Databases with Joel Larson

We were lucky enough to get a visit from Joel Larson a teacher at the University of Washington who knows a great deal about databases. Now I didn't know anything about databases before this presentation, like I didn't know anything at all. All i knew is database was a word, and it had something to do with computers. So as you can tell, I learned a lot from Joel. First of a database stores data. Thats its job. The coolest fact I learned was a database that stored data for a database is called a metadatabase. There is pretty much three different types of data, unstructured, semi-structured and structured data. Databases store data for structured data. I'm really not interested in knowing how the other two types of data are stored.  And yes I am saying data a lot. Basically if there is information on anything, theres gonna be a database. I especially loved learning about the Information Wars in the 1960s, mainly because i'm a big history nerd. The Information Wars was when manufacturers and grocery stores started competing over how many products they needed. With the bar code, and a database to store this information grocery stores where finally able to figure out how much product they actually needed, and could tell that to the manufacturer. I thought that was a pretty neat fact, and its all thanks to the incredibly complex database.

Disitermedition

With the emergence of the World Wide Web, a lot of jobs became disintermediated. Or in other words the internet cut the middle man, the middle man being thousand of jobs. The most obvious one is travel agents! There used to be a huge calling for travel agents. Just like Toula's job in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Their job used to collect all the necessarily information one needed in order to travel out of the country. Like the plane ticket, how to rent a car, what hotel to stay out, even restaurant reservations! It was a pretty huge calling back then, but thanks to the internet, a bunch of sites can now take care of all that for you. Another job is a Tax preparer, or someone who would help you figure out all those complicated questions when you file your taxes. Now you can go online answer a few questions and your taxes will be filed.  A lot of jobs have changed because of the world wide web, but the biggest question is where did all these people go? Well the most reasonable answer is they went online too. Many probably had to go back to school to get the necessary requirements to do their jobs online. I assume some had to get another job, probably in a similar field. And maybe some, like Toula, found the man of their dreams and work wasn't a necessity anymore. Regardless the reason, thanks to the world wide web, we don't get to interact with these people any longer.

Three Things I Wouldn't Buy Online

Of all the things I buy online, the list of things I wouldn't buy is quite small! In fact I could only think of two things I for sure wouldn't buy right away. The first one is my wedding dress. Not that i'm getting married anytime soon, but it is something I think about! Although I've definitely gotten clothing before online, to me something as important as a wedding dress is too meaningful to buy online. Not that I don't think I could get a wonderful dress on the web, but sometimes you don't get exactly what you clicked on. The next thing I wouldn't purchase online is a pet! Although a lot of small time breeders get their clients from online, there are a lot of scams when it comes to purchasing pets online. Even if they do actually have a pet, they could be lying about what shots they have received and all sorts of things.  Plus I have a pretty strong belief people should be getting their pets from shelters. The last thing would be electronics. Like really expensive electronics, purchasing them online is still kind of sketchy to me, because you're paying all this money for something that might not work, or could brake during shipping. Overall, I buy a lot of stuff online, even on sketchy websites that take months to ship to me. There really isn't anything I wouldn't buy online, but when I thought hard enough there were some purchases that were too important for me that I just couldn't purchase on the web.

Publishing Online with Erik Hanberg

Destiel

Would I say I know a thing or two about publishing online? No, absolutely not. However, I cant argue with the fact that I have published a few books online and they have received their fair share of a few thousand views. Would I consider myself an author from these forum publication? No, definitely not. Not like I'd consider our guest speaker Erik Hanberg to be. I absolutely loved his talk with our class. It was so inspiring. Erik is someone I would consider an author, yet not in a traditional way. Erik publishes all his novels online, but makes money from it! A feat my stories have yet to do. But it isn't all in the money that makes a person a legitimate author. Erik puts in a lot of work to his books, through cover art and receiving reviews, he can even send physical copies of his book if someone asks for it. I was blown away by what I had learned about online publishing. I figured the little world I knew about fan-fictions (stories written by fans of existing works, example above: Destiel) was all there was too online publishing. I knew some people were making money from it, by publishing on a website with ads, but I didn't know anything about Amazon Bookstore, using E-books to really sell your work. You can make a legitimate career from simply publishing online, and that fact quite excites me! I learned quite a bit from Mr. Hanberg, but he gave me some excellent advice that I know will stick with me. He talked about how putting yourself out there online, doesn't take physical energy, yet people are still reluctant to do it. He explained this is because it spends a lot of emotional energy, and people fear putting in that kind of work. I could very much relate to this, making all of my publications anonymous. I fear putting in all that effort for nothing. But listen to Eriks speech, I could see hes made a name for himself and has a loyal group of fans and made many friends, from putting his stories out there. I was very inspired by his words, maybe one day I'll be able to put more works out there, but for now I think I'll stick to writing Destiel fan-fiction under false aliases.

A Spooktacular HTML Page

Trick or treat

For this assignment our project was to design a webpage using HTML. This assignment was very new for me I have practically no experience using coding, or HTML. Besides occasionally pulling up the source code on a website and seeing this behemoth of numbers and letters I don't understand.  Working to make a webpage using HTML was quite the experience. Lucky for me I have a twin sister who understands coding and has been using a bunch of different code languages for a while.
For the most part it wasn't too confusing to understand. The language requires stuff to be put in 'boxes' or start brackets <> and end brackets </> putting words in these brackets allows it to be read and put in the webpage! Following all the steps my teacher gave me I was able to type out what I wanted my page to look like. Next was the moment of truth I saved and clicked on my file and saw really nothing I wrote out! It was only half of my text, no color and no picture. I had my sister take a look and she fixed some of my minor mistakes, like forgetting quotations or not doing a header. For my page I wanted to write a short story, I love to write and this was such a fun experience typing out a story on HTML. Since Its almost my favorite holiday of the year I decided to make my story Halloween themed. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading my story as well!

You can read it here!

Is Email just like Postal Mail?

Snail Mail- Inman

Is postal mail all that different from electronic mail? The truth is its not! In order to understand the similarities however you must understand its differences. Besides the obvious difference-that Postal mail is something you physically get- there are a few things unique to each one. Email is a lot faster then postal mail, you can receive an email in seconds from after it sent. Where standard mail can take a few days! You also can email practically anyone anywhere! And the cost is so much less, as long as they have internet access; whereas it cost more or less to send a letter depending on where you send it too!  After all these differences Email is seeming like quite the better option. But email needs very specific accuracy. If you get the email address wrong even just one letter or number, it will not get to who you want to send it too. Letters are quite the opposite, one of my favorite authors Bill Bryson once said he received fan mail when he was living in New Hampshire with the address reading-"Bill Bryson-Author-Somewhere in New Hampshire."Quite impressive for the Postal service! Overall, how is the postal service and email similar? The answer is they share very similar parts. Instead of labeling an address and paying for a stamp, you have to type an email address and pay for the internet service. Instead of sending your letter to a post office, when you hit send you dispatch the message to an email server. An Email server is kind of like a little post office- it reads the address and sends it to the proper user! Even with all the common problems of Emails-chain mail, scams, viruses and identity theft. All these things can happen in regular mail too! My favorite thing from the internet that has reached the post is click bait-or phrases that make you want to click on the article. Overall post and Email are quite similar, and as the internet expands I'm sure the post office will try and keep up!

What I Want From This Class

My twin sister signed me up for this class because I was on an island with no WiFi for my job and would have missed the window for signing up for Autumn quarter. My twin, Lindsee is far more interested in how the computer works and the whole internet thing, she even built her own computer. I however, get lost whenever she tries to explain something to me. I guess one of my biggest desires from taking this class is that I can actually understand what shes saying to me. But that's a really big stretch to be honest, I really have no interested in this field. There are obviously some aspects I find intriguing since technology spans across all fields of study. I'm intrigued by all the advancement education is making thanks to new technologies. But a lot of it still greatly intimidates me. I hope this class will teach me to appreciate technology more, there is a lot about it that just goes right over my head. I think that has to do with my generation growing up with technology. It really became second nature to most of us, something we don't even think about. Hopefully this class will teach me more about it, will help me to appreciate it. And since this class is about all aspects of technology I also hope I'll be able to focus on what I find most interesting about technology. That is all I have to say for now. Hopefully I'll also learn how to write better blogs!