Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Steve Jobs


Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali. Schieble’s father had never approved of Jandali, so when she became pregnant with his son out of wedlock, he was furious. She was forced to give the baby up for adoption. Whilst looking for suitable parents, she had some conditions, specifically that the parents must be college graduates. They had a family lined up when Schieble’s father became very ill and they backed out in hopes of keeping the baby. In the end, they ran out of time and had to give Steve away. He wound up in the hands of Paul and Clara Jobs.
Steve always knew that he was special. He saw himself as being specially picked and wanted. He loved hanging out with his father while he worked on cars. He liked to tinker with the electronics while his dad worked on the mechanical parts. Steve was always very bright and he knew this. His teacher actually suggested that he skip two grades because school too easy for him. When he was in the fifth grade, he was bullied for being so smart. He was made fun and requested that his family moved somewhere nicer. As it was, Paul and Clara were barely making ends meet, but knowing it was for the benefit of their son, they obliged and moved to what would eventually come to be known as Silicon Valley. They found a nice place in a good neighborhood with friendly neighbors. Steve quickly made friends with the neighbor kids. A few of his new friends’ fathers worked for HP and would show off what they were working on to young Jobs. He was fascinated with all the technology he had seen. In fact, he was so fascinated that one night, he called up the CEO of HP and asked for a job. They talked for hours and after getting to know Jobs, over the phone, he hired Steve. He worked a relatively boring Job with low wages but it was in the field that he loved to work in. Jobs was also known to be a prankster and always found himself in trouble. One day, he rewired all the speakers in the house and turned them into microphones so he could listen to his parents’ conversations without them knowing. When his father discovered this, he was furious. Steve never had very many friends growing up. He always prefered a few good friends over a lot of not so good friends. This held true all through school. During his sophomore year, he met Steve Wozniak. The two Steves became inseparable instantly. They were like twins. They were both techno-geeks and loved a good prank. It was these pranks that made Jobs well known around school. 
Steve’s hobbies include working on cars with his father. He loved being around his dad. He liked working with him in sharing new things with him. He left his father he always enjoyed working with electronics. That was just what he did. Everything he did was working with electronics. He found peace enjoying it. He also loved playing jokes. Everyone knew the Steve love jokes and that if he was around, you should watch your back. Jobs was also somewhat of a troublemaker. It was usually has jokes into the most trouble but in his 20’s he found himself more into drugs. He smoked marijuana on a regular basis and also dropped acid. He enjoyed spending time with his friends and with his love, Chrisann Brennan. He left to go on drives out into the forest. He was very much into nature and quite often went on tangents about it and would go when many health cleanses. 

One of the very first claims to fames the jobs had was when he was in his late teens. Him and his best friend Steve Wozniak found that the serial car was matched pitch perfectly to the AT&T tones for international calls. Stephen Steve quickly capitalize on this by building a digital machine to match pictures in a book with all the tones on the AT&T network. They built a good number of these “blue boxes” and sold them for a hefty profit. What many people don’t know, is why they stopped. One day, while selling, they had a gun pointed at them and got it stolen. 
Another lesser known fact about Jobs is that he had a child with Chrisann Brennan and treated her horribly just as he had sworn he would never do. He treater her like the child wasn’t his and did not even acknowledge her. He went out and treated her like nothing had ever happened between them. Later in his life, after Chrisann passed away, he took care of her.

Job started this critter when he started apple with Wozniak in his garage in 1976. He was CEO until 1985 when he was ousted by the board and replaced by John Scully. After leaving Apple, he went and founded a new computer company called NeXT. He worked with next until 1997, when Apple was going bankrupt, they bought Next and reinstated Jobs as CEO.

In 1986, Jobs had bought a tiny movie company named Pixar. A deal between Disney and Pixar created the first movie made together called Toy Story. The movie made millions and Disney agreed to make more movies with Pixar. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar and became the largest solo shareholder of Disney stocks.

Jobs returned to Apple and immediately put his own spin on everything. He quickly turned the company around and made it profitable. All designs had to be approved by Jobs himself before they were offered to the public. He had the final say and the power to veto anything he did not like. If he didn’t like a product, he would reject it until it was perfect. Thats what made the company what it is today, perfection.

Job’s reason for fame is simple. He is famous for designing and engineering the computers we use today. His strive for the impossible is what pushed forward innovation. Sometimes he didn’t know his limits and pushed people too far. He lived by the saying, “good artists borrow, great artists steal” and this didn’t mean that he stole things, it meant that he would take a small idea and build upon it and make it his own. 

Jobs dies at the young age of 56 years old.

He died at his home in Palo Alto on October 5, 2011. He died with his family at his side, including his children, wife, and sister.



Thursday, March 7, 2013

Nook or Book?

As technology advances it begins to phase out things that have been around for a long time. This has now spread to books and is becoming more common in libraries and on school campuses. Will this one day phase out textbooks or even whole classrooms?
Kindle app for iPad
Let's focus on the eReaders for now. With these electronic books, you can carry around hundreds, even thousands of books around with you all the time. They are simple and convenient. They also save paper and other resources. Not only are these eReaders convenient, but they are also cheaper. For the price of one paper book, you could easily buy two to three ebooks. There are many advantages to these ebooks but there are also many disadvantages. Some of the disadvantages are that these eReaders use batteries which means they have a limited run time before they have to be plugged in. However, most of the battery lives are about a month. Another disadvantage to this could be if you do not plan on reading very many books. Because if you are not a heavy reader, the inital cost could be higher than just buying a single book.
iBooks on an iPhone
Weighing in both the advantages and disadvantages, however, I believe that an eReader is a good investment and that the advantages outwight the disadvantages, especially if you plan on reading a good number of books.
Paper book
Next, let's focus on eReaders in libraries. I believe they are a good resource to have inside the libraries but I do not think that libraries should exclusively carry eReaders. Paper books are always going to be around and if we try and pretend that they won't be, they will just become harder to find when you inevitably need one. Another downside to having them in libraries is that with these eReaders, unless you have every book on every eReader, it could be harder to try and keep the books in stock in more popular books are on the same eReader.
All facts taken into consideration, I think that eReaders are becoming more and more abundant because they are a good technology. But they will never completely phase out books.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Are Those Button Eyes?

Coraline Title Card
Other Mother
     The movie Coraline stars Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones and revolves around her life after recently moving to the countryside. The movie also stars Teri Hatcher as Mother and Other Mother and John Hodgman as Father and Other Father. The movie is a stop motion film from the same director as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick.
       The movie is centered on Coraline and her relationship with her mother and father. Her parents are always busy and never have time for her. Her parents are always focused on their jobs. One day, the neighbor, Wybie, gives Coraline a doll of his grandmother’s that looks identical to Coraline. This starts a series of events that cannot be stopped. One night, she is awoken by a mouse that she then follows into a small door and enters into a new world. There she finds happiness with her “Other Parents” that treat her well.

  This new found happiness only lasts so long, however. Her new parents don’t want her to leave. They want her to stay with them forever. When she refuses, the other mother transforms into a monster and Coraline narrowly escapes. Upon reentering the real world, Coraline discovers that her parents are gone. They have been kidnapped by the other mother and are being held in the other realm. She returns to the other world and challenges the other mother to a game where if she can find her parents and save them, she must let them go.
Coraline and Wybie



  As a whole, this movie was a solid two and a half stars out of five. The stop motion animation was excellent, the voice acting was good, but the story itself was so-so. The movie was adopted from a novel but does not hold true to the book. Whole scenes and even characters have been added. The story was intense for younger viewers so one with young children may not want to see it. All things considered, the movie wasn’t half bad.

Monday, October 1, 2012

The Funniest Show on TV just got Funnier


The Office logo for season 9
     The show The Office has aired on NBC for eight full seasons now and recently begun its ninth and final season. The show is centered on what is referred to as “a typical American workplace” and the employees within. The show originally starred Steve Carell as the main character and branch manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton, Michael Scott. However, Carell did end his career with the show in the seventh season, not appearing in the eighth season at all. The show changed from focusing mainly on the manager to how the company functions. The new branch manager is Andy Bernard, who is portrayed by Ed Helms, but the show’s main focal characters are now Jim Halpert, his wife Pam (Jenna Fischer) and his rival Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). Halpert and portrayed by John Krasinski
Steve Carell as Michael Scott
The episode opens with the characters recapping what has happened over the summer since we last saw them. After the title sequence airs, we see two new characters emerge from the kitchen asking where to toss out some trash. The group quickly mocks them and then begin to refer to them as “New Jim” and “New Dwight.” Jim quickly jumps on the defensive and argues to the camera that he is not the new Jim and that if he is, then everyone is the new Jim. Dwight however remains silent on the matter. At this point Andy walks into the office returning from a soul searching trip for the past three months. At this point, Dwight embraces New Dwight. 
Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute
It doesn’t take long for the rivalry between Andy and Nellie to spark up as she previously stole his job. With Dwight trying to connect to New Dwight he sparks a conversation with him which ends with New Dwight trying to steal Dwight’s clients and him storming off in a fit of rage. Now, Andy takes the rivalry to a whole new level. He sets up a slack line, essentially a tightrope, outside and walks across. Next, He invites Nellie to do the same and says whoever falls off will look like a real “Nellie.” When she attempts, he pushes her off. Soon, New Dwight and old Dwight are at it just like Nellie and Andy. New Dwight does the line perfectly and Dwight falls off numerous times. We have a private talk with Jim where he tells us that he created an idea with his friends that they are pursuing and that he could be partners with but he declines. As the episode approaches its end, we see Jim hesitate to make a phone call. He even hangs up once after dialing the number. He does, however, make the call and we discover that he is going to accept the partnership. 
The episode ends and the credits roll. This, as an opening episode, was one of my personal favorites because it ties everything together, yet it leaves room to grow. 

Thursday, September 6, 2012