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Apple iMac
When I was in 5th grade, my family made the switch to apple products when my father bought an iMac core duo, because he liked the software provided for making home movies. My brother and I used it for video production and game design, and we thought thought about making a webcast (inspired by the TV show iCarly). The iMac was the first hardware I used that was unix-like, after which I pretty much did not use Windows. -
iPod Touch
I got a 2nd-generation iPod Touch in 6th grade, which was the first handheld smartphone-like device I used. I mostly used it to play games, listen to music, read manga, and use chatrooms on the internet - anonymously or with my friends in real life. The first jailbreak the iOS operating system was in July 2007, days after the iPhone was first released. -
neurofeedback
When I was in 6th grade, I began an experimental hypnotherapy program for ADHD, affectionately called by my mother neurotherapy. Neurotherapy consisted of using biofeedback electrodes to measure EEG waves in the brain, and issue endorphin-release-manufactured beeps from client software when my brain state seemed to be concentrating. -
Python
When I was in 8th grade, after making text-based games and other programs in the windows scripting language, I decided to learn how to program for real. I started with the Python programming language from Learn Code the Hard Way. My most ambitious project in python was a search engine that scraped the archives of a small chatroom I started using in middle school. Python was first released in 1991. -
C
When I was in 10th grade, after some practice with higher-level languages like Python, Ruby, R, and other tools such as regex and for website design, I decided to learn the lower-level language C (along with Vim), also from learn code the hard way and a PDF of K&R C. I do not remember much farther in the tutorial past learning pointers. While first appearing in 1973, C did not have a formal standard until the release of ANSI C 10 years later. -
Galaxy S III
Also during 11th grade, I got my first smart phone. Almost immediately, I rooted the default android operating system, and hardened the phone's security, as well as installing penetration testing tools. The galaxy S III would last me 4 years, seeing me through the failure of 2 other smartphones until finally broke this year. The president might use a galaxy s III, which is considered a threat to national security. -
GNU/Linux
About 6 months after getting an Acer Aspire 4830T running Windows, and a series of blue screens, I installed the Fedora operating system which I was satisfied with for about a year, before I installed the debian-derived crunchbang (#!). I would use crunchbang until project development ended, when I moved over to Debian. "Linux" refers to the kernel of a set of operating systems, which some believe should be referred to more properly as GNU/Linux. -
Haskell
In my senior year, I was a teacher's assistant in a class beginning with teaching students Scratch, followed by web development, Python, and Java. In that class, I took the opportunity to study PHP and Haskell, and learn more about Vim. Unlike other languages I had studied, Haskell attempts to conform purely to the functional programming paradigm. I found functional programming interesting, and feel like it comes more intuitively to me now as a math major.
