The third in a series of blog posts about my nearly-dead camera. Included in this series will be images that I haven’t posted to flickr. Don’t get all excited; they’re worse than my other shots. That’s why they didn’t even make the flickr cut.
Death of a camera: Part II
Death of a camera: Part I
Okay, so it seems as if I didn’t get raptured, but you know what did? My camera. This is the first in a series of blog posts about my nearly-dead camera. Included in this series will be images that I haven’t posted to flickr. Don’t get all excited; they’re worse than my other shots. That’s why they didn’t even make the flickr cut.
Grass ain't green
You may have heard about a Robert and Brenda Vale’s book Time to Eat the Dog?: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living
So the next time you think that green lawns are better than concrete jungles, just remember that each sliver of manicured grass is like a vampire fang extending out of the earth, draining precious resources.
My high school, homeless
Last week, my high school, the University of Toronto Schools (UTS), sent out an e-mail concerning the University of Toronto’s rejection of its site redevelopment proposal, effectively thanking UTS for all the fish. Though not entirely surprising, what was surprising was finding an article in the Globe and Mail about it this morning, prompting this off-cycle blog post. Not being half as eloquent as my academic siblings, I will try to keep it brief.
Fault tolerant… public transit
I was going to write a proper blog post today, but I got stuck in a good old fashioned TTC delay for about forty minutes this morning (this also means I haven’t proofread this post nor thought too much about the topic). Some poor folks that left later than I may have been held up by multiple delays. Indeed, a single delay on the TTC seems to invite further delays. I.e., though long delays aren’t (that) frequent, once there is one delay, multiple long delays seem to crop up. If the TTC has statistics on the number of chains of delays that appear within half an hour of each other, I’d love to see if I’m just experiencing a memory bias (also likely). However, I’m not here to rant today, but to put some thoughts down I had during my bonus (cramped) quiet time today.
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Nonereliable
If your pocket calculator made a mistake every ten operations, would you still use it? Or if the brakes of your wheeled-vehicle of choice only worked 99.9% of the time, would you keep using it? Or what if one in every thirty flushes resulted in your toilette backing up and surprise alligators streaming out? After I lost all the data on my phone, save the Chuck Norris-like audio files, I started thinking about what technology I’ve abandoned because it was so unreliable that it was more trouble than it was worth, or “nonereliable” ((Yes, this entire blog post exists just so that I can make this word a “thing”)). More generally, I began to wonder what makes things or people so unreliable that we’re better off without them. So, in the blog post, I’m just thinking aloud, considering a few examples of things I consider to be unreliable and trying to determine some factors that influence whether I continue to rely on them.
Thoughts on programming for all: Part IIb — Downsides
Last week, I discussed one of the downsides of students being taught to think algorithmically, even if they absorb it all. Unfortunately, just because students can pass an introduction to programming course doesn’t mean they have any understanding of code that they or anyone else has written. Whenever I teach a course, I make a point to mention cargo cult programming and warn students not to fall into that trap.
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Thoughts on programming for all: Part IIa — Downsides
In my last post, I wrote about some of the benefits of teaching programming as part of a general liberal arts education. However, I did express some new reservations about doing so which I explore further in this blog post. Having let quite a bit of time elapse since writing the first post, I’ve unfortunately forgotten a number of points I had intended to make. And now, I’m going to break up the downsides into multiple posts.
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Thoughts on programming for all: Part I — The Merits
I was reading Ira Basen’s article The algorithm method in the Globe and Mail and was reminded of the talk given last week by Professor Mark Guzdial of Georgia Tech as part of the DCS’ Distinguished Lecture Series. Guzdial argued that an introduction to programming, if not computer science, should be an essential part of a liberal arts education due to the way it reshapes the way one views computers, an increasing part of our everyday lives. While I agree with his position that being able to understand the algorithms that dictate whether one is approved for a mortgage or make predictions about climate change search could be useful and important, Basen’s article caused me to question and temper my own beliefs on the importance of introducing programming to undergraduates.
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