Archive for October, 2007

Bus Number

Posted: 31 October 2007 by Jason Adams in Uncategorized
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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 [...]

Obligatory Hallowe’en Post

Posted: 31 October 2007 by Jason Adams in Uncategorized
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So a lot of websites are posting their kids in their Spiderman outfits or an array of really cool pumpkins or just changing their logos.  Me?  I stick to dogs.  This lady brings a mastiff around school all the time and today she had him dressed up as a flying monkey from the Wizard of [...]

ACL 2008 Student Workshop CFP

Posted: 31 October 2007 by Jason Adams in Uncategorized
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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.

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 Uncategorized
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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 Uncategorized
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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 Uncategorized
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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 Uncategorized
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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 [...]

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 Uncategorized
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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 [...]