Monthly Archives: January 2012

Future in the Past

By david.humphrey | Published: January 31, 2012
The other day, while reading William Gibson no less, I paused to consider the term ‘Virtual Reality.’ I’ve encountered this term on both sides of its existence, even though it has never existed, never could. During my undergraduate work, In one of my computer science classes, I had a professor who specialized in [...]
Posted in Idea Factory | Comments closed

How to crash like you mean it

By david.humphrey | Published: January 30, 2012
I lost most of a day today trying to track down a bug in our Pointer Lock (nee Mouse Lock) implementation.  We’re literally within inches of being done this patch, and to be honest, I need to get it done so I can focus on other projects.  However, as is the case when programming, being [...]
Posted in CDOT, Implementing Mouse Lock, Mozilla Education, Seneca, Teaching Open Source | Comments closed

One needs models: on being dad

By david.humphrey | Published: January 30, 2012
I saw this first when Corban tweeted it (every cool music thing I hear comes from him first), but since then it’s come at me from all kinds of people.  I love this, and I also love being a dad.
Posted in Home School, family | Comments closed

A Harvest Table

By david.humphrey | Published: January 28, 2012
For many years, my wife and I have wanted to get a harvest table.  Between cooking, eating, and home school we spend a lot of time as a family around a table.  Philosophically as well as practically, the central organizing role of a well-made table is important to the functioning of our family. There are literally [...]
Posted in Home School, Idea Factory, family | Comments closed

Beyond Reality TV: The New Acting

By david.humphrey | Published: January 28, 2012
The new acting requires new skills.  Where once an actor took a role in a film, television show, &c., the new acting disperses the subject across media, and increasingly, traditional, everyday media.  Where once the actor produced a body of work, the new acting is the body of the actor.  Distribution, we used to understand, [...]
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Learning to type

By david.humphrey | Published: January 22, 2012
Learning to type, when I learned to type, meant learning to become a typist.  The premise on which typing was taught will, for some of you reading this, be foreign; there was a time when typing was a kind of suit that writers put on when it was time to go out into the world.  [...]
Posted in Digital Swag, Idea Factory | Comments closed

What I’d do: software teams as indie bands

By david.humphrey | Published: January 21, 2012
I’ve often thought that it would be interesting to see software teams do indie band style pictures along with their releases.  I’d like to see the people who write my software.  I know hundreds of people who release libraries and tools, apps, demos and games, drivers and converters and utilities–yet they never really show up. Long [...]
Posted in Digital Swag, Idea Factory | Comments closed

Return early, return often

By david.humphrey | Published: January 20, 2012
I’m fixing some code we wrote for the Mouse Lock implementation, based on review comments.  I had forgotten how many of my colleagues teach our students that you should avoid multiple exit points from a function.  It meant that our implementation code had a bunch of deep nesting in order to avoid early returns.  We [...]
Posted in CDOT, Implementing Mouse Lock, Mozilla Education, Seneca, Teaching Open Source | Comments closed

Occasionals

By david.humphrey | Published: January 7, 2012
I write to myself in the future, when I retire, and in case I own a winery, chocolate or cheese shop;  at which time I want to remember to create a line of occasional fare, one very narrowly cast for a particular clientele, those appropriate only for particular occasions, and as gifts for such individuals. These [...]
Posted in Food, Idea Factory | Comments closed

Holiday Reading

By david.humphrey | Published: January 5, 2012
I’m coming to the end of my Christmas holidays.  It has been a very restful and slow time.  I’ve filled it with family, long, slow recipes, and reading.  I logged off irc, closed my mail program, ditched twitter, and allowed myself to become properly isolated from my daily routines. I also tried an experiment.  My reading [...]
Posted in Reading | Comments closed