Pace yourself!

I personally haven't really had a terrible time with test taking, however, I have taken some extremely difficult and rare tests that most people will never have to experience, luckily for them. I have taken the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) test which is a test that aside from the questions being asked is in an entirely made up language. This test was issued to me by the U.S. Military to determine how well someone can decipher a foreign language. There was no preparation for this test for me, I simply agreed to take this 3 hour long mind splitting test and then took it. I have taken the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) which is a process that spans 3 days and is entirely in a foreign language testing oral, hearing and reading comprehension. 

To me, a major contributing reason as to why people struggle with tests is time management. I can say with confidence that keeping a solid pace is incredibly important. There will often be questions in your test taking career that stump you beyond belief and cause you to panic. Your frustration can build and cause you not to think clearly for the following questions. If possible, mark these questions for review and go back later. There is no shame nor harm in doing such a thing. Time management is even easier when you know how many questions will be on the test and how much time is allotted to take said test. Determine a realistic and adequate time goal for answering each question. If are able to keep a nice and steady pace and finish with 10-20 mins left on the clock you have ample time to go back and rethink those previous questions that you could not quite put your finger on. 

If anyone is interested in the DLAB, which I think is probably the most unique test I have ever taken, there will be a link below and you can take a small simplified practice test! (NOTE: There may be a few answers that are actually incorrect. My guess is that the multiple choices were moved around in their positions but the answer key was not adjusted.)

DLAB Practice Tests

Cite Your Sources

This semester I made the ambitious choice to take an 8-week English 101 class. This meant that we would be writing papers at a much quicker rate than a typical 16-week class. I saw this not as a burden but as an opportunity to deliver papers that were of a higher caliber than what I am use to. One of the biggest struggles of writing such papers I am my opinion is the need to cite information. There are many times that I can recall data or events that I have learned about but can not at the moment of writing remember the source or sources over lap from paper to paper. Learning how to properly use the citations and bibliography section in the references tab certainly decreased the amount of time that I spent on sources. 

I took advantage of the placeholder citations more times than I could even recall. This allowed me to quickly make a "note" that I should cite a particular piece of information without having to come to a dead stop in the writing process. In addition to this, being able to plug in all of my citations in one sitting after writing my entire papers and quickly go through and plug them all into their correct locations was a much better way of handling source material. Anyways if anyone is interested in reading a few of my papers below are links to two of my papers. Both of which I wrote for my English 101 class. 

Interstellar Impact On Climate Change - An analysis of the film Interstellar and its take on climate change.

This Revolution Will Be Televised - An argument paper based around socialism and the Black Panther Party

Beyond The Ribbon

It is no secret that the ribbon in just about any major application is beyond useful. But the chapter about features and tools that are in other menus not found in the primary ribbon most definitely takes the cake for "Best Features to Know About". Knowing about extremely helpful short cuts and things of that nature in almost all software can make you far more efficient. If you repeat a simple task enough times but are able to do it in a fraction of the amount of time can end up saving hours upon hours of effort. 

There isn't too many exciting things to show for such a topic but I did manage to find a potentially helpful video about iPhone shortcuts.

I do a lot of CAD design for work. Without knowing how to reach the lesser known menus or using the shortcuts for a feature that most people never think about when making parts sets us ahead of a lot of our competition when it comes to developing exceptional parts. The best part of this chapter though is that I have already applied most of these shortcuts and used some of these more elusive features to write some of my papers for other classes!

SQL Vulnerabilities and Defense

Though we didn't go over this as an assignment SQL definitely caught my eye. This was primarily because of my small background in coding and Cyber security. I remember a few years back that many of my friends who also were majoring in Computer Science, complained for weeks about having to learn SQL. But personally I remember it more from the cyber security field. SQL Injections are a rather common malicious attack. Essentially a hacker would insert SQL code to gain access to information that wouldn't be displayed to any user. 

About 1/4 of all applications are vulnerable to an SQL injection. A few ways a developer can defend against a SQL attack is by properly securing their databases with other coding languages such as Java, PHP, and .NET. It is also recommended for developers to keep their software up to date because old libraries and packages that once were secure can be exploited. This may be random but there is always some sort of hack taking place at any given moment! First step of prevention is being aware of the problems!

Someone who can explain SQL Injections far better than me :)

& Pretty cool site I visit often, here you can view live cyber attacks being reported!

Internet Protocol

This chapter really stood out to me because it reminds me of any episode of Mr. Robot. Though I know what all of the key terms function I didn't really know them all by their long for names. Its definitely nice to have this chapter serve as a good remind and cheat sheet whenever I forget one by name. 

I use a lot of electronics such as Raspberry Pi's, Arduinos, and Esp32 boards for prototyping of robots and well, anything that needs a small computer. One of the main things that I always find myself doing is getting them to either communicate with each other or perform a function over a network. Knowing things such as IP addresses for each device and HTTP/HTTPS address for the devices to go to.

Binary Numbers

The main thing I enjoyed about chapter one was that it was a solid refresher for me. There a many gears and gizmos that go on with computing and computers that I really do not spend much time thinking about in depth anymore so it is nice to have a good review. 

The primary reason why binary was one of my favorite parts of chapter one is because a while back one of my brothers asked if I could write binary. I didn't and still do not, but it really sounded interesting to learn. I simply never started the task because it seemed a bit daunting. Going over binary a bit in lab sim sort of opened me back up to the idea and the very useless task of learning binary. I will give it a good shot and see where I go from here!

Lastly, as a classic teaching in programing here is my textbook first output for binary code!

00100010 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01010111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00100001 00100010 

Flight Control Systems

    From getting you to your favorite island, to getting man to the moon, flight control systems are vital to say the least. Flight control computing systems in a way run the world. Essentially they are used to keep an aircraft or projective on course. A computer gathers a bunch of data such as altitude, pitch, roll, yaw and velocity, then it compares the constant flood of data to a plotted course. If the aircraft or projectile is deviating to far from the chosen course then it will use the data to make self-corrections to bring it closer to the targeted path. 

    I was definitely expecting to get extremely good information from scholastic and primary sources, and I most certainly did. The scientific papers i found were really jam packed full of information. There were plenty of algorithms for processing data and basic fundamentals of flight control. I was very pleased to find this amount of information on this topic. What surprised me is the lack of secondary sources. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but it seems that there was hardly any relevant information that even made the news on flight control specifically. The most interesting thing pertaining to flight control involved Russian missile testing. I really was not expecting to be this underwhelmed with secondary source information on something like this. However, I guess the subject is kind of a snooze fest to most people. Oh well!

The moment I knew I would work for a space agency

Pillars of Creation,
Eagle Nebula

    

    

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

                    ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

   

    It is fair to say that not everyone knows exactly what they want to do for the rest of their life, just before they get out of high school. That certainly was the case for me at least. I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my finite amount of time on this planet. I knew that if I tried, I could learn how to do anything. I had this ability to learn. I always enjoyed engineering, however I also liked cooking. I got really good with 3D modeling, but then again, I always found cyber security fascinating. It took me several years after I left high school to set my eyes on a dream and really go for it. 

    So, now I am on a journey. It is very warming to know that there are still professors that truly do care about the success of their students and encouraging their students to work hard to achieve their goals. I am very proud to be a student again and learn from professors like Albert Wu. I hope there is a day that I am able to reflect on my adventure and thank all those whom believed in me. 

Now, allow me to take you on our vary own journey into the Cosmos.