I heard a great metaphor in my software engineering class today. We were talking about agile processes and somehow the issue of not relying too heavily on any one member came up. I think the term “heroic programming” was on the slide. It made me think of that one person who tries to take on [...]
Archive for October, 2007
Bus Number
Posted: 31 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: agile methods, bus number, heroic programming, humor, programming, scrum, software engineering
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ACL 2008 Student Workshop CFP
Posted: 31 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: acl, call for papers, cfp, computational linguistics, conferences, student workshop, workshops
The Call for Papers (CFP) is out for the Student Workshop at next year’s ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics) conference. I’ve been playing around with a couple of side ideas, it would be nice to have something to submit to this. We’ll see. Full CFP is below the jump.
The Bush’s Mental Health
Posted: 31 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: big corporations, endless war, evil politicians, insanity, iran, iraq war, kucinich, nuclear weapons, politics, presidential election
Dennis Kucinich is not afraid to say the thing many people are wondering. Is Bush freakin nuts? Does he really think World War III is going to break out if Iran gains the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons? Who are the sides? The middle east versus the rest of the world? Oh and [...]
Limbo
Posted: 30 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: ads, advertising, arnt jensen, art, artistic, games, gears of war, japanese horror, limbo, video games
I love how art evolves. Well sometimes I hate it, but usually it travels in interesting directions. One of my favorite new trends is art in video games, video games as art, and art in video game advertising. Andy Warhol helped bring art to pop culture and advertising. That hasn’t stopped thousands of hacks from [...]
Peak oil has come and gone
Posted: 29 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: energy, natural resources, oil, oil shortages, peak oil
There is only so much oil in the world. We are consuming it an alarming rate and that rate is increasing as China adds millions of new cars to the mix. According to the Energy Watch Group in Berlin, the peak point of oil supply passed us last year, much earlier than anticipated. Peak oil [...]
Wherefore art thou Dark Matter?
Posted: 29 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: astronomy, astrophysics, blagoblag, dark galaxy, dark matter, ether, modified gravity, space
Astronomers have theorized for years that there must be more mass out there than we can see. Based on the movements of galaxies, star systems, and gas clouds the number of stars just can’t account for it all. Enter dark matter. Matter we can’t see. Special stuff. Even a whole Dark Galaxy. On a side [...]
Simple Cellular Automata
Posted: 28 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: books, cellular automata, code, computer science, experiments, python, wolfram
So I’ve been reading A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica. It was hyped up big time back when he first wrote it, since he had gone silent for a number of years, hinting that he was about to do something big. So my middle little sister got me the [...]
Photodriving Pittsburgh
Posted: 28 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: cars, downtown, mobile pics, photodriving, photowalking, pittsburgh, pittsburgh english, pittsburghese, regional dialects
A recent journey through the Steel City. And yes I am a menace to public safety. This is downtown, which people from the ‘Burgh pronounce [dɑ:ntɑ:n] instead of the Standard American English [daʊn'taʊn]. If you’re not familiar with IPA, it’s more like donton. But not quite. It’s amusing. Pittsburgh English is also sometimes called Pittsburghese, [...]
Rube Goldberg and Automata
Posted: 28 October 2007 by Jason Adams in UncategorizedTags: automata, contraptions, cool stuff, fun, games, mouse trap, rube goldberg, steampunk
Rube Goldberg devices are quite fascinating. However, whenever I see one in practice (below), I am nagged the entire time by A) worry that something minor will go wrong, causing failure and a lot of work; B) wondering about how much time this wasted; and C) who is the person who has that kind of [...]
