And in today's Blog...

HCI
I looked at the article A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology to find out more about the history of human and computer interactions. Human Computer Interaction, otherwise known as HCI, has been going on since roughly the mid-1960's. The research that has occurred in this area has led to the development of many new interfaces that we commonly use today. The research is basically work that explores the subject of human and computer interaction. This work is done in university, government, and corporate research labs. The two biggest of these being university and government labs. University research has led to some of the biggest improvements in user interfaces that brought us to the point that we are at now. Also government research and funding has definitely improved human computer interactions as well as paved the way for further improvements. Some of the improvements that came about from all this exploration are direct manipulations of graphical objects, the mouse, windows, drawing programs, text editing programs, spreadsheets, hypertext, Computer Aided Design, and video games. These programs didn't just come about and exist the same way then as they do now. Although some of the ideas are the same the research has advanced these devices and programs well beyond the power of the predecessors. Also these fields continue to grow now and advance with the research done by universities, governments, and corporate labs. Research is going to be focusing on the fields of gesture recognition, multi-media, 3-D, virtual reality, computer supported cooperative work, and voice recognition. Although the history is extensive in this field it is important that research continues so that the power of computers can increase continually. Also it is not just the power that can increase but also what you can do with your computer that can increase. So human and computer interaction has stayed relatively the same in terms of ideas for the past 50 or so years, but in terms of public availability and ease of use as well as just what you can do with them, the interactions have grown incredibly.

Readings
Nothing is really new with the readings. I'm finding Pause and Effect a little more interesting now though. Of course its easy to be my favorite reading when its competition is the Dreamweaver book. I still can't stand its simple step by step instruction that gets repeated about 50 times each page. Also the corny jokes need to end.

Underwater pyramids?

In this blog I am going to argue the fact that these underwater structures found off the south shore of Okinawa as well as other places in the area are in fact man made.

The first site I want to look at is here. This site contains an article by a man named Frank Joseph, a publisher for Ancient American Magazine. In it he poses many possible views as to how this could be true. For example there are many right angles that were made too perfectly. No where else has there ever been a natural formation like these. This makes it much more likely for them to be man-made than anything else. Also these pyramids have many more structures, like roads, that make it seem like an ancient civilization once existed there. I'd suggest reading the article to find out more.

The next site is here. This site contains some more interesting information. There was a huge human head sculpture that was found off the southeast Yonaguni Island coast. Although it has been eroded because it has been underwater for such a long time the facial features are still distinguishable. Also there were some ancient hieroglyphs that were found. This shows that there must have been an advanced civilization that lived there.

The final site I have to look at is here. The article is by Laura Lee, a talk show host. In it are some interesting reasons as to why the underground structures are real. The site near the Japanese city of Naha is Okinawa. It contains what looks like a wall with a right angle block. This appears to be what looks like a castle wall. Also the architecture of this wall seems similar to the style of some nearby castles located on the island. The other site that is getting a lot of attention is off the southern island of Yonaguni. This extensive site contains a platform that is composed of five irregular layers which resemble ceremonial, terraced platforms. Also there appears to be what looks like a road the surrounds this site. The argument provided by Prof. Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist with the University of the Ryukyus, as to why these structures must be man made is that if nature had carved these structures then there would be some debris that would be around the site. At the site, however, there is no debris. Another interesting find is that there seems to be holes in the stone structure that appear to be there for the purpose of holding some wooden structure. As to why these sites sank into the ocean there are a few possible theories. One is that they were flooded when the ice caps melted at the end of the last Ice Age. Another theory is that seeing the sites are so close to the Ring of Fire, tectonic activity might have caused subsidence of the land. Still another theory is that it was a combination of the two.

Going through the motions

Readings
So I did the readings for this week and all I can say is that it was just more of the same. I was not impressed at all. The Dreamweaver textbook is so slow and boring. I feel like I am going to fall asleep every time I start reading it. The only thing that keeps me awake is I want to count all the corny jokes the author tosses in. All this is better than the Pause and Effect book. I can grasp what they say in that book sometimes but the rest of the time I am lost. Maybe its just me and I'm not that smart but sometimes I think the author writes a little too abstractly. Basically what I am saying here is that there is a good portion of the time when I am reading that book that I don't have the slightest clue as to what he is talking about. So as to which textbook is the worse I don't really know but I'm pretty sure that everyone else will get their own conclusion.

Website
I've been thinking about what I wanted to do for a website but the ideas aren't really coming to me that well. I was thinking maybe something to do with snowboarding but I think I need to hear again what it is that we actually have to do with these sites. So I think I'm just going to keep tossing ideas around in my head and I hope I can find the perfect one in that mess.

Another blog to soothe the soul...

Dreamweaver
Not my has changed since my last blog as to what my opinion is about this textbook. The lessons are drawn out and way too long and a lot of them are simple lessons about things that I already know. I know I'm saying how easy it is but that's because I've been exposed to Dreamweaver before and I'm used to a lot of what it has to offer. If I was brand new to Dreamweaver I'm sure id be singing a different song right now. Anyways, I'm sticking with my previous comment about this book being incredibly boring. Chapter six I found to be a total waste of time altogether. The person who wrote the book even said it was because the tag has been deprecated (good thing I didn't put depreciated because the author would have had a heart attack I think). What was the point of that whole little story she gave us anyways on page 169 about those two terms? Who honestly would take the time to put such a random insert in their textbook? That's just weird to me. Anyways I'm still hoping things are going to pick up in the coming chapters.

Pause and Effect
This book was interesting. I wasn't exactly sure why some of the wording was as complicated as it was but I think I'll put that blame on myself because I am pretty tired at the time. I found all the talk about the church painting very interesting. I think its pretty creative of the painter to have that idea to paint the walls like he did. I'm eager to read more this next week so I can find out just what exactly the book is going to talk about.

Kyle Levesque 9/8/04

Reading is fun....
Well with the case of our readings for this week that sure wasn't true at least. I'm sure the Dreamweaver basics were more than enough information for anyone who has never touched Dreamweaver before. Actually if one were to think back to the first chapter this book would be very informational for anyone who has never even heard of html before. I found the book to be very slow paced, not to mention incredible repetitive. Everytime I saw one of those dark gray boxes that said "Warning" or "Note" I would cringe because I knew I was about to read it and most likely read the exact same thing that the author had just stated in the text. The exercises right now weren't extremely helpful yet either but that's expected because we are still so early in the book. One good thing that I found in this book was the website http://www.xguru.com/tutorial/news.asp?id=9. This website provides a nice little introduction to some of the basics of XHTML. Most of the stuff was already pointed out in the book but I enjoyed how this website had some nice visual examples in this introduction. These visuals I figured could make it easier for some people to understand some of the things the textbook was talking about before. Anyways I'm hoping that this book is going to pick up and start giving me a lot more information.

Kyle Levesque 09/02/04

This is my first blog of the year so I know that summer is definitely over now. I'm curious to see just what exactly we are going to be doing in this class and I hope its something fun. Anyways I'll be blogging till winter so this is all for now. Later.