Hello All. Welcome to my page!

Some data about me:

This is an all new page from scratch... admittedly I have neglected this site for eight months and sorta forgot some stuff so this class is going to be great!. I did fairly well in updating it for three months but then life happened.

Stephen Johnson, living in Ventura, California

I have been in the Navy for 19 years as of this month and wonder where the time went. Without posting too many specifics, I worked with radars and gun systems before and now I work with missiles. More accurately, I work on paperwork regarding the administrative efforts surrounding said systems and the the junior personnel who now do all the heavy lifting and such. Managing personnel just does not sound as appealing to describe, hence the former. Regardless, it it what it is.

I have been attending National University every month I could book a class since April 2013. So far, and including this one, it has been 25 classes. I have four more and my capstone to graduate... but sadly I have a six month gap before my next available one. I will likely work to get my maximum two independent studies classes in AND work on various random stuff to fill out my portfolio prior to graduation. I initially signed up for this pipeline and nearly began my first class when I suddenly changed to Computer Science. Then I had six months of pre-req math classes to do. I also began taking classes at the local community college... all while still working full time. After a year or so, and well into my core classes for Computer Science, I discovered programming and I had a disagreement and I lost. Then I changed back to Digital Media Design and it has been a year of blissful classes which I enjoy vice dread.

Hobbies. Well, I have a bunch of those... In no particular order: Photography, Astronomy, Coin Collecting, PC Building, Legos, Traveling, Hanging out with my Wife, Woodworking, Reading, Driving, 3D graphics, Photoshopping... there's got to be some more I am sure. Recently I've not done so much Astronomy or messing about with coins or Legos but I have done quite a bit of wife hangout time and woodworking. About a month ago I built a new PC desktop on the cheap... it boots from power on to ready for use in 25 seconds and that is pretty cool. Solid State Drive for the boot path is the secret to a fast machine... I'm making another one soon with the M.2 SSD on a PCI Express x3 card.. that machine will be $1700 probably vice the $600 one I'd just made. Maybe I'll make a page to show specs and process... it was super easy to get familiar with the new stuff.

Being I've traveled to 20+ countries in the past 19 years, mostly for work... I do think about the times I actually did do vacations. My wife and I did a week in the UK a couple years ago and that was great. We've also done about a week in Europe between France, Germany and Italy. I went to Italy for work recently and did not get enough spare time to enjoy the locale.

Below, links I visit often and explainations of each

YouTube. What do people go there for? Well, sometimes it could be as simple as determining what has a high view count. This is great to discover trends and seek out what is likely to come up in discussion during the week. Something gets 18 million views in a week, it might be important or it might just be a new video from a user with a high subscription base. Someone like PewDiePie has to be recognized as a powerful person just due to followers; 38.6 million of them. His videos are simply silly, but often funny, commentary over the top of him playing a video game. Numerous other videos of educational value also exist... but the real reason for YouTube is for watching Cat Videos.

Daz3D. The core component is Daz Studio, a free to use, powerful, 3D rendering program for 3D models. The free part has a catch. The program only comes with a small number of basic models. The website however is chock full of high quality posable and adjustable models for use within Daz Studio. The alternate software to this is Poser Pro 2014. The latter does the same basic functions but also includes soft / rigid body dynamics system, bullet physics, 3D shape morphing and can accept every model in the site as well. Pretty robust stuff.

Cloudy nights is a learning resource for Astronomers of all levels. The idea is that if there is a clear night (ie no clouds) then that person should be outside watching the sky. Either by just your eyes, or using a camera, using binoculars, using a telescope etc. If it is cloudy, then come to this site and learn or share knowledge from and with others. There is also an amazing classified system built into it which is great for those needing specialty items or if one is just looking to score a used scope at a reduced cost.

Pixiv is a resource for incredible anime style art. I'd issue a strong warning to keep the safety on in doing searches. The site is hosted in Japan and they do not have all the same laws as us regarding what is ok to draw or not. Some of the most talented anime artists have their own pages hosted on this incredible site.

Recently I got into playing Destiny on Xbox, but some user content is better than the actual game.