Strider's Journal

Computers in education

strider — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:28:04 PDT

Children enjoying some time reading at their desktops.

The debate over computers in the schools has finally come around to giving naysayers equal time. There was an article in the Sunday New York Times regarding a school in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley that teaches math, music, and other standard elementary [...]

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Dennis Ritchie, dead at 70

strider — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:03:48 PDT

Computer programmer Dennis Ritchie passed away today at age 70. Ritchie co-invented the UNIX operating system with Ken Thompson at Bell Labs in 1969, while co-authoring the C programming language with Brian Kernighan around the same period. In 1978, Kernighan and Ritchie co-authored the book “The C Programming Language”, now known as the K&R [...]

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Catch-22 is 50

strider — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:04:03 PDT

Well, that milestone had been past a couple of days ago having first been published on October 11, 1961 (I was sure it was first published in the 50s, but not so, according to publisher Simon & Schuster), but I must say it was my favourite book, and possibly remains my favourite book of [...]

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On Advocates for Suicide

strider — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:06:20 PDT

Whether it’s in favour of Euthanasia, or whatever other pretext there is to make suicide look good, do you ever notice that people in support of suicide are still alive, and need to be alive to advocate for it? I dunno. Just a thought.

Nice polynomials, nice polynomials …

strider — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 21:00:51 PDT

For my math class, I was attempting to create a curve sketching question by writing the second derivative as a factorable quadratic, and working backwards to an order-4 polynomial. Along the way, I would fill in the missing constant terms by using synthetic division on an arbitrary binomial factor, and striking upon a satisfactory [...]

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Regretsy is into their second year.

strider — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:20:28 PDT

I am a lover of satire, and I came across a great site called “Regretsy“, a parody site of “etsy“, which is a site for people who want to sell their arts and crafts. There are a lot of bad crafts out there sold by people who are often full of themselves (you have [...]

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Thoughts on September 11

strider — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:02:29 PDT

Frankly, I didn’t want to get caught up in the hubbub that has marked the 10th anniversary of the disasters of 9/11/2001, but my wife had been watching the TV about this constantly, so I thought I would weigh in on opinions on what has been called 9/11.

There are a lot of conspiracy [...]

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An SSD on an HP TX-2 Laptop with Linux

strider — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:00:12 PDT

I recently purchased an OCZ Vertex 2 Solid State Hard Drive. The price per gig is enormous ($220 after taxes, in-store warranty, and mail-in rebate for a 120 gig hard drive), but is just the size to install the operating system and any applications I like. I generally don’t use the main hard drive [...]

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Chili and TSP

strider — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:00:50 PDT

I always had an aversion to veggie foods. This isn’t because I hate the stuff; it’s more because I admit to quite a lot of ignorance toward going veggie and eating balanced meals at the same time. This doesn’t mean I avoid it altogether, it’s just that I didn’t feel ready to let go [...]

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Homage to species that barely existed

strider — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:00:35 PDT

It has come to my attention in recent years that we are the stupid ones. Homo sapiens, as we so arrogantly call ourselves, might be the least intelligent of the surviving genii of hominids. Our species won out over Homo neanderthalensis because we were more competitive and selfish than they. Neandethals have larger brains [...]

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How to spend an idle afternoon

strider — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:00:20 PDT

Yesterday, I told another fellow computer geek an ’80s DOS joke about being prompted to “Enter any 11-digit prime number and press ENTER to continue.” She then suggested that a number with 11 1′s might be prime. Having encountered this before in programs I’ve written, I warned her that you can’t assume all sequences [...]

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A Walk Around Harvard Yard

strider — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:34:37 PDT

A couple of days ago at Harvard College was the first day that students had a chance to get settled away to their dorms; freshmen arrived with their parents, and clutches of parents and their young adult kids were clustered around the statue of John Harvard to have photos taken of them touching the [...]

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Keyboards and Keypads II

strider — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:00:01 PDT

I had been searching for a good USB keypad for use with my laptop. I prefer to enter sets of numbers using a separate keypad rather than using the “keypad mode” keys native to my laptop, since I don’t need to keep switching between modes if I am both entering a list of numbers [...]

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Cambridge Diary II

strider — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:24:01 PDT

2:11 PM Tuesday 16 August

I am sitting in the Catherine Stratton Lounge inside the Stratton Student Centre at MIT. At one end, a soap opera plays in a room where about 20 armchairs and couches are arranged on one end, theatre-style, around a 50-inch flat-screen TV. Only two students are lying there viewing [...]

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Cambridge Diary I

strider — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:35:16 PDT

11:45 AM, Aug 15

I came out of the Boston subway system after taking the long way around to get to the Kendall/MIT stop. It’s raining, and I enter a building where I can get my first full meal, which is connected to a bookstore called the MIT co-op. There is a food court [...]

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Keyboards and keypads I

strider — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:00:44 PDT

I have had a problem with dust, hair, and dirt accumulating on my keyboard, going in between and under keys thus and over time the keyboard gets increasingly difficult to use, even with compressed air. Elephant adds a silicone covering over the actual keyboard. The form-fitting layer is completely removable. Cleaning it is a [...]

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[Media Monday] Cheesy vintage video from Toto

strider — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 21:00:47 PDT

Rosanna, a 1982 single by a collection of former studio musicians called Toto would not be here due to the overall cheesiness of the video, but for a few overwhelming facts:

The drum beat on the song, called a “half-time beat”, is a notoriously difficult one to play, but played gracefully by drummer Jeff [...]

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[Media Monday] – Getting Sound equipment on the uber-cheap

strider — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:00:43 PDT

This photo shows my sound equipment used for generating voice recording on a laptop.

The most prominent devices on the photo are the pair of Optimus microphones which have no hint of XLR connectivity, and just have quarter inch jacks. I bought them 10 years ago, and they have hardly been used.

There is [...]

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So what if happiness is a mental illness?

strider — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:00:38 PDT

It is rather amazing that through all I have experienced, that these truths were the deepest and most enduring. They are also the most comforting. Simply keeping a balanced life, and looking on the positive side of things. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Perhaps happiness and satisfaction with one’s life, however humble [...]

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HP 35s Calculator Annoyances III

strider — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:00:49 PDT

I keep saying how much of a fan I am of the RPN mode, and have used it on and off since high school. But times have changed, and HP needs to find a way to manipluate the logic of repeated calculations to make RPN still come out on top, but I feel discouraged, [...]

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