I am taking a History class that has an online component and is taught in a computer lab with Internet access. The teacher lectures while everyone looks at myspace, checks their email and basically does anything to avoid actually learning. This can be distracting, but is bearable.
Enter Flash games.
Imagine the sound of a spacebar being hammered between ten and twenty times a second followed by hushed jubilation in the form of, “Yes!” and, “All right!” Next, picture this happening every thirty seconds for ten seconds at a time. Now picture this going on for five minutes with no obvious signs of stopping! Something had to be done.
I tried for three of these attempts to give him the crook eye, but he wasn’t looking in my direction. He was too busy concentrating on irritating me to notice me staring at him. By this point I noticed the student next to me shaking his head incredulously. Knowing that I wasn’t the only perterbed pupil in the classroom boosted my confidence. It was at the precise moment that I felt this surge of assertiveness that keyboard crusher happened to glance in my general direction. Without any conscious thought I let loose with a crook-eyed head shake with shoulders hunched and palms turned upward immediately joined by mouthing the words, “What are you doing?”
The student to my left that had once shared in my frustrated head-shaking immediately went stiff and almost magically removed himself from the situation. It was his reaction that started my paranoia. Had I overdone it? The kid in the row behind me didn’t look amused by my harsh reproof. He was sitting next to at least one good friend who had seemed to be enjoying his role as spectator until I ruined it for him. I began to feel ill. I only knew one other person in the class, and she was nowhere near me at the time, so I emailed her. I was hoping she might check it, see my dilemma and offer backup in case of emergency. She was too busy learning to find my plea for help.
The hammering of the keyboard had stopped, but the hammering in my head was just beginning. I thought I had met my objective, but I was still not able to concentrate and learn. I waited until class was over and pretended to be working on an assignment at the computer. I was fearing eye contact as I worried that that may act as a catalyst for the punks who saught my suffering. I waited five long minutes. I mustered the courage to chance a look back; they were gone.
I packed up my belongings and was on my way. I watched my back during the long walk across campus and to my car. I will see them again on Thursday. I only hope that they don’t remember me.
I am considering starting a petition requesting the removal of Flash plugins from all lab computers.
My Dad, my half-brother Matthew, Krissy, and I went to the San Diego Zoo today. I hadn’t been there since I was in grade school. That was when our school got banned from returning because some kids got caught stealing stuff in one of the gift shops. The thing I remember most from that day was spitting from the Skyfari and trying to hit the tiger pen. We were mad that the designers of the tiger’s enclosure had made the most comfortable spot for the tiger to rest as for away from the viewing glass as possible and he was out of view the entire time we were there.
Today was better, although the food was disappointing. It tasted like school cafeteria food, but cost as much as a pretty good restaurant. I know that was imitation cheese, you guys. Why be so cheap?
If I go again, I’ll bring my own food. It was a lot of fun, and even though it’s a bit pricey at least I know I’m helping to keep the place running. Living so close to attractions like this is great, and I take it for granted too often.
Krissy finally got her new glasses after almost a month of waiting for the factory to get done making the lenses for them. They are a new type of lens apparently based on technology developed for laser eye surgery. There is a device that measures the irregularities of your retina and then lenses are made that correct for these unique differences. The brand name is iZon and there are only a few optometrists around the country that are using this technology.
Of course, troche I know that what you really want to know is, “What does she look like in glasses?” Well… something like this!
I was looking at “Weird Al” Yankovic’s album “Poodle Hat” on Amazon.com today and couldn’t help but be reminded of that old Sesame Street song “One of These Things is Not Like the Others.” This is what it said:
Customers who bought titles by Weird Al Yankovic also bought titles by these artists:
I find it increasingly preposterous that the BIOS updates I want to install are distributed in the form of executables with floppy disc images buried within them. I really would find it a lot more useful if they would allow you to download just the image files. Then I’d be able to use dd on *NIX machines to write floppies.
Of course, this is all rather interesting considering that the laptop I wish to flash to BIOS on doesn’t even have a floppy drive, but that’s another point altogether.
Dasher is an amazing technology for inputting text in the absence of a keyboard interface. When I saw this for the first time it just blew me away. From their website:
Dasher is a zooming interface. You point where you want to go, and the display zooms in wherever you point. The world into which you are zooming is painted with letters, so that any point you zoom in on corresponds to a piece of text. The more you zoom in, the longer the piece of text you have written. You choose what you write by choosing where to zoom.
Dasher is being developed by the Inference Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.
This really has to be tried to be understood well. I believe an interface very similar to this will be finding its way onto handheld devices in the very near future. It’s currently in active development for handheld devices and there are videos of Dasher being demonstrated on an iPaq.
As if this functionality weren’t enough, the team is also working to develop mechanisms for people with disabilities to reach high-speed and high-accuracy levels by innovating multiple interfaces to control Dasher including tracking eye-movements, using large buttons, and breathing as an input method.
When visiting in Las Vegas at the Fremont Street Experience I was amazed by the hourly spectacle of light and sound projected onto the world’s largest video screen. The video screen is only in use once an hour for about seven minutes, though. Even more amazing than the video projection was the spray painted artwork of a man whose name, I must admit, I failed to learn. Below is a video of him practicing his craft.
Well, I’ve arrived in Las Vegas without critical incident. I happen to have realized my mind is becoming feeble. I don’t know if it was because I was tired or just excited to be leaving, but I have discovered that I can’t remember anything anymore.
Krissy and I stayed the night in Barstow. I learned quickly that a “data port” is a fancy name for a telephone jack in the wall. My laptop’s modem doesn’t yet have Linux drivers released for it so that precluded anything useful from happening that night. I popped in my wireless card and fired up kismet to look for nearby access points; there were none. I was sitting on the bed and wanted to conserve energy, so I popped out the wireless card and layed it on the bed. I later moved the laptop to the desk.
Later that night Krissy realized we had left nearly all of our dress clothes for church back home. I was less than pleased that I had hidden them where we would easily forget them, but quickly realized everything would nonetheless be okay. And everything was okay. We visited some outet stores in Barstow that happened to have some really smoking deals on exactly what we needed. We then continued on our merry way to Las Vegas.
My Grandparents’ new place is huge compared to the place I grew up in. There are really high ceilings and I think they’re really happy with it. I wanted to post to this blog so I proceeded to set up the wireless router I had brought with me so I could get on the Internet in the living room of the house. Then I realized the wireless card was not in the laptop where I almost always keep in, even in transit. I frantically scoured my backpack and my pockets. I ran out to the car fearing the worst. Krissy hadn’t seen it, and I knew all along where it was: blending into the colorfully cheap Motel 6 bedspread in Barstow. We had two beds in our room because it costs the same as having only one and at the same time gives you a larger room.
So I’ve already wasted nearly $80 replacing clothing I already had and now I’ll have to fork over another $30 to replace the wireless card I so deftly left for a confused cleaning lady to toss in the trash or give to her manager.
Tomorrow is the big day. Spring Break came just as Krissy got some extra floating holidays suddenly. We’re going to be spending Easter with Grandmother and Grandfather at their new house in Las Vegas.
We plan on stopping in Barstow and looking around for anything interesting to stop and do on the way. I’ll report on what we found and if it was entertaining or enlightening.
