Author: AMH

Embracing Inaccuracy

By AMH

The generally entertaining The Daily WTF recent had a nice, more serious than usual article Documentation Done Right about the role of documentation in the development process. Particularly relevant to my Systems Analysis class is the discussion at the end about the role of diagramming, as well as the acknowledgement of the dangers of documentation when that documentation is inaccurate. Provocative quote: “Less complete documentation is generally better all around.” But if you haven’t thought a lot about why documentation is necessary in the world of “self-documenting code”, it’s worth a look. And the weblog in general is a fun … Continue reading Embracing Inaccuracy

Start of the Semester Inspiration

By AMH

“When I talk to young designers, and I talk to people who want to be designers, I tell them, “Here is the truth: The truth is, you are never going to make your dream game, so get over it. Okay? You are going to work really, really hard, you are going to go to school, you are going to spend time learning, you are going to write papers, you are going to intern someplace where you work very hard, and when you finally get your first job, it’s going to be designing levels for Hello Kitty.” And what I look … Continue reading Start of the Semester Inspiration

Merge sort is my favorite

By AMH

Making a note of this so I don’t lose it before the next time I teach Data Structures – a couple of videos not just visualizing but also translating the intermediate states of sorting algorithms into audio, it appears by playing a note corresponding to the magnitude of each data item in the collection being touched as the sort proceeds. We use visualizations like this in class already, but the audio adds a fun wrinkle.

Back to school – spend some money, make some money

By AMH

It is time for back to school sales, services and advice to start flowing, and a few things have caught my eye recently. There is always interest in saving money on textbooks, and the Lifehacker guide to saving money on textbooks isn’t a bad start, though the comments do rake them over the coals a bit for suggesting photocopying as a valid option. But you get the standard list of sources for new and used books and a wonderful reminder at the bottom to make sure that you are getting the correct book. If at all possible – remember to … Continue reading Back to school – spend some money, make some money

Heat Maps on Demand

By AMH

My attention was caught by this description of a company that provides cheap eyetracking for websites on contract. As the article says, full eyetracking studies, whether you do them yourself or contract a consultant, are quite expensive. The title suggests that they keep the costs down because they are using webcams – but I suspect the real savings aren’t the cheap hardware, it is that they have developed a bank of testers who can use their own computers at home and get paid for viewing websites and sending back the data. The way the GazeHawk system then works is that … Continue reading Heat Maps on Demand

Bolo! Review

By AMH

On a friend’s recommendation, I just read David Weber’s Bolo! this weekend, and from early in I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading a modern variation on Asimov’s I, Robot (the short story collection, which has little relation to the movie by the same name), and I enjoyed it almost as much. Some of the similarities are apparent on the surface. Both are a collection of stories about a particular universe, and focusing on the development of a particular technology within that universe over centuries. In both cases the technology is robotic – for Asimov, classic robots, and … Continue reading Bolo! Review

Skim and Go

By AMH

This latest variation on ATM skimmers is terrifying: gas pumps are being found with skimmers installed inside them, some with Bluetooth capabilities so that the thieves do not have to do anything more than park near the pump to get the card data off them. Krebs on Security has some good information on this new twist on ATM skimmers, as well as a few photos. I don’t even know what the advice for the average consumer is here. With ATMs, you can recommend that people use machines they are familiar with and pay attention to if they appear to have … Continue reading Skim and Go

Two Winchester Books

By AMH

Based on how much I enjoyed “The Professor and The Madman”, I have read two more books by Simon Winchester in the past few months: “The Map that Changed the World” and “The Man Who Loved China”. Both continue the theme of tracing the life of a researcher who embarks on an immense project cataloging some portion of human knowledge in minute and exhaustive detail, often to their own personal detrement along the way. “The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology” covers the creation of an exhaustive geological map of England and, along … Continue reading Two Winchester Books

More thoughts on video games

By AMH

I’ve read a couple of interesting videogame related items in the past few weeks – it is times like this that I wish I could assign followup reading to students after they leave a class. I liked this weblog post about recent research into the correlation between videogames and violence not just for the links to some current research, but because of the critiquing of the papers and the general conversation about video game violence going on right now. While I’m not entirely on board with the post’s undercurrent of sceptibility about any psychological research, there are some really interesting … Continue reading More thoughts on video games

Escher Subs

By AMH

It is nice when a little thing that has been done wrong for so long will start being done right. Case in point, I was actually mildly excited to read that after doing it wrong for years, Subway will start tessellating their cheese triangles worldwide starting July 1, which is silly because I maybe get a sub there once or twice a year max. But now I won’t have to live with the knowledge that every time I drive past a Subway there are people in there making subs with asymmetric cheese distribution.