Lest We Forget

Here at Notre Dame Regional Secondary Vancouver, BC, a Remembrance Day service is held each year in honour of those who fought and died for our country. Just like in previous Remembrance Day ceremonies, we had two men play their bag pipes. Also, students in Acting 11 and 12 performed a scenario of World War I. Notre Dame Concert Choir and Band students performed various songs that related to Remembrance Day, like Amazing Grace. Mr. Scott prepared a video of the experiences many veterans faced and reenactments of what happened during the war. A red poppy is worn to remember those who sacrificed their lives for each and everyone of us. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marks the end of World War I.

The photos below were taken during the Remembrance Day service:

Visual Basic

On November 4th, we started a new programming language called Visual Basic. We started the new language with a Hello World program. We used various tools such as the "command" button and "label" control.

Microsoft Announces New Operating Systems

Yesterday (October 27th, 2008) Microsoft unveiled details of two new operating systems. Currently, the most commonly used Microsoft operating systems are Windows XP and Windows Vista. Although frequently criticized, often by those who have never used it, Vista is actually a very stable, rich, environment in which to work, particularly when used with up-to-date machines.

Nevertheless, Microsoft has decided to press ahead with successors for Vista. In late 2009, Windows 7 will be released. It will be much like Vista. Around the same time, Microsoft will release Windows Azure, an operating system that lives on Microsoft servers and not in your computer. This is called "Cloud Computing", the 'Cloud' being the Internet. Basically this means that you won't need an operating system or programs: they will all live in the 'Cloud.'

Whether this works out or not remains to be seen. However, many companies are already trying this, both with Microsoft and with Google products.

"Cloud Computing" is one of the most used technology buzz words at present.

Global Anti-Piracy Day Follow Up

Microsoft claimed today as Global Anti-Piracy Day. In 2007, the global economic loss was estimated at nearly $50 billion. Technology, nowadays, is expanding that the distributing of fakes is increasing. Piracy and counterfeiting are growing a threat, therefore, Microsoft is trying to raise awareness and address this problem.

Here is a link to the Microsoft site on the Anti-Piracy initiative:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/antipiracy/map.mspx

Class Blogs

ICT 12 Student Blogs (2008-09)

Ava Balingit
Ryan Battistel
Sofia Busse
Nicole Ceralde
Nathan Chiu
Tomasz Cieslik
Jonathan De Maeseneer
Danila Di Giacinto
Sonia Di Palma
Lia Estrellado
Kimberly Francisco
Dilantha Geekiyanage
Nikko Henderson
Nikka Komisarski
Steffani Mastromonaco
Caitlin Nery
Conner Olenick
Andrea Strazzullo
Adam Troczynski
Nikko Tagle
Alannah Villella
Jason Wong

These are the blogs URLs for my ICT 12 class colleagues. The class is using Blogger throughout the year to record information about various programs and techniques.

This list will be updated to include several blog URLs not presently available.

iGoogle

Today i signed up for iGoogle surface and made a couple of minor changes. I made a custom widget to display my IP address.

Binary Numbering

Earlier in the year, Mr. Vogel taught our class a computer operation: Binary Numbering. Every computer works on binary operations, which are based on "switches" or otherwise known as "bits". For example, 1111 would equal to 15. It is a four-bit byte with all the switches set to on. On is represented as a 1 and the off is represented as a 0. These four switches represent a sequence of numbers using the same positional values as the decimal system. The values are set to the power of two, reading from right to left.