ITE 221 Morello Chapter 3 Binary

Chapter three was like drinking from the fire hose! It took me a while to slog through it. Thankfully, my husband, who is a Senior Software Engineer, was able to demystify some of the most difficult concepts for me. The one that I had the most difficulty with, at least, until my husband explained it to me, was binary numbers.  He showed me how to look for the patterns that emerge.  I slept on his tutorial and was able to finish my homework in a much shorter amount of time the next day. So when I went to look for the website for the blog, I knew I wanted it to be about binary.  I found a tutorial about binary, which makes it easier to understand.  There are some other concepts in there which we have not yet touched on, but it also touches on twos complement and other ways of negation. It seems to be pretty in depth, and has practice binary math problems. You can find the tutorial at http://www.math.grin.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/152/97F/Readings/student-binary.html

ITE 221 Morello Chapter 2 Babbage

In my last post, I wrote about keeping up with technology.  But sometimes, it is good to look back at where you came from. The Computer History Museum, in California, has some fascinating pages dedicated to Charles Babbage, the Difference Engines (both one and two) and the Analytical Engine. Neither of the Difference Engines, nor the Analytical Engine, was completed in his lifetime.  Difference Engine number one was started in 1821. It had approximately 25,000 parts and would have weighed 4 tons! Unfortunately, work was halted in 1833 after spending £17,500; enough to buy twenty-two steam engines. This was not inexpensive!  The sites give a full history of the Difference Engines and discuss a modern day working reproduction of Difference Engine number two. It also has the biographies of Babbage and those who worked with him.  You can view the tribute to the first computer pioneer, Charles Babbage at http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage .

ITE 221 Chapter 1 Morello- Keeping up with technology

Technology is always evolving. Ten years ago we had not yet seen the full merging of computers and phones that we see today. Cloud computing was almost unheard of. But there are some things that are still the same. Microsoft is still an industry leader, and that is why I chose one of their sites as the site to write about today. This is relevant to the Periodical Literature Section of Chapter One. The site is TechNet. It is full of the latest industry information.  TechNet has a library, a wiki, learning labs, a gallery of applications for current operating systems. TechNet also offers you the chance to beta test new technology for future operating systems.  It also has a knowledge base, forums where IT professionals can interact with each other to troubleshoot and solve problems, and it even has blogs by different IT professionals!  You can view this site at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/