The Millennial Gold Rush for Data

Before you start reading, I would like to stress that I am not an expert in this field.  These are my ramblings based on what I have read, patterns I have noticed, and my own personal theories.  There may or may not be truth to this, and while I have done a decent amount of research, I do not work in this field directly, and cannot specifically comment on all aspects of it.  With that said, let's begin:

With all of the "hype" in regards to big data, I've slowly begun looking into what the growth for big data is going to be like as far as the job market is concerned.  What's interesting is that this entirely depends on which part of the market you plan to go in to.  For example, if you plan to learn about processing this data, your market value is very high from what I have read, probably for the next five to ten years, until we have the process mostly automated.  But if you plan to go into the gathering sector, there really isn't a way to determine how long you'll be able to rely on your skill set.  The reason for this is that gathering data is becoming more and more like a gold rush, instead of something long term.  This is what interests me, as I believe it is a very valuable skill set to have right now, partially because I believe more "gold deposits" will be found in the future still.  Thus I have been analyzing these "gold deposits" in order to gain a better understanding of what they are, where they come from, what their value is, and how to find them.

HoloLens is Just the Start

If you've looked at any tech website in the past week, you've probably seen something about HoloLens, Microsoft's fantastic attempt to finally bring augmented reality to the world.  I have to hand it to you Microsoft, they did this very well, and what they have looks fantastic.  While I've been impressed by Google Glass, I've talked about the one thing its been missing to make it perfect: A depth sensor.  Based on what I've seen, it looks like HoloLens is finally adding that, and boy does it look nice.  The best part is, this is only the beginning of augmented reality for consumers!

Why to wait on 4K

I've seen a few people start getting excited about 4K TVs, monitors, and more, and I keep coming back to the same question: Why is everyone buying them now?  Don't get me wrong, higher resolution screens are nice, and 4K screens look fantastic, but that's not the next step in resolution jumps.  In fact, 4K is just a beginning step, and upgrading this early on is kind of like buying a 720p television when HD was just coming out: It's better to wait!

Standing out in a World of Code

This is an interesting question that I've been asked a whole lot recently.  A lot of people want to know how they can make their code stand out for jobs, and what it takes to do so.  The interesting thing is, you don't have to be a fantastic coder to do so.  In fact, standing out is pretty simple in the world of software development, you just have to know yourself fairly well.  So for today's post, I want to go over a few ways that can help you stand out, whether it's at your school, a job interview, or just online in general, here are my top three tips for standing out in today's world of code!

Setup for 3DS Homebrew

Well, it's finally here!  The 3DS homebrew scene is live and ready to start.  With everything out in the open, I thought I'd do a quick tutorial on how to install everything to your 3DS, and what you can and can't do with it.

Setting up your 3DS

The first thing you will need is a 3DS (duh), an SD Card, internet access on your 3DS, and the game "Cubic Ninja".  This can either be a physical cartridge, or the version off of the Nintendo eShop (Japan only) [This has been taken down as of now].  Once you have this, go to the main menu of Cubic Ninja, select "Create", then select "QR code", and finally select "Scan QR Code".  This should open up a view from your 3DS' camera, and allow you to scan a QR code with it.

Once there, go to http://www.smealum.net/ninjhax/ and select your 3DS version, click submit, and it should present you with a nice QR code you can scan.  Scan this with your 3DS and you should see a screen like this pop up:

Don't forget to make sure that your 3DS has an internet connection as well to download part of the exploit.  Now you can choose to either run a homebrew application, or install it to the save file of the game.  This allows you to not have to worry about using the QR code in the future or needing an internet connection, so I highly recommend doing this, as it can be uninstalled later if you so choose.  Once this is done, you are all set and can begin using homebrew applications!

Running Homebrew

To run homebrew applications, you simply need to put the a boot.3dsx file on the root directory of your SD card, and then when you launch NinjHax, it will run your application.  My recommendation is to download a homebrew launcher and just leave that as the file, so that you can launch other homebrew applications with it.  It's a pretty simple process, but if you have questions, feel free to post them below.

To add other homebrew applications to the homebrew launcher, simply create a folder called "3ds", and place folders contain the boot.3dsx files of homebrew applications within there.  If you wish to make icons for your games, simply place them in an application's directory as "icon.bin" files.  You can use the SMDH tool included with devkitPro to make them, or look into my application over at https://github.com/gemisis/SMDH-Creator (Windows only).

When it comes to what you can run, please be aware that this does NOT run pirated games.  It ONLY runs homebrew applications.  We do NOT support piracy and will NOT be adding support in.

Deleting Homebrew

Should you ever wish to delete the homebrew save file on Cubic Ninja, all you have to do is hold L+R+X+Y on the main menu, and it will prompt you to delete the game's save data.  Click yes, and poof!  All of the homebrew stuff will be gone.  This can also be used to update the launcher in the future, as you can just delete it, and then reinstall it.

Creating Homebrew

Creating homebrew is a bit trickier, and requires knowledge of C.  As of right now, most of the tools are available from https://www.github.com/smealum/ctrulib.  There is also a quick install tutorial there, though I may add one on here in the future if a need arrives.  Using the libraries is a topic for another post, so I'll try to go over making a simple application at another time.

I hope this all seems pretty straight forward!  If you have can questions or comments, post them below!  Happy homebrewing!

Photos of the Month - August 2014

A bit more delayed then I would have liked, but here are my favorite photos from the month of August!

A nice dinner one night!  I await the inevitable criticism of my cooking though XD

An icy cold warehouse, with ice forming in the warm 85 degree weather.

The mountains of Virginia!

Sadly no traveling for this picture, just a trip to Busch Gardens!

This upcoming month will prove to be challenging since my phone's camera is now destroyed.  Guess I'm gonna have to look into upgrade to an actual camera!

Photos of the Month - July 2014

The month of July was a rather crazy month.  For those who don't know, I got the chance to go to Mountain View California and interview with Google at their headquarters.  It was an insane experience, and while I still don't know if I got the job, I had a great time and got a ton of pictures!  So for this month's photos, here are a ton of neat pictures from California (With one or two from Virginia too)!

Cooking up Hash Tables

Originally I was thinking I should rename this post, but I've decided to go ahead and keep the name since I find it kind of funny. That said, hash tables are super cool, and a really important data structure that I believe you should absolutely know.  Even Googlers says they are one of the most important data structures around.  So how exactly do you implement a simple hash table?  Let's go ahead and explore this!

A Shady Browser

Before I begin, this is yet another post inspired by Michael C. Johnson, so I just want to give another shout-out to him!  Most of the code from this is just re-purposed code from http://www.learningwebgl.com/ as well due to laziness, so shout out to them too!

With all of this talk about shaders, I started thinking about the best way to demonstrate shaders through my blog.  I think they're pretty neat to mess with, and are very important to understand how to use due to the fact that they play such a huge role in 3D graphics today.

Photos of the Month - June 2014

With June finally over, it's time for some new photos of the month!  While not as high of quality as last months, I still found these to be quite good!

The Current World of Virtual Reality

For the past few months I've spent some time with the Oculus Rift, and have gotten to learn the basic ins and outs of how to make virtual reality applications, where the market for it is going, and some of the challenges that come along with it.  It's been quite a fun experience, and while I am no means an expert now, I feel pretty comfortable with my ability to use these technologies and develop applications for them should I ever need to.  While I plan to slowly add-on new features to Project Virtua as needed, there is not much more to do on it as of now, and so I've decided to start looking into other realms of technology to mess with.  This post is a quick summary of some of the things I've learned, as well as some of my views on where this technology should go.  While I won't be super active on these technologies, I will still post some things about them, so don't count me out completely.  Specifically, I have a few games I would like to code for it that I plan to start sometime over the summer if I can muster up the free time!

Game Systems - 8th Generation Current Status

Game systems are a very tricky business to read into.  While your favorite system may have all the games that you like, that doesn't mean that it is selling well.  At the same time, high sales for one console at the start might not mean that it will be the best selling in the end.  There are quite a few ups and downs specifically to the current 8th generation of game systems, each complete with coming challenges as well.

Please note that this was written prior to E3 2014, and so this is just my personal opinions and thoughts on the current generation of consoles before then.  I will be writing up a post E3 version soon.

Hack it! - A TV Show Idea

This was an idea for a TV show I had right before falling asleep one night. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to execute such a show, so I figured I'd share the idea online for those who do since I think it has a lot of potential.  If you are interested in picking it up, feel free to, though I'd love to help out where I can if possible, as well as some credit!

Replay for Life 2014

Recently it was announced that the Relay for Life organization would be coming to our campus here, and was doing their yearly round-up of student organizations.  Being as interested in charity as I am, I went ahead and started trying to gather interest in raising money for the event through the the Association for Computer Machinery chapter that I lead at Christopher Newport University.  The decision by a group of us was to create an event called Replay for Life.  If you have ever seen the speed-run charities online, then you know exactly what Replay for Life is, but if you haven't, it's a live-stream of classic video games being played as fast as the person can.  Some amazing things have appeared in these videos, and we are incredibly excited because we have someone doing a Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time speed-run using some incredible glitches.  We hope that everyone will join us and donate to our cause, and that you of course enjoy the stream!  It will be Saturday, March 15th, starting at 2:00pm EST.  You can find our Facebook event here and our website is currently www.replayforlife.org.

Our flyer, hand-drawn by a student!

The Real Problem With Ken Ham vs Bill Nye

Recently I got the chance to watch the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye on whether creationism is a valid form of science to teach students in public schools.  Ken Ham believes that creationism is valid, whereas Bill Nye thinks it will be harmful to future generations of children.  Watching the debate was incredibly painful however, mainly due to Ken Ham.  It was not, however, due to his beliefs.  I respect everyone's views, even when I don't agree with them.  I don't agree with parts of Bill's views either, but I also respect them, and will not be rude to him about them.

I'm sure that this is the case for many people.  We all have friends whose beliefs in religions and sciences all differ from us; it is part of what makes everyone different.  While parts of my family are Christian and highly devoted, I am not.  I know many people who are set in their ways of atheism, but I am not.  That's my take on things; you are fine to partake in any religion you'd like near me, just don't try to make it affect me.  That's a huge part of what this debate has been: should you be able to force your views upon others, what is an acceptable "view" to force upon others, and what is not.  Ultimately though, that is not what bothered me about last night's debate.  What bothered me was how incredibly rude Ken Ham was towards Bill Nye about his views.

Take a minute and watch this video to the side (If the embedded time doesn't work, skip to 1:51:25 for a perfect example of all this).  Do you see what Bill is doing? He is listening to Ken and actually taking in what he says.  Bill does occasionally look away, but only to write down notes about what Ken says.  When the first rebuttals start, Bill talks about what Ken had said, rather than trying to bring up new points, thus ignoring what Ken said previously.  He's actually debating, and constantly states that he has an open mind.

That is where Ken ultimately came to bother me.  Every time Bill Nye starts talking, Ken looks away and even walks away (See 1:59:40).  He is very obviously not even listening to a thing that is said.  When asked directly if something could change his views, he bluntly states that there is nothing that could.  That to me is a huge problem.  Ken is not listening to facts, he is not listening to others, and he is not trying to be a scientist.  He is simply trying to shove his views to others, regardless of what others say.

This is where the danger is.  This is exactly why I do not like a single thing that Ken said.  He's not trying to help the children of our future, he's trying to make his museum (where the debate took place) get more visitors.  It's not about what's actually good for anyone, he's not interested in listening how his views could help people or hurt people.  He is solely interested in getting more visitors to his "Amusement Park" and making more money.  It has nothing to do with what is actually best.

Bill however, with all of the odds against him, with absolutely no hope of winning this debate, went out  and tried to address the issue based on what he believes will help, and was willing to listen.  That is something that I think is much more important.  If you choose to stand by Ken, like I have seen many people do, I will not stop you.  In fact, I will respect you still.  I might not like that you do so, but I will still listen to you, I will still help you when I can, and I will do my best not to let you down later, just as Bill Nye did during this entire debate.