Women and Computer Science

As a student studying Computer Science, I have noticed that it is a field that doesn't seem to have much appeal to women.  Out of all of my Computer Science classes, I think that the most females in one class was three.  It makes you wonder why there are so few women going into computer science.  This article suggests that the current nature of the Computer Science field appeals more to young men because they like to tinker with things and don't mind spending hours to figure out how something works.  Also, the way girls are brought up - playing with dolls and ponies - may be a reason that girls may not be interested in things like the "hard" sciences, engineering, or computer science. Maybe what the young girls need today is a Computer Engineering Barbie.  Follow this link: http://www.barbie.com/vote/ to vote for Barbie's next carreer: Computer Engineering.

Timeless Tetris

One of my favorite games has reached an impressive milestone: Tetris has recently passed 100 million mobile phone downloads.  This game, created the year I was born, has a simple yet gripping formula that appeals to many people.  Even my grandpa played and enjoyed this game!  I find it amazing that the creator of the game, Alexey Pajitnov, is also surprised of its success. In a recent interveiw he said, "Obviously, I feel that this is a good game and I really expected it to have some kind of longer life because I didn't see why not. The platform changes but the human brain doesn't change that rapidly, but I didn't expect it to be such a long living (intellectual property). I am really amazed and pleased by this fact."  It's impressive that something so small and simple can affect so many people.

We live in a Digital Age

The increase in technology that the world has seen in my short lifetime amazes me. I find it fascinating that, just like my grandparents can tell me about life without electricity, I will be able to tell my children that I remember a time before personal computers and the internet. I remember using a card catalog in the library. I remember using a typewriter to write a paper. We lived a life without cell phones; a life without digital TV; a life without Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook. We now live in a time when groundhogs send text messages and toasters use Twitter. This is truly a digital age.

CS 404

I will be using this blog for my CS 404 class - "Ethics and Computers in Society." So, most of my posts in the near future will probably be related to that class. Maybe I'll have something interesting to say, and maybe it will get me into a habbit of updating this blog...

Dinosaurs! I got a tour of BYU's museum of palientology today. I got to go back to where they store some dino bones and got to touch some. It was really cool!

Sunday Naps

Everyone enjoys a nice Sunday nap. (Everyone I know at least... (or should I say anyone who's normal? ... k, maybe i shouldn't say that)) It is very enjoyable to be able to catch up on some much needed sleep that may have been lost over the week/weekend. I haven't had a good Sunday nap in a while because I've been busy with stuff at the church, busy doing stuff with friends, or busy with other things like that. So today (well, technically yesterday since I'm writing this after midnight), I decided to take a nice little Sunday nap ... but I didn't really get one.

It was almost 2:00 pm, I just got off the phone with someone and I decided to lay down for a nap. At 2:06, my brother calls me about plans for later that day. No big deal right? I had just started to get comfortable - just a minor interruption and I soon resumed my nap attempt. I was fine for a little while - got a little sleep in - but at 2:28 a friend called to ask me a favor. My attempt was again thwarted around 2:40 when my brother got home and I talked to him a little about our plans for later that day. Then, after focusing my efforts on getting some rest, my phone rings again. 2:45 someone from church was returning a call I had made earlier. After that was settled, I again tried to get some shut-eye but 2:51 my phone rings again! It was an assistant stake executive secretary asking me if I could meet with a member of the stake presidency later that day. After that, I only had about 20 more minutes of my previously allotted nap time left. I got close to dozing off but then I couldn't sleep when someone who lives in the house behind my apartment complex was outside having a heated conversation on the phone with his ex-girlfriend about some money ($600) and a car or a motorcycle. I figured this all out because he also called someone else and was explaining the situation to them and saying it was unfair and that she needed to give him his money because it was still his money ... or something like that.

By this time, I couldn't sleep and I needed to be somewhere within a short amount of time, so I got up and went about my day. My nap attempt had failed.

Konami Code

First, a little history lesson: This is a cheat code used in many classic videogames, specifically games made by Konami. It was first used in a game called Gradius, but it was made famous by the game Contra for the NES. This code, if entered in at the title screen, gave the player 30 lives (opposed to the 3 that you normally start out with). This code became well known and popular enough that different versions of it have been used in many games since. I remember using a similar code in the game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project. If you entered Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, (Select if you want to play 2 players), Start on the title screen and after choosing your character, a new screen would appear where you could change the options of the game. You could change the level (or scene) you started on, the difficulty (easy or normal), and how many lives you started with (3, 5, or 7). On the same screen was a sound test thing where you could listen to all of the music tracks in the game.

More recently, I have found this code to be used on some websites. Just last week, the Konami code could be used when visiting ESPN.com to make rainbows and unicorns appear, but this was quickly removed. A list of websites that use the Konami code for something can be found here: http://konamicodesites.com/ (You need to enter the code to access the site.) Some are strange, some are "meh", but others are neat. My favorites are Facebook, Specced for Awesome (zombies), Paul Irish (I think this is the same type of thing that was on the ESPN website), and Patrick A. Carrell Design.