Week Ten: Clear LAN and WAN

LAN and WAN. It sounds like a progressive band name. While they were progressive in their time, LAN and WAN is not a band name but area networks of connected computers. Nearly everyone who has interacted with a computer has accessed a LAN, and most people have encountered a WAN without even realizing it. 

A LAN is a local area network and connects network devices over a relatively short distance. They can typically be found in office buildings, schools, and homes. As the term implies, a wide area network or WAN spans a large physical distance. The Internet is the largest WAN, spanning the Earth. A common interaction with WAN's is through bank ATM's.

Excel Project

Working on this Excel project truly was a pleasurable experience. I have always enjoyed working with Excel but have never learned to work with pivot tables. I think that having this skill in my bag of tricks will help me out immensely in the long run.

 

The project required me to manipulate and analyze data from a study of men and woman's heart rates while exercising. I added rows, created formulas, edited fonts and sizes, and created two pivot tables. As I mentioned before, I am new to pivot tables so I spent the grand majority of my time understanding the utilities of this tool and finessing the results shown in my tables. 

 

 Screen capture of a pivot table

This past summer, I did a lot of work in Excel with data of a research study conducted. I spent hours crafting complex functions to get specific results out of the information. If I had know pivot tables existed, I would have saved myself hours of racking my brain! With pivot tables, nevermore will I struggle with data analysis!

Week Nine: Clear- Relative and Absolute Cell Addressing

My first introduction to relative and absolute cell addressing was in the introductory required computing class CGS 2531. We had a MONSTER Excel project to complete. At one point a friend who was in the class with at the same time as me consulted the Microsoft Excel help desk because she was stuck and even the professional could not figure out the correct formula!

I revisited relative and absolute cell addressing this past summer at my internship where I used Excel on a near daily basis. One of the projects I was working on required me to write several complex formulas using data over several worksheets. I created a workbook that gave the results and my analysis of a market research survey I conducted. The knowledge I gained from that killer CGS 2531 project and referencing Excel Bible got me through the project with ease and certainly wowed by bosses with my above average understanding of Excel =).

Week Seven: Clear Disk Defragmentation

Once upon a time there was a teenage girl who was given her very own computer for the first time. This girl loved music and quickly began uploading her CD collection and downloading tracks she didn't already own. Before long, her computer was running slow and she barely had any space left on her mere 60 GB hard drive. What was a girl to do? Luckily, the girl in our story had a father who was very knowledgeable about computers and told her to run a disk defragmentation. The first time she ran this tool it took a very long time- nearly two hours- because all the files on her computer were spread out. The defragmentation tool bar looked like it was a rainbow because of all the separated files! Almost immediately she found her computer was running faster and she visibly had more available storage space on her computer. From then on she regularly ran the disk defragmentation utility to keep her PC at a high level of performance. The End.

The girl in the story, well, she was me. In high school I learned the value of regularly running a disk defragmentation after downloading waaay too much music. To this day, I still run the utility on a regular basis and like to think that this small conscious move will help expand the life of my computer.

Week Six: Muddy Tape Storage Devices

Probably because I am a member of Gen Y, I have never had the pleasure of working with tape based storage devices. I found the idea to be a little foreign, but then I realized that they are similar to audio cassettes.

I remember struggling with jammed cassettes and twisted tape that would always inevitably take at least an hour to getting it back into playable condition. An hour is an excruciatingly long time for an inpatient child.

My favorite cassette tape would play on repeat all day and all night and eventually the tape stopped playing. The same thing happens with tape storage devices. Either through repeated retrieval of information from the cassette or re-recording of information, eventually the tape will wear out.

Web 2.0 Project- Johnnie Hillwalker's Kyoto Walking Tour

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This assignment was truly a test of my patience and motivation. It took me nearly a week and a half to fully read through the instructions and understand what they meant. I usually like to be innovative and unique in my work, but this is one time where I had to wait to see what my peers had done to understand how to execute my project.

My Web 2.0 project is of the walking tour I took in the city of Kyoto, Japan. Johnnie Hillwalker's Johnnie Kyoto Walking Tour is one of the most esteemed and unique tours available. I created a video incorporating many of the stops along the tour and created a poll as an interaction method to see if people would be interested in taking the tour after seeing the video.

Through this project, I learned the importance of drafting a solid framework, but being flexible to work around any changes if needed. My storyboard incorporated a few things that I did not have images of, so I had to use images of other stops instead. This is very important in the business world because there is rarely, if ever, a situation with perfect information. Resources and information change quickly and you have to work with what is available to you.

From my peer's interactions with my my Web 2.0 tool, I believe that my photos thoroughly conveyed the uniqueness and quality of the Johnnie Hillwalker tour. Every peer who used the poll responded that they would like to participate in it if given the opportunity.

Would you want to go on Johnnie Hillwalker's tour of Kyoto, Japan?

Week Five: Clear Voice Input

I LOVED the segment on voice input and software to accomplish that task. My favorite part was the video of the NY Times review of the product with his hands tied behind his back.


The advances in voice recognition technology is truly amazing. I had been using voice recognition software to help further my practice with learning Mandarin and it was certainly a love-hate relationship. The "training" period with the software was longer than I expected and I would frequently lose patience and close the program for the day.

After watching this lecture and seeing some examples of its recent developments, I would highly consider using this kind of software again if I ever found a need.