Start your needles….

I am very excited, because tomorrow I’m taking part in my first Sock Wars! It’s a single-elimination tournament where you assassinate your target by knitting and sending them a pair of socks before your assassin sends a pair to you. The sock pattern and target dossiers are being sent out tomorrow. I’m not the fastest knitter in the world and with it coming into finals, I’ll be pretty happy if I make it into the second round on my first time out. I went out and got my yarn and checked my gauge yesterday. I’m using this Sockotta yarn from … Continue reading Start your needles….

Someone in Spain is dress shopping…

I’m a fan of the different cool uses of Google Maps that keep popping up around the internet. ThisNext is a sort of weird shopping guide site that uses a social networking approach to shopping recommendations. It is not clear to me if there is a limitation on what products are covered or particular source that the products recommended are from. A lot of the products seem random. The site sells itself though with the worldwide shopping map that overlays images of and links to products that people are browsing through the site at that time, showing where in the … Continue reading Someone in Spain is dress shopping…

Mindbending

I wish I could remember where I saw a link to this odd little jigsaw puzzle, but it is very cool. Especially once you scroll down and read the directions and realize you can rotate pieces as well as drag them around the board to fit them together. It is both cute and fun. If you like that type of little game, or enjoy “brain teaser” type puzzles, the site as a whole is worth a browse. A lot of the games are fairly old, but the Flash implementations are quite nice. The I/O Puzzle is also worth a look … Continue reading Mindbending

Where *is* our time travel technology?

I have seen the short story Wikihistory linked from a lot of places (first, I think, from Boing Boing) and finally went and read it – it’s short and amusing so you should check it out too. It does a nice job playing with online conversation structures; I think that this format for this particular story lays out all of the information you want to know about this scenario in a very compact way. I do not think I would have wanted a longer-form version of the story. I definitely like the use of the “n00b” as a justification for … Continue reading Where *is* our time travel technology?

Another Open Source Summer

If you are a student, like writing code, and are still looking for something interesting to do with your summer, you might want to check out Google Summer of Code 2008. Students are paired with mentoring organizations to participate in various open source development projects. The list of organizations interested in mentoring students has been recently posted, including summaries of the types of projects they may be interested in supporting. The program FAQ answers most of the key questions; student project proposals are due at the end of the month.

Flames! Gears! Excitement!

I was just notified [Thanks T!] that ESPN wants to sponsor a Collegiate BattleBots Championship and I am semi-seriously wondering if there is any interest among my students because WOW would that be fun. It doesn’t look like there have been any competitions since 2005, so they are still investigating whether there is enough interest to actually do this. It actually makes me wondering if there is some sort of tie in with Doonesbury – this week they are rerunning their awesome series from last January where Alex is off at MIT competing in a robot competition. Go check it … Continue reading Flames! Gears! Excitement!

Simple but addictive

In between tackling chunks of the pile of work in front of me, I’ve been poking and dragging my way through the levels of Untangle. It’s an insanely simple game – dots are connected with lines, and you drag the dots around until none of the lines cross. I am up to level 18 out of 20 and it is getting quite hard, but there is still something soothing about the combination of luck, logic, and trial-and-error that seems to work best for tackling the puzzles. Plus, it’s a pretty game, if you ignore or hide the chat window in … Continue reading Simple but addictive

Dinner Reruns

There are a ton of memes like this, but I’m thinking of keeping my weblogging juices flowing by taking part in these Weekend Assignment weblogging prompts. It is contrived, but looking back the questions seem pretty good. This week we are asked: Weekend Assignment #201: To promote a new cooking show, a TV station is going to pay you $500 to eat the same basic meal every day for a week, prepared with only minor variations by their on-screen host. What’s on the menu? Extra credit: Do you tend to eat the same thing all the time anyway? For me, … Continue reading Dinner Reruns

It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your data is?

I’ve been keeping track of interesting stories about security over the past couple of months for my intersession course, mostly ones that I have found through Slashdot, BoingBoing and/or Digg. As part of the process of selecting which ones will make it into the final week of the course and which ones will not, I thought I would put the whole list here, mostly without comment. If you notice anything that seems particularly interesting (especially if you happen to be in my course!) let me know and it will probably move up my list of things to discuss. Last year’s … Continue reading It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your data is?