January 2009 Archives

I finally found it!  My favorite video game ending of all time at 2:35!

Politicians are notorious for saying one thing during election season to win votes and doing another once in office.  President Obama has said, "I want you to hold our government accountable.  I want you to hold me accountable."  To that challenge, PolitiFact.com has responded, "Okay, we will."  On their website, they have created the Obameter where they measure how many promises Obama has kept, how many compromises he made, how many promises broken, how many promises stalled, how many in the works, and how many with no action taken yet.  So far, Obama is doing pretty well with no promises broken and five promises kept.  It's good to see that while the Internet helped Obama get elected, the Internet will also help keep Obama honest. 

The Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young Children group, which is a consumer watchdog group, released the finalists for their annual TODAY awards.  One of these finalists was Lego Batman: The Videogame.  According to the group, "children choose which cyber weapons to use to beat up their opponent. Finally, ignore the fact it was rated suitable for ages 10 & up and partner with McDonald's for a Happy Meal toy giveaway to simultaneously promote the video game, junk food, and the violent Dark Knight movie series to preschoolers."

While it is nice that Batman got nominated for a major award, I think that TODAY is a little off base with their claim as with the rest of the finalists nominated.  Ultimately, even if Lego Batman is oppressive, a young child won't be able to buy the items on this list, so the discretion is the responsibility of the parents.  Personally, I really can't see how LEGO Batman can be seen as oppressive and destructive to kids.  The worst violence in the game is the brick violence where when Batman beats up a villain, the villain just turns into various LEGO blocks.

     

I was able to watch the inaugural address of Barack Obama.  Overall, I thought his speech was excellent.  What stood out to me the most was the following excerpt:

"...Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.  This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny..."

Let's get to work.

"...We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

Barack Obama will be sworn in next week bringing with it a lot of historical firsts.  However, an important first for information technology and the president-elect came on Tuesday evening when photographer Pete Souza took the official presidential potrait of Obama using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital camera.  This marks the first time that the portrait has been taken by a digital camera and speaks to how far digital cameras have progressed in terms of quality.  I wonder when the first holographic presidential portait will be taken.....

In my ASTRO 001 class, I was shown the following YouTube video about the Powers of Ten which emphasizes how large the universe can be and how small the universe can be.  After watching this, I couldn't help but think of what Bill Nye said, "I'm a speck, on a speck, orbiting a speck in the middle of specklessness."  Besides, you can't beat the Morgan Freeman commentary.

This semester I will be a teaching intern for an IST 210 database course.  I already have taken this course, but as a teaching intern, I will serve as a resource to the students in the class.  I am looking forward to expanding my skills and gaining new experiences.  During the first training session for new teaching interns, we did several activities to emphasize key concepts, but the activity that stood out to me was the drawing activity.  The picture book Fish is Fish was read to us where a tadpole and little fish become friends.  Then, the tadpole becomes a frog and leaves the little fish to explore the world.  When the frog comes back to see his fish friend, he tells the fish about birds which the frog described as having many colors, wings, and two legs.  I was told to draw what the fish would picture as a bird.  In the story, the fish has never seen wings much less a bird, so the fish forms his own different version of a bird as shown below.

The moral of the story is that one has to be careful when describing new abstract concepts to people.  One needs to understand the perspective and knowledge of others in order to communicate effectively.

This semester I am taking ART 002, an online class, to fulfill my general arts course requirement.  In ART 002, the main objective is to create a website using the web space that Penn State provides its students and then to use this website as a way to present a research project.  I stumbled across the course website and completed 6 of the 7 assignments.  The seventh assignment is a group assignment.  Feel free to check it out by clicking here.  One class 6/7 of the way done, 6 and 1/7 classes to go! 

I stumbled across an article on Reuters that made me stop and think.  Stevie Wonder recently spoke at the Consumer Electronic Show and commented about the usability of technologies such as the touch screen for the blind.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

"If you can take those few steps further, you can give us the excitement, the pleasure and the freedom of being a part of it," said the famed musician.

Wonder said some companies had managed to make their products more accessible to the blind, sometimes without even meaning to. He cited an iPod music player and Research in Motion's BlackBerry as gadgets he likes to use.

Advocates argue that if product designers take into account blind needs, they would make electronics that are easier to use for the sighted as well.

The good news is that manufacturers do not need to put large sums of money into making products accessible, nor would they have to forsake innovation, said Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation For The Blind.

"We don't want to hold up technological progress," he said. "What we're saying is, think about the interface and set it up in such a way that it's simple .... The simpler you make the user interface of a product, it's going to reach more people sighted or blind."

My experience with information technology has shown me that the next big thing is the central focus of the field.  Once a piece of technology such as an operating system, Internet Browser, iPhone, or laptop is out on the market, another one is in the works being developed.  With the emphasis being on faster, higher, and stronger, information technology loses focus of the people using these technologies.  Chris Danielsen made an excellent point when he said that simple user interfaces will help all users get the most out of technology.  Information technology has the tremendous potential to help people and should incorporate this potential while developing the next greatest thing.

Research conducted by Oxford University suggests that playing Tetris after experiencing a traumatic event helps decrease the number of flashbacks people suffer after witnessing a traumatic event.  People with post traumatic stress disorder such as war veterans suffer from irritability, outbursts of anger, sleep difficulties, trouble concentrating, extreme vigilance, and an exaggerated startle response.  By playing Tetris hours after experiencing a traumatic event, the task of recognizing shapes and moving the shapes strategically interferes with formation of the traumatic sensory memory thus decreasing the frequency of the flashbacks.

As a lifeguard, a part of the first aid training is learning about PTSD.  While playing Tetris just a few hours after a traumatic event may not be ideal, I do believe that this is an important advancement in understanding more about PTSD, sensory memories, and the human brain.  Also, I think it is pretty cool that researchers are using video games like Tetris.  Who knew that Tetris could be potentially good for your health? 

Tetris - Flash Game
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