Friday, October 28, 2005

Columbus here I come + joining the Flock that is myspace

Flickr PhotoFriday is the big day for OSU , I finally go down and get to see if its for me or not. A fun day is planned for me though. 2pm starts off the Engineering Preview Day, which is a big open house for all things engineering. After a little bit 2:30 I am going to the Computer Science overview. I'm not sure which will be better but, I hope they tie for awesome.

I joined myspace

Yeah, apparently everyone already has an account. I'm myspace.com/eclectech which wasn't the first choice, but I'm happy. I kinda like it already, not as much as tabula rasa as with your own website, but you CAN enter html in every text box, which ups the techo ante, which I like.

I don't know who this Tom guy is, but he gets around. I think he's either a computer virus or the bird flu that is just going around. In either case, he can keep his distance.

I'll keep you posted on what happens at OSU.


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Sunday, October 23, 2005

Trading big bucks for OSU bucks

I've finally come to my senses.

It sucks having to leave Cleveland. Right now I have a nice job at Jackson Hewitt as their lead Network Technician, that means I supervise 30+ networks and keep an eye on 300+ computers. Its a big job, but I scale myself to handle it, and I'm a professional. Things would go on if I stayed in Cleveland through the winter, the world would turn, I would even make alot of money. I can't do it.

Instead this Winter, (January 3rd 2006 to be exact) I transfer to Ohio State, I mean The Ohio State. How freaking sweet is that.

Flickr Photo I've seen the future, and its scarlet and grey.

Cleveland is my comfort zone, and ... I need to step out of it. Giving up money is not hard to do, so long as it allows me to pursue my passion.

Here's a response I got today after talking to my friend Matt. It's a bit of my inspiration to just about drop everything and go head first.

Braxio187: on
my website, under the ideas tab, i have this idea for a handheld device
that does everything from playing videos to surfing the web. In between
that you can have your textbook loaded into a pdf in there and read
through this thing, press a button and its your notebook and jot down
things, also call mommy and tell her to wire money down to you, which
you could then use your handheld as a credit card

TARHEELxxx: jesus christ pete, when did u become a compueter genius
Braxio187: ever since i broke my leg in the sack race on field day at St. Albert.
TARHEELxxx: hahahahaha


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Saturday, October 22, 2005

Flock, flickr, and blogging... getting their 15 minutes

Today I stumbled upon Flock, which is basically Firefox's cousin that likes to keep in touch with everyone. It is built off of the same code (Mozilla) so you know its rock solid, though they underpromise. Well it is really good at helping you keep track of sites through starring, which makes a tag and a comment, and then you continue surfing. The star is like gmail, when you star a favorite message, though it uses del.icio.us (stores a list of your favorite sites online). The next thing that is cool is integrated flickr (online photo album) which goes best with the integrated blog, in my case blogger. You get a window that you can drag flickr images in, create tags for organization and searchability.

Flickr Photo

Basically Flock brings all these technologies together to make a something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Sure you can do it all without the fancy all-in-ones, but then that would just make you a geek.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Eclectech.us The birth of something

I have created eclectech.us just a few days ago, and I hope to work a good deal of effort into the site. It is going to be my site where I will keep my ideas, and other brainstormings to keep for myself and to share with the world.

What prompted me to create the site is the Universal Machine idea that I am working on. The idea will get transferred to the site eventually, as I finish dreaming the idea, and I find someone to make some nice graphics to put up on the site.

One thing I learned in Dreamweaver is that you create your first page and save it as a template, then you select all the regions and turn them into editable regions. The template will remain intact and each piece will be able to be modified. So I will just fire up the template, change something and call that a new page.

One thing I learned on a mac is that the usb port in the keyboard sucks, and they are not impossibly difficult to use and connect a flash drive to. I plugged my card into the computer and it worked automagically. Also I learned that iTunes on a mac can read my flash drive to load songs from it. However it still doesn't love it like an iPod.

Eclectech.us - The homepage blurb


Driving less did this to me

After Hurricane Katrina hit, many in the Gulf were left devastated as their lives were forever altered as hell broke loose upon them. They might have suffered a loss of house, family members, and dignity, but I lost a good chunk of skin as I did my part to reduce gas prices. I don't drive an SUV or any type of gas hog, but I felt that our environment was important for us to keep clean, safe, and easy to breath. That was then, I also have those secondary emotions, such as me doing this kept a soldier from having to die. They defend our pipelines, I'll make sure I use less. The story was that I was attacked by a bear, which a few people actually believed, however nobody bought me bear repellant I was selling the next day. But despite what you might have heard, this was not the result of my hat falling into the bear cage at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and being attacked as I grabbed a bananna from the cage and was chased all the way home. No, this was from driving home from the zoo, on my bike, from a bear chasing me, not from the bear itself. I was using my mom's bike which is lightweight and fast so I was tearing up the world. I was just cruising up and down the Parma sidewalks, when this maldesigned piece of concrete launced my bike up with some force that caused something in the bike to give way. I remember watching my bike tire roll past as I flipped over the handlebars. They bike is pretty groovy, all bent at the front frame. I lived, with scars to proove that I'm not a sally. I still ride my bike somedays, provided its not raining, snowing, or too cold out.


The birth of Eclectech.US



I had the idea of creating eclectech when I had a powerful brainstorm for my project of the Universal Machine. I have an idea that I will post soon, and I really needed an outlet to pour my ideas and to display them, so that I can tell my friends and family. Eclectech is a spin on eclectic, which is defined as , selecting what seems best of various styles or ideas thanks to wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn, which is my favorite dictionary. It is my intention to use this website as my personal website for everything which will lead me to use technology in a modern fashion, and so that I may be a pioneer in leading the way in certain aspects.


Focuses of this site I wish to expand to are: my photos, a blog, a place for my friends and family to check in and see whats going on in my world, a collection of my ideas of technology that I think will "make the world a better place" or just plain make us more productive but in a "do no evil" kind of way that it makes our quality of life better, and lastly I want to be able to offer my skills to the world at large.

Monday, October 10, 2005

An idea...

What if you could click a link in some text that you are reading and build up a queue of links to go to. Similar to opening the link in another tab, but will automatically load up when you reach the bottom of the page your reading, or after hitting a next page button.

I'm reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 and I really think that this is a good direction for the internet to evolve into. I've read some books about the beginning of the wide area links of (D)ARPA which eventually became the internet. (which means if I where web 2.0 l33t then I would have a book reading list you could check out) Their original intentions where to build a connection so that Universities could share resources. This grew to communications and data transfer, which coupled with all the evolutionary founding protocols (http, ftp, telnet, pop3) plus today's (rss, del.icio.us tags, social networks, wiki, blogs) which lead to something more involving and more resemblant of how we might naturally want to organize everything.
{I just discovered backpackit.com and protopage.com and I suggest you do too}

Why do you want to work in IT?

I want to work in IT not just for a career, but because it is a great passion of mine. I am very excited about all the possibilities I can learn at school, and how we can push our society further by developing new applications. In life I generally want to stretch the boundary of what we once thought was possible. Also I want to work in IT because it means that I would get to meet some incredible people and coworkers who think the same way I do about technology.

Another aspect I see in IT from my limited experience and on the job exposure is the great challenge it provides. I have worked as a Junior network administrator for a small company and found the stress from work to be both a curse and a blessing. We ran into a severe difficulty when our server crashed and ground everything to a halt. Customers were in the office and we had been very busy. When I arrived on the scene to resolve the issue everyone immediately fixated on me and expected me to have it repaired an hour ago. I immediately felt the tension as workers who could no longer carry out their work stared at me working on the server. As I diagnosed the problem and attempted a stepwise refinement to correct everything, each attempt I made that didn't fix everything only heightened the tension. Having responsibility for the productivity of others really made me feel the importance of having a properly functioning Information System. I felt a great sense of pride once I finally corrected the problem and everyone really opened up to me. I have found that working in IT is a thrill for all that I will get to do, and I wish to continue in the field to seek these types of challenges.

I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio and the city has been experiencing economic difficulty and is below the curve on high-tech growth. What I am in school for is to learn from the experts in the field and then transfer those skills into the workplace where I will learn by experience. I have every intention in joining the knowledge-sector of the economy and I feel the country will be better off with a more educated work force. I wish to become a professional and lead a respectable career that my children can look up to. Also I wish that society progresses as do I so that everyone knows that some in IT doesn't just "fix computers". There is a quote about technology that says "the only thing constant about technology is that change is the only constant" which leads me to believe in Information Technology as a lifelong learning experience, full of room for mastery and excitement.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Google Zeitgeist + Current TV = Google Current....

Google distilled into video form is basically what I would call this show. It is an entertaining 3 minute show about the top clicked news from google.

This is basically 2 diggs in one. One for Google Current and another for Current TV. My favorite portion of current tv is the screening room, you watch other peoples uploaded videos and then decide whether to give them the green light. Getting the green light puts your video on to satellite / cable television.

LINKS
Current TV http://www.current.tv
Screening Room http://www.current.tv/studio/screening
Google Blog mentioning partnership with Current TV http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/lights-camera-action.html

Eclectech - selecting what seems best http://www.eclectech.us

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