Personal Freedom
I’ve been dissatisfied with Ron Paul’s loss of the Republican Party ticket. I was hoping that this election cycle would finally be determined by the enthusiastic minority of libertarians. I was hoping that it would be the nomination which proved…
Stack Storage and Garbage Collection
Recently, I ran across Mike Vanier’s page containing his opinions on Scalable Computer Programming Languages. I agree almost entirely with his list: garbage collection no pointers or pointer arithmetic a foreign function interface to the C language static type checking…
Gestapofest
On Sunday, I went with some of my friends to enjoy a beer and celebrate Oktoberfest at Alpine Village. When I arrived I was dismayed to find the festivities closely guarded by a squadron of private security decked out in…
Booze Poetry: Three Philosophers
Last night I drank a Three Philosophers Belgian Style Blend (Quadrupel), and decided to write some more descriptive verse: Tonight, I drank up the philosophy of my three Beligan friends. Throughout the night we opined strongly about the mysticism of…
Rant: A breed of well-informed idiot
I’m not liking the peer review system right now. Since I’ve started grad school, I’ve had every one of my papers rejected. This leads me to the following theory: reviewers are some breed of well-informed idiot. They may be smart…
Bayesian Anthropic Law
This one has been on my plate for a long time. There is a popular argument for the existence of God/Creator known as the “Fine-Tuning Argument”. When looking at the universe, we notice that it has a specific construction which…
Notes: CSTA CS+IT Conference
Today I attended the 2012 ACM Computer Science and Information Technology Conference. It was focused heavily on the advocacy of teaching Computer Science material in the K-12 system. I most liked the fact that every session I attended have some…
Booze poetry
Last night, Ben and I conversed about mixing drinks. He pointed me to a drink containing Chartreuse VEP by the Cocktail Whisperer. Inspired by the opulent verbiage, I wrote the following: Not satisfied with an insubstantial vodka, I prowl around…
Lessons learned while teaching.
I may have only done three classes, but already I’ve rediscovered that there is one principal to working efficiently: automate and systematize whatever you can. Practicing this mantra allows a course to run much smoother, reducing headaches and prepratory time. I’ve compiled…
Keyboard Kraziness
Again, I spent far too much time looking at different keyboards. This time around, however, I can see that some people are progressing toward my latest ideal: The multi-touch surface with re-configurable keys. Mostly, I want to record all the…