2009 Dec 11, 5:13"A real true history lesson: Before there were laptops, everyone had to carry entire desktop computers to class. Before there were desktops, they had to lug typewriters. Before that, everyone just
tried real hard to remember stuff. Ask your grandparents!"humortypewritersatirelaptopcollege
2009 Jul 20, 11:40"My interactive media project this semester is about the augmentation of the classic communication medium business card... what came to my mind pretty quickly was Augmented Reality." Ever since I saw
those AR things you print out I've wished they were based completely off of QR codes that would tell the client app where to download the 3D scene to project.3dbusiness-cardqrcodeqraugmented-realityresearchtechnicalvideo
2009 Jun 29, 1:23"'You have 3 hours. You may use your class notes and Feynman.' "Feynman" of course referred the Feynman physics lecture notes which are published in three volumes. On reading these instructions one
particularly alert student grabbed his exam and ..."humorrichard-feynmanphysicseducation
2009 Mar 10, 9:42Music professor tests students and finds 'they seemed to prefer "sizzle sounds" that MP3s bring to music. It is a sound they are familiar with.' Then told the students to get off his lawn and to turn
down their sizzling music.mp3musicvia:swannmanaudioarticle
2009 Feb 23, 11:04"...the two have designed what they are calling a SmartSwitch, which lets people know how much energy they are using, not through colors, but through tactile feedback."ecologyuiinterfacehcienergylightlightswitch
2008 Dec 17, 2:27"Specifically, we have noticed that there is absolutely no training in the K-6 grades that prepares students to become mad scientists. In this competitive 21st-century world, the need for mad
scientists will only increase... We are pleased to announce the release of our Young Mad Scientist's First Alphabet Blocks."humorsciencegeekgiftvia:swannmanshoppingwishlisttoyalphabet-blocks
2008 Nov 16, 10:13"Imagine my mild surprise when I discovered that the woman who terrorized me in my final days in high school is the face of Proposition 8. Sonja Eddings Brown is everything you would expect a
Proposition 8 supporter to be: someone with misplaced values and a knack for being a big bully. Yes, a middle-aged mother of three went out of her way to threaten to kick a high school senior out of
her valedictory speaking position simply because the student refused to have (strange) words placed her mouth and to be used as a propagandistic advertising vehicle."politicseducationcaliforniasonja-eddings-brownhigh-schoolvia:kris.kowal
2008 Mar 8, 11:23"Translating a fragment of MathMLPurpose: To get the MathML matrix related, apply, minus, times, divide, and eq tags to translate to VML and to SVG via XSLT."Namon-Nuttayasakulmathmlvmlsvgxsltxmlconvert
2008 Feb 19, 12:33MS dev tools now free for students FTA: "Microsoft DreamSpark enables students to download Microsoft developer and design tools at no charge." I would have loved this as a student.microsoftstudenteducationdevelopmentvisual-studioc++free
2007 Oct 19, 4:10FTA: 'This letter was sent to a Russian student by her French friend, who manually wrote the address that he received by e-mail. His e-mail client, unfortunately, was not set up correctly to display
Cyrillic characters, so they were substituted with diacrencodingcharsetunicodelanguagehumorarticle
2007 Sep 27, 2:17Starting on a new simple project I wanted to get the history of my Delicious links. Delicious has an export tool available via the settings section so I thought I'd try that. However, the links
aren't exported in XML not even in XHTML but rather in HTML. Shocking. An example:
Remix of the 'Don't tase me, bro!' guy getting tasered.At this point I'm already not going to use this file because its in HTML but I'm even more disgusted by those date time values.
Raymond Chen of the Old New Thing posted about recognizing timestamps and timestamp sentinel values. From the first blog post and with the use of a calculator for base conversion one can tell that
those are UNIX style timestamps counting the number of seconds since 1970.
It reminds me of my hatred for the MIME date time format I developed working on my webpage's server side parsing of atom and RSS. Atom is
of course my favorite as Atom uses the Internet date time format described in the following documents. Here's an example of one
2007-09-27T020:50:00.000-08:00
On the other hand the evil and villainous RSS uses the MIME date time format now described in the more
recent IETF MIME standard. Here's an example Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:50:00 -0800
The Internet date time format has the advantage of being so easy to sort. An alphabetic sort with normal C-style collation rules of strings containing Internet date times will also sort them
chronologically. This is not the case for the MIME date time due to the preceding day of the week and the spelled out month name. This also means that when producing these you have to figure out
the day of the week and when parsing them you have to match month names rather than just parsing out numbers. Anyway now days if I see mention of a date time in a new proposed standard or spec I be
sure to point out the numerous advantages of the Internet date time format.
2007 Aug 12, 2:50Thanks to Netflix I've been able to enjoy several movies that I'd never heard of.
Brick is a classic PI film set in a modern high school. Its fun figuring out which high school students correspond to which film noir archetypes.
Primer is a sci-fi movie but it doesn't focus on action or effects. Its like watching an excellent Twilight Zone episode. I hate to describe this any
further for fear of giving something away.
The Amazing Screw-On Head is an animated version of the one shot comic. It feels like
the 1800s precursor to the The Venture Bros. and stars Screw-On Head, a steam-punk robot head thing and Abe Lincoln's top spy for occult
matters.
In Toronto we visited the CN Tower, the ROM, and the Bata Shoe Museum. We generally acted like tourists walking around taking photos of things, putting on sun block, and not saying 'eh'. But we could have been worse
like the drunk American college students in front of us in line for the CN Tower asking the guide if the CN Tower is taller than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. We stumbled upon the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit which was really interesting. Sarah in particular recalls the cute stuffed animal
monsters.
After Toronto we drove to Burlington where Palak and Meghal's wedding would take place. We got up early and made it on time to the wedding which was
lovely. I hadn't attended an Indian wedding previously so it was a new experience for me. During the ceremony the child in front of me kept peeking over her parent's shoulder and staring at me. It
lasted all day with a break after lunch during which we drove around and experienced small town Ontario. After the break cousins performed dances for Palak and Meghal and then we all danced the night
away until the wee hours.
In Niagra we stayed in a hotel room with a falls view which was lovely. We went on the Maid of the Mist tour that takes tourists
right up to the falls in a boat and drenches them. We also went on the Behind the Falls tour which was not as fun. In both we are
given rain coats which are essentially glorified plstic trash bags. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant which had a lovely view of the falls. At night the falls are lit up in various colors
with gigantic lights.niagraweddingpersonaltorontonontechnical
In Toronto we visited the CN Tower, the ROM, and the Bata Shoe Museum. We generally acted like tourists walking around taking photos of things, putting on sun block, and not saying 'eh'. But we could have been worse
like the drunk American college students in front of us in line for the CN Tower asking the guide if the CN Tower is taller than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. We stumbled upon the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit which was really interesting. Sarah in particular recalls the cute stuffed animal
monsters.
After Toronto we drove to Burlington where Palak and Meghal's wedding would take place. We got up early and made it on time to the wedding which was
lovely. I hadn't attended an Indian wedding previously so it was a new experience for me. During the ceremony the child in front of me kept peeking over her parent's shoulder and staring at me. It
lasted all day with a break after lunch during which we drove around and experienced small town Ontario. After the break cousins performed dances for Palak and Meghal and then we all danced the night
away until the wee hours.
In Niagra we stayed in a hotel room with a falls view which was lovely. We went on the Maid of the Mist tour that takes tourists
right up to the falls in a boat and drenches them. We also went on the Behind the Falls tour which was not as fun. In both we are
given rain coats which are essentially glorified plstic trash bags. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant which had a lovely view of the falls. At night the falls are lit up in various colors
with gigantic lights.
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