One of the things I find interesting about using IM, and specifically chatting with people who use pictures of themselves, is that you can so easily get confused about how they really feel. For example, if I open GTalk right now, I have a whole bunch of smiling faces with…
You walk into a bookstore, a used bookstore. The books are not so much on display as piled. There is every kind of book, from philosophy to literature to cook books to children's stories. Sitting at the desk is a man smoking a pipe and reading something intently. You approach…
I wrote previously about my upcoming talk on open source education. I'm happy to say that it went well, but for reasons I didn't anticipate. The most exciting outcome for me was that after my talk, one of the people in the crowd introduced herself in order to take the…
Three stories I wish I didn't have to share. First, I found a live mouse that had fallen into a pail in our garage. I ate released it. Later in the day, I lit the bbq, and felt something fall on my foot and looked to see another (the same?…
There's been a fair bit written in recent days about the importance of community initiative, the role of students, and the part educational institutions can play in order to encourage and enable this. I couldn't agree more, and this week I'm working on doing my part to further these ideas.…
We're off to a bbq with friends in a few hours, and I'm taking my mother's famous taco dip. Every time I make it people literally lick the plate clean. Here's the recipe: Ingredients: 1 Package Cream Cheese at room temperature (you don't need a full one) Sour Cream (also…
We're seeding out lot this weekend, and I had to share this exchange. For context, it's common in the country to plant wheat with the grass for protection as it takes: Customer: "I'd like some wheat seed" Clerk: "Sure, I'll get some." Clerk goes to the…
I get a fair bit of mail from people asking how to do their own password dialogs/functions in VNC#. I wrap the password function in a delegate of type AuthenticateDelegate, which takes no arguments and returns a string (i.e., the password). By default I stuff a call to…
I rolled a bunch of bug fixes and patches from people into a 0.9.0 release for VNC#. Some interesting work being done by folks all over the world with the code--thanks for your emails. It's nice to read about all the ways people are using it. I'm not…
The weather this weekend was incredible. Not surprisingly our girls wanted nothing to do with the great indoors. We spent both days exploring outside. Today after church was particularly incredible. While we were out I saw so many mating pairs of birds, I couldn't believe it. First, I showed the…