Day 7, or: What do you mean I don't write big enough, you meanie? D:

GRRRRR....

In all seriousness, I kid, I kid. This came up when I signed up for taking notes for the disabled student on Monday. I went to the TLT, and turned in my notes to Diane. She said that they were considered "itty bitty"...And I actually tried to write bigger. I really did. But I guess compared to the people who fill up the entire column, it's still considered kind of small. So basically, I spent this class more trying to perfect/improve my handwriting than to completely immerse myself in the lecture. I swear I also subconsciously absorbed everything! Its just that consciously, it felt like I was responsible for two now, and I would feel very guilty failing someone who needed obviously legible notes.

That said, now to critiquing the class.

The case study was kind of interesting, and a cool coincidence, because right before coming to class I was doing a bit of research in contemplating whether to buy an Apple laptop. With how many people around campus use one, graphics design majors or not, the visual appeal of the apple was quite appealing. I wondered why it was that apple generally didn't drop prices low enough on ANYTHING, and I guess the whole closed systems thing we learned about Apple is why. It must drive off a lot of consumers if Apple is both as secretive as they are, and as high and mighty. It reminds me of reading about Abercrombie and Fitch in the newspaper, and how they refuse to make their clothing more economical and have more sales. They believed, doggedly, that brand loyalty and the high power image they created was enough to carry them. I guess apple thinks the same? Except it seems like for the small market share, they're still doing fine. I mean, why else does it seem like this campus is rampant with macbook users...

Much of the lecture was very technical, but again, not boring technical. I think I'm neutral this time, as far as interest in the material. Discussing speech recognition systems, and later on the mini palm computers(that Fedex and such use), was pretty cool. I kind of wish there was more details on those, because I always thought those gadgets were cool. How do they work?...Also, the mini credit card processing machine that they use on airplanes.(or at least, on United Airlines). I thought those were awesome as well, when I saw them on my plane to Hawaii and back.

Although the parity checking, and ASCII sections were not required for us to remember, it was quite interesting to listen to. By now I forgot most of the small details(since writing stuff down is crucial to my memory), but the overall idea of how a computer has to check and recheck(at times) each individual byte, to make up words, to make up sentences, and then to make up the monstrous wall of text that is my blog posts...that's amazing. Actual artificial intelligence might not exist yet, but it makes me appreciate how smart computers already are.

I hope the student is not visually impaired...I hope the student is not visually impaired...I hope the student is not visually impaired...