Month: August 2007

T-minus 12 days

By AMH

Thoughts on the approaching semester: Syllabi – There are two philosophies here, it seems. Go bare bones – who are you, what book is being used, and when are the exams. Or go all out – detailed policies on late homeworks, attendance, academic honesty, etc. and day-by-day breakdowns of every class meeting for the entire semester. I’ve been veering more and more towards the later, but that is really not my style. I’m thinking about how I can start to streamline. For now, I think it is going to vary by courses – low-level courses predominantly taken by freshman or … Continue reading T-minus 12 days

No need for a hot glue gun either….

By AMH

If you know me, you may know that I fall pretty far on the information-privacy-over-convenience spectrum and can even be a bit paranoid. You would not be at all surprised that I liked this article on how to de-RFID your credit card. You might be interested that it involves a dremel tool and not a microwave…..

Assign yourself reading homework….

By AMH

DailyLit is an internet service that lets takes public domain or creative commons books and will email them to you a bit each day. I tried this once several months ago with a book that I was interested in reading but wasn’t sure I wanted to buy, and I really liked the enforced progress on making my way through the book. I only realized today that they provide a ton of books in a number of different genres. I am tempted to try to work my way through Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights on Woman this way, as it … Continue reading Assign yourself reading homework….

Road Trip!

By AMH

Ooooo! Oooooo! Details about the DARPA Urban Challenge are starting to come out, as the list of semifinalists has been announced along with the location: Victorville, CA. Qualifiers are the last week of October with the actual challenge on November 3rd. All of the expected teams seem to have made this cut. The photos of the site seem “urban” in only a loose sense – I pictured a site with tall buildings and less nature. I couldn’t find any indication of whether there would be a webcast of the event – I would love to go watch in person but … Continue reading Road Trip!

Internet Line Art

By AMH

There seems to be an online aesthetic of crude stick figures and line drawings, at least in my regular visits – typical would be the strip xkcd or the RPG Kingdom of Loathing. While the sketches here are significantly more artistic, the Myst-style game daymare town has a similar feel – minimalist sketches of a seemingly deserted world scattered with puzzles and items to collect [via not martha]. I haven’t played my way through the whole game (there doesn’t seem to be a save option and I unfortunately closed my browser window before finishing it) but I’m definitely going to … Continue reading Internet Line Art

Good thing they didn’t find sea monsters….

By AMH

I did a bit of a mental double-take when I saw this article about Russia planting a flag on the North Pole seabed to claim the land as Russian, because it seemed a century or two out of date. On reading it, it turns out that I am not the only one who thought so: In a record-breaking dive, the two craft planted a one metre-high titanium Russian flag on the underwater Lomonosov ridge, which Moscow claims is directly connected to its continental shelf. However, the dangerous mission prompted ridicule and scepticism among other contenders for the Arctic’s energy wealth, … Continue reading Good thing they didn’t find sea monsters….