Week 7: Clear

We'll, it's the end of week seven and I'm still hanging in there. This weeks lecture was easier for me to understand, even if my quiz grade of 80 doesn't back that up. The topic that was clearest to me was that of booting a computer. I new the basics of how a computer cranked up but now I really feel like I understand it very well.

The first thing that happens when you turn the computer on is that the computer runs code from the BIOS, which is interesting to me since I have messed with setting in the BIOS so many times and never realized how basic it was to the functioning of the computer. The other interesting thing was how the MBR holds such vital information, which would explain why I had such difficulties years ago when one of my computers had a corrupted MBR.

If you are interested in seeing more that you could ever be interested in on the topic of POST then Here It Is.

Week 6: Muddy

Well, week six came, and with it brought a whole host of new topics that I hardly understood. The most perplexing of all the topics this week was the pdf of disk storage. I would never have imagined how much is going on inside of my hard drive right now. I found the fact that the hard drive spins at up to 10,000 rpm incredible, seeing as most race cars have trouble getting to those speeds.

Wikipedia had quite a lot to add here, but all in all I felt that after looking through the pdf a few times I gained a good understanding of the functions of a hard drive and the different types that exist. The Wikipedia page does not really go into the different types the same way the teacher had it in the lesson, but does further explain accessing and storage.

Web Story 2.0 at OneTrueMedia.com

I hope you enjoy my web 2.0 project.

This is the story of my Father's 1972 911 targa restoration.

Please participate in my survey and let me know what you thought. The survey is a simple multiple choice questionnaire.

I have found that this project has shown me very much about how to manage media files online and create a story that others might enjoy and possibly share with you. I am not sure how valid the skills are to business. I imagine that in some business it could be very useful, but to be completely honest I couldn't think of a time in the oil and gas business that I would ever make up a story board and put a project together in this way. I will admit that I feel I have greatly improved my skills with both the computer and the internet in making this project, and I am sure that some aspects of this project will come in handy in business in the future.

Week 5: Muddy

This week killed me with the processor. I have a very hard time wrapping my head around the processor and how it works. I find it amazing how the CPU can do so much and yet is still bound by seemingly simple problems, such as a branch. I had a hard time understanding pipelining and how it could make such and improvement over previous methods of processing.

I found a site http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~melhem/courses/1541/tutorial/ that had a tutorial on pipelining that helped to clarify how the process happens and why it is such an improvement. I didn't understand why you couldn't have each column working a separate problem until I realized that they are basically different work stations and can only work on certain steps.

After the tutorial I feel like I understand how pipelining works and how it helps to streamline the process of working out a problem that finds its way to a processor.