Coding

When I first started exploring the wonders of the Internet back in the fourth grade, I was simply amazed and curious. As such, I got into HTML and CSS, and a little bit of PHP. I continued doing these things, perhaps mimicing some Javascript things, but I never really knew what I was doing.

In high school, we had no special "computer science" courses. There was essentially one class - one semester was some C++, the other semester was HTML. I didn't bother taking the course, because: 1) I knew most of the stuff that was going to be taught, 2) I had other courses that took priority, and 3) the teacher was perhaps not the best one to be teaching the course. Either way, I was never really exposed to much else, aside from be curious with Flash, but I didn't have the resources I have today to acquire Flash and learn that ActionScript exists.

Coming to Stevens and being accepted into the Computer Science program, however, threw me in for a loop. MATLAB - while not legitimately used for programming, but a glorified calculator - was easy enough to pick up since (for some odd reason), it was very similar to some PHP (which was all I knew at the time, really). And then I learned Java. While I hear it get a lot of crap, it is an easy language, and it works.

Back then I knew of a few languages, such as Javascript (though really that's script), C/C++, mySQL/SQL/SQLite, SSI... but there are some that I have never heard of until my academic career here at Stevens. Call me a "newb," but it fascinates me as to how many different languages there are. For example, Scheme - one of the few banes of my existence, but I have a pretty intermediate grasp on it. Not that it's hard, but the idea of all the parenthesis and JUST parenthesis is somewhat daunting in the beginning.

I am now looking into learning Ruby, Python, ActionScript, and a few other languages. One of the languages I have to learn in class at Stevens is C, too. I learned a bit of basic Assembly last semester as well. Those were interesting.

I also find it interesting of a sort of "programmer instinct," I guess I could call it. If one knows a language, it's not too difficult to pick up the syntax and some basic principles/tricks of a language. For example, pointers in C.

You must be wondering where I'm going with this; to be honest, I don't quite know myself. I am just intrigued by the fact of numerous languages. I would write about something else, but I haven't had much time to do anything else of more interest lately. I'm also attempting to use this as some sort of vent for inspiration in order to think of some little projects I can do with some of these languages, because sometimes learning with just tutorials and the given exercises is not enough.

I will, however, make some sort of silly app for myself for Android, though, once I bother to download the SDK. I'll have to finish learning Flash and ActionScript, first, though, since that will be the most useful to me right now.

Signing off. Sorry for the useless rant. :D

~ Caroline

The Best Damn Tea I Ever Had

OK. Let's call this post a restaurant review:

So, for my birthday today my mother took me out to this awesome place in the city called the Russian Tea Room. Awesome place. I mean I would go there all the time if it wasn't so damn expensive. It was crazy expensive, however, my mom took me because it's restaurant week in the city making this place not crazy expensive. We got a three course meal for $25 each, awesome deal!!! The atmosphere was fantastic, very Eastern European, the food was top notch, and the tea. OK, well I'm not a tea enthusiast, but I got this peppermint tea affair and it was crazy. It came with biscuits and these honey infused cherries, it was sick. I guess all I'm gonna say is 5/5, there really wasn't anything wrong. I don't think I've ever been to a restaurant this good.

So look, if you are reading this get to the Russian Tea Room (7th Ave & 57th Street) before February 28th, and get yourself some damn good, some damn good food, and great time.

-DJ

Nerd-dom

First of all, excuse part of this post. I literally copy-pasta'd it from my Tumblr, only because I want to share it here as well. I made some minor edits to the beginning. I also want to say, I'm not waiting for Willy or Arty to make an introduction, because I have this to post for the evening, and I thought I'd share it with you all. Too bad I didn't take the time to read the entire essay; perhaps I would have had a long critique to the essay. Doesn't matter - I really don't have that kind of time. Anyway:

I am a nerd and proud, and I found it both appropriate and inappropriate to find in my Facebook Notifications that I was tagged in a note "Why Nerds Are Unpopular." My friend posted on Facebook this copy of an essay about why nerds end up not being popular. I’m not going to copy the entire thing, but you can read it here. I didn’t even read all of it. After the first few paragraph I just started to briefly skim.

There was something about it though that somewhat summed up my philosophy on popularity and nerdiness: “So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don’t really want to be popular.”

I think this is very true. It says somewhere later in the part that I did read that one can only really be good at something if one works at it. Kids who want to be popular work on being popular; kids who wants to do well academically, study. However, you never have to be on one side of the spectrum - jack of all trades, master of none, as the saying goes. I, personally, feel I am one of those kids.

My school never really fostered very exclusive cliques because of the size and the setting. I went to a private Catholic school, and we were only about 500 in the entire school. Yes, there were cliques, but it was never so exclusive or extreme. I was not UNpopular in any sense; I got along well with most people, and I didn’t have any real enemies. I studied and did my extra-curriculars and clubs, so I was social enough with upstanding academia. My group of friends was a good blend of the same people.

There was also another point somewhere in the section I did read of the article that sometimes the nerds choose not to be popular because they don’t want to be part of what “popularity” stands for. I do not want to sound elitist, but my friends and I knew some of the things that the “popular” kids were doing, and those things never interested us. Of course, we didn’t look down on the popular kids; actually, I was friends with a lot of them. It was the stupid actions and things that some people did that I tend to frown upon. Now, this is my opinion, and you can think otherwise.

I commented the above on the note my friend wrote, and he can see where I come from, coming from a very small school. He also did note, however, wondering about the community at Stevens. There are various demographics (I’m trying to avoid “cliques” because I believe as college students we should be past that stage, but it is still that in a base essence) apparent at Stevens, but many are those nerds. He was intrigued that many of us get along so well, if we were to base our backgrounds on a lose skin around that “unpopular” nerd skeleton. It is probably because of our sense of priority being learning and friends instead of what the trends were that we get along so well.

It is an interesting topic. I’ll have to read the entire essay sometime. I most likely won’t, however, so I’ll just sign off with this: I enjoy my nerd-dom and my current level of socialness. Although popularity contests exist, one’s competence and character become the deciding factor on whether or not people take pleasure in your company.

Signing off!

~ Caroline

Witty Post Title

Blogging? Interesting. I honestly thought for awhile that I would never get into something like this. Guess I was wrong.

Lets start with a little bio about myself. First, my name is Rob. We started this blog (as DJ said in his post) from an idea that came up when reading one of our friend's blog. I'm a computer science major (and mathematics minor) and my interests include programming, science in general, video games, acting (to an extent) and improv. I have a ton more, but little time to post this, since I'm at work right now, but don't tell anyone.

Most likely my posts will be pretty random, but I will try to stick to a few key topics. As far as they go, expect all things technology, this includes reviews on new/old software/hardware that I either find useful or repelling, video game reviews and expectations of upcoming games. Also expect random posts about current science, such as discovering a new planet, element, etc., music, forms of comedy, such as funny comics, shows, acts, etc., and everyone's favorite, philosophy. You may also see a rant or two, how fun! I'll probably only be on topic a little more than half the time. If a thought comes up during the day or if something interesting happens, I'll share it with you.

A bit bland for an intro, I know, but like I said, I don't have too much time to make it pretty right now. As a note I will probably not overlap with my fellow bloggers so that there aren't two posts on the same topic in the same week.

Thats all for now. Hopefully I'll find something of interesting in my life to talk about soon.

~Rob

A New Challenger Approaches!

So enters Arty Erb to join us.

Just a small note.

Carry on.


~ Caroline

And Now for Something Completely Different

No Caroline, you're wrong, we will post in that order, so Rob go before Willy, and Willy you're last, cuz you're awesome. Yea I just did cuz, we're gonna change some things on this mutha fucking blog...YEA!!! OK just kidding, Caroline is getting so mad right now, what with all the "cuz's" and improperness, but I'll TRY to do my best. (CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL).

Now, this is my first blog and obviously first group blog. So, where did this come from, who am I, and what is my role? All very boring questions which I will now answer. So in short this idea came up when we were commenting on a friend of ours blog. We found it interesting and said to ourselves, "Why don't we try a blog in group format, about topics in each of our fields of interest." and that's how it started. Who am I? Not exactly that important. I'm a sophomore Mechanical Engineer here at Stevens, besides that nothing worth blogging about. What is my role? Not sure, of my four colleagues I'm probably like the second funniest, but definitely not the smartest...okay, so I am the best looking, but that's besides the point. I've decided to focus my portion on the blog on the three things where I am probably better apt to comment on: politics, sports, and movie reviews. Don't worry I don't have a political affiliation. Mind you, I don't have to stick to these topics, but I probably won't rant on this blog. However, if I do find an awesome daily observations, I may comment on it.

So that's it. I don't have much else, but I will give a SHORT comment on something that happened today that I would be remiss if I did not touch on it. I'm sure anyone who is reading this blog heard of the events in Austin, Texas today. I saw on CNN that a Facebook group was created basically calling Mr. Stacks a hero for his actions. I think this is a ludicrous thing to say, there are other ways to speak out besides crashing planes into buildings. Destroying your life and possibly the lives of others is horribly dangerous and irresponsible. I would urge anyone who thinks that what this man did was heroic to reconsider what "heroic" means and that it should never involve endangering the lives of others. I'm not saying I'm right, this is just my opinion.

Anyway, so now that's it. That was just my little rant, and I wanted to express my feelings on it. I hope there are more happy things to comment on in the future. Good night!

-DJ

FIRST POOOOSSST!

First!

Nah, it's okay. Not going to pull that on you all. [/internet joke]

Anyway, for all of you who don't know - which is probably most of you - there are four of us on this blog, all of us pretty good friends. We all go to Stevens, and we're all pretty much nerds/dorks/geeks, whichever you will, but we are all quite proud of it. We're pretty much going to be posting about our various interests or relevant rants to life in an intelligible manner.

I am Caroline, the only female of the four of us. I'm a graphic designer, videogamer, programmer, and generally an atypical girl. After all, I am attending the tech school. One of a few female Computer Science majors as well. I have my own website, CarolineAmaba.com, showing off my portfolio and resume. I am somewhat of a freelance graphic designer for hire, and I just enjoy learning more about design aspects.

As such, you could probably guess that the main focus of my posts will have to do with design. You could also probably count on me for some videogame chat and other things with a hint of double X chromosomes.

You can find me on other sites like Tumblr and Twitter and Facebook, though for the last one I only add friends that I have met and had a conversation with at least once or twice.

Anyway, only a short introduction post from me. My fellows, DJ, Rob, and Willy will be posting their introductions as well, although not necessarily in that order.

Good evening for now!

Caroline :D