I've made it through the first week of this spring semester, and I'm no worse for the wear. I'm really enjoying my classes so far. I'm taking the second semester of Humanities for Engineers, which is going to be divided into two "landscapes" for the semester. For the first part, we'll be covering some of the classics: the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aneid. That should be interesting. The math class I'm taking is probability. The professor's accent is very thick Asian, but he's a great teacher, and I think I'll enjoy the class. I have three computer science courses. The class on game programming will be much less pure entertainment than it sounds like; it's focused on designing and prototyping educational games. We're using a program called AgentSheets to do our games, and it's pretty awful to install and limited in it's uses. However, it is good for getting something working quickly, and it's simple enough that anyone ca...
I work with high schoolers and their teachers, and I often come across questions about how to get started with physical computing. This post is meant to compare some of the most well-known platforms. To begin, understand that the space is broadly separated into microcontrollers and single-board computers, with different strengths and weaknesses. Microcontrollers (MCUs) Microcontrollers are basic, general-purpose processors with limited capabilities compared to single board computers (SBCs). They offer slower processing speeds, smaller storage capacity, and fewer communication options. Unlike SBCs, which run full operating systems, microcontrollers typically execute only one program at a time. Despite these limitations, microcontrollers have several advantages. They are generally more affordable than SBCs, and their simpler architecture makes it easier to understand and control their behavior. Additionally, microcontrollers can begin executing their programs almost immediately after pow...
I've been mulling it over for weeks, and I decided that a new laptop really would help my endeavors this semester. My old laptop is a bit slow at this point, but I could live with the dated technology. What really prompted me were the bulk and weight of the machine, and the fact that it has a 2 minute battery life. It's impractical to try and use that laptop very often, since I'm forced to sit near an outlet and take a few extra minutes for setup and tear-down. So today I finally took the plunge. Armed with some leftover student loan money, I headed to Best Buy. I had already shopped around and picked out the machine, so the transaction was fairly quick. I am the proud new owner of an HP Pavilion dv2415nr . It's fairly small and light, and looks great with their Wave pinstripe design. It's got Windows Vista, an AMD Turion dual-core processor, comes with 1GB of RAM (I'll probably upgrade that posthaste), and built-in NVIDIA GeForce graphics! Not to mention the in...
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