Categorized: January 2008 Archives

So obviously, my good intentions about blogging more often didn't work out so well upon returning to Hopkins-- but hey, life is complex. So what're the cool (seriously!) things that've been stealing my time away from the Blogoverse? * I spent a week in Chicago with Caitlin, which was a blast; got to see all the big museums, look at the Bean, eat really great food (including having pizza at the self-proclaimed "Inventor of the Stuffed Crust Pizza"), and generally relaxing. * I did a large number of interviews with all sorts of fun people. No, I won't say who they were all with, but I will say that all but one were quite enjoyable. (One was pretty terrible... but that's fine, as the company in question was highly sketchy at best. Note to recruiters: If you find my resume on Google, that's fine. If you find my resume on Google then cold-email me and get my name wrong (for the record, my name is spelled correctly on my resume)-- that's less than fine, but I understand. If you do all the above, *then* reveal that the company for which you're recruiting's mission is targeting spam by stealing personal information from social networking sites-- OK, that's not so good. Thank you, best wishes to you in your future lives, but no thanks.) * I spent a bunch of time developing the first part of a new syllabus for the Java lab course (the one I really teach, as opposed to the Java primary course, where the professor teaches and I just grade/hold office hours/etc.). Hopefully I'll be able to talk more about that soon; I'm still waiting for final approval on the new plan from my boss / the course professor. And now, classes have started at Hopkins; today's the third day of the new semester, because Hopkins has extraordinarily short semesters. This is my last semester with any undergraduate status, and it should be fun-- I'm taking all those courses I really should have taken before: * Operating Systems - Pretty much what you think it is. * Programming Languages - the department chair's introduction to life, the universe, everything, and OCaml * Digital Preservation - A cool one-credit seminar on techniques of keeping data around forever * Information Retrieval - A course on, basically, "doing neat things with the Internet as your data source." * Understanding the Supreme Court - my fifth Constitutional Law class, and my third at the Ph.D level-- with a professor I really enjoy * Computer Programming Workshop - this is just a name for, essentially, "creating a Java lab syllabus on the fly." But it should be quite enjoyable * Violin lessons, as always. I'm also enjoying all the stares, gasps, and cries of amazement every time I pull out my OLPC, which is coming with me to every class; not only do I get more battery life, a faster recharge time, and better WiFi than other laptops, but it also weighs nearly nothing and is indestructable-- entirely unlike most laptops. So it's a fun time. I *did* get the dreaded alt-key-stuck bug, but while I could have spent a month without the laptop and shipped it back to be fixed, I just used the power of Linux to implement the fix the OLPC people came up with, which works perfectly well (I didn't need a left alt key anyway). The other big OLPC advantage is that I can bring my laptop and sit in Starbucks for a few hours on occasion, since I have the OLPC's free year of T-Mobile WiFi-- I'm not sure I'd actually pay money for Internet in Starbucks, but it's quite nice simply to *have* it. And at the end of the year, who knows? Maybe I won't be able to live without it. That's all from me for now-- nerdy blog posts are upcoming, but first, I have to go sketch out how to best torture educate Java babies.

The first time I saw a mention of the "Hipster PDA," I thought it was ridiculous. "So it's just a bunch of 3x5 cards? How is that advanced organizational power? How will I do Google Maps on it? Or addresses? Or... anything? How is this not entirely lame?" Unfortunately, as I grow somewhat older (and more importantly, more distracted), I find that this (still quite) lame little device is just what I need-- and indeed, I've found it to be useful for a far longer period of time than any digital PDA I've ever used (including my really nice (at the time) Handspring Visor Platinum, now being used as a datebook for my father's scheduling conferences). So then, as a bit of background-- yes, the essential Hipster is just a bunch of 3x5 cards, bound together with a binder clip. You can add nicer holders, covers, pictures, special pens, whatever you want; part of the advantage over, say, a small planner is that you only need to include cards you actually want to use-- and if you realize that you aren't using one, just pull it out. I found an invaluable resource at DIYPlanner.com-- they have pre-created templates for 3x5 cards (and other forms of paper) to do all sorts of neat things-- write novels, make task lists, you name it. The other resource I find helpful is my GTDTiddlyWiki-- it's a one-page wiki (derived from the original TiddlyWiki) that you don't need a web server to host-- it's self-modifying code that uses javascript and can be run locally. The GTD part is the modification to be compatible with the "Getting Things Done" methodology-- which I don't really follow religiously, but their tools are nice. The really useful part of the GTDTiddlyWiki is that it can print "tiddlers" (the replacement for wiki pages) to 3x5 cards-- CSS sugar, but useful sugar nonetheless. This thing holds my task list on my computer, as well as my agenda, people I need to call, research goals-- whatever I need at the moment. So then, with those two tools and some playing in PhotoShop, here's the current contents of my HipsterPDA:

• Cover-- the DIYPlanner cover with my address and email, and the same cartoon self-representation I use everywhere else
• Agenda-- generated by the wiki
• Blue Divider-- The dividers are just me outlining a 3x5 card with a marker, the truly artistic solution :-)
• Task list-- this is usually two, sometimes three cards, generated by the wiki
• Research tasks--wiki
• Recruitment tasks (stuff about prospective internships, jobs, gigs, etc)-- wiki
• People I'm supposed to call-- wiki
• Green Divider
• A calendar (no boxes, as I have information on the agenda page-- just a quick reference as to what day of the month next Thursday will be)-- DIYPlanner
• A penalty guide cheat sheet for my Judging duties for Magic-- derived from the cheat sheet in the penalty guide itself
• A resume-- yes, seriously, a resume; I reformatted my resume (thank you, LaTeX) for 3x5, and I've actually handed this to employers; it's odd how often I meet people who ask me randomly for a resume, so now I just carry one at all times. It's surprisingly readable, considering how packed my normal resume is at 8.5x11)
• A shopping list that I add things to as I remember-- wiki
• Red divider
• A shuttle schedule for the Hopkins shuttle
• A MARC schedule, as if I ever had time to go to DC
• Back cover

All the covers and dividers have hard lamination, which was by far the most expensive part of the project; with it, the whole thing costs maybe $3-- I.E., 1/100th the cost of a PDA (or less!). It works pretty well for me-- whenever I think of something, I can write it down on the appropriate card as soon as I think of it, so that it might actually get remembered and done at some later date. Periodically (daily when I'm in school, weekly on vacation), I pitch the scribbled-on agenda and task list after disgorging their contents into the computer, then print off fresh ones, which makes sure I can actually *read* my tasks. :-) In addition, I have three DIYPlanner grid-printed index cards (for drawing charts, or playing games, whatever's necessary at the moment), and six blank cards for writing stuff on and handing to people, or making collections of information and sticking them into the PDA; again, whatever I need. That flexibility is extraordinarily helpful. For those of you (like my father) concerned about the geeky look of pulling out a binder-clipped thing in otherwise formal circumstances, Levenger sells really nice "Pocket Briefcases" designed for 3x5 cards, that are shiny black leather; while I was loathe to give up my binder clip at first, I have to admit, this works much better in a suit (for instance, while talking to the Governor). So: for just a bunch of notecards, this little thing works pretty well. It also works well in conjunction with my other tiny business things: my tiny laptop, and my tiny business cards. Life, as a micro cosmos! Entropy:

• Outstanding tasks: 14

In my last post, I mentioned an impending road trip; now that it, and its followup meetings, are handled, I can talk a bit about what was going on. Quinlan (my younger brother, now a sophomore in Politics at Yale) heard about the OLPC project and decided that it was wonderful-- and not only that, but that what really needed to happen was that Montana, with its low internet and computer access levels for children, high rural populations, and insufficient opportunities for collaboration in many schools, should have the same program. Off, then, we went to show the XO to a few people and see what they thought. Because my brother is not one to start small, our first meeting of the day was with the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and their educational advisor-- during which I got to take a fun picture of Governor Schweitzer with the XO's webcam (in the Lt. Governor's office, hence the sign on the door). We spoke for awhile about economic stimulus (a hot issue in this state), and about the possibility of turning even Montana's middle-of-the-road students into technological leaders (briefly: if students learn to write code as they learn to write papers, then we will have students who can write code as well as they can write English-- making our C students major technological people). He seemed excited about it-- and may, he said, make it a focus of his reelection campaign this year to give one XO to every first-grader in Montana, each year-- and let them keep it forever, to use in subsequent grades. From there, on to the MEA/MFT -- the state teachers' union. Their leader seemed to think that Montana wasn't ready to push real educational measures-- but he certainly agreed that the XO was, indeed, a powerful educational tool. His assistant seemed to be more confident in the goodwill of the legislature! Our last meeting of the day was set up by the Governor's office for us, and it was with the Office of Public Instruction, the state head of education. They were (as I would hope!) completely ecstatic about the possibility-- and on the spot, invented new uses for it that we hadn't thought of. For instance, in most of northeastern Montana, an entire school district might have only two or three children from the same grade, making collaborative possibilities limited; what if, instead of making school servers be for one school, we made them for one grade, so that the (say) 300 second-graders in the northeast 20 counties could all work together? Brilliant, say I-- and another way that Montana could greatly benefit from the XO. So then-- if the governor wants to make this a successful campaign message, what he needs is some support from the field-- legislators and educators. To that end, the day after the Helena trip, we had a party/demo at our house, with a variety of each there-- senators and legislators in addition to teachers, and even the head of the local school district for grades 7-12 was kind enough to join us. While the governor can look at this device and see a boost to education and thus the economy he leads, these teachers looked at this and saw immediate change for their students-- in the words of one Government teacher, "this device would be an answer to my prayers." She, of course, would not be the first to be able to teach with the device-- it would be 10-12 years before her students walked in with green laptops-- but even so, it was great to hear such support; and the same sentiment continued around the room. So then, what happens next? Well, we hope that everyone we talked to in the last week who is not a governor, OPI member, or MEA/MFT leader will write to those people and show them that there's support for a real change in Montana. If you live here, writing to your legislators would be great too. If we can show grassroots support for making Montana an educational leader, then this can really happen; there's nothing standing in its way other than apathy. The biggest talking points we found over the course of these meetings were:

• Educational tool-- teachers in every grade can teach with current events or online resources as is impossible now without every student having real computer access
• Research tool-- every grade writes reports, but many students don't have computers at home, putting them at a severe educational disadvantage
• Educational savings-- if every child has a laptop, we can do away with paper textbooks, which saves the state enormous amounts of money while simultaneously allowing the state to get more up-to-date literature. In addition, with every child having a laptop, we can stop spending money on computer labs that have only standard equipment, leaving more opportunity to get special equipment for extra opportunities
• Gifted/talented education-- students who can work beyond the class now have immediate access to the tools they need to carry their education beyond what the teacher is teaching at the moment
• Special education-- having individualized laptops lets each student with special needs work in an environment designed to let them maximize their potential, whatever it may be
• Collaborative opportunities-- between classrooms, schools, and districts, in ways that simply can't happen without the Internet being in every child's hands

It only takes a minute to call or email those 3-5 groups; I hope everyone takes the time to help make Montana a national leader in education.

Hello, friendly denizens of the Interweb. Having just woken up at 1:45PM (MST) after a really quite excellent New Year's party (including friends I hadn't seen in years-- and new, cool people I hadn't met before), I'm now camping out at a coffee shop to hang out and play with my XO without waking the rest of my family up. I met a really interesting older gentleman last night. I'd been told he had, at one time, worked in computers (a slight hazard of being a CS student in Montana: everyone introduces you to their friend/cousin/uncle/son/poodle who "works in computers," which can, and has, included such diverse career paths as mechanic, plumber, and cable repairperson; all of whom are interesting to talk to, but none in quite the same area as myself)-- so I sat down with him. As it happened, this man had not so much "worked with computers" before retiring as "invented the digital computer." He had been an original member of the IBM Stretch Project, which brought us a few important things that you might have heard of-- e.g., the byte! Anyway, we got to talking-- about his work, about the rise in the need for computer security work ("we never saw that coming"), and eventually, about the XO; as he'd seen the article on 60 Minutes (which I recently saw described as "catnip for old people," possibly one of my favorite quotes ever), but had naturally not seen the device in person. He was so taken with the five-minute demo I gave him (and just the experience of holding one in his hands) that he rushed downstairs to our big computers (the wireless in my house being sketchy, the XO does not always play well with it) to order one himself-- six minutes before the end of the Give One, Get One program. Presumably he'll have his own little green fun laptop before too long-- and in any case, he definitely counts as one of the coolest people I've met all year. Tomorrow's project: driving to Helena (the state capital) and back. More on that, I hope, later. Entropy: Number of outstanding tasks: 22.