Other names for a railroad caboose are crumb box, brain wagon, bazoo wagon, strawberry patch, and loose cage.
Monthly Archives: February 2005
We offer free next day shipping!
I just completed ordering a product from a website which claimed “free next day delivery!”. “Golly”, I think to myself. “It will be nice to have this gadget sooner rather than later.” I eagerly click, and imagine the box being here on Friday.
Just got the confirmation email. The item (mind you, not built to order or anything) is scheduled to ship on Feb 9, and should be delivered on Feb 10. Next Thursday. Sigh.
I imagine that I could use a similar tactic to write my own operating system in a single day. Expect delivery sometime in 2030.
Addendum: Allright, I’m too grumpy. Checking their status again reveals that they have shipped it today! Woohoo! Tomorrow!
The Mac Mini as a Server: Good idea?
Over at Flutterby!, Dan Lyke was baiting comment by suggesting that you could do better than a Mac Mini for a small server. I’ll try to bait some comments out by asserting the same thing: small servers like this one are pretty cost effective, and if what you really want is a server, FreeBSD or any of a number of Linux variants will foot the bill nicely.
If, on the other hand, you want to run iLife, by all means, get the Mac Mini.
The Campfire Blog > Restored photo of Ulysses S. Grant
The Campfire Blog has a nice example of what you can do with Photoshop and some historic photos from the Library of Congress website. Neat!
Holy Crap!
While testing MSN Search using my name, I found Topics in Animation: The Pinscreen in the Era of the Digital Image which includes a reference to my public domain raytracer. Who knew?
Decoding Why Few Girls Choose Science, Math (washingtonpost.com)
Stories like this one have been making the rounds, probably in response to the unfortunate remarks which Harvard University President Lawrence Summers made last month that suggested that innate differences between men and women might be responsible for the differences that the two sexes demonstrate in math and sciences.
Unfortunately, in all of the these stories that I have read, they neglect one thing which seemed obvious to me:
Teachers and scientists say that there are greater differences in learning styles within each sex than there are between the sexes and that any school or teacher that doesn’t approach students as individuals is missing the mark.
The problem with bad schools (of which there are plenty) and bad educational practices (ditto) is that they try to take the shortcut and stereotype the failures and successes of individual students by some overly simplistic indicator. “Girls aren’t good at math because they are more social.” “Boys are less afraid of being wrong.” “Girls are collaborative.” “Boys are programmed for conflict.”
There are certainly lessons to be learned. Every teacher should examine his actions and try to decide whether his actions are somehow biased towards outcomes for any of his students. Every child should enjoy an atmosphere where they are welcome and encouraged. How much should we do? All that we can, and all that they need, for each individual student.
Scripting iTunes on Windows with Python
The Lonely Lion has a small snippet of Python that adds files to iTunes using the COM interface. Could be useful.
How?
How in the world does this book get to be ranked #15 on amazon.com?
Truly, the end times must be upon us. Or, they would be if I believed in such nonsense.