Jaw-dropping Photosynth Demo

via ForeverGeek

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year,” wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

WOW. Watch this video to see why it is jaw-dropping.

BTW Seadragon is

an incubation project resulting from the acquisition of Seadragon Software in February [by Microsoft]. Its aim is nothing less than to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays to mobile devices, so that visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network.

If this sounds a little vague, consider the following four "promises" of Seadragon:

1. Speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects.
2. Performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen.
3. Transitions are smooth as butter.
4. Scaling is near perfect and rapid for screens of any resolution.

Learning Vs Practice

Here is a good example of the difference of learning something and being able to do something (after learning it).

Watch any of the 20 magic tricks from this. Now, do the trick.

[I'll wait. Go ahead, do it!]
































Are you successful in performing the trick?

If you are like me, the answer is "no".

In order to perform the magic, after knowing the secret, you need to practice.

In our discussion on learning, we seem to focus only on the learning part and have completely ignored the practice part which is at least equally important if not more.

Question: how can we encourage (or ensure) practice so that the skill will reach mastery level?

Which Word processor are you using?

Here is a review of 14 word processors including 3 online alternatives.

The author's (Zaine Ridling) summary:

my only advice is to look beyond any one word processor and seek openness in your choice of file format. Do not allow yourself and your data to be locked-in to the whim of any one vendor. ODF can be used by any word processor if the vendor so chooses, and it satisfies the criteria outlined by Sam Hiser of: "(1) being developed and maintained in an open, multi-vendor, multi-stakeholder process that protects against control by a single organization; (2) being the only openly-available standard, published fully in a document that is freely available and easy to comprehend; (3) being the only format unencumbered by intellectual property rights (IPR) restrictions on its use in other software, as certified by the Software Freedom Law Center; and (4) offering interoperability with ODF-compliant applications on the common operating system platforms of Windows, GNU/Linux, and OS X, along with most online word processing apps."

For me, I am still using Word 98 (on my XP laptop) and Google Doc for online sharing with collaborators. Reason: Inertia of change.

Image Hosting

Every now and then, I need to make some images available to an unspecified number of people, such as those reading my blog. Where should I put these images?

I hot-link to the original image if I can. (ok, I am stealing someone's bandwidth.)

Alternately, if copyright allows, I get a copy and upload to flickr. Get the URL of the image and link.

Well it seems that there are many choices too.

All you can upload allows you to upload your image, copy the link and post.

From TechCrunch:

Well known and often controversial BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay has launched BayImg, an uncensored free image hosting service.

From BayImg:

bayimg.com is a place where you can host all your images. We do not censor them. We believe in freedom of speech, it's of utter importance to us. As long as your pictures are legal they will be hosted here, but we reserve the right to remove images due to technical reasons though.

So for those images which you may have problem locating their rightful owners but you definitely have to use, you now know where to put them. :-)

Immersive Learning Environments

The proceeding of EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Spring 2007 Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments: New Paths to Interaction and Engagement is now online. I have not had a chance of go through the material yet. It certainly looks very interesting.

Here are the list of available material.

# Generation G and the 21st Century
Speaker: Richard Van Eck
# Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Learning Environments for Gen Z
Speaker: Gary R. Bertoline
# Cognition, Learning, and Literacy in Virtual Worlds
Speaker: Constance Steinkuehler
# Virtual Learning Environments in 3D
Speaker: Phillip D. Long
# The Bar May Not Be as High as You Expect: Considerations in Implementing an Immersive Learning Environment
Speakers: Heidi Trotta, Jeffrey K. Sarbaum, Phillip D. Long, Alan Levine (Moderator)
# Student Cameo 1 - Using Adaptive Interactive Narrative to Guide Discovery Learning
Speaker: Jim Thomas
# Student Cameo 2 - Visions of the Underworld: Transforming Classical Texts into a Virtual Reality Experience
Speaker: Patrick Paczkowski
# Student Cameo 3 - Online Time Consuming Real Time
Speaker: Whil Piavis

Encyclopedia of Earth

from TreeHugger

This Encyclopedia aims to become the definitive one stop destination for all things environment, climate change and sustainable development.
[snip]
"there are many resources for environmental content, but there is no central repository of authoritative information that meets the needs of diverse user communities."

More Google Gears Tech

Laurence Rozier responded to my previous post:

I think Albert Ip provides some reasonable definitions of the terms peer-to-peer and mesh networking but as with a forest(especially a rainforest) precise definitions of trees, to degree they can be said to exist, tend to obscure the forestness of the tree.

He further adds:

Croquet is p2p at it’s core but each instance of Croquet is perfectly capable of simultaneously behaving as a client and/or server. Similarly, Jini/Javaspaces are not inherently p2p but can be configured to function as a p2p service.

Again, I believe there is a difference in our underlying assumption. Laurence, while talking about Google Gears (GG) which is a browser-based technology, is happy to extend the "forest" to include non-browser-based technologies. I have stayed within Web-based technologies and argued that the current GG implementation cannot provide the fundamental features to support peer-to-peer or mesh network.

Adding a local data storage does NOT provide the essential technical infra-structure for peer-to-peer or mesh network!

However, for those hard-core technies, some limited peer-to-peer techniques are available today without the need to invoke GG.

Firefox has an extension which adds a server to the browser, POW. With a web server incorporated, smart programmer will be able to enable ways of having a webpage calls the local web server. That's the enabling technology we need to kick-start peer-to-peer with web-technology.

Of course, there are several limitations to such an approach. But when more people are interested, things will start to look interesting.

About Teaching and Learning - 2

A previous post here.

Among all the interesting questions James Kariuki posted, here is another one: What should students know in order to ask questions about the future?

I would rephrase the question as "What should students know in order to be effective in the future?"

Our world is changing, fast, very fast! Information is doubling every couple of years. This is exponential growth! While it is not true that whatever we know today, it will become irrelevant in couple of years time. But it is true that whatever we know today will be only a smaller part of we know in a couple of years.

The job market in the future will consist of jobs that have not been invented yet. How could we prepare today's students for tomorrow's world when we do not know what will happen tomorrow?

See some of my thinking in Learning for 2020

How has Information-scape Changed?

David Warlick was challenged by Gary Stager on "How is information changing?” He gave a few very good points about how the information-scape has changed.

1. Information has become increasingly networked. I suppose he meant there are increasingly more hyperlinks within information. We can find referred or linked information more easily via such hyperlinks.
2. Digital convergence of information is continuing at rapid pace.
3. We are overwhelmed by information.

I can think of some changes as well.
4. Information can spread rapidly these days. News published at one end of the world can be read instantly from the other end, usually by almost everyone connected to the Internet.
5. Because of 1 and 4 above, we are now capable of reading multiple viewpoints of current affairs. [Bloggers play a significant role in this.]


Back to how information has changed, I think:
1. Information creation is increasingly collaborative, e.g. Wikipedia, and hence more information is a manifestation of a community instead of an individual.
2. A few new information genres have evolved over the past years. Email as a format of information (cf letters), webpages (full of hyperlinks see 1 above), blogs (cf with personal diary) ... More and more information is now written as first person observation of world rather than from a third person description.
3. More information are published by novice, students and other groups which traditionally do not have a platform to reach millions. (Is it part of the explanation of 3 above?)

Implication for learning: [obviously an incomplete list]
Two life-skills:
1. ability to evaluate accuracy, authentication and viewpoints of information
2. ability to filter, yet have a general "feel" of a vast amount of information and make sense of out such a body of work.
A learning strategy:
3. participation of information production is now a necessary strategy in learning

Some other good points from the comments in David Warlick's post:

I also think one area that has NOT been touched upon is that that teachers need to be preparing more for the PRESENT and the FUTURE…..and many still teach in the comfort of the past.

I would add to your Item 2 about information becoming digital the discussion of SIZE and DUPLICABILITY. E.G. the book War and Peace can be shrunk to an electronic footprint that is so small we can pass it to others with little regard to the taking of physical space. Duplicability allows us to make one thing and provide it to millions of people almost instantly.

At the very least the tangibility of “frozen” media (whether print, video, etc.) gives it a different affect than the purely oral tradition that preceded it.
[snip]
The distinction between print and electronic forms has, perhaps, some small relevance, but in the end it is all physical (physical pits on a DVD, electron transfers in RAM, etc.) At most we might be talking about the difference between “light through” media (stained glass) vs. “light on” media (paper), and volumes have been written on this topic, none of which have enlightened me much on the issue you raise.

As David says, the print vs digital question is a false dichotomy.

Information is information is information, whether its from the neighbor, the teacher, the Weekly World News ( as we all need a little Wolf Baby now and again), or some other source.

Taking my lead from Danny Hillis, ‘The Pattern on the Stone’, Gregory Bateson defined information as “the difference that makes a difference”

Hillis goes onto argue that computers have made a difference. So I agree with David Warlick’s second point, about the importance of the change to “being digital”, a point made long ago by Negroponte (book title)

I also like the McLuhan / Alan Kay / Philip Armour suggestion that the important thing is that we are undergoing a shift in the dominant media that we use to transact knowledge. Philip Armour said it this way:

“Software is not a product. It is a medium in which we store knowledge. Historically there have been 5 such media: DNA, Brains, Hardware, Books, Software.”

Software is a superior medium to print, more powerful things can be elegantly represented (eg. simulations of systems), it is more readily searchable etc. So I disagree with David Thornburg in playing down the importance of this shift. The future is (almost) here it just hasn’t been distributed yet.

It’s dangerous to talk about information in isolation and I agree with Tom Hoffman and David Thornburg that we need to be clearer about the terms and also look at the interplay between “data, information, knowledge and understanding” (David Thornburg)

But this is not the only perspective. Hugo (in Hunchback) provides a brilliant analysis of how printing competed with the architecture of the church. Grand cathedrals, with their stained glass and sculpture, were books built of stone and glass, telling the story of the bible. To “read” this story, one had to travel to the church. As Hugo remarked, the book let ideas be more like a flock of birds in the square that would scatter themselves way beyond the edifice. To Hugo, print destroyed the power of the edifice, and THIS was the threat to the church.

Again, the point was access.

We have perhaps been deceived by the relatively stable texts of the print-age into thinking that information is static, but surely it isn’t. Change the reader of the Bible, for instance, and you generate different information. Convert the Bible to a Charlton Heston movie, and you have yet different information. I’m certain that the Bible in Japanese or modern English is different again from the Bible in Hebrew. Decide that the Bible is written not by God, but by Moses, say, and you get even different information.

Project EnRoLE

This is the official blog for project EnRoLE, a Commonwealth funded initiative to encourage role-based learning in eLearning environments.

sloodle - Learning System for Virtual Environment

from the website:

Sloodle is an Open Source project which aims to bring improved learning support to 3D Multi-User Virtual Environments. Our first objective is to develop a range of tools and methods for learning activities in the rich interactive and user-created virtual world Second Life with the Open Source and modular web-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) Moodle.

About Teaching and Learning

by James Kariuki

James posted a list of interesting questions (not in any particular order, he said):

Is the teaching and learning field broken? Does it need fixing? What need to be fixed? Who should fix it?

Are educational institutions fighting for freedom through education or freedom for education?

What is the importance of teaching and learning? What is the importance of scholarship of teaching? What is the importance of the culture of teaching? What is the importance of learning materials?

What should students know in order to ask questions about the future? How would students be encouraged to define and create their world views? How do students learn? How do we teach? What is defined by the culture and heritage? How are we encouraging students to drive innovation in Higher Education? How are we realigning the teaching and learning in the wake of technological innovations?

Is good teaching a skill that can be taught? how?

How do we shape our schools and teachers for teaching and learning?

What are we using to evaluate the success of teaching and learning? Can we justify the use of the evaluation tool?

If marks are what motivates students to learn, then why don't we link evaluations to mark?

Why do academics fail to use or adopt elearning? For those who do, why do they use it?


What is the role and responsibility of government in improving the quantity and quality of educational output?

What a list!

While I am passionate about most of the questions posted, I just like to say a word or two on one at this time. (May be more later.) What is the importance of learning materials?

To me this is a particularly interesting and difficult question in this era of fast changing information age. Information has become ubiquitous and students can easily be more knowledgeable in a particular field than the teacher. The information gate-keeper role of teacher has long gone!

Is there still a role for teacher in someone's learning? Is there still a role of "learning material" in learning?

Obviously, the answers are "yes" to both. Let me just focus on the second one here.

I have always held that education is about "orientating" a person into a community of practice. Community of practice includes professional groups, being a functioning citizens and a contributing member of social groups etc.

Historically, academic subject was introduction to (or steps towards ) professional groups. Take Physics as an example. There are a set of vocabularies, concepts, methodologies etc which are being used by Physicists. The primary aim of "Physics" was to enable Physics students to be able to communicate and practice in this "community". As we progressively realize, not all students aspire to become a Physicists. We started to look at what are the other values a Physics curriculum can offer to people who do not have a primary interest to become a Physics and look at the value of such training. Understanding the nature, realizing the importance of evidence-based investigation (or scientific methodologies), etc. become the learning objectives of such courses.

Information, as I insisted in many of my previous postings, are manifestation of a subset someone's world view. Physics textbook, in particular, is a writer's attempt to systematically introduce Physicists' working guidelines, concepts, vocabularies etc. (The auther may also pay attention to relate such work with daily life examples).

I understand current education system is still very much a "people sorter", implemented as various examinations, qualification tests. Curriculum was forced down from University lecturers who do not want to teach "basic" stuff. [Sorry forgotten who said that before.] Textbook writer has no choice but to meet the "market demand".

Unfortunately, in the case of Physics for instance, Physics textbook is too far away from the actual practice of a current working Physicist. It can not excite students. It rarely covers the current issues. It is likely to be out-dated before it is published.

To make "learning material" an important part of the learning process, it needs to change. Do NOT compete with the information on current issues in the chosen community of practice. Focus on a gradual introduction to the community, generate the excitement of the field, discuss current issues up front and enable communication with the practitioners.

Am I hoping too much?

Dalai Lama and Science

While Christianity is in conflict with science (creationism vs Darwin's Natural Selection), Buddhism seems to be embracing Science very well.

Dalai Lama wrote:

Science shows us ways of interpreting the physical world, while spirituality helps us cope with reality. But hte extreme of either is impoverishing. The belief that all is reducibnle to matter and energy leaves out a huge range of human experience:emotions, yearnings, compassion, culture. At the same time, holding unexamined spiritual beliefs-beliefs that are contradicted by evidence, logic and experience-can lock us into fundamental cages.

To back it up, Tibetan Buddhist Monks were taking part in studies of the brain activities involving emotions. So far, experimental data showed that mind training (such as mediation), people can learn to control their emotions and remain in "happiness". See this and this.

Learning about Dalai Lama

Here is a worksheet and a video (both from ABC) for students to focus and learn more about this man.

Video of Bush losing his watch

via BoingBoing

When working the crowd, with security personnel surrounding him, US President lose his watch in daylight publicly. [Video in Dutch website]

Photo showing the watch


Photo showing the watch has gone


Can you spot who took his watch?

Top Firefox 2 config tweaks

by Gina Trapani

When you type in about:config in the address bar of the Firefox browser, you enter into the Firefox's configuration page. Here are some tweaks to make your browsing experience more pleasurable. The following are the tweaks that I have put in.

Fetch only what you click

Fx .6 and up: Firefox has this wacky little feature that downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on pages you view, like the top result on a page of Google results. This means you use up bandwidth and CPU cycles and store history for web pages you may not have ever viewed.

* Key: network.prefetch-next
* Modified Value: false

Turn off chrome tooltips



All versions: [snip] Like you, I already know what all the buttons on my browser chrome do, so the tool tips aren't necessary. To turn them off, set the browser.chrome.toolbar_tips key value to false.

* Key: browser.chrome.toolbar_tips
* Modified Value: false

Enable spellcheck
layout.spellcheckDefault = 2 turns on Firefox 2's spell-checking in input fields as well as textareas. (That means no more typos in Lifehacker post headlines!)

Hide the Go button at the end of address bar
* browser.urlbar.hideGoButton=true turns off the rarely-used Go button at the end of the address bar, for more room to see long URLs.

See other tweaks in Top Firefox 2 config tweaks

You Only Live Twice

This is a 4 Corners program by Australia Boardcasting Corporation (ABC) on Virtual Worlds, Second Life in particular.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 10

The first group of chinese radicals, according to the ChangJie Input method is "Philosophical group" consisting the words 日, 月, 金, 木, 水, 火, 土.

The first two: 日 and 月, being sun and moon respectively, represents the Yang 陽 and Yin 陰in the Chinese YinYang 陰陽 Etymology. Sun is also commonly known as 太陽 and moon is also occasionally refers to 太陰.

金木水火土 are the Five elements 五行 in Chinese philosophy.
金 literally means Gold and is generalized as metal [金屬]
木 is wood. 森林 means forest, lot of 木!
水 is water. But as a radical, it is usually appears as 3 dots on the left such as 海洋 [ocean].
火 means fire. 炒 is stir-fry and 炸 is deep fry when you talk about cooking.
Finally 土 is earth. 土地 means land.

Because YinYang and the 5 elements form the basis of a lot of Chinese concepts, they are radicals of many words. We shall look at some words with these radicals in the next lesson.

Beethoven Symphony No. 3

Another great resources for Music by San Francisco Symphony


From Neatorama:

The San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas has created a fabulous website devoted to Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the Eroica. The section called Explore the Score is especially valuable. The music plays as you follow the score, with the option of highlighting themes, keys, and markups, offering an excellent insight into the details of the composition.

DaLai Lama

I have the opportunity to hear the Dalai Lama speaks at a public meeting this afternoon. Here are a few personal impression of this man.

At the start, he told us that there is NO miracle. He is just an ordinary man like you and me. He jokingly said if there is any miracle, he would like to meet as well because he has an itching skin and hoped that miracle can cure him.

He offered to speak to the people at the gathering (I believe there must have over 10,000 people there) on a man-to-man level.

The main teaching is "compassion" to others. Compassion to other is NOT for the sake of others. It is for oneself. I may write more about this if I can understand that better.

A few interesting answers from Dalai Lama really shines through to the deep of understanding/wisdom he has.

An 11-year old girl asked him the meaning of life and why. He said he did not know and then proceed to explain why. He said scientists and experts are still trying to learn the meaning of life, so he did not know either. He suggested the girl is still young and can search for the truth herself. (I later learnt from the friends that Buddhism refuse to question the origin of life, instead, Buddhism encourages living the life to the fullest. The analog is "when you are driving a car, you don't worry about the mechanics or the make of the car, you concentrate on driving the car and don't hit a post. I would add that this whole true for the Buddhist Monks. Scientists may make it their purpose to understand how life has evolved!)

Wikipedia's article on 14th Dalai Lama (the current Dalai Lama) is accurate: He has also stated his belief that modern scientific findings take precedence over ancient religions. At least I believe Buddhism does not corner itself to the contradiction of the findings of modern science - great contrast to Christianity (as I understood it).

As a religious leader, Dalai Lama's teaching is remarkably non-religious. He appeals to fundamental good human nature. He objects using fear, hatry and force.

I really want to learn more about this man.

Genie Gears Up

Laurence Rozier is optimistic that Google Gears (GG) can be extended to include "mesh" and "peers" based on security page for Google Gears:

Sometimes web applications on different origins may want to share resources. We are investigating ideas for granting permissions across origins.

I must say that Laurence and I must have different understanding of "mesh" and "peers".

There are several types of collaborations:

1. A website which acts as a post master and relay data among users log on to its server(s), a star-collaborative model, e.g. discussion forum. GG can certainly helps increase the concurrent users log into a system by caching some previous data local to the users.

2. A web page pulls together several resources from different sources into to provide added-value to the user. That's the current "mesh-up" model. Most of these are done via server-side technique. The originating server (the one which sends the web page) performs web service calls to the different sources and then process and present to the user. A client-side solution will be pulling the data from different sources, massage the data on the client-side (typically using Javascript) and present via updating different elements of the web page DOM. The second scenario to work, the web service must be able to return a JSON string and allows a call back function. (See JSONscriptRequest for a technique to implement the later.) If the web service only returns a XML string, cross-domain scripting restriction will block the Javascript from processing the returned XML and block insertion to the DOM.

3. This is similar to 1 above, but this time the user will arbitrarily select star-model collaborative services (1) to connect AND enable users from different collaborative services to exchange data. That's what I refer to as "peers-to-peers" service. Currently, I know of no pure browser-based service of this type.

4. Extending from (3), if user A can, via connected to user B, further support data exchange from those connected A (such as A1, A2,...) with those connected to B (such as B1, B2,...) AND truly enable a mesh, then I call this "mesh".

Web is basically a client-server structure, (3) and (4) above are definitely pushing the web model to its limits.

Going back to collaboration type (2) above, the client-side implementation is already posing a serious security threat. Firefox 2.0 trusted extensions cannot help in this case without the use of extensions or chrome code. Current GG only use the "same origin" policy. I hope the clever guys at Google can come up with something to enable granting permissions across origins in a scalable way.

Journey of Mankind

via OLDaily

WOW!

From Stephen Downes:

displaying the spread of the human population across the globe through history, connecting the story with the artifacts and artwork that documents the history

More on Intel Vs OLPC

On one side, we have OLPC, with Sugar interface running a version of Linux supported by open source using AMD processors.

On the other side, we have Intel teams up with Asus offering $3 software bundle.

Is that a winner-take-all game? or both can survive and serve different clientele?

The Radical Impossibility of Teaching

via Stephen Downes OLDaily by John Connell which in turn refers to Ron Burnett's paper Learning to Learn in a Virtual World

John did a great job summarising Ron's key idea which is further summarized by Stephen:

"Is the whole process of teaching a paradox? When teachers teach and learners learn, what is the nature of the causal link between the two, if any? How does teaching produce learning? Does teaching produce learning?"

The traditional teacher/student relationship, whereby, teacher controls the information and claim the authority of knowledge no longer exists in today's world. Information is highly available and teachers can no longer control what kind of information students are exposed to.

As Stephen suggested, the causal relationship between teaching and learning is much less direct than popular wisdom suggests and he believes the teacher is limited to modeling and demonstrating.

Is there anything else teachers can do besides "modeling and demonstrating"?

In so many subject area, "modeling and demonstrating" are not a regular part of the "teaching", e.g. history which is very much a "story-telling" approach - at least as I learnt it in the old days.

If the causal relationship between teaching and learning is illusive, the causal relationship between information communicated to the students and the actual message understood by the learners is problematic and uncertain too. (This is another poiint from Ron's paper - communication.)

I would further add this:
Information is only fragments of the author's inner world as manifested in a language. No author can expose his/her complete world view in full details. The manifestation is only one instance or one way of express what the author really believes. The language, being a socially constructed symbols, is subject to continuous change and varying interpretation. (Isn't politics the art of interpretation, eg "some animals are more equal than other".)

If knowledge means the procedural steps to execute a complicated sequence, yes information can do a lot of "teaching". If knowledge refers to the understanding of the world, the value system and the belief system, then the "causal relationship" of information and knowledge is yet another problematic uncertain area.

Wikipedia Games

Here are a couple of games based on Wikipedia:
1. Joining Back [The name I give this game]

To begin, a random page on the Wikipedia database is loaded (Random page link in the left navigation menu). The player is then given twenty seconds to orient him/herself to the subject matter on that first website (called the 'Homing Page'). Once this 'Reading Period' is up, the player is then transported to completely different topic page after a series of hypertextual selections ('clicks'). More specifically, this displacement is caused by first selecting a random link on the Homing Page and then on ten subsequent pages.

[Snip]

After arriving at the final page in the randomized succession, the player must reorient him/herself and begin playing the actual game. It is the object of the game to find one's way back to the Homing Page using as few clicks as possible. The player can use any wiki-link inside the contents of any entry page they come across. These links can appear as either images or words."

2. Catfishing
Game invented by Sumana Harihareswara and implemented by Kevan, December 2006.

Get the list of all the categories that an article belongs to (at the end of the article), your opponent must guess which article it's describing.

3. Get there first [The name I give this game]

grab a laptop and challenge someone else on a different laptop. Both people go to Wikipedia and start in the same spot. [...] Then someone calls out a word or term or person, like "Bob Dylan," and they race to see who can get there first. The rule is you can't type anything; you can only click on links. And you can't go backwards.

A different version of this game is always to start from the homepage.
Wikipedia itself has a description of a version of this game too.

4. Wikigroaning

First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created.

Have fun!

“Explore Evolution”—displacing good science with 'dumbed-down' creationism

by PZ Myers

I am not going to discuss the validity of the content of the referred book.

What worries me is that religion is now mixing into /interfering with politics and decision making at the highest level. I remember (but not very sure) that the US president once said he sent US troops to invade other countries because God told him to do that. I really hope I have mistaken. Otherwise, what is the difference between USA and an Islamic-extremist-governed country?

Religious wars kill people. Unlike couple of centuries ago, the weapon today are more dangerous.

Sound, evidence-based education is the only tool to fight against this. Teachers, again, are at the front line.

May reason and common sense bless America!

Apple’s File Labeling: An Effective Anticopying Tool?

Recently it was revealed that Apple’s new DRM-free iTunes tracks come with the buyer’s name encoded in their headers.

There are many discussions on how bad it is to add buyer's name in the header of the music file, and I honestly believe that Apple would have known all these issues and it is not implemented without careful consideration. So what is the REAL reason of doing this?

IMHO, adding information in the header of a file has always been there and removing such information is just a matter of getting the right skill or tool. So encryption of the information is NOT an issue. (Just look at the properties of any MS Word document, how many people actually take that seriously?)

Given that such information can be added and removed (with the right tool and skill), this is also not a great method to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that a music file was copied from a certain source. Tracking distribution via header information as such, with good defense lawyers, should be very difficult to establish because anyone can just pretend to be anyone else.

This is a very clever move, Apple!

Procrastination

I must admit that my family members and me included are suffering from Procrastination.

From Wikipedia:

Procrastination is the deferment or avoidance of an action or task to a later time. For the person procrastinating this may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of productivity, the creation of crisis, and the chagrin of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments. While it is normal for individuals to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological or physiological disorder.

This 1995 essay describes my situation very well and has given me some hope - that's why I am writing this post.

Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.

[snip]

The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don't). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren't).

What do these findings tell us about this generation of parents?

BBC has a report on a survey.

One in four adults in a poll of 2,000 for the services website, Directgov, said they wanted an online alert if their child did not turn up for school.
[snip]
Speaking in focus groups on the subject, some parents said they wanted to be able to play back video of lessons to help with homework.

I think the UK parents are doing the right thing. What is your view?

ASUS and Intel slaughters OLPC with Eee-ase

A bit more information is coming out about the Intel and Asus's $200 Laptop:

The ASUS Eee computer will cost a mere $199 for the 7″ LCD model whereas the so-called $100 OLPC costs $175. Given the fact that Eee can run Linux or Windows XP and it can boot off NAND flash memory in a mere 15 seconds, the Eee slaughters the OLPC with ease.

Gear Mesh: Power To The Peers

While everyone is putting forward about how great Google Gears (GG) would be, pushing it to include "mesh" and "peers" [I assume is peers to peers (p2p) is a bit over the edge.

I agree that GG would potentially be able to increase the capacity to serve more concurrent users in a collaboration system. However, creating a browser-based solution do "mesh" or p2p is a totally different ball game. First of all, for security concerns, scripts will not be allowed to call arbitrary servers (AJAX is no exception) and hence one user logging to multiple "collaborating" servers is a technical challenge. Establishing connections to other peers without an intermediate server acting as a post office, meaning each user is both a client and a server at least after connection is established, is even more difficult.

Intel, Asus Show Off $200 Laptop

...to provide an alternative to the One Laptop Per Child project, Intel announced plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek to produce a notebook for developing countries that could cost as little as $200. The 'Eee PC' will be a full-featured low-end notebook, whereas the OLPC is more aimed at children. Intel has criticized the device in the past for being too simple, and not having enough functionality to even make it worthwhile.

While the specifics of the Intel Eee PC is unknown, whether it would be a good alternative depends on the software that is included!

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 9

I set out to do a "read/write" focus to learning Chinese. So far, I have explained some Chinese way of expressing ideas and have not given much information about how to input Chinese. Here it is.

The particular input method I am recommending is "ChangJie" method. Please review lesson 1 if you have not installed the input option.

ChangJie method (倉頡輸入法) was invented in the seventies by Mr Chu Bong-Foo (朱邦復) and has been in the public domain ever since. I met Mr Chu in the Nineties when he was working on hanzi 聚珍 Chinese operating system (My company in Hongkong helped in promoting this product) before it became public domain.

From Wikipedia about 朱邦復:

During the development of Cangjie method, Chu found that his invention is not only an input method, but also a character encoding method for computing systems. Unlike An Wang's encoding method of the time, or later methods such as Big5 and Unicode, Cangjie method dose not sort characters by their usage frequency, stroke count, or radical, but is based on their composition aspect and inspired by the "pictophonetic compounds" principle of Chinese.

Chu therefore began to develop a theory (which he would later call "Chinese DNA", "Alphabets of Chinese Language", or "Chinese character gene" theory). The theory states that the forms selected by Chu are the "genes" of Chinese. Proper arrangement of these "genes" can provide all functions of the characters. Therefore Cangjie method as a character encoding is very useful, since it contains not only an ordered set of characters, but also precise references of shapes, pronunciations and semantics of the characters. Therefore the system is an efficient base for a variety of Chinese information technology: smart dictionary; operating system and application software; programming language; hardware architecture of PC and embedded systems; and even strong artificial intelligence.[3][4]

Here is the basic mapping with an English (US) keyboard with the "Chinese Genes". Please study the input table from Wikipedia Cangjie method [Wikipedia chooses to spell 倉頡輸入法 as Cangjie method and I am using the original spelling used by Mr Chu and the general public.]

Now, try using your keyboard and ChangJie method to type in some Chinese.

Strategies and Techniques for Building Immersive Learning Simulations (ILS)

The recent Guild Research Report on Immersive Learning Simulations (ILS) revealed that in the next 12 months there will be a projected 72% growth in simulation/scenariobased learning and 37% growth in e-Learning games.Though the use of ILS is on the rise there are still a number of barriers that prevent organizations from using this approach for e-Learning — from perceived difficulty in building this type of e-Learning to questions about the costs to build ILS to the appropriateness of using “games” for e-Learning.

I will be presenting "Engaging Learning Experience Using Role Play Simulations" on Thursday, July 19 — 12:00n to 1:15p (USA Pacific Time).

Further details will be posted when the event is closer. :-)

Women In Art

via BoingBoing



This may be an wonderful resource for Art classes.

Crude - the Incredible Journey of Oil

This is the broadband edition of ABC Science (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not American).

In the last 150 years we have released much of the ancient carbon from oil back into the atmosphere as CO₂, driving the now familiar greenhouse effect. ...

Ironically, it seems that as we burn our way to the end of oil, the CO₂ we're returning to the atmosphere could recreate the supergreenhouse conditions that would heat and poison the oceans, once again laying the condiitions for depositing oil.

Has the human race passed the point of no-return in switching on the condition for the supergreenhouse conditions?

Looking at this graph [from The Carbon Cycle], we may be dangerously close to the switch-ON point for anoxic event.

If you don't have time to watch all the main parts, watch at least the third part "Carbon in the world of dinosaurs", especially around 6 minutes from the program.

Cross-posted to Sustaining Future

Carbonated Fruit

This is a 6 min video.

A little science project (good for those schools in Northern Hemisphere: Summer) using dry ice.

Warning, dry ice is cold to the touch and can hurt you if used inappropriately. Please exercise caution when working with it, wear proper safety protection, and use it responsibly.

Growing Up in the Universe

I have just finished watching the 5-hour double DVD "Growing Up in the Universe".

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins presents a series of lectures on life, the universe, and our place in it. With brilliance and clarity, Dawkins unravels an educational gem that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, virtual reality, and special guests (including Douglas Adams) all combine to make this collection a timeless classic.

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children were founded by Michael Faraday in 1825, with himself as the inaugural lecturer. The 1991 lecturer was Richard Dawkins whose five one-hour lectures, originally televised by the BBC, are now available for [...] on DVD.

Although it was 1991 lecture (some 16 years ago), it is still highly relevant and informative. Strongly recommend it and should be a compulsory material for ALL students in high schools.