p-bot

Did this one last night.

Mexist and I did some GPS n3rd art last night in SF’s Sunset district… more to come…

Digital logic = 0 (false/blows chunks), but bike rides to Ocean Beach on a beautiful day in the Bay = 1 (true/is the sh*t!)

Photo by: Mexist!

It’s almost halfway through the semester of my course and I’m starting to lose focus big time. Experiencing one of those, “what the hell am I doing this for?” “do I really want to do IT/Internet?” “what am I going to do with my life?”

I think I would like to own my own business and open a little store selling cool books, music, t shirts and art. I really don’t envisage myself writing assembly language or Java for that matter in the future.

Being a slave is dead.

Anyone out there have any knowledge of binary multiplication, binary with fractional components and data representation of floating point formats?

Just hit week 5 of my university unit i’m taking this semester and it just destroyed my brain. I was doing pretty well up until now, actually managed to write my first assembly language program for the Motorola 68k processor… nothing special, just moving some numbers around the data registers.

N3rd.

Homework

Over the last year or so I’ve been pretty actively taking units at Open University to step toward a Bachelor Of Technology. I never went to uni, so this is a real eye opener for me.

I’ve taken a few units per semester before, but this semester (only two weeks in) I’ve already had to drop out of one…

I took both Programming 1 (Java) and Computer Organisation. Last semester I had received a HD in Intro To Programming, so I was fired up to complete Prog 1, which covers a little of the old ground but steps up the game very quickly. I also decided to take on Comp Org, which sounds relatively harmless, until I opened the first chapter. First chater was all about data representation, ie: decimal, binary, octal and hex, how to convert between them all. I had to go back to my primary school years and learn how to do long division again (helpful in converting decimal to binary and working out totals in various base numbers. This course works up into low level assembly programming (uber geeky/hardcore), so yeah, this is a *crazy* subject to take on with anything else. I have got my hands full with this and with my work and long commute it’s making time to share with my other unit, life and health a bit tough to manage.

Which did I drop? Prog 1.

I thought, even though I had a head start in Java and I could get through this without too much stress, it would be better to get the hardest subject out of the way first… devote an entire semester to focus on blasting this subject out of the water. And even though Comp Org freaks me out to no end, i’m perversely interested in this subject for whatever reason i’m still trying to figure out.

Even though I think this is the best decision and gives me better chance to get higher marks (albiet slowing down the race to my goal), I’m not feeling the best about having to drop Prog 1… feeling dumb. I’ll get over it.

Taken at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It’s pure porn for computer geeks. I loved it so much.

Finally caved in to peer pressure and bought an Xbox360. My second console, the other is a Atari 2600… Just a small step up It didn’t actually cost me anything… I sold two pairs of jeans and 9 pairs of sneakers on eBay, which got me enough cheese to buy this badboy.

Getting my ass served to me atm, but it’s a pretty cool interface and fun blasting a few friends. I have to say, the “social” aspect of gaming with your friends on the 360 is light years ahead on Wii. Trying to add friends to the Wii is a f$%king nightmare, they really need to update that.