Welcome to my blog, I guess lol?

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Analyze: Technological Breakthrough

A piece of technology that is ubiquitous, which I assume refers to something is so common in the modern era that it can literally be found anywhere, I supposed war innovations are out of the question. The piece of technology must also be developed before my birth date, which is around the mid-90s. Alright, the piece of technology I’m going to be covering today, is the prehistoric calculator, abacus.

So, what is an abacus? Abacus is the first known calculating device used for arithmetic counting that is dated back to at least approximately 2500 BC, where the first recorded use of it was all the way back in the time of ancient Sumerians. The exact origin is quite a mystery and is still debated among historians to this very day. 

As you can see in the picture, an abacus is typically made of wooden beads, rods, and a frame to hold them all together. The modern version of abaci is derived from the ancient Chinese’s abacus model. It is typically divided into 2 sections: upper deck, and lower deck. It usually contains about 10 rods and 7 beads on each rod, which makes a total of 70 beads. There are several varieties of abaci with a different number of beads on each rod, a different number of rods, or even different counting system. It has simply been existed for a really long time, definitely older than my unspecified birthday, which is why it has so many different iterations with lots of varieties throughout the globe. Even without a keen observation, most children can tell you that abacus is clearly being replaced with the inventions of far superior computational power such that of electronic calculators, computers, smartphones, and probably some technologically advanced toasters. Not to mention that most of the abaci are only limited to 2 digits. Even modern skeuomorphism doesn’t even use an abacus as a signifier for a calculator on most applications. However, it is not completely forgotten, many places around the world still use abaci even today. Although it is mostly used for educational purposes.  

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Program: Scratch

So, I’ve recently just visited code.org to complete a coding exercise for this very module. While browsing through the list of exercises, the first one that really strikes out to me the most was the Flappy Bird one. 

You can check it out here [https://studio.code.org/c/491987763]

The exercise is sorted in a quick-learning 10 steps style, where you will have to go through each process of attaching simplified code to make a game. It was overall very easy to follow, and its format is very loosely similar to that of Max Cycling 74, a sort of simplified visual coding style. I have had some minor experience with Max Cycling 74 back in high school, I just fooled around with the program to make a sort of counting machine that changes displaying image every time a particular number is randomized. Putting pieces of predefined codes together on code.org was very easy, and I can see how it is a good learning tool for someone who isn’t familiar with digital technology. Once I’ve gone through all the 10 steps, the very last page allowed me to simply make the game however I like. So, I did.

The Flappy bird game I made with code.org, as you can see in the image above, looks very simplistic. I modified the game so that each click propels the bird up with randomized flap-strength. I figured it is pretty funny and made the game pretty much challenging to play. Also, instead of ending the game when the bird is crashed into an obstacle, I made it so that the speed of the game gets faster, and a randomized gravity strength would also have triggered. The speed of the game is also slower when you successfully passed an obstacle to reward a player with a cruel twist. In the end, I got an online certificate for it!

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Visit Original Link

Create: Soundscape

As instructed, I’ve downloaded and installed Audacity, then create a 1 minute audio track with no use of any audio imports. I actually have had experience with Audacity a few years ago when I used it to convert audio files into desired format. That was it, I have never use the program to edit audio before, so this was my first attempt to do so. I’ve generated the audio with Chirps and some pink noise. I assumed the “Filters” was referring to the “Effect” menu, where I discovered High/Low/Notch filters. I used all three of them on random separate parts of the audio, and generally, it sounded horrible. The sound was quite irritating to my ears, so I added a bunch of other effects on it. I think I’ve tried all of them, there are definitely some over-lapses. It was all an experiment for me, I’ve tried to make it sounds like an actual tune with the echo, and Fade in/out rhythmically. 

In the end, the final product sounds like some random noise my two year old brother would make when he’s playing with his toys. What have I learned, specifically about ownership and licensing? Well, other then downloading and installing the program itself where you have to read the program agreements before accepting it, I find ownership of intellectual property should be taken seriously. As I’ve tried to create my own piece, and it wasn’t easy at all without the knowledge of the specific field. Although technically, it is definitely possible to import someone’s else content and edit them as your own without breaking any copyright laws, as long as the finished product is within the appropriation of fair use policy. For instance, even if I imported a licensed audio file, I transformed the file into something else that’s different than the original, then it is considered a fair use.     

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Create: Soundscape

As instructed, I’ve downloaded and installed Audacity, then create a 1 minute audio track with no use of any audio imports. I actually have had experience with Audacity a few years ago when I used it to convert audio files into desired format. That was it, I have never use the program to edit audio before, so this was my first attempt to do so. I’ve generated the audio with Chirps and some pink noise. I assumed the “Filters” was referring to the “Effect” menu, where I discovered High/Low/Notch filters. I used all three of them on random separate parts of the audio, and generally, it sounded horrible. 

The sound was quite irritating to my ears, so I added a bunch of other effects on it. I think I’ve tried all of them, there are definitely some over-lapses. It was all an experiment for me, I’ve tried to make it sounds like an actual tune with the echo, and Fade in/out rhythmically. In the end, the final product sounds like some random noise my two year old brother would make when he’s playing with his toys. 

What have I learned, specifically about ownership and licensing? Well, other then downloading and installing the program itself where you have to read the program agreements before accepting it, I find ownership of intellectual property should be taken seriously. As I’ve tried to create my own piece, and it wasn’t easy at all without the knowledge of the specific field. Although technically, it is definitely possible to import someone’s else content and edit them as your own without breaking any copyright laws, as long as the finished product is within the appropriation of fair use policy. For instance, even if I imported a licensed audio file, I transformed the file into something else that’s different than the original, then it is considered a fair use.     

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Use: Room Escape

I and my friends are no stranger to the thrilling experience of escape rooms, we did it together so many times. In my most recent experience, we booked an escape room at Omescape, at the Markham location.

[7501 Woodbine Ave, Unit 7, Markham, ON, L3R 2W1 - 905-695-9556 - https://www.omescape.ca/markham-games ]

The Markham location has 5 different rooms, each with different themes, but we decided to book the “Dark Altar.” I really liked the story as it revolves around stopping an archeology fanatic from completing a dark ritual at a creepy museum, which would somehow give him some sort of godly powers. It was probably inspired by some Hollywood junks. The room had a difficulty of 4/5 and had a very low success rate, which suits us well as we wanted to really challenge ourselves.

Before entering the room, an employee had shown us an instructional video to ensure our safety and protection of the room. Afterwards, we put on blacked-out sunglasses and were lead to the dark room. Once we were all in, the employee left and sealed the door, leaving us to attempt to the stop the ritual and escape the museum. The main reasons I found this particular room to be great was because of: consistency, technologies, and décor. Firstly, all the puzzles remained consistent with the theme of “dark rituals” throughout the room. Secondly, they had used different types of technologies and mechanisms which I haven’t seen before in any other escape room and was very impressed with. For example, we were trapped in a room with no door but had an altar, two coffins, and four skulls. Two team members had to step inside the coffins, which would trigger sensors for lasers to come out of the eyes of 2 skulls on one side of the room. Another set of team members had to use mirrors to redirect the laser beams into the eyes of skulls, which were facing the other side of the room. After successfully doing this, the altar would split into two and uncover a hidden passage behind. Lastly, I thought the escape room’s decorations were very immersive. All the props, decorations, and room schemes really made you feel like you were inside that creepy museum.

Another positive point about the particular location of Omescape we went to is that the main area contains a Yogen Fruz/Preso Tea and Board Game section. I thought it was great that we could grab a snack right after the escape, or failed escape, and hang out playing various board games for however long we wanted.

The only reason critiques I have about Omescape is the noise levels and service. When we were at the end of our escape, we could hear all of the noise in the main area. I felt it made it harder to think about the puzzle solution because the voices of other guests were distracting us. In addition, we felt the after-care service was quite poor. Once we were done the escape, we would be able to take a group picture of memories. However, the employees did not come to the picture area, even after multiple reminders.

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Innovate: Innovation Hubs

It is true that location does have a part to play in one’s innovation, since it is very likely that the innovation is going to be an imagined improvement based around that environment. For an instance, an innovation of fishery wouldn’t be innovated at a village in the middle of a desert. Innovations are crafted by the people who have been adapted to survive in certain environment, however, despite the terrain setting, it is still up to the capability of those people. 

Think of the greatest human innovation that ever been created throughout the perceivable history of humankind, what is it? A computer perhaps, or automated transportations, or even the internet itself that eliminate the needs of proximity from communication? Innovation isn’t just something that only exists after the industrial revolution, even though the industrial revolution era accelerate the speed of mechanical innovation, some of the greatest human innovations were pioneered by our ancestors a couple of thousand years ago through mostly meshwork of emergence. One of the most, if not the most, greatest innovation in my opinion is the sophisticated form of communication, language. 

This is the case through sheer number of human cooperation with each other to perform a certain task, plan the steps, inherit knowledge, divide a big task into smaller ones shared by multiple people, and just about everything that is needed for an innovation of anything. A well thought-out sophisticated language solidifies human communication from basic level such that of animals, to a complex level where years of knowledge from one unit of human can be transfer another in a few hours. It’s an innovation that breeds innovations. They may be many inspiring locations in the world that ease the procedures of innovation, like universities, workshops, offices, or even just coffee shops, but ultimately it is up to the people to be innovative. Historically speaking, places with a high concentration of people, such as cities, are the places where most modern innovations originated from. It is really not a location that determine such creations, but an emergence of simply having many minds in one place that are willing to work together.

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Meme history: Arthur’s fist

As some of you may know, Arthur is a long running children's cartoon since 1996 that many people have seen growing up in the West. Fast-forward to twenty years later, it may seem kind of strange that Arthur has regained its popularity on the internet. There are many memes inspired from Arthur, but one in particular has become very popular in the recent years, the Arthur's Fist. In modern meme-ology, Arthur’s fist, which is an image of the main protagonist of the series clenched fist, is a reactionary meme used to express anger or frustration in a sort of humorous circumstances. 

The particular image of the meme is originated from an episode that was first aired on televisions in September 6th, 1999, as the first episode of season 4 named “Arthur’s big hit” on certain cartoon network. The particular episode contains a scene where Arthur was shown to be infuriated at his sister, D.W. for breaking his airplane toy. In the scene, Arthur clenches his fist, and hit his sister to the ground. It’s actually quite heavy-handed for a modern lens of kid’s entertainment, but the scene itself didn’t attract much attention back in the days. Now a direct quote from KnowYourMeme [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/arthur-s-fist] for an abridged version of the meme’s history. 

“On July 27th, 2016, Twitter user @AlmostJT posted a screen captured image of Arthur’s fist, describing the picture as “relatable” for displaying “so many emotions in one fist”. The original tweet has since been removed”

From then on, Redditors were the very first people to make use of the meme in various circumstances that invoke the feeling of frustration in certain comedic ways. One of the most memorable ones to me was the Harambe’s shenanigan.

 The meme has its peak in 2016, and slowly dying out by the beginning of 2017.

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Password Management

Forgetting one’s password is probably something that we’ve all experienced at least once at some point in our lives. So, password management is a thing now, especially in this digital era when we’re more relied on virtual authentication than ever. Thus, I decided to download a password managing extension on Google Chrome called LastPass.

Upon first inspection, you do require to register with an email and password, a typical method of any digital authentication. Of course, this means it is hackable, so long there’s a LastPass’s data breach. Which it actually had, even though the hackers didn’t seem to get away with anyone’s encrypted password vaults. Although it actually has a 2-step authentication with the registered phone number as well, which is quite the standard. The extension seems to work like browser cookies that keep track of entered usernames or passwords. It’s kind of like the autofill or autocompletes function on a web browser, but more sophisticated. The real hook of this application isn’t the fact that it saves all the credential information that you’ve stored or modified in the most convenient way possible, but because it allows you to have a different password for each and everything that requires it. Having a different password for everything is actually one of the best methods of securing your credential information. This is because most of the “hackings” done in the past can be traced back to events of a data breach. Once a data breach of a certain company occurs, the cost of it may vary, most of the user’s credential information like their usernames and passwords registered on the site are all leaked to the public on certain platforms. A few mischievous individuals could potentially search up the leaked username, email, or possibly other information, on other websites in order to try to log in as the original user with the leaked password. This will only work if the unfortunate individual who got his/her info leaked used the same authentications on the googled site. 

I’ve had a first-hand experience in this regard to Pokémon Go, not as a victim of a data breach, but as a mischievously curious novice hacker who’ve tried to use the leaked usernames and passwords on other sites, and I ended up logged in a few of them. The individual had the same username and password of Pokémon Go as his/her Deviant Art, Habbo Hotel, and Twitch account. Of course, most of these are of nothing serious that doesn't require a second authentication, but I’m just an amateur trying this out, someone else who knows what their doing is going to be able to extract more. Therefore, it is quite precautious to have a different password for each and everything. Up until recently I just usually write them down on a notepad file saved on my USB.

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Software Review: Dota 2

Collaboration is a huge leap in most animal evolutions that can be evidently observed to be practiced by most of the living species on earth today. We, humans, are certainly some of the highest among the top tier collaboration masters, if not the highest, in the entire history of humankind has been built on all kinds of collaboration among the people. In our modern digital era, collaboration among people has never been easier as the innovation of internet has removed the need for proximity from the equation. 

Nowadays the majority of people using the internet are digitally collaborating in some forms whether it’d be: playing an online team game like League of Legends, figuring out a solution to a Java’s bug via a Microsoft thread of submitted answers, hive-mindedly pushing a certain post to popularity on Reddit, or anonymously locating an ISIS training camp on 4Chan. Collaboration has never been more powerful than what it is now. The platform that I’m going to introduce in regard to boast remote collaboration is, of course, an online video game, a majority of online games can actually be represented as promoting remote collaboration, but today I’m just going to show one of the most successful online team games out there, Dota 2. 

This game is considered as a multiplayer online battle arena or MOBA for short. A genre of game that came into existence because of online collaboration within the game modding community, molded the game genre into the modern biggest e-sport competitions. Dota 2 is at its core, a strategic 5-man team game that requires a high level of precision in execution, something the players in the team must be able to comfortably work together to win. Players usually play this game online somewhat anonymously with their crafted avatar of choice and must collaborate with each other without having to know the other team members true agency. However, Dota 2 is a tournament game, and being the second most popular e-sport games means a LAN tournament where the professional players have to meet up in real life to play together as a team as they have online is very common. For these professional players, whether they play together online or in real life, their collaboration has to be precise and well planned to win the game. Although there are a few differences between playing in real life and remotely. One of them is the removal of digitized agency, as their true faces, voices, behaviors are really exposed to one another, and often these features don’t match their online counterparts. Although online participation kind of removes the sense of immediate consequences, If the anonymous online player doesn’t want to take the game seriously or just simply throw game, he/she could do so without facing many penalties. On the hand, face-to-face interactions put the player in proximity to ones he/she plays with, so acting a certain way isn’t going to be as safe as doing it online.

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Digital Touchpoints

A digital footprint is an interesting concept as it is implying that all of your digitalized actions can actually be traced quite literally like an actual footprint. This is especially true when these actions are done in an online environment that keeps traces of every little detail of almost every action done by participating users, with or without your consent. While it is true that every little action you do in real life is also tracible, but not as easy as a digitalized one. Recording logs of every interaction I’ve done with a digital technology over the course of 24-hours isn’t going to be visually presentable, as some of them are not even recorded on my computer nor a smartphone. However, what I do have below is a sample of my computer’s action log from Sunday 24th September 2017. This will simply show you what program I ran at what time?

Action Time             Description             Filename Full Path  More Information   File Extension        

2017-09-24 3:05:11 PM Run .EXE file               chrome.exe                C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\Google\Chrome\APPLICATION\chrome.exe              Google Inc., Google Chrome, Google Chrome, 69.0.322.103           exe          

2017-09-24 1:56:55 PM Run .EXE file               GAMEOVERLAYUI.EXE   C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\Steam\GAMEOVERLAYUI.EXE    Valve Corporation, Steam, gameoverlayui.exe, 04.20.53.621     EXE          

2017-09-24 1:56:50 PM Run .EXE file               dota2.exe   C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\Steam\STEAMAPPS\common\DOTA 2 BETA\game\bin\win64\dota2.exe                      exe          

2017-09-24 1:56:49 PM Run .EXE file               X64LAUNCHER.EXE      C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\Steam\bin\X64LAUNCHER.EXE Valve Corporation, Steam, x64launcher.exe, 07.13.53.69        EXE          

2017-09-24 1:56:46 PM Run .EXE file               Steam.exe  C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\Steam\Steam.exe   Valve Corporation, Steam Client Bootstrapper, Steam Client Bootstrapper, 44.32.93.69             exe          

2017-09-24 1:56:28 PM Run .EXE file               SKYPEBROWSERHOST.EXE             C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\Skype\Browser\SKYPEBROWSERHOST.EXE                Skype Technologies, Skype, Skype Browser Host, 8.13.0.233      EXE          

2017-09-24 1:52:03 PM Run .EXE file               SYSTEMSURVEY.EXE     C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\BLIZZARD APP\SYSTEMSURVEY.EXE           Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., SystemSurvey, SystemSurvey, 2.3.3.44          EXE          

2017-09-24 1:52:02 PM Run .EXE file               BATTLE.NET HELPER.EXE               C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\BLIZZARD APP\BATTLE.NET.9397\BATTLE.NET HELPER.EXE                                EXE          

2017-09-24 1:52:01 PM Run .EXE file               BATTLE.NET.EXE           C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\BLIZZARD APP\BATTLE.NET.9397\BATTLE.NET.EXE       Blizzard Entertainment, Blizzard App, Blizzard App, 1.9.0.0911       EXE          

2017-09-24 1:52:00 PM Run .EXE file               BATTLE.NET.EXE           C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\BLIZZARD APP\BATTLE.NET.EXE Blizzard Entertainment, Blizzard File Switcher, Blizzard File Switcher, 7.5.2.1488    EXE          

2017-09-24 1:51:59 PM Run .EXE file               Agent.exe   C:\PROGRAMDATA\Battle.net\Agent\AGENT.5798\Agent.exe            Blizzard Entertainment, Blizzard Update Agent, Blizzard Update Agent, 6.12.5.1488        exe          

2017-09-24 1:51:58 PM Run .EXE file               Agent.exe   C:\PROGRAMDATA\Battle.net\Agent\Agent.exe              Blizzard Entertainment, Blizzard File Switcher, Blizzard File Switcher, 5.12.5.1798  exe          

2017-09-24 1:51:58 PM Run .EXE file               BATTLE.NET LAUNCHER.EXE           C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\BLIZZARD APP\BATTLE.NET LAUNCHER.EXE Blizzard Entertainment, Blizzard App Launcher, Blizzard App Launcher, 1.13.0.1984          EXE          

As thoroughly summarized by the computed logs: I’ve logged into a game launcher, Battle.net from Blizzard Entertainment, to run a game called Overwatch.

A few hours later I’ve also logged into Steam from Valve Corporation, another well-known gaming client, from which I launched another game called Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota2). 

A few more hours later, I ran NVIDIA Settings to adjusted a few things for the visual ratio. I’ve also launched Google Chrome a few times in-between these logged actions, usually I always keep a few browsers up in the background. Of course, these are just a few samples of my computer logs, I’ve definitely done more than that, but to put all of the logs I did in one day just from my computer alone would take 15 pages. This is not even considering my other device, my faithful smartphone that goes Nexus 5. I recalled texting my friends a few times through Facebook Messenger, Textra, LINE, and Snapchat. I didn’t go outside today, so I’ve only interacted with my computer and cell phone throughout the day. Some other digital technologies that I’ve interacted with today at home are the air conditioner, and a microwave. They are digital in a sense that you’re inputting the parameter of instruction digitally whether it’d be adjusting the temperature or heating up food. Even on a day where I just stayed home, the usage of digital technology is unavoidable and is definitely prevalence in modern lifestyle. Even though it is just a matter of ease of access and comfortability, digital technology would be considered a necessity to some that have no idea how to do these tasks manually, especially for the latest generation.

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Online Netiquette

Rules of thumb of internet etiquette; whether you’re commenting on a YouTube video, posting a thread on Reddit, or just communicating with your team in Overwatch, can mostly be generally summed up as “Don’t be a dick to others!”. This philosophy is kind of innately applied to us in real life as well since face-to-face interactions required having you being there, vulnerable to physical/legal consequences of your action while plausibly being judged in all sort of ways due to your actual appearance being exposed. 

On a daily basis, in real life interactions are usually more conformed with the social etiquettes when compared to an average online social interaction throughout any basic platforms. On the other hand, online social interactions exclude you from immediate physical consequences should you offended someone. Yes, you might still be ostracized by the relative like-minded mobs, but the incoming flames are not directly aimed at you per se, but at your self-constructed avatar of you. In a majority of online platforms, you can either be mostly anonymous to the fellow public users or craft an idealized version of yourself to represent your particular online persona whether it’d be literally creating a digital avatar or selfie manipulations. In either case, you are freed from the immediate physical consequences because you’re not there, and the mental consequences because they don’t really know who you are, to the typical public users at least, thus their mean judgemental words are simply smearing the mask your online persona. It is true there are some cases where some people actually behave genuinely online, but changes in a medium of conversation also change the tonality of the message itself, the medium is the message. A certain degree of anonymity is too alluring to resist, it makes the best of us said some questionable things without any immediate consequences from others.

 However, there are still self-morality consequences that some might not be able to resist. You might still feel guilty for causing such behavior or feel offended from mean comments, but ultimately it is your own choice to feel them. Anonymity isn’t really a bad thing, it can be revolutionary when freedom of speech is scarce, or cyber policing is a reality. All in all, be somewhat considerate of other online users and don’t take comments from someone you don’t know too seriously, occasional trolling is part of the internet.

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