Daily Stuff--10/1/2012

Languages--Chinese:

I watched another BBC Chinese tutorial. This one went over greetings and saying things like "My name is ___. What's yours?"

Articles:

There was an interesting article on businessinsider.com about Oracle's new cloud computing service. This will join Amazon Web Service and Google App Engine and what makes Oracle's service unique is the fact that there are two different versions, the public and private cloud. The public cloud is pretty much the same as GAE and AWS but the private cloud takes everything from the public cloud and puts it in the customer's own data center. What also makes Oracle's service unique is the new database the company is using. It allows several companies to use it at the same time, which is something Google and Amazon don't have on their services.

Philosophy:

I read about what a proper Epistemology consists of. People use their senses to gain information and reason to process it and acquire knowledge from it. Logic ensures consistency and people use objectivity to connect knowledge to reality to test it's validity. Lastly, concepts are abstracts taken from specific details of reality.

Internships:

I read about FlexT9 on nuance.com. It's used on Android phones and allows users to speak, trace, write, or tap any input depending on which is appropriate for the situation.

To-Do:

• Wake up:--8:30 am
• Muir 50 (writing class) (1 and 1/2 hours)
• Went over the syllabus and introduced ourselves to the class. I got three different emails so I can ask questions or compare notes.
• Go ask about my laptop and internet connection (15 minutes)
• Done. I'm unblocked from the network and can get online now.
• Lunch (1/2 hour)
• Done
• Start Muir 50 reading (1 hour)
• Done. Got about halfway through the first article. 2 hours.
• Italian tutorial (1 hour)
• Went over some spelling that's unique to Italian, specifically the double consonants, which mean those syllables get emphasized more. We also went over the sounds that certain letter combinations make. For example, "ci" is pronounced as "chee" and "chi" is pronounced as "key". The "ch" letter combination equals [k]. 
• Review Italian vocab in notes and book (1 hour)
• Done
• Read more of the ebook (1 hour)
• Read about 1/2 of chapter 7 and did examples. 
• BBC Italian, Chinese, and French (1 hour)
• Did Chinese but didn't get to French or Italian. 1/2 hour. 
• Dinner (1/2 hour)
• Done. 1 and 1/2 hours
• Read ahead for Italian (1/2 hour)
• Done
• Review notes for Phonetics (1/2 hour)
• Done
• Work on improving blog (1/2 hour)
• Done. Found a few videos on customizing blog templates. Will attempt to make one tomorrow.
• News (15 minutes)
• Done
• Tomorrow's schedule (1/2 hour)
• Sleep--1 am