Twenty years ago our blogger lost one of his pupils on the London Underground and didn’t even report the incident to the child’s mother or his headteacher… fast forward to the present day and it’s a very different story
A little old in Internet-time, but I just got around to reading it, and it’s a fun read with a very insightful conclusion that’s not “OMG look at kids and parents nowadays ughhhh”.
When I first read the title, though, I thought it was “the day I lost a child on YouTube”. THE HORROR
A long, detailed piece on Stanford’s history, its ties with the valley, and some interesting remarks by former president Gerhard Casper challenging some of Hennessy’s decisions. OLD CODGER FUZZIE VS. OLD CODGER (with boring textbook) TECHIE FIGHT
A couple more. Waiting for my new styluses (styli? steezes?) to arrive before I continue sketching, since the wife has commandeered mine for Draw Something.
On the second drawing: man, Kirby crackle is tough to do on Paper.
An interactive HTML game to help you become familiar with Vim commands. Very nicely done!
I found it a little frustrating to get through because I know the basics, but the player is made to “unlock” commands such as w and b. Worse, the first “maze” you navigate with hjkl encourages you to mash those buttons (can’t put a number in front to repeat commands). That said, though, very fun and great production values. “YIPPEE”, as they say.
For at least five years, we’ve been working with the same operating logic in the consumer technology game. This is what it looks like:
There will be ratings and photos and a network of friends imported, borrowed, or stolen from one of the big social networks. There will be an emphasis on connections between people, things, and places. That is to say, the software you run on your phone will try to get you to help it understand what and who you care about out there in the world. Because all that stuff can be transmuted into valuable information for advertisers.
Mike Zamansky on the recent spate of online programming education offerings, specifically the more “vocational” ones such as Codecademy:
‘The premise seems to be that anyone can code and that everyone should code. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I keep coming back to the question, “what’s the endgame?”‘
This post articulates the fear I’ve been having about trying to make programming more accessible to everyone: to what end? For users, is there any value in this knowledge? (Conversely, though, what’s the value in learning basic science and humanities for “users”, i.e. people existing in the physical world and society?)
John C. Welch, whose hilarious take on Lotus Notes kept me alive through some very dark times (i.e. when I had to use Notes), takes on Brin’s comments about a “closed web”.
