Interviews

It was tough, but Technologadget finally got an exclusive interview!  With who?  About what?  Well, you'll have to go to Technologadget.com to find out!

Anyway, be sure to like Technologadget on Facebook, follow Technologadget on Twitter, and Subscribe to Technologadget on Youtube

-Hank Wu

Chance Encounter

In the post below, Perry (From Lottery)  and Sam (from The Rock and The River) .  The two have a chance encounter in a waiting room in Chicago where they discuss the two friends they have lost, and try to find closure.

Hi, my name is Perry, and I’m not retarded.  Keith was my best friend in the world, all the way up to the point to the day he died..  I loved him a lot.  Yes, that is true.  Sometimes I miss Keith.  Sometimes, I miss Keith very much.  Cherry misses Keith too.  One day, I was walking to work, when suddenly I saw a flyer on the ground.  The flyer was for a person that could talk to people that were already dead.  Unfortunately, the person was located all the way in Chicago.  Still, Cherry and I both really missed Keith, (and I also missed Gram) so we decided it would be worth the trip.

When we arrived in Chicago, there were a lot of things and it was very confusing to find where the flyer led to.  There also were a lot people that were saying bad words.  I tried to ignore them.  Gram didn’t like it when I said bad words.  After a long time, I finally found the person who talked to dead people.  There was another person who was there named Sam.  He looked like a teenager that had gone through a lot.  Cherry didn’t come to Chicago with me when I was there, I was lonely.  So, I started to talk to him.

“Hi.  My name is Perry.  Who did you miss from the dead?”

“Hi.  I lost my best friend who was my brother.  Even though he was a member of the Black Panthers, I still loved him.”

“Wow.  I also lost my best friend.  His name was Keith.  I’m unsure if he would be ok if he knew that I married the woman that he loved.  Yes, that is true.”

After we introduced ourselves to each other, we started to talk about how much we missed our dead friends.  Sam was pretty passionate about trying to get African Americans more rights.  I think that he thought that he was still in the 1960s.  Sam tried to help me make myself feel better about Cherry.

“All that matters is that you love her and she loves you.  It doesn’t take a message from the dead to tell you that.  If Keith really is the nice person you say he is, then he’ll have wanted your wife to move on and be happy.”

Those words resonated (that was one of my old dictionary words) with me.  I left Chicago with a feeling of happiness and joyfulness.  I didn’t even need to talk to the dead.  In order to repay Sam, I sent him something that no one from the 1960s would have imagined would be possible.  I sent him a picture from President Obama’s Inauguration.

Why The Next Gen iPad Will Have the Same Display (Extra Credit Post)

If you've ever used an iPhone 4 or the newest iPod Touch, you've probably seen a "Retina Display".  First off let's define what a "Retina Display" is.  That's a bit tricky, since "Retina Display" is just a marketing term used by Apple.  So, I will use what Apple believes a retina display to be.  To Apple, a "Retina Display" is a display that uses a LED backlit TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen that has a pixel density that is 326 pixels per inch.  Along with that, every pixel must be 78 micrometres wide and must have a contrast ration of 800:1.  Apple believes that an average person cannot distinguish the individual pixels when a screen with at least 300 pixels per inch (ppi) is held 12 inches away.  While this feat is receivable on a rather small 3.5 inch screen (the size of screen the iPhone and iPod touch), on the a 9.7 inch screen (the screen size of the iPad) it is almost impossible!  A WQXGA (the cheapest standard resolution that can bring the iPad over 300pixels per inch ) would cost more than $1000 itself!  With the entire iPad costing a mere $500 you should wonder how Apple (the makers of these iProducts) would be able to pull this off.  Sure, they could charge users $1400 for each baseline iPad, but at that price, users would probably choose the cheaper and infinitely more powerful Macbook Pro or Macbook Air.  On top of all that, this new resolution would lead to fragmentation of Apps, as it is not easy to port apps that are designed for 1024 x 768 to a display resolution of 2560x1600.  When Apple bumped up the resolution of the iPhone 4, Apple avoided fragmentation by carefully choosing the precise resolution that had exactly twice as many pixels as the current iPhone 4.  That means that for every single pixel on the iPhone 3GS screen, there were 4 pixels on the iPhone 4 screen (that's not a typo).  So, we can effectively debunk the idea that the iPad would get a WQXGA resolution.

In recent times, 9to5mac has found different elements and icons in Apple's iBooks application that were optimized for a 2048x1536 screen.  If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that this is exactly twice the resolution of the current iPad.  Also, if you're a math whiz, you'll notice that the pixels per inch of a 9.7 inch screen with a 2048x1536 screen only leaves you with 263.92 pixels per inch.  While that may not bee a retina display if you are holding it at the viewing distance of an iPhone, the typical viewing distance of an iPad is much larger and results in a much smaller requirement in pixel density.  If you hold the iPad a mere 15 inches away from your body, this new resolution is more than enough to be named a "retina display".  So, case solved, right?  Not quite.

I've already mentioned the cost of the display itself, but there are other costs that this display would require.  First off it would need RAM, a huge amount of RAM.  2048x1536 is a huge resolution (probably higher definition than the computer you are on right now) and for the iPad to be able to control each pixel, while saving other apps for fast app switching would require a huge amount of RAM, around 2 GBs.  For reference, the current iPad has 256 mbs of RAM, 1/16 of what is required for this new resolution.  Along with that there would need to be a new and more powerful GPU and CPU.  There are rumors of Dual-Core processors coming to iOS, but in order for these processors to actually have the 100% performance increase that is promised, iOS has to fully optimize it's software for these new processors.  The optimization itself will take at least one more year.  All of this adds up to a lot more than $500.  The components would cost more than $1,000.

There's one last problem with a super high res screen on the iPad.  The highest quality standard format for video is 1080p.  Currently when you try to watch a 720p video on the iPad (the highest quality video available for the iPad) you see black bars over and underneath the video.  With this new resolution screen, there will be black bars surrounding the video.  There is no quality of video that is high definition enough to be able to take advantage of this new resolution.

Sorry, but no new screen on the iPad.  Maybe we'll get something brighter, or something from Pixel QI, but as far as resolution is concerned, 1024x768 is as good as it's gonna get.  At least for this generation.

Found Poem

Below is my Found Poem from the book, "The Rock and The River".  The book was written by Kekla Magoon and the poem is consisted of bits and pieces from the book.  The pages I used were between 1 and 100.


He stood up... feeding the crowd with his words,
Mama stood behind him, where she always stood,
Yeah.

I tried to pretend I was somewhere else.

Just say the word, my man,  
They'll never miss us,
Tempting,
But impossible.

It doesn't matter now.

A flashbulb exploded in my face,
Assault?

I didn't reply.

Father stared at me,
Eyebrows dropping lower and lower,
None of you business.

Leave me alone.

Stick was gone,
It still burned me,
A handgun.

Don't even joke about that.

Father sighed,
Turn the other cheek,
I laughed.

Suddenly,
I turned.

So here we all are,
No intrustion,
We're finished,
One last question.


Why?

1968, Martin Luther King, Black Panther Party, Roland Childs

Hello, this is Hank Wu and I'm here to tell you about what's happening with Civil Rights!  In this article I will give you an in-depth look into what is truly going on behind Martin Luther King, the Black Panther Party, Roland Childs, and what specifically happened in this year of 1968.



Just this February of  1968 (February 8) there was a civil rights protest that occurred at a bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina that only serves white people.  This protest led to the unfortunate deaths of three college students, and had to be broken up by highway patrolmen.  If we fast forward to April 4, 1968, we see that Martin Luther King Jr. has died.  Good friends with very well known Roland Childs, Mr. King died at the age of 39.  His murderer, was none other than James Earl Ray.  His name might seem familiar to you, we just did a story on the fugitive who escaped Missouri State Penitentiary.

Now lets move on to the Black Panther Party.  This is an active African American revolutionary leftist group that is making dramatic impacts on our lives and is making history as you read this article.  They try to focus on anti-racism and are deeply involved with the Black Power movement.  They were founded in 1966 by two men (Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton) and recently release their first newspaper article last year.  They also seem to have a list of 26 of strict rules, that must be obeyed by their members. You can find the rules by going to page 2 of our Newspaper (click here to go to the rules).  They also have "The Ten Point Program" which seems to state the rights they want.  Some examples include, "WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES" and ,"WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE,".  The Party also seems to be fairly violent.  Just this April it had to resort to guns, and one of its own members was killed due to this.


On the other side of the protesting spectrum, Roland Childs is a very well known, very public figure that supports non-violent movement against racism.  He is one of Dr. King's Colleagues who has two sons, a 13 year old boy named Sam, and a 17 year old boy name Stick.  These two boys seem to be part of The Black Panthers, despite his fathers wishes.  What might this lead to?


Well there you have it!  An in depth view into what is going on in Civil Rights so far this year.  

A quote about "The Rock and The River"

For this round of book clubs I am reading a book written by Kekla Magoon called "The Rock and the River". The story is about a boy named Sam, who's father is a well known civil rights activist, but his best friend (who also is his brother) is a Black Panther.  He must make a choice between his father and his brother on which way he should take his life.

"I tried to pretend I was somewhere else... It was a peaceful protest; orderly and insistent, like the ticking of a clock... He (father) was feeding the crowd with his words."
-Sam

The quote above is actually thaken from the first paragraph in the entire book.  It's the first impression I have on the book, and it truly foreshadows alot about what is going to happen as the story goes on.  First off, you should know that the place Sam is in is one of his Father's peaceful protests.  As I've already explained, Sam is eventually going to have to make a decision on whether he will choose to go with his father or his best friend.  From this first sentence, we can probably gather that Sam is going to choose his best friend.  It seems that he has had enough of going with his father's life, and wanted to make a decision of his own.  Along with that, Sam subtly portrays the protest as something that is boring by saying that it is like the ticking of a clock.  I think that we all can agree that watching a clock tick is fairly boring.  Another important thing that Sam says is when he states that he was feeding the crows with his words.  To me, the word feeding pops out, and seems to imply that his father was giving the crowd a type of propaganda.  So far, these three points lead me to believe that Sam is going to go with his brother.

If we take a look at how Kekla Magoon phrased the sentence for Sam, you probably can tell that Kekla was trying to angle Sam as an innocent mind.  There were much more negative ways Sam could have said that he did not want to be at his father's rally.  In fact, Sam never specifically stated that he did not want to be at his father's rally, just that there were other places he would rather be.  The next to sentences are crafted more stealthly.  These sentences seem to have hidden implications and meanings.  Like I explained in the previous passage, all of these implications seem to point to the fact that Sam will join the Black Panthers.

I believe that it is now quite apparent.  Sam will choose to go with the Black Panthers, he will choose to go against his father.  He will choose to go with the rock.

One Lingering Question

As I reach the end of the book, one question seems to have been haunting me since the start.  Why did Patricia Wood make Perry's IQ 76?  Why did she make it exactly 1 point over 75 (which Perry says that 75 is the IQ level for someone to be "mentally retarded").  I've already taken a look at great length to find out why Perry was slow (you can click here to go to that post).  However, it would have been simpler to make Perry's IQ an even 75 or less than 75.  Was making it 76 just an unnescary complexity?

In my opinion, this was one of the most important elements in the story.  By making Perry believe that he is more intellegent than an average mentally retarded person, he is able to have confindence.  That confindence fueled him to memorize words from the dictionary, and that confindence even fueled him to buy lottery tickets (despite his grandmother not wanting him too).  Yes, this confindence is somthing that seems to have dramatically affected the plot of the book.  Who knew that one IQ point could make such a difference/

(Interesting Fact:  If you subtract ten from 76 and put the number into base 16, you get 42.  Which is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.)

A deeper look into Patricia Wood

Today, we will take a deeper look into Patricia Wood, and look for different clues about her life that possibily could give us some new information in the story.  I've touched this in the last post but I believe that the information from that post is relevant to what I am discussing now and I have inserted the relevant exerpt from that post below.   The first quote from my previous blog post is trying to understand why Patricia Wood decided to use the word "gyp" and the second quote is just a fun fact about the setting I have discovered. 

"The book was published around 2008, which makes the book quite recent.  Personally, I don't hear the word "gyp" as often as some of it's alternatives such as "rip-off".  If we take a look at the Author's (Patricia Wood) personal history we see that she recalls a place by the name of "Casey's Drive-in on Aurora Avenue". She also recalls that "For a dollar, you could buy a deluxe hamburger, fries, and a milkshake -- and get change back."  The word gyp, might have come from a time in the past.  It has to be recent enough that the price of food as significantly changed, but distant enough from the present that "gyp" is still a word that is used, even if it is not used often.  I am not entirely sure, but I believe that she simply brought that word back into her memory when she was writing this passage."-Hank Wu, Tuesday, January 18, 2010

"(Side Note: Everett, Washington is the city that Patricia Wood's child lives in, and also happens to be where the book takes place.)"-Hank Wu, Tuesday, January 18, 2010


Now let's get some quick background information on her.  She was one of four sets of twins in her neighborhood.  When she was two years old, she fell right into a fire and she was quickly soaked in saltwater.  She says that this is what gave her love of the sea.  Now, she lives in a 48-foot sailboat called Orion which is located in Hawaii  and she has one son who (as I've said before) lives in Everett, Washingon which is the location of the book "Lottery".   She first discovered writing when she was 8 years old and wrote a book titled "Thickamore The Backnus".  Along with all of this she says that she has done research on sharks, competed in horse shows, and served in the army.

What might caused Patricia Wood to write a story about a person who was mentally unfit who had won the Lottery?  I believe that we can break that basic summary of the book down into two parts: fortune and disabilities.

At first, I could not find a way that these two things were related, and how Patricia Wood's life instigated this.  Then, I found something that made everything click.  Patrica Wood actually was a teacher for special education.  That experience must have influenced Perry's character in many ways.  In the University of Hawaii, Patricia Wood is an actual candidate for the specific area of education and people with disabilities.  It also seems, that she has written quite a lot about educating people with disabilities and even home-schooling the disabled.  Now, Perry (the main character of "Lottery") was not homeschooled, but he did learn many different academic things at home from his Parental figure at home, such as memorizing different words from the dictionary.    Most importantly, she advocates and supports special needs students.  I believe that the Lottery was an inspiration from her work as a special education teacher and as a student on special education to spread the word about people with mental disablities.  She herself has said, "We know how far people can go, yet not enough gets out to the real world. Normal people do not pick up a book to read about special needs adults.”  She wanted to spread word about people with disabilities and what a person with disabilities was like along with giving the person with disabilities a happy accident.  I believe that she loved disabled people so much, that she wanted to help all of them any way she could, even if she made the disabled person up.

Suddenly, everything is starting to make sense.