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 [...]
Archive for October, 2007
31 Oct
ACL 2008 Student Workshop CFP
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.
31 Oct
The Bush’s Mental Health
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 [...]
30 Oct
Limbo
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 [...]
29 Oct
Peak oil has come and gone
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. [...]
29 Oct
Wherefore art thou Dark Matter?
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 [...]
28 Oct
Simple Cellular Automata
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 [...]
28 Oct
Photodriving Pittsburgh
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 [...]
28 Oct
Rube Goldberg and Automata
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 [...]
