Week 9: Current Event, related to technology

Something a bit on the lighter side...

Joseph Tame, a social media producer who declares he is a “tech geek,” wanted to bring firsthand experience of the Tokyo Marathon to those who would enjoy seeing his live streamed video. "When you watch a marathon on TV, it feels a little distant. We really want to immerse people in the experience so they never forget the Tokyo Marathon 2011," he was quoted as saying by Kyung Lah, a reporter for CNN.

Tame was bedecked, along with pink windmills on his helmet, with 10 pounds of transmitting equipment, which included four iPhones and an iPad, allowing over 3,000 people to virtually run the marathon along with him. A British citizen who resides in Tokyo says he's pushing the limits of the medium and commented, "It's citizen broadcasting. Can we take live sports event coverage to the next level?"

The 33 year old completed the marathon in 6 hours and 28 minutes, with one iPhone pointed toward him, while another was pointed at the road ahead. The third phone was a GPS tool so he could be located on the route, and a fourth was for communicating with his media team who would in turn type out tweets. The iPad on his back displayed the returned encouraging comments from followers of this endeavor.

Throughout the race, the runner was plagued with technical difficulties: broken video, drained batteries, and inconsistent audio. Receiving his medal at the end, Tame remained undaunted and high-spirited for the duration, buoyed by friends and followers, but said he would not be doing the stunt again, “Once is enough for this crazy stuff."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/02/27/japan.marathon.man/index.html?iref=allsearch
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/sports/2011/02/27/lah.marathon.man.cnn?hpt=T2

Week 8: Progress

I had a lot of fun with the Google site this week. It has really gotten me excited about HTML again! But it seems every time I go back and take a look at it, I have a little more tweaking or editing to work on! I have enjoyed the sites everyone else has put together also, and have tried to be encouraging on the discussion board :)

I really had a difficult time with the Interview project this week. I don't really think I understand what it is we are supposed to be asking about. The assignment is supposed to show the "depth and breadth" of our understanding, but questions are asked when you don't understand something, right? I know I really enjoyed talking with my co-worker and learning more about GIS, and I look forward to my second interview on Monday. I think I am learning things, I just hope I am portraying it with the questions I've asked.

The Corning YouTube video, "A Day Made with Glass..." that our teacher posted this week was really interesting. My son asked me how soon I thought this could become a reality, in the next 10 years maybe? Gosh, I have no clue, but it's probably sooner than we think... look at the past 10 years. I also found it interesting that over 10,500 people Liked the video but there were over 300 who Disliked it. My son posted the link on his Facebook.

I spent about 10 hours on this class this week, but have a lot to catch up on this coming week along with studying for another test in my business class, and I might be called in for Jury Duty the day I've scheduled my test! Gads. Also, on Tuesday evening during the Elluminate I commented that I was interested in going towards Game Development as a career, but by Friday, that all changed after talking with Mr. Mason at TVCC, and now I'm headed toward becoming a PAX Administrator. I'm kind of excited thinking about a solid 9 months of school in '12-'13 and living dorm life which I have never experienced. I really appreciated his encouragement that age is not a factor in this field, more whether you are teachable and can get along with other people. So, I think I may do good :)

And my last note: Yay Jeff Gordon!! Winner of NASCAR's Subway Fresh Fit 500 this afternoon (Sunday the 27th) in Phoenix after a 66 week winless streak which has been the longest in his career. Go Jeffie!!

Week 8: Said Boston Rob

"Let it be a lesson to ya... government jobs... stressful!"

Week 8: Pretty Kitty

Just thought I'd pop in a picture of my cat here. Her name is Tirzah. She is about 3 years old and very loving. I almost lost her about a year ago when she ate a cat food bag string. She was hiding from us and had stopped eating or drinking. I took her to the vet, had her hydrated and they gave her a heavy dose of hairball medicine even though they couldn't feel any real obstruction. About a day later she passed the string and she's been fine ever since, but I have to keep watch for rubber bands and strings around the house now.

When I was younger, I knew when I had a family that I would probably end up with a mess of pets (they seem to follow children home) and it turned out to be true for me. We've had lots of fish and a guinea pig a while back, but the most we ever had at one time was: 3 cats, 2 dogs, a ferret and a turkey! Life is funny, isn't it?

Week 8: Current Event, related to technology

Is the Internet Being Held Hostage from the People?


In a February 22nd report on CNN.com, Libya is purported to be the latest country to crackdown on the services of the internet because of the role the web might be playing in the democratic protests that are currently plaguing the country. The electricity is working, cell phones are still functioning, but the internet has been down for several days. Although the outage could be traffic overload or simple power failures, the possibility of a concerted government effort could also be the reason.

Libya would not be the first country to institute restrictions on public access to engage with the outside voices of the world. Internet access restriction has been used by various rigid governments as a way to continue their hold of power. Iran has been known to limit capacity to overload the system to a standstill. Syria, China and Russia are known to use the internet as a way to monitor citizens and have filtered some websites. Egypt completely shut down internet access to its nearly 20 million users for 5 days during the recent protests to remove a 30-year government leader.

It is unclear just how much social networking, email and blogs may be affecting the anti-government protest efforts since only about 6% of Libya’s population is on the internet. The Al-Jazeera news network is reporting that Facebook was used to coordinate the first protests in Libya and that one Facebook group that was calling for a “Day of Anger” grew from 4,400 to 9,600 members in just two days.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/22/libya.internet/index.html?hpt=T1

Post Script

For anyone interested in more information, the following day an article came out on CNN.com interviewing Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Yes, the internet may initiate democracy as we have seen recently in the Middle East and Northern Africa, but, as this article asks, “what about instances when the internet actually prevents democracy from coming about -- when dictators use social media to track the populace, plant pro-government bloggers and online activists and, in short, increase their own power?” It is a thought provoking piece.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/22/authoritarian.internet.morozov/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Week 8: Absolutely Scrumptious

A gal brought these into work and they were way too wonderful! She said they were easy to make. I haven't made them yet myself, but next time I need to bring something... this is going to be what I bring because who doesn't LOVE cookie dough? :)

Cookie Dough Truffles

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup semisweet mini chocolate morsels
1 cup finely chopped pecans
1 1/2 pounds chocolate bark candy coating, melted

Directions
In a large bowl cream butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer at medium speed until creamy. Add vanilla. Gradually beat in flour and add milk. Add chocolate morsels and pecans, mixing well. Shape into 1-inch balls. Place on waxed paper; chill 2 hours.

*Cook's Note: Since the dough is sticky, roll your fingers into flour. This will make it easier to roll.

Melt chocolate bark candy coating in a double boiler. Using 2 forks, dip cookie balls into candy coating to cover. Place on waxed paper and chill to set. Store in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Hope you enjoy :)

Week 7: This Week

Power Point was really fun this week! There is so much you can do, and I learned so many more parts of it... I just need to remember where everything is located! A lot of classes will accept a Power Point Presentation instead of a written paper for a project, so I hope to use this knowledge wherever possible in the future. I used Power Point for a report on Childhood Obesity in my health class about two years ago and it was very basic, but I got a good grade. Hopefully with all the bells and whistles I will be able to make even better presentations.

I really enjoyed expanding our websites. It was so great to get back into the creating groove with the hard-coding. I think some things have changed or grown in HTML since a decade ago (egads! has it been that long!?) and I can't wait to do more on a business website I have decided to create.

Outlook was fairly easy, and even though I use Outlook Express all the time, I learned a few more things about it.

The most difficult project for me this week was the current event. I have been following Julian Assange and what has been going on with Wikileaks for a few months and questioning the power over technology Mr. Assange seems to allude to have. It's not a synopsis at all... I much more loquacious than that, so it turned out to be more of an opinion essay.... hope I don't get marked down for that because I did a lot of research for what I wrote. Anyway, that took me a lot of time because I had so much information and I was having difficulty with the right words coming to me.

All in all, I probably spent about 15 to 19 hours on the work this week, only because I am fairly slow at things sometimes, and wanted to get my words and my web page just right :)

We got snow again this week, but I want everyone to know that summer is bound to come sooner or later, so here's a "little cup of Florida Sunshine" a co-worker brought back to us from vacation...

Week 7: Current Event, related to technology

Is The World Being Held Hostage by Technology?


The power of the written word has been a dominant force throughout the age of history: the letters of the Apostles, Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, and the United States Constitution. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century those powerful words have been posted on the internet… at Wikileaks.org. As the question has been in the past, should anyone, and if so who, be held responsible for the morality of mere words?

The Wikileaks website, unveiled in December 2006 and since removed but relentlessly mirrored, stated its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations." Although the site was originally set up to accept user comments and edits, it moved to a traditional type of publication no longer allowing user control.

Australian born, publisher, journalist, software developer and internet activist, Julian Assange, began the whistle-blowing media and set the philosophy for the Wikileaks site. In his blog he wrote, "the more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.... Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."

A list of documents attracting media attention on the Wikileaks site can be found in Wikipedia’s article, “Information published by WikiLeaks” and includes among others: an apparent Somali assassination order, Guantanamo Bay procedures, killings by Kenyan police, contributors to Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, the 2008 Peru oil scandal, a nuclear accident in Iran, toxic dumping in Africa, an internal document from the Kaupthing Bank just prior to the collapse of Iceland’s banking sector, the Afghan War Diary (almost 77,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan) and a package of 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs which allowed every death in Iraq and across the border in Iran, to be mapped.

The Wikileaks site has been both praised and condemned. The New York City Daily News listed Wikileaks at the top of a list of websites “that could totally change the news.” A number of awards have been bestowed upon the organization including The Economist’s New Media Award in 2008 and Amnesty International’s UK Media Award in 2009. Julian Assange himself was named Reader’s Choice for Time’s Person of the Year in 2010. At this same time, there have been claims that Assange is a terrorist and government officials of the United States have criticized Wikileaks that the leaked classified information could harm national security and compromise international peace efforts.

Currently, Mr. Assange is being held under partial house arrest in Britain while authorities decide whether to honor a Swedish warrant for his extradition in order to face sexual assault charges. His lawyers, besides saying the accusations are false and politically motivated, are apparently fighting the order with concern that Sweden would then extradite him to the U.S. where there are calls for his arrest for the disclosure of top secret government documents and Assange fears execution. In early December 2010, Assange went so far as to hint that a heavily downloaded encrypted file would be sent a key to unlock should anything happen to him or the Wikileaks website.

This past week, a former colleague, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, in his new book, “Inside Wikileaks” claims Julian Assange had started assuming the characteristics of the kinds of institutions he was trying to bring down, going from “imaginative, energetic, brilliant” to a “paranoid, power-hungry, megalomaniac.” When Berg left the organization in September 2010, he took with him employees, key software and 3,000-3,500 documents claiming it would be "irresponsible" to leave them with Assange. A new site, OpenLeaks, was begun in January as a more transparent secret-sharing website. Berg says the new website, which he and a few previous Wikileaks employees started, has a "technical mechanism whereby sources can be protected" and whistleblowers can decide for themselves to which outlets they want to release their information.

Now on a newer website, it continues, anonymous leaks of confidential information in a world where “news travels fast”… faster than ever in history. Who should be held accountable for the morality of those words? Will the power bring Daniel down, just as it did Julian? How long will it take? Is the world now hostage to technology and those who can wield the code? Time will tell us all.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/02/10/domscheit.berg.wikileaks.cnn?iref=allsearch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_published_by_WikiLeaks

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/02/08/julian-assange-fears-swedish-authorities-would-send-him-to-america-where-he-fears-execution-115875-22907137/

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/02/eveningnews/main7111845.shtml

http://www.mobiletribune.com/profiles/blogs/0130assange-poison-pill-threat

http://www.dayonbay.ca/news/international/268-wikileaks-the-new-threat-to-business

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/daniel-domscheit-berg-wikileaks_n_821100.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Domscheit-Berg

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/02/10/germany.openleaks.wikileaks/index.html?iref=allsearch

Week 7: Said Tony Stark, Iron Man

"Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing."

Week 7: Said Alice

"What an idea! What a crazy, bad, wonderful idea!"

Week 6: Access, Elluminate, HTML, Blogging, and an Idea

I stayed late two nights this week at work to use the Access program and do my Skills Reviews. My Microsoft Office 2007 does not include Access so I'm glad this worked out for me. Wow, there is a lot to Access, and I can see how wonderful it would be to use this program in certain instances. It was difficult for me to wrap my head around what all the program can produce for me, so I'm going to go over the units again before I take the quizzes. The tutorials were indispensable for me since I wasn't always sure where I was headed or what it was I was trying to do. I'd say I'll probably end up spending about 10+ hours on the Access part of our assignments this week.

I was so bummed I had missed the Elluminate this week! I was headed home with an hour to spare, and then I stopped by a friend's house to say hi! and that turned into dinner, and when I got home around 7pm... it hit me that I had missed the session! I listened to the recording and I had a question of mine answered, so that was good. There are not too many of us who tune in on Tuesday evenings, I sure hope fellow students are listening to them later because I know there are a few hints I've gleaned from Prof. Bagent on our assignments that I would have missed if I hadn't listened. I don't think many of the students realize the Tutorials are available for us to utilize and I think that tool would help them out a lot.

The HTML part of this week's work was easy. I loved learning that code back in '99/2000. I have helped with friends business web pages, and I've done some other pages. Here is my website where you can click onto a few of my own personal projects. Unfortunately I haven't updated anything since about 2007 or 2008, but I see my Oregon Trail page has over 46,000 visits... WOW...

http://personal.my180.net/thesmiths/index.html

I also can't believe that several students have stopped blogging, or haven't added more things to their blog. As Prof. Bagent suggested, the Blog part of our weekly assignments has become a lot of fun! I guess I was ready to jump into it since I enjoy my son's blog from Sweden so much. Anyway, I'm having a blast with it :)

And an Idea. Taking this computer class, and the business 101 class, and having my mom tell me about something she is working on and having trouble with... I have come up with a business idea that I think could make a bit of money. I'd have to get a .com, and I think I might have to learn some javascript and maybe brush up on CGI. The idea is so overwhelming my thought processes that I have not been able to study for my business test coming up on Friday! Every time I sit down to read, my mind wanders away to the idea and how to make it all work! Driving me crazy because there is still much to learn on the computing end, and I'm depending on my mom to work a few details out on the information end. I am really excited about it though. I'd like to make it so almost everything is handled with programming. I think it could work, and I think it might make me a little bit of money too. Wow, wouldn't that be amazing?

:)

Week 6: A Little Bit of My Family History

My birth certificate lists my father's occupation and employer. I have not heard of too many other people's birth certificates that contain this information. I find that interesting. Generations from now, I hope my descendants will find the information about me very intriguing as they trace back their family tree, because my father's occupation was "Aerialist" and his employer was "Ringling Bros."

My Parents - 1958

Yes, my parents were in the circus!! My mom was a dancer with the show when she met my dad, a trapeze artist! (after I was born, she learned to "fly") They were married about a year later, and I came onto the scene about two and a half years down the line. My mom says I was overstimulated as a child... watching the painted elephants go by, having clowns come by my playpen and talk to me.

Me and Mingo - 1959

I traveled through half of the United States by the time I was three years old, but we settled down in California when I started kindergarten. We traveled for two more years during the summers until my dad hurt his shoulder and could no longer fly. Shortly after, he started a career at ABC Studios in Hollywood as a Stage Manager.

It's been kind of fun to have a different beginning to my life. Different from anyone else I've met so far. My kids think it's pretty cool, and it's just a little bit of my family history :)

Week 6: Updates

On Cinnamon: She came home from the vet all peppy but we had to keep her quiet for a week. She's had her third wrap done, and should be getting her stitches out this coming Friday. Unfortunately, the biopsy has shown some very serious cancer, and since that lump was so close to her lymph nodes, the prognosis is not good. She is a happy girl right now, and our job is too keep her happy and love on her lots.

On Jury Duty: Didn't have to go in a couple of weeks ago, but my number is coming up on Thursday again. I needed to get an excuse though because I am taking a defensive driving course for work that only comes around two or three times a year. Guess they will have to catch me next time around! :)

Week 5: Excel

I have been using Excel off and on over the years, but never had as much fun with it as I did this week! So many whistles and bells to use! Colors and shading, making tables and pie charts :) I probably spent a good two solid days (altogether) on my work this week - I wanted everything perfect. I wish I could use Excel more to it's fullest extent in my job. I actually started a huge project entering handwritten notes of bird and animal sightings in the Fremont National Forest onto a spreadsheet. Records go back to the '80's. It's mostly just columns of info, but I was able to color code certain columns and made the headers looks nicer, so I am able to use a little of what I have learned.

I am jazzed about my grade for weeks 1-4, and hope to keep up the good work. Next week is Access and I have never worked with that at all, so I'm sure it will be a challenge.