Epi curious?

My Video For Class

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:09:00 +0000

the awesome visulation came from http://www.flight404.com/blog/. This guys is using a programing kit called proccessing. its based on java and it looks like it lets non techie people produce some really kickass graphics. The music is by a guy named trentemoeller. Check out his myspace for his infulences videos alone. He has introduced me too so many new band just from his page. And He has re introduced me to Joy Division. I love the raw expression in the video.

Collabrative Class Making

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:53:00 +0000

I am posting this before editing because i just want to get it out into the world I will cross out this part once I feel that I have tried thouroly to edit my remarks. Also this is just rambling I just let my self work through this , I haven't really check for logical incosistancies or even wheter or not I have thought through all the ramifacations yet.

collabrative class making

in response to question about current status of writign track and in particular what to do with beca 670

I think in any give class its presumptive to assume anything about students before they show up. I think that it is exactly these assumptions that get us all into trouble. For example students will be held to lower and lower standards because teachers continue to assume the worse(Mayby?). To fight that I would like suggest that we do something like collabrative slyabys making.
If a slybus is a contract between the tecaher and the student then I do belive that the student should have some ability to negotiate the contract. I know that this is way against the rules, that students aren't suppose to question the actually enviroment they are taught in. I am not the only one to think this way, see Jerry Farber article.
If then we all agree that students are to be included in this process we should build the sylybus together. How could this work. I will use beca 670 as an example. We first start out by talking about goals. The teacher has goals for the students and the students clearyly had goals for themselves, as the classroom showed us. I think that if on the first day we talk about the goals and then how the class was devised we can cleary develop and agenda or a simple list of topics.
After we have developed this quick list we can then go through the list and find out if any of the students know about these things already. In the cast of making links. I think there were at least 2 - 3 students, mayby more, that kenw how to make a link. As we all saw one teacher was wildly spread thin and it took the better part of the class too teach links. I think links shouldn't take more then a half hour , but I am just a student and a techie. I understand that it is completley possible that I underestimated the time it would take. In the end though I think there is a solution. Instead of having one teacher teach everybody place the people who know how to link into the teacher position for that topics. In the case of links we could have broken the class apart after one group demonstraiton and then had 3 groups. And then the teacher could roam between the leaders after there has already been a filter of the day teacher(or student teacher).
We could then apply this type modle to every topic that came up. This would allow us to rapidly cover the technical aspests of the class. Leaving more time for the class wide discussions and working on the main projects.

My Mashup

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:32:00 +0000

Cooking w/Alex s01e02 - Pasta

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 09:42:00 +0000

Click to Play

Ben Gibbard on Tour Cooking

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 05:01:00 +0000

This was just too perfect
a musician that I love
talking about road cooking.

I'm a big fan of Death Cab for Cutie,
but I am an even bigger fan of
The Postal Service.

Extra Credit,

This is Ira Glass Introducing
Ben Gibbard,
But some guy comes up instead
and make fun of Ben Gibbard,
And Then ...

Ira Glass on Story Telling

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:15:00 +0000

This is a series
of youtube videos.
In which
Ira Glass explains
how to tell a story.

The way he he explains it
you feel like you can
make radio like he does.

Ira Glass is a hero of mine ,
I don't think we use that word enough.
A hero usually does something stronger than
just a person you admire. I think Mr. Glass has.
He is trumpeting a new form of public radio.
A public radio that doesn't have to be boring.
A public radio that can entertain and teach at the same time.

Sometimes on public radio
it seems like that
is something
that you have to fight for.

found on Your Daily Awesome

Cooking w/Alex s01e01 - My Coffee

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:34:00 +0000

Click To Play

Show Notes

Chemex
I love my chemex. I have experimented with everything. I started with a machine. Then I moved on to a french press. The problems I had with the french press stem from the exact nature in which you have to use a french press. Because the water and the ground steep together you have to time them to get the best coffee. Timing for a roast is one thing, but for coffee I need it to be simple. That is where the chemex, or any method that uses gravity, shines. Everything is set up so the coffee spends a set time with the ground. Then its just a function of the volume of water you pour over said grounds that is the biggest determinate in the flavor. I suppose you could get the same affect with a funnel and filter over a cup. That is where my penchant for modern design comes into play. The chemex just looks great.

The Story of the Chemex
I was wrong about being invented in the 50s it was made in the 30s and it was invented by a guy named Peter Schlumbohm

Coffee Selection
I didn't cover this in the video its self. I think that most coffees will work. I would suggest buying from small batch roasters. If you don't want to go out of your way trader joes house brand coffee is perfectly fine. In the end what matters most is that you get through your coffee roughly once a week I think is a good time, like a thing every two weeks on the far side. If you don't want to buy coffee that often I think a good idea would be to freeze some of it when you first by it then pull it out as you need. You don't want to use straight from freezer coffee though.

The best coffee in the city of San Francisco is definitely Blue Bottle Coffee Company they are at near hayes valley or at the ferry building farmers market.

Library Thing

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:24:00 +0000

this isn't my weekly post I am just trying to spread this as far and as wide as possible.

Okay so I think this place is fucking awesome. Library Thing.

My wife wanted me to write a simple program for her that would catalog her books. I was cool with that I have always known that Amazon had a good set of API's. Then I stumbled across this great site. All I had to do was copy and paste the list of ISBN's into their import tool and it found all of them.

They have some great features like cover view. It lets you look at the covers of the books that are in your library.

So now we just need mobile features like being able to check from a borders if you already have a certain book and this would be unstop able.

Ahh ... I didn't look hard enough they totally have a mobile interface this is incredible.

LibraryThing Mobile
Check whether you've got it when you're standing in the bookshop. LibraryThing Mobile gives you the power of LibraryThing and the... oh I'm sure you get it.
Point your phone's browser to:
http://www.librarything.com/m
Non-mobile tester page.

Food Hacks

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:40:00 +0000

Alton Brown is the best Food TV chef, even Anthony Bourdain thinks so. I learned to love cooking because of my mother and grandmother, but I learned how to cook from Mr. Brown. I am not sure why his style of show, or his descriptions work so well for me. It probably has something to do with his scientific approach to cooking. This approach has led him to show off some peculiar cooking devices over the years. Some , like the cardboard smoker are an oxymoron. Who would think to put a heating element in a cardboard box? It's this type of thinking, this out of the box thinking (ha ha ha) that has inspired this post. I call these food hacks.
Hacking has its own long history, now a days its a good thing. Hacking has gone past the computer , it's now being applied to everything. Basically a hack is showing off a bit of ingenuity by modifying something usually. You can have intangible hacks like mnemonic devices, but most of the time you are doing something, or using something in another way then normal.

Here are 5 food hacks.

The Imu pit
Underground Pit Cooking from Hawaii

" Anyone who has experienced a contemporary Hawaiian lu'au (feast) will find kalua pig a main part of the menu. Traditionally, the pig was cooked in an underground pit and served in plaited baskets made of coconut fronds or on large banana leaves. The shredded pork was just as tender and moist as a pork butt roasted in an electric or gas oven. The wordkalua refers to the process of cooking in an earth oven (ka, the; lua, hole)."
I love this thing. Although this was a normal way of cooking for Hawaiians, its was new to us Americans. Why is it a hack. Well they are using the earths thermodynamics to keep the temperature hot in the pit where the pig cooks.
Another site on the put

Brick Pizza Oven

" The pizzas cooked in 3-5 minutes and were incredibly delicious. They had to be rotated to cook evenly, but the fire was so hot you could see the dough rise as it cooked."
Again another ages old cooking method, but its been forgotten. It actually cooks many things better then a normal oven. I also like the fact that they made it them selves

Homemade Microwave Popcorn

"Go to the supermarket and look at the boxes of microwave popping corn. $1.99 to $3.00 a box and the odds are you won't find one seasoned to your individual taste. You just have to settle for what they offer. <b>HAH!</b> Not anymore, my friends. I am here to liberate your palates form the work-a-day microwave popcorn. Today, you will learn that which they don't want you to know. You will learn how simple and cheap it is to make your own popping corn. Lets get started."
This represents my favorite genre of food hacks. The you can make it at home cheaper and better genre. There are so many of these and they can sometimes be as easy as the above
extra credit -> the Alton Brown sandwich press

Clothing Iron Grilled Cheese
Yes this is the one from Beeny and Joon.
But it really works, just make sure you clean your utensils first.

The Beeny and Joon way

"Johnny Depp, clad in a ric-rac-trimmed apron, is an appealing figure as Sam in the 1993 film Benny & Joon as he cooks a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches using a clothes iron. But will this technique actually work when practiced by ordinary folks in an ordinary kitchen? On December 5, 2004, Roy and Laura set out to make grilled cheeses sandwiches the Benny & Joon way."

WikiHow way

"Is your stove top broken? Have you just moved, and don't have your own frying pan yet? Or are you just looking for an alternative way to make a grilled cheese sandwich? Here's how to make your next lunch with an iron..."

Finally the Cardboard Smoker

"Feel like real BBQ? Don't have a smoker? Don't feel like spending more than 10 bucks or so? Like Alton Brown? Here's how to make a very serviceable smoker out of a cardboard box and some other things you might have laying around the house."
I can't say much more, the idea its self I think speaks volumes. I just wish I lived in a house I would be doing this all the time. A good size Costco Salmon fillet is only like 15.00 bucks.

The Tools I use Everyday

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:18:00 +0000

Photo by pvera

Gmail - I use gmail , all day long everyday. Its searching, and filtering capabilities put and standalone client to shame. I have been using gmail from a year and a half now I am only at 500 MB I have 2.8 gigs if I have to use it, and they are slowly increasing the size of individuals emails boxes a little bit all day everyday.
Google Calendar - I am and extremely forgetful person. My wife has the same school schedule every week, but I can't remember it. That is where google calendar comes into play. She puts here school schedule on her calendar and then we join our calendars together, voila I can look at it anytime of day to know if she is in school or not. Some things I would like to see are, everyone using something like it my school, my family. You could then do searches on free time.

The Hype Machine - This is my music hookup. They have a billboard chart for music in theblogosphere . Which I think is cool, but they need to work on there algorithm a bit I think. I fell like it allows me too get a grasp on theblogosphere, like how as a whole it is thinking, or at least listening too.

IM - Instant Messaging has become my main mode of communication to many people. I now sometimes talk to my parents more on IM then on the phone. There are many ways to get your IM on.
- GAIM - open source wonderfulness. cross platform windows and linux. and all the protocol's under the sine AIM, YAHOO, MSN, JABBER(gTalk)
- Google Talk - I use this mostly while I am using google mail. its also the easiest for most people to pickup because it sits there right inside your mail client.
- Meebo - At someone Else's computer or worse at a library computer that's locked down. Meebo does all the IM stuff in the web browser no need to install anything. The greatest work around I have ever seen.
Google Reader- The way that google lets me interact with my feeds is the reason why I read blogs in the first place. It makes it so easy, that I feel like I am using an app on my computer. Blogs without Google Reader, I don't know how I ever did it.

Ubuntu Linux - Linux is a great tool by it's self, but Ubuntu makes it 10 times better. I think Ubuntu is going to change a lot of minds, it has already changed mine. More soporifically then just Linux. The command line allows me to work so much faster then just clicking around in windows. The windows command line just sucks it doesn't have the power of Linux

A couple of places you didn't know you could use your aggregater.

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:36:00 +0000

Blogs are cool, but they are just one aspect of what RSS can do. It blew my mind when I figured this out, it was a revelation. Everything should be in an RSS feed. My bank statements, my appointments, my wife's birthday(just don't tell her). Even though RSS as a personal tool is still lacking there are many places where RSS is helpful now.

The coolest one so far is, the RSS feeds for del.icio.us users. This is cool because I found that a number of big people use del.icio.us to book mark websites. Which means I don't have to wait for the links, I can get at the links as soon as they bookmark it. There are a couple people so far that have provided the best links. I also have found some peoples name even though it doesn't look like they use it so often

First Clay Shirkey. He teaches New Media at NYU. His writing on network effects and tagging changed the way I look at blogs and folksonomies. - del.icio.us page

Second is Gina Trapani the lifehacker geek goddess. Not much comes from here del.icio.us page I just link that I found it. - del.icio.us page

Amoeba music always has great acts in their stores but I kept forgetting to go to there web page and checkout the upcoming shows until I discovered they have a RSS feed. Now whenever they add something it shows up in my aggregater. Calendar link

A couple of others.

Youtube - provides RSS for searches. Example search for cats falling asleep, and then subscribe the RSS feed. Every time a new video is uploaded to Youtube that matches that criteria it will show up in your aggrigater.

Google - Does the same things for Internet searches, also news searches as well.

Food Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (voidfiles) — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 09:03:00 +0000

I am a foodie ... I guess, people tell me so. Anyway I also have been reading blogs for a long time. I am most excited about blogs like these food blogs. Because for a long time blogs have been computer oriented, or politics. Now there are some great blogs popping all over the place about everything.

so on too the food.

My first foray into reading food blogs was slashfood. I hadn't seen any quality food blogs yet but I put this into the quarantine folder and expected it too fail. Over time I realized that these guys were great food writers. My favorite post are those about extremely expensive food items. Like 100 dollar hamburgers. They really try and talk about food items, or food oddities. I don't really remember any restaurant reviews, and I like that.

The next place blog in the food world that I found interesting was My Tiny Plot. While not a food blog it is about growing food. Everyone and awhile she posts about what she made with the food that she grew. I like this blog because she posts a picture with every post. and the pictures are really amazing. I don't know if she takes them her self or not but I think so.

Finally, just last week I got the itch to find some local sf food blogs. They aren't as good as the ones above but they have the local slant which too me will always push a blog into my blog reader. The one that I like the most so far is chez pim. I don't know the story about this person yet and I haven't seen that much food yet but the person who writes this blog I think works at like a restaurant. I am reading and I will find out if this is a good food blog.