new haircut!

Chopped off a good six inches of my hair today.  Or rather, Delia of La Jolie Salon & Spa chopped it off.  I think I'm done with my binge-and-purge approach to hair--it'll stay at about this length for a little while.

Nathaniel graciously indulged me when I asked him to take pictures.  Since I'm quite particular, I was still using photos from over three years ago for all my online profiles; one was from back in college, at least five years ago.  It was definitely time for a change.

Also: five years ago?!

incorporating computer science into K-12 curriculums

Math, Science, History, English--the four staples of American education.  Sure, maybe there's Art (performance or studio), foreign languages, physical education, health, and electives in there as well.  Sometimes there's the token technology class or the computer science AP you can take as a junior or senior in high school.

But computer science is huge, and deserves more time than it usually gets in classrooms.  I got my bachelors in CS and am working on my PhD in CS, so obviously I think the world revolves around it, because mine actually does.  But that doesn't mean that CS isn't huge, because it is.  There are the big names: Google, Apple, Microsoft. Wanna buy stuff?  Amazon and eBay.  There are the social media guys like Facebook and Twitter.  There are the folks doing websites and apps: Etsy to Instagram.  There are game companies like Blizzard and EA.  There are movie companies like Pixar and Dreamworks. Adobe, IBM, Yahoo.  The list goes on and on and on.

So we should teach our kids more about computer science, because it's crucial to so many industries.  Even if they're a digital artist, they'll still need to know a little about hexadecimal.  So let's teach them!

Recently, I did a demo at an elementary school science fair in which I brought a balance scale and had a dozen containers of various weights.  The task for the kids was to put the containers in order using as few comparisons as possible.  The older kids got it very quickly, and the patient younger kids got it too.  I was teaching quicksort to 2nd graders, and they didn't even know what hit them!

Kids are more than capable of learning basic computing concepts.  Elementary school kids could pick up counting in binary and hexadecimal, symbolic logic and basic satisfiability problems, sorting algorithms, and deterministic finite automaton.  These topics range in difficulty equivalent to mathematic problems they cover in elementary school: counting to pre-algebra.

I've got so many ideas of how to teach this to kids, and I'm not the only one.  High schoolers could do regular expressions, circuits (and, or, not gates), and maybe transistors.  And programming!  Ugh!  Why doesn't everyone learn how to program?  I know that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but neither is math, and I can't tell you how may people I've encountered that say, Oh I really need to learn how to program...

I was showing a middle-school kid from church how to program in Python, and when he left he told his mom, I wish they taught this stuff in school.  Me too, buddy, me too.

So what has to give in order for this to happen?  Not much.  It can be taught alongside math and science in elementary school.  We can overhaul the terrible "technology" classes taught in some schools and offer more serious computer science electives.  It's totally possible, but it needs to happen at the school or district level for real change to happen.  Going up any higher might just result in more crap "computer" classes.

Part of the problem is that second grade teachers usually don't know how to count in binary--that is, that the concepts that would be so easy to teach aren't yet known by the teachers.  That won't change until everyone starts needing to know this stuff, which wont happen until the system is changed.  It's tautological.  Maybe I'll start by contacting my local schools and see if they'd like me to come in for a computer science day or something.  If I do, I'll let you know how it goes.

goodbye, google reader

Last week, Google announced that they were closing up shop on Google Reader.  Earlier this week, I attempted the transition to Feedly, which is a fine service, but I need to re-tweak my reflexes.  Today, they removed Reader from the general "more" dropdown menu, which is exactly what I needed to finalize the transition. 

Feedly isn't quite right for me, at least not yet, so I might end up starting my own RSS/Atom reader projet.  There are all sorts of great machine learning techniques that could be applied to feeds, and I've worked on some myself.  Feeds could also be integrated into a massive life management application that handles email, calendaring, todo lists, etc.

This hypothetical app could spoon feed you exactly what you need when you need it.  For example, I'm not a morning person, and I tend to read a few webcomics over breakfast to warm up my brain.  While opening a new browser tab, getting to feedly, and clicking comics really isn't that hard, I do the same three clicks almost every day.  And then I usually check my email.  This could certainly be streamlined manually, but why not automate it and make the whole process easier for everyone?

Ideally, we'd be able to detect importance and urgency of emails, posts, or other messages, and figure out when someone would like to be interrupted for something (or a batch of somethings).  If work was automatically paced like this, would some people be more productive?  I probably would.  I hate email clients that ding or give you a popup every time you get an email.  But I also hate the feeling that I'm missing something important if I go for a while without checking my email.

This has turned into a rant about tools for streamlining productivity instead of an obituary for Google Reader.  Reader was good, but not perfect, and it obviously wasn't well-used enough to survive.  Hopefully Google will spend their energy on bigger and better things, and maybe it'll force me to write some awesome productivity app.  Regardless, I used Reader a lot, and I'm a little sad to see it go.  Goodbye, old friend.

noodle

I just got back from a trip up to Boston, which was excellent.  N left for Niger last Saturday, and not wanting to be a lone woman in the garden of Eden, I took to the north.  All I can say is that my friends and family are wonderful.

After a long drive home, my todo list for the evening was: 1) unpack 2) go grocery shopping, 3) work out at the gym, and 4) do some work-type stuff (prepping for an HCI event tomorrow).

Number one has resulted in an explosion all over the living room.  Number two involved dropping a 1 gallon glass bottle of apple juice in the apartment parking lot (I sense a pattern...).  Number four I might put off until the morning.

Number three, though.  Man, oh man.  I'm not really a gym person.  I've tried various things, but none of them have stuck thus far.  The machines scare me.  But!  My cousin-in-law Rachael is totally amazing and got me to get over my phobia and try getting serious about working out at the gym.  We're trading personal training for coding lessons, and it's awesome.

Tonight was my first night trying the workout she's given me, and whooaoao. I have a long way to go.  My legs seem strong enough, what with all the walking and hiking I do, but everything else?  I feel like a total noodle.  For some of the machines I was like, "What do you mean you don't go any lighter than that?"  And the machine responded, "Suck it up."  Noodle.  I haven't felt this kind of adrenaline for a long time, and I'm stoked.  And laughing at myself, but still stoked.

recovery

I just finished my last class for the semester.  Whoooew.  After three years off school, it hit hard.  I'll still be doing a bit of research for the next little bit, but I'm also going to plan my garden, take a trip to Boston, clean the house, read like mad, paint, sew...you name it.  This here brain is tired.  Speaking of which, a nap is in order; my sleep deficit is high.

new notebook

I have a tiny little red notebook that has been a lot of places and held a lot of information, but now only has half a leaf of empty space.  It's basically this, with lined paper.  I went to Labyrinth on Tuesday since they're a listed vendor for that brand, and ended up getting something a little bigger than my old one: a small flexible notebook with 300 plain pages, also in red.  It won't be quite as easy to lug about, but my old one was a touch cramped at times.  I don't like the new cover material as much (it doesn't feel as nice), but that's okay.

Since I'd rather not keep the old one around (more clutter), I'm trying to digitalize anything interesting.  In doing so, I discovered a page that reads as follows.

JMT - Day 1 got permits early, started late afternoon got into camp at dark, stayed at half dome hiker's campground.  day 2 made it to sunset camped a little past 130 mosquito bites kept going w/ no breaks once we hit the mosquitos.  day 3 thunderstormy. got to lyle canyon  day 4 more thunderstorms had to pitch tent to wait it out camped just before Donahue pass  day 5 lots of lakes

Not so bad for one little page.  I gave up on journaling the JMT and the next ten pages are fill with brainstorming for foodstuffs--everything from cafe menu ideas to dinner parties, muffins to salads, simple dinners to homestead productions, ravioli fillings to cookies.  I obviously was not pleased with the backpacking food and needed something to obsess about as I hiked.  Good times.

I think I'm going to try and do this more incrementally for my new notebook: when a page no longer contains unique information to be revisited, I'll draw a slash across it.  We'll see how it works.  This is all part of a larger scheme to get more organized.

google recipes and as close as it gets to a makeover

N was describing tortilla espanola to me, which was a little silly because I've had it before, but so it goes.  Anyway, he googled "tortilla espanola" to find that there are recipe selection options in google now.  For this search, it suggests chives, potatoes, etc., and give cook time options, calorie count options, and suggestions for related foods.  I don't know how well it works yet, but it seems promising.

In other news, I cut off about 13-15 inches of hair, which was a tough choice, but much needed.  The long hair was getting to be more trouble than it was worth, and this is the first new hairstyle I've had since I decided to grow out my bangs in the second grade.  Heavens, some change comes slow.  Now all I need to do is replace the glasses I've had since the fifth grade, and that'll be as close as it gets to giving myself a makeover.  Back to the hair, I'd like it a couple inches longer eventually, but in the short term, this style is forcing me to not pull it back constantly, which may have been damaging it.  I also have zero split ends, which is a novelty.

Here are some low-quality bathroom before and after shots.  Don't be fooled by the mild curls in the left one; they aren't natural.

Otherwise life has been busy, per usual.  There was the wedding in DC, with all sorts of romping about. Then my family took us to see Spiderman on broadway, which was spectacular, though in some ways it was more like a loud, showy concert than a musical.  And then the family will be in town a bit longer, so more good times to come.