Steve Jobs Commencement

On June 12, 2005 Steve Jobs stood before the Standford class of 2005 to deliver their 114th annual commencement speech. In that speech he tells three stories. The first is about his experience with higher education, connecting the dots and finding his passion in calligraphy. The second story is about love and loss. He talks about being fired from his own company, starting over, and Pixar. "Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick," he says, "but don't lose faith." His final story is about death. He talks about living life to its fullest, preparing for his own death, and saying goodbye.

Steve Jobs has a lot of very good advice in this speech. Particularly as he refers to perserverence, education, life and death, and passion. I think this is an incredibly imporatant speech. First, as it reveals more about this man's character. And second, as it refers to everyone's life and human nature.

TI 99/4A

The Texas Instruments 99/4A was one of the precursors to modern computers. It was released in 1981. It was a newer model of the TI-99/4, and featured a graphics card that revolutionized the programming world.

Bill Cosby 1981- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CyfHZui0g8

Performance Art Project

https://vimeo.com/113577427

This project gave me a lot of trouble... It took me a long time to get a solid idea, and when I did, the anxiety about performing in public set in. Upon consideration of the theme of fun, we wanted to do something that involved the reenactment of video games. Most things had already been done (postmodern crisis!) such as Mario Kart or Pac Man, so we decided to kick it back to the early days of Nintendo with Donkey Kong! We decided on a location, gathered our supplies, and everything developed from there...

Alan Turing

Alan Turing was a British Mathematician who's contribution to World War II was not only a huge victory for England but a groundbreaking event in the history of computers. A brilliant computer scientist, Turing discovered a way to break the German code and turn the war around. He created "Colossus," the first real computer and eventually the Turing Machine, a precursor of modern technology. He was prosecuted in the UK for being a homosexual and wasn't pardoned until 60 years after his death.

Xerox Project

Grid Art Project

Wow, this project taught me a lot about being too ambitious and planning ahead...

For this assignment, I decided to make a multimedia piece with wood and chewing gum. I went to the store and got a 32 x 32 piece of wood and exactly 900 pieces of gum (which ended up not being enough because the proportions in the bags were off). I then came home and drew a 30 x 30 grid on the wood and began sticking gum on it according to a pixelated drawing that I made in photoshop.

I was doing fine until maybe the second line (60 pieces) and I became very sick of this project. The flavor of the gum was fake and starting to gross me out, but I was determined to finish it.

It was somewhere around the 200th piece that this project took a turn for the worse. Despite me brushing my teeth obsessively after every chewing session, disaster struck in the form of a broken filling and an excruciatingly painful cavity. After visiting the walk in dentist (who INSISTED I not chew another piece of gum for a long time) I decided to enlist the help of my friends. With the help of about 6 other people, We made some good progress, but the project is far from finished.

OTR- Buck Rodgers

For this assignment, I listened to "Buck Rodgers in the Twenty-fifth Century" (in the science fiction tab at otr.com) It was interesting to listen to a radio show like this because I don't think I've ever really listened to anything like this. Of course, we've read books and we've seen movies, but it was this in-between medium that was lost to my generation. First, writing for radio must have been very difficult. They had to create place, character, and even time, without any visual aids. I also thought it was interesting how advertisements were incorporated into these shows. Unlike today, where we have commercial breaks, Buck Rodgers had advertisements built in to the beginning and the end of the story. I thought it was especially funny how Wilma, the lab assistant, ends the show by suggesting they get a popsicle, leading straight into a detailed and obnoxious advertisement for fudgesicles. And finally, I think "Buck Rodgers" was an interesting listen especially because of how they make speculations about the future. Some things are so far fetched, its almost humorous that they think its possible, and some things they think will take 500 years and we've already achieved it