Author: AMH

Miscellanea, November 2025

By AMH

Messenger: Beautiful little browser game where you travel a tiny world delivering messages and packages. Fully playable in a short sitting. Bringing this pair of stories to my security class this week as a fun palette cleanser before final exams: Cryptographers Held an Election. They Can’t Decrypt the Results. and Magician forgets password to his own hand after RFID chip implant. Life lessons that key management is hard. Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models is also fun (and summarized by Schneier) “The sight of a person dressed as Batman led to a nearly doubled … Continue reading Miscellanea, November 2025

Miscellanea, September/October 2025

By AMH

Late September/early October brought a combination of work travel and midterm grading so we’re just rolling a couple of months of miscellanea together here rather than getting anxious about a self-imposed structure. So a bit of a longer miscellanea post than usual! I liked House of Mirth decently well so I clicked through on the article It’s Okay to Hate The House Of Mirth and then the opening grabbed me with something interesting way beyond what one things of House of Mirth: “What kind of reader does this book want me to be? When you start with this question, you’re taking … Continue reading Miscellanea, September/October 2025

Miscellanea, August 2025

By AMH

This is the first I’ve come across the Tiny Awards recognizing “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web”. Voting for 2025 will be over by the time I post this so we can check in who the winner is. The 2024 winner One Minute Park is a collection of 60 second videos of parks from around the world (they’re still accepting submissions for more parks). It’s much more appealing and relaxing to get sucked into than the similar-in-words-only experience of getting stuck in an endless stream of videos on social media. Daily web game of the month: Clues … Continue reading Miscellanea, August 2025

Latest Socks – Bamboo Anklets

By AMH

I just finished up my latest pair of socks, a short set of ankle socks in a bamboo rayon yarn. The pattern is based on elements of Wendy Johnson’s Socks from the Toe Up which is my go-to source for basic elements of setting a toe and turning a heel (though, I still always seem to have an extra row half the time I’m turning a heel). I kept it simple with just a K2,P2 rib as the pattern and made the pair with just a single skein of the Lion Brand Truboo yarn from the label in the photo. … Continue reading Latest Socks – Bamboo Anklets

Future of classroom design

By AMH

We’ve been having talks in my department about what our wish list for classroom spaces might look like, and we’ve consistently been interested in a “design studio” type space that could be used for collaborative student work and some smaller, design-focused classes. This industrial design case-study of a “cafe classroom” has some cool features and also raises some questions about how this type of classroom would fit into a larger academic building. The combination of seating, writing surfaces, and whiteboards with lots of different heights and configurations is appealing for letting students figure out what type of space they need … Continue reading Future of classroom design

Miscellanea, July 2025

By AMH

Detailed photo essay of making the table for the G7 summit – nice details about the challenges with the oak veneer and the design for hidden power and data ports that can be updated as technology evolves. I am unspeakably bad at Hued. I have bad intuition for how hue and saturation change a color, and for guessing what the hint text is referring to. Turning on fine-tune mode with the crosshairs in the lower left helps a bit. This got covered all over, but here’s Soundslice’s accounting of their decision to add a feature to their software because ChatGPT … Continue reading Miscellanea, July 2025

Thinking about what kinds of rigor are needed

By AMH

A couple of articles have been bouncing around in my mind, both of which touch on issues I’m sure most educators are thinking about, but where I feel like the most interesting part of the conversation starts at the point the articles end. The first article from Inside Higher Ed, New Data Shows Attendance Fosters Student Success, initially caught my attention because of the sheer obviousness of the statement and curiosity about what more there might be to say about this. If my class sessions don’t foster student success, what am I even doing! The article, of course, is more … Continue reading Thinking about what kinds of rigor are needed

Miscellanea, June 2025

By AMH

This video made me laugh enough I watched it twice, and then a bunch of others from the series, which were also good but not as funny as How to Fix Grocery Stores from Hank Green. This made the rounds thoroughly, but this is exactly how I consumed the weather forecast for years and I would absolutely install a widget that ran this on my phone. Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Aviation is a variation on the falsehood programmers believe about names. While the names piece is great, the aviation variation is interesting because, on its surface, air travel is an … Continue reading Miscellanea, June 2025

Project report: Raglan Pullover

By AMH

I took a step away from my lace knitting projects and knit up a quick sweater for myself this spring. I managed to finish it while there was enough cool weather to wear it a couple of times and it’s a comfy, slightly oversized fit. The pattern is Lightweight Raglan Pullover from the Purl Soho yarn site. The yarn is Big Twist Boho in color Lakeside Lodge – it’s a Joann Fabrics brand I had never used before but picked up in one of their store clearance sales. It’s an 80% acrylic, 15% wool, 5% mohair blend listed as “super … Continue reading Project report: Raglan Pullover

A big agree that “the homework is the cheat code”

By AMH

Just the title of this long blog entry caught my eye, because YES!!! The Homework is the Cheat Code indeed! The content didn’t disappoint. Written by someone teaching CS at the graduate level at U Chicago, I’m not sure if I’m shocked or relieved that they’re seeing similar patterns in their students as we’re seeing at the undergrad level. Maybe the most honest reaction is that if we want to graduate students who are job- and grad school-ready, addressing these tendencies has to be central to undergraduate education (bold mine): I get a lot more requests now for extensions on … Continue reading A big agree that “the homework is the cheat code”