Monthly Archives: July 2009

How to love gcc

One of the first thing many students starting to work on Mozilla learn is that they don’t know enough about the build tool-chain.  For example: I’m working on fixing a Mozilla bug on OS X bug right now, and here’s what happens when I make a change to the file where I’m working and it [...]
Posted in CDOT, Mozilla Education, Seneca, Teaching Open Source | Comments closed

Encouraging Students to Blog

Matt Jadud, a CS prof at Allegheny College, has a great post up about the hows and whys of getting students to blog.  Luke is going to be doing the same thing with his students this fall.  I preach a similar sermon quite often, and think it’s great to see more profs saying the same [...]
Posted in CDOT, Mozilla Education, Seneca, Teaching Open Source | Comments closed

Patching the web: on the uses of “View Source”

I’ve thought previously about how much the web needs a way for users to connect with developers in order to improve things.  This past week while at POSSE, Greg was talking about how to create a patch culture, and it brought this to mind again. Since writing that post over a year ago, I’ve been [...]
Posted in CDOT, Idea Factory, Mozilla, Mozilla Education, Seneca, Teaching Open Source | Comments closed

Walk it off

One surreal moment from today was having Greg show us his prized walking desk.  What’s the saying about golf being a good way to ruin a walk?  How about having your desk and laptop strapped to you while you do? Above is Christian, one of the profs at POSSE, showing us how it’s done.
Posted in Digital Swag | Comments closed

Summer School – POSSE 2009

I’m just about to head to the airport after spending an enjoyable week in Raleigh, North Carolina at the Red Hat headquarters.  Before I leave the week behind, I wanted to reflect a bit on what happened here. Earlier this winter, Greg DeKoenigsberg got in touch with Chris to see if we’d be willing to help [...]
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“So when does home school end for the summer?”

One of the questions we’ve been asked a number of times in the past month is when we are going to stop home schooling for the summer.  The question is a perfectly logical one in the context of a learning that necessarily happens outside the home and in a school.  We can rephrase it many [...]
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Laughing at myself

Today, despite leaving with so much extra time it was ridiculous, I still had trouble getting to my plane on time.  I’m now in Raleigh, NC, and getting ready for the start of POSSE 2009, which Chris and I will be leading.  The reason I was late was airport craziness.  It’s interesting how much the [...]
Posted in Come on! | Comments closed

Wild Raspberries

This week we have been walking the back field in search of a natural wonder: wild raspberries.  The plants have almost totally overtaken huge sections of the old fence line.  With the girls in long sleeves and pants, we have been able to forage and find some of the most amazing fruit I have tasted.  [...]
Posted in Food, family | Comments closed

Bats, Nagel, and Kafka

Jason left a great comment on my earlier blog post on the consciousness of bats, pointing to Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”  He and I seem to come at many of the same questions from completely different directions, in terms of the things we’ve read on the way.  So, being [...]
Posted in Idea Factory | Comments closed

“Science does not think.”

This past Saturday I was listening to CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.  I was amazed to hear one of the guests make the following statement: You don’t spend your life studying a miracle. It immediately took me back to something I had just been reading in Heidegger: It is important above all that on the way on which we [...]
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