I, Curtis

MCTS: 70-536

I have just done something that makes me incredibly nervous. I have registered for Microsoft’s 70-536 certification exam. The English title is: “Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation”. The exam is covering a lot of what I did in my C# Programming course and now in my Advanced C# Programming course. Under most circumstances I would have never even considered taking this exam, but Microsoft has made an offer that I can not turn down, they are offering me the ability to take the exam for free as part of the DreamSpark program. I am a little nervous about this because it has been over 4 years since my last certification exam. On May 29, 2009 at 1PM, I will bite the bullet and take another one.

One of the biggest things making me nervous is that I have to find a new testing center. My old New Horizon’s testing center is no longer a public testing center and my contacts inside the organization have long since moved on, leaving me with no other option than to seek going directly to Prometric. I don’t know why, but all of this is making me feel so young again.

LMS Outages During Normal Semester

I am not entirely sure I understand the way that college and university IT departments justify their downtime. From the 8th of April until the 15th of April Gaston College is taking down their perfectly functioning Blackboard server to replace it with a “new” and “improved” version of Blackboard. We are a few weeks from the conclusion of the Spring semester and the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th are normal class days. Why are we being interrupted for an unnecessary outage during scheduled class time?

Simple Excitement

Friday night I ordered some bookmarks from Amazon, because I realized I only have one good bookmark, and I don’t like the picking up a random paper thing (I do that too much in books already). Anyway, I’ve been like tracking the package through UPS since it entered the system. I feel crazy because I am tracking a package whose total contents is worth like $1.50. WTF is wrong with me.

First IR Images

My IR pass filter arrived this morning. I have done a few subjects with it. Not much yet though, as it requires a lot of time to use this filter (like 15-30 seconds per frame).

The wind today made these shots a little hard to get and thus, they are a little low in quality. The fun part of the IR photo process is that you can never really see what you get out of the image until you finish post-processing it. I did not shoot in RAW today because I was not aware of this, but on future IR adventures I will use RAW to store my images for a more simple post-processing job. The original images came out quite a bit different than these finished versions. The originals were bright pink as a result of the red/black filter in use. I processed out the pink color by using the pink as the neutral color.

The cool thing about IR is that it is not color sensitive at all. As you can see in the first image, the red tulip and its green leaf are almost the same color in IR, this is because the image is composed of only the IR radiation that is reflected back off an object. I do not know a lot about IR yet, but a few of the articles I have read suggest that that object density determines what hue it will appear as on the image.

Psychological Procrastination

In 48 hours, on Sunday evening at around 11PM, I have a major psychology assignment due. I sometimes procrastinate on things, but not usually like this. I am afraid to do the assignment that I am procrastinating on. Remember that term paper I mentioned a few months ago? Its due. I do not like the idea of writing a paper about myself. I forced myself a few weeks ago to write the abstract for the paper as well as do a basic outline of the paper topics. I looked over it early in an attempt to get ready for the paper, but could barely stand to look back over the outline. I was a very open person the day I wrote the outline, and today I am a little more wrapped in my shell. I hate writing about myself, especially analytically. I recognize that I need to get over all of this if I am actually going to make it into graduate school. I have a difficult year ahead as I prepare for all of this. I will have to become very comfortable with myself if I am going to be successful with psychology. As a matter of fact, if I manage to overcome my issues with myself for the purpose of psychology, then it will have a profound impact on my abilities as an artist, writer and anything else I choose to do. If I can manage to survive this one little assignment, my existence will make a lot more sense to me, but first I have to survive that first paragraph, the biography.

Distance Frustration

I am becoming frustrated with distance education, although I do not entirely know why. On the factual side of things, my credentials from other schools have not been evaluated at FSU yet (they were sent in February), the change of major process is going way too slowly for my liking (since it isn’t a real change of major, just a change of campus), and I can’t seem to get my advisor to issue my alternate registration PIN for summer and fall registration. It bothers me that I can not physically go to these people that are troubling me, and that they are not responding to my emails. I don’t get why I am so bothered, since it is not like when I go to a physical campus I interact with anyone by any way other than email.

I think I might be a little upset by the fact the email systems are in transition and I have no way of knowing which address I should be using for official university communication.

Do you see in infrared?

Yesterday I made probably one of the silliest purchases that I have made in a long time, I bought an IR pass filter for my D60. I have no clue about infrared photography, so I suspect at the least it will be a fun learning experience. I have only seen infrared photos in the form of some small thumbnails online and it did not seem that interesting, more just color shifted, but I am hoping to see something somewhat dramatic when I try my filter. My primary focus is going to be on emitted vs. reflected light stuff at first. Might be kinda cool to play with some of the potential X-ray effects of IR, but not hoping for much there, since the camera is technically filtered against that (although, Nikon claims it is very much possible).

For those that are not familiar with IR Pass filters, they are pieces of glass that have been coated in such a way as to mostly block the visible light spectrum, allowing only the IR to pass to the sensor. They could be called “Visible Light Filters”, but then people probably would not make the jump to connecting them with infrared photography.

I have also been told that UV is interesting to analyze as well (and is more available to the camera), but it is a little bit more expensive to go to that side of my friend Roy G. Biv.

All this being said, I would have loved to have purchased my new filter in person, but so few places have camera filters and almost none have IR pass filters. Retailers are really sucking for my needs.

Opteka’s Camera “Case”

Now that my camera bag has been ordered (went with the Case Logic), I decided to see what other types of cases (non-backpack style) existed, perhaps for other purposes. I was surprised by this particular case. It is Opteka’s Hard Case. It is pretty cool in concept for protecting valuable hardware (and if I get the $3,000 Nikon 200 – 400mm lens, I will buy this case), but it comes across a bit like a camera case for a member of the mafia.

Lips of a Tulip

Fall 2009 Course Plan

I have been planning for my upcoming registration date for both Summer and Fall for a while now (just ask my advisor). My summer schedule has been previously discussed, and everything appears to be in order for that. There are some problems with my fall schedule though.

Introduction to Clinical and Counselling Psychology [PSYC342]
Introduction to Clinical and Counseling Psychology: A survey of the history, theories, and applications of clinical and counseling psychology, with an emphasis on analyses of the various approaches to counseling and therapy. — 3 hours

Research Methodology [PSYC352]
Research Methodology: A lecture and laboratory course covering the design, analysis, implementation, and interpretation of experimental research in areas of general psychology, such as learning, memory, and perception, and in social psychology. — 4 hours

Behavior Modification [PSYC380]
Behavior Modification: A study of applications of learning theories and laboratory findings to behavior problems in educational, clinical, and social settings, with emphasis on empirical research demonstrating the effectiveness of behavior modification and cognitive/behavioral techniques — 3 hours

Developmental Psychology [PSYC331]
Developmental Psychology: An introduction to developmental psychology, focusing on the period from conception through adolescence, with emphasis on developmental principles and theories in the areas of cognitive, emotional, social, personality, and physical development. — 3 hours

That is the schedule as I had originally planned it. The department on the other hand, has other ideas about the course selection. At present only 4 courses show up in Banner for Fall in the Online Psychology program (remember, registration is in 14 days). So far the only course from my list that is in Banner in PSYC 352, which is a core major course, so it will likely be not very exciting.

I had considered working on some courses for a potential minor in Sociology (common pairing at FSU), but the only thing I could take is SOCI 210, but that isn’t even available online. I really was looking forward to “Sociology of Deviant Behavior”, but I don’t meet the pre-requisite, so no fun course in that area for me.