I was just looking over this blog, and I realized that it still gets a lot of views! Just so you all know, I have transitioned to a new blog and will no longer be updating this one.
The new blog is at www.sullivansweet.com. Please take a look and subscribe!
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Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Monday, June 27, 2011
From the farm to Italy
Last week I got to stay at the house of our old baby sitter with my sister at their farm. We had a ton of fun walking around, getting ice cream, and seeing a movie. Here are just a few pictures of the farm:
After that, my dad picked us up and we went home to get ready for our trip!
We drove to Chicago and got onto our plane. At first it was fine, until it was time to sleep. These baby's in the back just wouldn't stop crying, and people kept talking. There were some TV's on the ceiling and the light they made was really bright. About nine hours later, we finally landed. I hadn't slept at all. We had to catch a taxi from the airport in Rome and drive to a train station. Thankfully our taxi driver was fast (probably way past the speed limit), but we got to the station about 10 minutes before our train left. We had to get out and run with our luggage even though we were exhausted, and show our tickets to people trying to understand where we had to go. Since we can't speak Italian, it was much harder to get directions. We finally made onto the train just 2 minutes before it left.
I managed to sleep for about a half hour, but then we arrived at Bologna and walked to our hotel. We manegded to stay awake until around eight thirty, and then slept to eleven the next day.
When we finally did wake up today, it was already around lunch time. We crawled out of bed and got some amazing pizza from a stand nearby.
We're mainly here to see some movies from an anual film festival here where they restore movies that are 100 years old! For some movies, the set up a huge screen outdoors in a square a few minutes from our hotel. We have seen a few movies and eaten lots of great food.
I'm writing this from a cafe just outside our hotel. See you next week!
The farm
My sister with a horse
A piglet
A flower we saw on our way back
We drove to Chicago and got onto our plane. At first it was fine, until it was time to sleep. These baby's in the back just wouldn't stop crying, and people kept talking. There were some TV's on the ceiling and the light they made was really bright. About nine hours later, we finally landed. I hadn't slept at all. We had to catch a taxi from the airport in Rome and drive to a train station. Thankfully our taxi driver was fast (probably way past the speed limit), but we got to the station about 10 minutes before our train left. We had to get out and run with our luggage even though we were exhausted, and show our tickets to people trying to understand where we had to go. Since we can't speak Italian, it was much harder to get directions. We finally made onto the train just 2 minutes before it left.
I managed to sleep for about a half hour, but then we arrived at Bologna and walked to our hotel. We manegded to stay awake until around eight thirty, and then slept to eleven the next day.
When we finally did wake up today, it was already around lunch time. We crawled out of bed and got some amazing pizza from a stand nearby.
We're mainly here to see some movies from an anual film festival here where they restore movies that are 100 years old! For some movies, the set up a huge screen outdoors in a square a few minutes from our hotel. We have seen a few movies and eaten lots of great food.
I'm writing this from a cafe just outside our hotel. See you next week!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Old computers, interacting with our devices
While my dad was digging through our messy basement, he came across a really old Apple laptop. And when I say old, I mean: this thing has a black and white display, can't connect to the internet, has less memory than a cheap flash drive you can get while waiting in line at Target, and is as thick as my Illustrated Oxford Dictionary. Surprisingly, it still works very well, and as far as I can tell, it's fully functional.
One of the tings that really caught my eye about the software was that it was much less "friendly" than Apple software today. Everything seemed a bit hard to find; what you wanted to see was hiding in some menu in some folder somewhere. This is very diferent from, for example, the iPad. There, everything is practicly sitting there in front of you, and all you need to do is tap it.
The ways people interact with their devices range a lot. On a computer today, a lot is represented by little icons. From your mail application bouncing up and down letting you know you have some new mail, to the Wi-Fi symbol telling you how strong your signal is. When you look around your computer, you'll see a lot less text than you might think.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, lets take Apple's iPod Shuffle for example. The challenge here was to make a really affordable iPod that didn't have a screen, yet keep its functionality. They did this with a cool feature called VoiceOver, which tells you what your listening to at the push of a button. If you want to switch to a different playlist, hold the button, and it will read all the names of your playlists to you. Press the play/pause button to go to that playlist.
I was thinking about how interaction with technology will continue to change and what that might look like. I think that we will definitely see more touch screens because of the natural way you can control things on screen (like tapping something you want to open, not double clicking something with a mouse. Handsfree technology is starting to become a trend now with features like talking into your microphone and converting that to text. (see Google Voice.) Another hands free technology is the Xbox Kinect, where you can control video games using your body. I think that these types of features will become a lot more common in the near future.
I've lately been working on a new Scratch project called "Butterfly Tree"with some other Scratch users. I'm working with some script writers and animators to make a animation with gameplay in between scenes. We still have a long ways to go with it, but I'll keep you posted on our progress.
Finally, I'm leaving tomorrow to hang out at a farm for a few days, so I'll be sure to take pictures! After that, my Dad, my sister and will fly to Italy to meet up with my mom for a fun vacation!
Until next Sunday, where I will be reporting to you from Europe...
(The old computer is on the left. The iPad2 is on the right.)
One of the tings that really caught my eye about the software was that it was much less "friendly" than Apple software today. Everything seemed a bit hard to find; what you wanted to see was hiding in some menu in some folder somewhere. This is very diferent from, for example, the iPad. There, everything is practicly sitting there in front of you, and all you need to do is tap it.
The ways people interact with their devices range a lot. On a computer today, a lot is represented by little icons. From your mail application bouncing up and down letting you know you have some new mail, to the Wi-Fi symbol telling you how strong your signal is. When you look around your computer, you'll see a lot less text than you might think.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, lets take Apple's iPod Shuffle for example. The challenge here was to make a really affordable iPod that didn't have a screen, yet keep its functionality. They did this with a cool feature called VoiceOver, which tells you what your listening to at the push of a button. If you want to switch to a different playlist, hold the button, and it will read all the names of your playlists to you. Press the play/pause button to go to that playlist.
I was thinking about how interaction with technology will continue to change and what that might look like. I think that we will definitely see more touch screens because of the natural way you can control things on screen (like tapping something you want to open, not double clicking something with a mouse. Handsfree technology is starting to become a trend now with features like talking into your microphone and converting that to text. (see Google Voice.) Another hands free technology is the Xbox Kinect, where you can control video games using your body. I think that these types of features will become a lot more common in the near future.
I've lately been working on a new Scratch project called "Butterfly Tree"with some other Scratch users. I'm working with some script writers and animators to make a animation with gameplay in between scenes. We still have a long ways to go with it, but I'll keep you posted on our progress.
Finally, I'm leaving tomorrow to hang out at a farm for a few days, so I'll be sure to take pictures! After that, my Dad, my sister and will fly to Italy to meet up with my mom for a fun vacation!
Until next Sunday, where I will be reporting to you from Europe...
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