Posts

Where to go

Image
As most if not all my blog users know, I’ve been doing these blogs as assignments for a class. But unfortunately, my CIS 115 class is now coming to an end. This will be my last blog article related to this specific course (as far as I know). The topic of this one is “Where do I go from here?”. I’m going to look at it in different angles. First, what would be my dream job in computer science? I’ve thought a lot about my dream job growing up. I’ve more recently decided that my dream job would have to be along the lines of working in a small group developing technology in some way using a variety of my skillsets. I’ve always been interested in simulation and space. Those have been topics that I’ve really wanted to delve into. I’ve always been fascinated by replicating real life processes in a logical way in a ‘perfectly’ controlled environment. But along the lines of computer science itself, I’ve wanted to learn more about operating systems and low level coding. Hopefully I can learn more...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review - "Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers"

Image
Today I am going to give my thoughts on what I think about the book “Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today’s Computers.” This book was a fun read. Much better than the last one. When reading this book, I felt engaged. What does that mean exactly? It means that I was captivated by it’s words to a point. Unlike the last book this book went straight into the details, so it was more like reading a todo/manual than a textbook. But not to the point that it was uninteresting. There were some boring parts, but for the most part it went right to the point and The most interesting thing I learned in the book was about RSA encryption. It was just really cool to learn that there is a way to make sure there is a private connection between 2 people even with people listening in. It’s a really fun concept. There were some parts that I didn’t specifically like. Like where it got confusing and I didn’t understand what was going on, especially with the chapter on ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mathematics and Computer Science

Image
As a kid, mathematics never interested me that much, it was just something I would do for school. But I did get into programming when my uncle introduced it to me. As I programmed though, I started to see the close relationship between programming and mathematics. Mathematics gave me a structure to know how to solve different computational problems. Then as the first helped lift the second, the second helped lift the first. I started to use my computational problem solving to understand more into how to solve mathematical problems. Then my senior year of high school, I was put into a Calculus class with a teacher that was enthusiastic about mathematics. Her enthusiasm spread to me and I fell in love with mathematics. So much so that I decided to make my major in college Applied Mathematics. During work, when no customers were around, I would pull out my ruler, protractor, pen, and calculator and do my own math every chance that I got. That was all fine and dandy until I went on a churc...
Post a Comment
Read more

My thoughts on "Pattern on the Stone"

Image
  While reading the book "Pattern on the stone", I was very engaged and interested. This level of computing has always interested me. There were parts where I felt like it was rambling on, but that could’ve been because I was hungry and those were few and far between. For being a book about technical things, it keeps your interest while learning at the same time. I found quite a few interesting things, but the most interesting thing I learned in this  book was about recursion. I had seen this video (2) I didn’t really understand it until I read this book. The book describes this "This kind of recursive definition with a changing parameter is useful for producing anything with a self-similar structure. A picture that contains a picture of itself is an example of a recursive, self similar structure."(4) That brings my mind back to the home depot buckets (take a look at the bucket that the guy is holding). (3) Both seem like very powerful tools that are used to day in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A look into seam carving

Image
Good day readers, I’ve been thinking about algorithms recently due to some reading from “The Pattern on the Stone.” It’s interesting how algorithms make logical ways of doing a task. It’s really cool how it can be applied to theoretically any programming language. It’s not operating specific, not programming language specific, not hardware specific. It’s how it’s done on a more basic logical level. Even technically algorithms can be done manually without a computer (albeit most would be a little slow, tedious, and boring). The book describes what an algorithm is this way. “an algorithm is a fail-safe procedure, guaranteed to achieve a specific goal.” (2) I have been doing a bit of research on various algorithms in studying for this post and happened upon this algorithm. It’s called seam carving. Before delving into what it does, I’ll present the problem first. imagine you have an image that will be displayed on many different screens with many different resolutions and aspect ratios: ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hello World

Image
I would like to officially make this blog. For Starters, I'm Jesse. I am a creator of many things technical with experience in robotics, programming, and computers general. Really, I love to learn. To introduce myself, I was born in a small town in New York. My childhood was spent in Utah, my teenage years in Kansas, and post-teenage years were in mostly Maryland. All my life I’ve loved computers and anything that uses electricity to run. Much of my fascination with computing derives down to the basics of how computing works, and the logic gate level. My feelings are portrayed, just like how Daniel Hillis feels in his book ‘The Pattern On the Stone’. His introduction to the book I feel is just perfect and his honestly magical description of a CPU: Logic Gates  1 “ I etch a pattern of geometric shapes onto a stone. To the uninitiated, the shapes look mysterious and complex, but I know that when arranged correctly they will give the stone a special power, enabling it to respond to in...
Post a Comment
Read more