Technology

I haven’t got to sign on the my Playstation and play some Call of Duty lately cause I’ve been too busy with work, school, and homework. Another thing that is interrupting my use of my PS3 is Skype; this is a program that allows people to chat with each other. It’s a free program that every computer user should have, it’s similar to aim and facebook chat except that you can talk through a webcam. I showed my parents what it was and told them that it would be a necessary program that they would need once I leave for college next year. Plus there are over 12 million people on when I sign in every time I turn my laptop on. Skype is awesome because you are able to actually see the person you’re talking to, which is really cool because it adds a whole other dimension to talking and once again it’s FREE!!

I really wish that I had more time to play CoD, once summer starts I’ll have the time and it will be awesome. I can’t stress how amazing this game is and since I’m really good at it, it’s even more fun to play. Maybe since I’m such a beast at this game I could join a clan and possibly become a professional gamer and have my absolute dream job. This dream is very unlikely though because these professional gamers are the best in the world and this is all they do and there’s no possible way I could play this game all day no matter how fun it is.

As for now I’m hoping to become a computer engineer and hopefully work for a successful company such as Sony or Microsoft and build some extensive hardware for them. I think it would be sweet to join the Playstation team and help design the next next generation gaming system. With the knowledge I will obtain throughout college I will definitely be able to do anything with a computer and even be able to manipulate the hardware to make a system function much better. Although the salary is very good, that’s not what draws me to this career and I can’t wait for college next year!!

Soon enough our nation will never have to leave their house for anything, all the necessities will be accessible via cell phone or something else. I was looking on the New York Times website and they had an article about a device that they iPhone has that allows the user to make payments with their credit cards. If Apple can create something like this then imagine what’s going to happen in the future.

The gismo makes it able to pay any sort of bills that a consumer has or allows them to make donations to many different groups. The device plugs right into the head phone jack and can somehow read the magnetic strip on the card and then it transfers the selected amount of money. This invention is very useful if the user is very lazy, but this technology can lead to much more technology.

The iPhone also has another application that allows two different people to transfer money between their accounts through a bump of each iPhone. This app makes it extremely easy for a friend to pay them back and through this technology it could completely eliminate the use of cash. The iPhone is definitely the best phone out in the market, but it’s only accessible for those people who have AT&T. If I could have any phone it would be this one, but since I have Sprint I could not easily get an iPhone. There is a way of getting this phone, but I would have to buy a $600 unlocked iPhone and then crack that so it is able to work on the Sprint network. By doing this there’s a chance that it would not work and that would be $600 down the drain. I have heard talk of the iPhone wanting to switch phone companies because AT&T pretty much sucks and hopefully it would switch to sprint!

Now to switch over to the topic of electronic money, I believe that in the future the need of cash will not be a need. Everything will be accessible via credit card, were starting to switch over to that technology now with the sensor on the sliding devices that does not require the user to slide their card. Eventually all places will have this technology and swiping will be the new trend not sliding!

Photo from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/technology/29cashless.html?ref=technology

Today I’m driving up to Duluth to register for college with my mom and it made me realize how much I don’t really talk to her. She asked me what I’m doing in school and I told her about physics and how interesting it is. In Physics Mr. Howard is teaching us about quantum mechanics and quantum theories; it really baffles me how people of modern physics think. For example, what was Einstein thought process when he was wondering what it was like to travel next to a beam of light? Or what’s a modern physicist do? Physics is definitely the most interesting and intriguing science class and almost everything relates back to it. Mr. Howard told us today that back in chemistry we were actually learning about physics and quantum theory and how chemistry is just an extension of physics.

Quantum physics is pretty crazy because these genius physicists don’t even know exactly how it works and particles at the atomic level behave completely different. We just learned how when you shoot protons at a double slit the proton splits into two and then it gives a pattern on the sensor that would be just like a wave. But when a device is watching the protons, the protons behave just like they’re supposed to, quantum physics is crazy!! We watched a video about Hugh Everett, a famous physicist, who created the theory of a parallel universe. If an atom can split, and were made out of atoms, can we split too? Who knows? Crazy stuff!

Last week the physics class took a trip to Chicago and we went to see Fermilab, a place where physicists do a bunch of stuff. But what this place is known for is its particle accelerator, where they accelerate protons around a 4 mile track and then collide them. I won’t get too deep into that because I fear I might just lose you guys. But soon Fermilab will be overtaken by a more sophisticated accelerator or in Switzerland called the CERN hadron collider. CERN has a much larger accelerator and the intensity of the beam is also much stronger. This collider is looking for what physicists call the “God” or the higgs particle, which is the basis of everything and could lead to much better technology or even other dimensions, these scientists don’t know what’s going to happen with this accelerator.

My mom and I then got into talking about what the future is going to look like and how much technology has changed and it has. She mentioned what the technology will be like when I’m her age and what kind of things we will be able to do. It’s pretty crazy to think about the technologies we will have such as, traveling and possible living on the moon or how communication will advance. I can’t wait to see what happens and am amazed how our generation will be leading this technology movement.

Photos from: http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory/DoubleSlit.shtml http://www.djibnet.com/photo/atlas/the-large-hadron-collider-atlas-at-cern-2046228644.html

After a long wait I finally went and picked up my playstation from the UPS store. As I was driving home all I could think about was how I’m going to kill some people. Then when I was getting the Playstation out of the back sit I turned around and the box slipped coming out of my hand, but luckily I caught myself and saved myself from buying a brand new one. After that almost accident I brought my dearly loved possession inside and brought it downstairs to my gaming zone. I flipped open the box cutter I got from work and sliced right through the packaging tape as fast as possible. I was surprised to see how brand new the Playstation looked; I swore Sony said this thing is definitely broken so we’re just going to give this person a brand new one. There was no way Sony could’ve cleaned my playstation up to look that good. Then I had to take it out of the Styrofoam to see the PS3 wrapped in a thin protecting screen that I had to peel off. The whole time I was opening it I was thinking to myself how awesome it’s going to be when I finally log on for the first time in three weeks.

I came to find out that they replaced my hard drive and everything that was previously on it was wiped clean. I actually had to re-set up the whole PS3, and that process took longer than I thought, so technically I didn’t start playing until an hour later. Before I could play I had to pick my language, date, time, set up wireless connection and my account. Then I was able to play the greatest game ever created, CoD MW2. Since Sony replaced my hard drive I lost all my saved game progress, so if I were to play the campaign mode I would have to start all over, but I can play online where I left off because that has nothing to do with the single player. This whole process isn’t the first time that it has happened, a while ago about three months after I got it, it broke and I had to do all of the same steps. Thank god I didn’t have to talk to anyone stationed over in India or else I probably would have been even angrier.

Last night while I was doing my homework I was watching this show on the History Channel that was all about invisibility. The show was called “That’s Impossible” and scientists talked about how this new technology is advancing very quickly. The show was extremely interesting and I actually learned a lot from it. At the beginning of the show it started off talking about deception of the eye and playing tricks on it to achieve this invisibility. Up until now that’s the only way people could obtain some sort of cloaking, the very first type of deception was used centuries ago by ninjas. These ninjas would deceive the eye by hiding in a person’s blind spot until their angle of vision focused on something and then they were able to attack without alerting anyone. The ninjas knew the eye very well and by knowing that they were able to move very stealthy among anybody.

Next the show talked about how in World War 1 the allies used deception against the German’s. Winston Churchill the leader of Britain hired a magician to try to cloak an entire canal and port from the German’s. This task was very difficult but the magician figured it out and his ideas turned out to be extremely affective. To conceal the port he created a fake port a few miles away from the actual port and also made it a little more noticeable by faintly lighting it up. This caused the German’s to be attracted to this fake port and kept the actual port intact. The canal was a different story he had to make a huge canal invisible to the naked eye which took some time to figure out. After a while the magician came up with an idea; the idea was to set up hundreds of spotlights with mirrors that would reflect the light causing the pilots to attract to this point and also disorient them. This deception of the eye was very effective and by maintaining these necessary points the allies won the war.

Before this century people could trick the eye, but now scientists are coming up with ways to actually cloak something. A professor from the University of California developed a “metamaterial” that could clock microscopic items, the first step into invisibility. The way a metamaterial works is that it is able to bend the light waves around an object making that object, invisible. Another professor from Duke also created a different type of metamaterial that was able to conceal an object by bending microwaves around these rings of his own fabricated metamaterial.

There actually has been a leaked top secret account of a tank being cloaked by people over in Britain, but the show didn’t explain that part very much. Also there is a scientist over in Japan that has created a cloaking jacket that is made out of tiny beads that bend the light around the suit making the person look invisible, much like that of Harry Potter. I’m pretty sure that this technology is actually out there and the government just doesn’t want the people of America to know about such a top secret thing. If this technology fell into the wrong hands there could be a national disaster, bombings and terrorist attacks would be coming out of nowhere and people’s lives would be in danger. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen and we can use this technology in the best way possible.

Images from: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/cloaking_device.html

Now when I get home from school I have to stare at a TV that has to Playstation connected to it. This makes me very angry because I used to sit in front of that TV almost every single day and play Call of Duty and now that it’s gone I have no need to play. I sent my Playstation into Sony about a week ago now and I haven’t heard anything from them, it’s really weird not being able to play at all. Now that I can’t switch on my missing Playstation I have more time to do my homework, go outside and even more time to work. YAY!! Not!! This sucks I don’t want to do any of those things I want to play Call of Duty and shoot people in the head. There was something that angered me even more today.

I get home from school to realize that my Playstation was at my door, but it needs a signature to be in my possession. UPS can’t leave the item because of the signature so they left a note on the door saying that they were coming back at the same time tomorrow. Why would they come back at the same time tomorrow if nobody was there today?

So I took the tracking information that slip gave me and I went to ups.com to try to change the time the package would ship so that someone would be at home to sign for it. The website was kind of frustrating because I couldn’t find what I was looking for and once I typed in the tracking code and I wanted to go back a page the web page would expire. Because of this I had to type in the stupid 10 digit number too many times. Fed up I decided to call the number on the notice, I would get even more aggravated when a machine answered. I hate listening to these robots that try to talk to me, why can’t a real person just answer? The stupid thing started to anger me so I started yelling at it and after enough yelling the machine switched me over to an agent.

I came to find out that I can’t even switch the time my Playstation would come; therefore I had to resort to picking it up at an ups store. After all the frustration I realized that I was going to get my Playstation tomorrow and I would be killing people all across the world in no time!

During our week of spring break, Apple came out with its newest and greatest advancement. This device is called the iPad, a highly anticipated piece of technology. Jordan, one of my other friends, and I went on a little trip up to Minneapolis to go to MOA and the casino, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that this device was coming out on the day we were leaving to come back to Rochester. We all then decided to come back a take a peek at this device before we left.

We could tell that iPad had plenty of buyers by the empty waiting lines that seemed to go on forever. When I realized that this device was going to set someone back $500, I couldn’t see how someone would want one. That was before I actually got to examine one for myself.

Essentially the iPad is a giant iPod Touch, it can do everything the touch can do, but in some cases even better. The iPad has a 9.7 inch LED screen, about 3 times bigger than the Touch and its content is given an update. A user can now edit PowerPoint’s, see everything bigger, create a library of books, and much more. The iPad is pretty much a full blown computer that looks like an enlarged iPod Touch. The virtual keyboard it has is surprisingly wonderful; I don’t think I misspelled a single word while I was playing with it.

There are some flaws to the giant iPad; one of those is its size. You can’t really take this device anywhere except for around the house and you can definitely not fit it in any one of your pockets. The price alone would turn me off to this device, but I know for a fact that eventually the price will come down and Apple will release newer ones that are even better. One factor Apple forgot about is the need for a camera, now a day most electronics have a camera and this one does not. Also for the visual quality the iPad has its apps aren’t even full screen and are definitely not in HD.

For more information visit: http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/ (Picture also from here)

While I was playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on the first day I spring break, I experienced something very detrimental. My Playstation 3 broke right in front of my very eyes. I was about to win a game of team death match on one of my least favorite maps (Derail) when all of the sudden my screen just went black. It was extremely weird and very unexpected, but right before the screen went out CoD gave me an error message I have never seen. I can’t remember exactly what the phrase was, but once I saw that I knew something was extremely wrong.

I seriously had no idea what was going on, I sat there for a few minutes to soak in exactly what happened. But I was lost in my thoughts, so I decided I would turn it on again. Then my Playstation gave me what PS3 users call YLoD (Yellow light of death), it’s very similar to the Xbox’s ring of death. I actually had to look that up online after I observed the symptoms and I was then able to diagnose my Playstation with deadly disease.

This is exactly how it happened; I turned on my Playstation again, then I looked as though it was going to turn on, but it gave me a yellow light and after that three distinct beeps, then a flashing red light. I found a website online that a guy created for people just like me, as I was reading his article I was shocked how exact his explanation was. Everything he described was exactly how I felt and exactly how it happened.

Once I found out that the only way to cure my PS3 was to send it into Sony Playstation and pay $150 just to get it fixed, I was even angrier. I found some videos online of a few people taking apart their whole entire Playstation to re-solder the broken connections on the memory board, but there was no way I was going to try that and have to buy a brand new $300 PS3.

So I called Playstation the next day and they told me everything I would have to do and how to send it into Sony and how I can’t fix the problem myself. Then the person asked if there was a disc stuck inside, and I realized that my favorite game was still in there and Sony is the only company able to get that out. I’m now sitting at home still waiting for Sony to send me back my PS3, so my favorite hobby will have to be put on hold for a little while longer!