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I was recently asked by someone who manages a librarian newsletter, why I thought that library tools did not make it in the Top 100 Tools for Learning by Jane Hart. I immediately replied that Google Scholar made it to the list. (source) Then I had to think back. What about the last time I used a…
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My wife before and after
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My wife, before and after losing 35 pounds. Note that she had two kids in the process. I think that the pictures are sufficiently impressive, I do not need to tell her how impressed I am.
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For all my adult life, the American dollar has been worth more than the Canadian dollar, often much more. No longer! We reached parity today. Maybe Americans should reflect on what this means for them that the value of their currency is going downward so fast. (Hint: stuff is going to cost more.)
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Canadian dollar reach parity with American dollar
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Google Presentations: What did I tell you?
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Less than a year ago, I predicted that Google would come up with a PowerPoint-like tool. They did it. And you know what? It is pretty good. Downes had this to say about it: What I’d really like is a slide library I can simply draw from to create presentations. But you can’t even drag and drop…
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My Experience as a proud Wii user
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No, you do not have to settle on a poor language because you have bad programmers
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We got our Wii on Friday. This was a busy week-end! First, some background. I have owned and played video games ever since I was twelve or so. My wife has played on the Nintendo first generation machine extensively as a kid too. I have two young boys who are still a bit too young for video…
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I do not entirely believe the title of this post. Clearly, if you hire subpar programmers, you have to settle for whatever programming languages they know. These days, it is probably going to be Java. And you could do a lot worse than choose Java. Or maybe it is PHP. Again, PHP is fine. The real…
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Smultron is, by far, the best text editor on MacOS. And it is free. Now, I just found out how to make it even better. One annoying problem with Smultron is that if the underlying file gets updated, Smultron often forgets to reload it. You can make this less likely. First close Smultron, then, in a…
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Microsoft apparently once used this video to promote early versions of Windows. It is really funny. Update: my wife does not think it is funny. Is there something wrong with me?
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Machine Smarter Than Naked Human Being?
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What a good question! Why can’t I search my attachments from withing Gmail? I think I have an answer, though people will not like it. I once worked as a project architect for an e-Health project. This was circa 1999 and we were trying to automate exchange of data between laboratories using some…
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I keep seeing the statement that machines can now beat human beings at chess. To me, this is like saying that a car can move faster than a human being. A naked, unassisted human being is pretty useless. Most of us, me included, would not last a month without tools, naked in the woods. I might not…
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Science and Technology Advice is Not Free
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Ever since I setup a web page, even before I even knew what a blog was, I have had the following odd experiences. People get in touch with me, in some way, typically by email (but not always), because they do not know how to do something and want me to help them. I am not talking about a business…
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(source) Paul Graham, the millionaire, Harvard graduate, Italy art school graduate, the same guy who wrote that Americans would keep the upper hand because all of the best professors are parked in a few small elite colleges instead of wasting their time all over the country teaching to lesser kids,…
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Thomas has evidently been reading David Weinberger. He points out that The Web folds space in a way that (most of) human knowledge is within our arm’s reach. He then asks how Frank Herbert would have felt. Myself, I always ask myself, whenever I read a pre-Web SciFi novel, whether the author…