Author: AMH

That evil textile monopoly….

By AMH

Via Boing Boing, this article draws a pretty awesome analogy between the RIAA and 17th century French button-makers who worked to block individual innovation to protect their business interests. The quote that is getting passed around the most on this topic as the demand by button-makers to be able to search people’s homes to make sure that they were not using buttons made from outside the guild. Note that the analogy does not (from what I see at least) argue that individuals should be able to rampantly appropriate others’ ideas without due credit and compensation, or argue for the theft … Continue reading That evil textile monopoly….

Automated Grading

By AMH

It’s just a short little blurb, but report is that starting this year the MCATs are going to be graded automatically using an artificial intelligence system, rather than human graders. The MCAT, like the GRE, moved to a computerized format recently to allow more frequent administration. The essay section, though, was graded in much the same way with multiple readers scoring the writing samples and a degree of consensus being required for the final score. The claim is that the AI system is more consistent than human scorers. I’ve certainly read that human scoring can vary widely. The AI system, … Continue reading Automated Grading

Cute Cute Cute

By AMH

Oh yeah – the little clutch purses whose instructions are given here are soooo cute and also look like the perfect way to use up a moderate amount of a pretty fabric, though the designer comes at it from more from an interest in using the cool handles you can find in craft stores. The pattern seems very scalable – make a little change purse or a full sized bag – or a set of both. I’ve got some awesome purple plaid silk that I’m going to made a box-pleat summer dress out of, and I’m thinking the scraps would … Continue reading Cute Cute Cute

Building Cool New Stuff

By AMH

I was looking for fun mini-projects last night over at instructables (I made this Simple Circuit Game today but with a buzzer instead of an LED during lab today – if you’re local stop by and play!) and along the way I discovered a ton of instructions for office toy guns, mostly out of K’Nex. The video on the K’Nex Gatling Gun is really awesome. But then again, K’Nex are awesome. At the least, I want to dig mine out and make a K’Nex iPod dock.

Meta-visualization

By AMH

Relating to another colleague’s intersession class, I lost a lot of time browsing the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods [via Boing Boing]. The periodic table itself is pretty nice, though I found it distracting that the abbreviations were not the expected abbreviations from the periodic table of elements. What would be great would be if, in addition to getting examples of the visualization methods on mouse-over, clicking took you to a page describing the method in detail. I also find their distinction between data and information visualization interesting – they seem to use a distinction similar to the one I … Continue reading Meta-visualization

Are you a robot?

By AMH

I’ve got robots on the brain this month, so this link via J (who got it from Digg I think) is apropos – old advertisements with robots in them. I actually think that the first one on the page is my favorite; it strikes me as ironic….

Drinking the kool-aid…

By AMH

Actual Conversation: Them: Guess what tomorrow is? Me: What? Them: MacWorld keynote! Me: (sarcastic) wooo Them: It is wooo! That’s when we find out what all the cool new gadgets are. Me: It’s like a cult. Them: Yeah – tomorrow is when we hear from our leader! Me: I hope he doesn’t tell you all to take multiple wives….

Back to school

By AMH

It’s the first day of the semester for me, tackling a new class which I am both insanely excited about and having the requisite new-class jitters over. One of the things I love about my school is having the opportunity to totally obsess about just one course for a month – I’ve been lucky and always been able to teach something I was interested in obsessing about for a whole month, which I suspect makes all the difference. But, I’m pretty scatter-brained this morning because of that, so today I’ll just bring you a smattering of random fun stuff – … Continue reading Back to school

A resurgence of vi?

By AMH

Building on yesterday’s post about the command-line interface, the same sorts of interface concerns play into this discussion of the renewed relevance of the vi input model when using a laptop [via Digg]. The argument is that, without a mouse and with generally poorly placed navigation keys, editing that centers on the home keys and minimizes complicated key combinations is ergonmically desirable. This actually relates nicely to an article I saw linked over at Slashdot about motivations behind the design of vi based on an interview with its creator Bill Joy. The liimiting factors back then were certainly different than … Continue reading A resurgence of vi?

GUI v CLI

By AMH

I had a conversation a few weeks ago about frustrations that current OSs, or at least their documentation/presentation, overly obfuscate the ability of users to have a command-line interface as wll as a graphical one, reflecting an invalid, in my opinion, assumption that only hard-core power users would ever want a command-line interface. Over at Lifehacker, there is a really nice analysis of the current incarnation of the command-line embedded in our GUIs. Intuitively, this model of the merging of the two approaches to interaction feels right to me. A trivial example of my own habits is that I always … Continue reading GUI v CLI