All my blog posts and articles
Page 68 of 142 (2825 total posts)
Fun article about Ben Hescott who has some unique – and impressive – approaches to teaching an abstract topic: > Q. Did you experience an “aha’’ teaching moment? A. My first time teaching, I was using PowerPoint slides. One student kept saying, “I don’t see it.’’ So I turned off the c...
Read more →JavaScript is the language of the future. Why do I say this? I love Ruby, I respect Java, and I am jealous of Python. And of course I have a warm spot in my heart for C++. Think about it. JavaScript is unique among all those languages: - Any computer you can get your hands on nowadays has a workin...
Read more →As you (don’t) know, I am teaching a course at Brandeis University about mobile and game development. So I follow stories about how to more easily create cross platform mobile apps with great interest. Check this post [Adobe Software Updates To Help De...
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I recently saw the movie “Waiting for Superman” – yes I am late to the party. But in case you have not seen it let me recommend it to you as a highly revealing and disappointing view into the way the American school system runs, stuck in a system that feels so wrong in so many ways. Watch it. And visit the Waiting For Superman Web Site. Here is the IMdb info for Waiting for Superman. Here is theNetflix link for the DVD.
The U.S. government is helping create parallel internetsand cell phone networks in countries where the government is suppressing free communications between their citizens. The idea makes sense and is, “pretty cool”: “The effort includes se...
Read more →So I finally got to try Hulu Plus on a one month promotion, and used it to watch an episode of Friday Night Lights. I had read a recent TV review comparing Friday Night Lights to Glee, and it made me curious. Verdict: Friday Night Lights – Excellent! Verdict: Hulu Plus – Commercial after every 7-8 minutes, highly annoying
Mike Taibi writes in Rolling Stone about some fairly outrageous doings between Washington D.C. and Wall Street during the various ‘bailouts‘: > “Christy is the wife of John Ma...
Read more →Robert Krulwich gave this graduation speech. While it is aimed at Journalism students, it has some good stories: > “As I say, he was a news writer, wr...
Read more →This article, “Anatomy of a Trending Topic: How Twitter & the crafting community put the smackdown on Urban Outfitters” is interesting for two reasons: - Photographs that show graphically that Urban Outfitters, in at leas...
Read more →A theme that I have followed in this blog is the question of whether it’s a good idea to require a picture ID of some kind before permitting a citizen to vote. In another [article in the New York Times called “Republican Legislators Push to TIghten Voting Rules”,](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/u...
Read more →Just a quick read of this post showed me several great gems that I want to try right away! If you’re a Rails programmer this is going to be of great interest: Rails 3: Fully Loaded [ActiveAdmin](http://activeadmin.i...
Read more →I am about a week from beginning teaching my course at Brandeis University. The curriculum is a little different from last year, focusing on mobile software engineering and game development. This is different from last year, where we focused both on web and mobile software engineering. The ...
Read more →This is too funny. Here’s a taste, but you should read the whole article saying how an Israeli should adapt to living in the United States. For example, this is about the express line in the super market: > “The expres...
Read more →Last year when teaching REST concepts at Brandeis University I proved the truism that there’s no better way to learn about something than to try and teach it. We (all) wrapped ourselves around the axle trying to understand HTTP “PUT” versus HTTP “POST” and l...
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How to build authentication into Rails applications? Well, at least at RailsConf 2011, the buzz was around a new Authentication gem called Devise. I played with it a little (here in the airport) at it seems quite nice and straightforward. Check it out if you were looking for something like that. #railsconf
Another tidbit I came across at RailsConf is Hobo. I haven’t tried it myself but did just go through the screencast and tutorial. I think it’s worth a closer look. > “Hobo is a plugin for Ruby on Rails that brings a number of extensions—some small some large—t...
Read more →Why doesn’t every one love Rails? I am surprised when I run into someone (Pat?) who’s not so sure about Rails. Usually it’s about scalability. [I warned you this is a geeky post] When I am designing or building a system and am questioned about whether **writing it in Ruby or Rails is a good id...
Read more →One or two H’s? Don’t look it up!