband drugs, which he overdosed on, by blowing up his office. Oh yeah he happens to be the president of a major telecom company in Italy. Before it detonates, the bomb is emptied into the trash by the cleaning lady and manages to kill four innocent people. I guess they can’t be that innocent. I mean they were in the building of a drug dealer. In no time flat, the woman is arrested and is interrogated, and here’s the kicker, she’s English and demands to be interrogated in English rather than Italian. This is where Giovanni Ribisi comes in. Not only is he the stenographer for the interogation, but he speaks English also. Joy! He grows infatuated with the woman and devises a scheme to bust her out of prison. Anyway it turns into a rip roaring road trip movie that you have to see. It’s not really that bad of a movie, though it is part of a trilogy and the other parts haven’t been made yet It would sort of be like what those Red, White and Blue movies (which surprisingly enough are French movies. Statue of Liberty anyone? Or as I like to refer to her as Freedom Lady.) would be like without the complete set.

Watched North To Alaska (1960), or as I like to refer to it as John Wayne’s Fabulous Adventurerama. It’s a typical John Wayne affair, which interstingly enough I found out in a short documentary before the movie that this was the type of movie he made when he wanted to take a vacation and was actually a vehicle for his agent’s girlfriend, the stunningly beautiful, for a hooker in an Alaskan mining town, Capucine.(Also French, can anybody see a theme?) It’s got all of action and plot points which you expect. I have to say I slept through 75% of this movie, so my review may not be completely accurate.

Watched Gettysburg (1993), or should I say watched half of it which is all I could take before gnawing my paw off like a rabbit in a steel trap and escaping. Not much to say about this one. It is a pretty good account of the happenings during that battle, plus an added bonus C. Thomas Howell has this awesome moustache.

Watched Hancock (2008 ). Synopsis: Crap sandwhich with a side of crap fries, extra dirty.

Finally watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007). It is a beautifully portrayed biography about the editor for Elle, who suffered a stroke and developed Locked-in syndrome. The director does an excellent job of expressing what it would be like if one was afflected with this disorder. You feel the agony of understanding everything going on around you and being unable to respond. It is an inspirational story, demonstrating how he was able to learn to speak by blinking while the alphabet was read to him, eventually writing his memoirs. A true story about the value of determination and persistence and it’s French, so Boo-yah.

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