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This is why I don’t blog as much as I used to

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

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Savage’s Theorem

Monday, April 14th, 2008

I don’t remember where or when, now, but but a few years ago I came across a piece of advice from a respected security expert that ran something like this: “If you treat your users like criminals, they will invariably prove you right.” Even though I don’t remember who said it or where (I think […]

AJCU/AUSJAL/DACE San Salvador Postmortem

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

P3150220.JPG*Originally uploaded by daggerquill
I just finished organizing the photos from the San Salvador trip, and that seems as good an excuse as any to finally talk a little bit bit about the conference itself. The problem, of course, is that I really don’t have a lot to say about it, mostly because I […]

GTD: Email in reverse

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

I’ve heard this email tip before, but I always forget to use it, even thought it’s probably the best single productivity enhancer I could implement on a daily basis. The advice? Write your email in reverse. If resist the temptation to just hit “reply all” and instead compose the body of the message, then write a […]

Volcano Movie

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

Volcano MovieNot quite sure what happened, but YouTube only took :15 of video before. The full movie is above.
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Last Day

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

P3150212.JPGOriginally uploaded by daggerquill
Last round of pics from San Salvador are up over at . We visited the volcano and the Mayan Ruins at Joyas de Cerén and San Andrés–as well as the chapel where Óscar_Romero was killed, and his home–yesterday. The Volcano was stunning, the ruins were fantastic, and the Romero’s home […]

Birdsong

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

BirdsongShort video (of nothing much) with the birdsong I was listening to outside at lunch today.Also posted a few pics
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In San Salvador

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

P3120095.JPGOriginally uploaded by daggerquill
This will probably be of interest to about two people (Hi, mom!), but I’m in El Salvador at the moment for the Annual Distance and Continuing Education (DACE) conference hosted by the association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Today was mostly travel, but I’ve posted a few things to the […]

Wanderlust

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Watching Lee Lefever’s ignite presentation from last Feb. Every time I see something that came out of the year that went into The World Is Not Flat, I’m more amazed.

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biblatex MLA patch

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

As part of finally getting a jump on my dissertation, I’ve been re-learning LaTeX and BibTeX, and learning biblatex, which seems to be the only thing that offers any hope of turning out LaTeX reports that are MLA formatted. Thanks to James Clawson and his bibtex-MLA package, “MLA BibTeX support” is no longer any oxymoron. […]

Best paper ever

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

Ok, maybe not. But certainly the best article I’ve read in an academic journal in a long time.
In Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther’s Original “Adventure” in Code and in Kentucky in the most recent number of Digital Humanities Quarterly, Dennis G. Jertz examines some of the differences between Will Crowther’s original “Colossal […]

Someone, please, standardize gamma

Thursday, October 11th, 2007

This an open complaint to every PC maker on the planet: get over it already.
I know that there are historical reasons for this nonsense. Decisions had to be made decades ago, and the mess of RGB, VGA, sVGA, etc. complicated things. Plotting RBG values in a VGA space is difficult, and people don’t agree […]

Identity and hypocrisy

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

I relaized today that I’m a hypocrite.
On the one hand, I’m a big proponent of OpenID. I think that tying identity to individuals, rather than services, makes sense and is the only sensible way to handle id management on the internet.
That doesn’t mesh well, though, with my general security policy and open derision […]

On Student Nature

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

I just had a conversation with an instructor about making his Blackboard course available to students. By default, we make courses unavailable to students because 1) not everyone uses an LMS for every course and 2) even the ones who do don’t need emails from nosy students wondering when materials will be posted. This particular […]

"On a plane bound for the sun”

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Listening to Magna Carta this foggy morning in honor of C.K. and Kris, who are supposed to be taking off for LA in about half an hour. Tara and I spent last night with them and Kris’s ever-gracious family for a farewell feast at Greorge Martin’s Firegrill in Rockville Centre. Great food, although I don’t […]

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