Spitzenpopper

Two Variable Statistics Calculators

2012-01-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

Two variable statistics calculators of essential if you want to do linear correlations. Here is a page from Texas Instruments web site showing range of solar powered calculators capable of two variable statistics.

Mozilla Firefox — A Browser That's Making A Difference

2012-01-27T05:13:00.001-08:00

SEE HERE

Piazza Continued

2012-01-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE That's a literal "see here" because it is a link to a video by Piazza's founder. Piazza is a cool work sharing environment for students who can share all kinds of things on-line while they are working. It probably needs a little motivation to get going ... nothing like a hard assignment to get students working together. I've used it and if you get the students using it then they learn more, have more fun, and you get some valuable feedback on what is giving them problems.

Spitfire versus Me-109 — You Are There!

2012-01-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE Great footage about a little known fact of World War II history. Sometime very interesting stories live on the margins of history. The video window below is a short video about how the effects were achieved.

Visual Effects Breakdowns - The German from Nick Ryan on Vimeo.

Origin of the Species

2012-01-16T08:34:00.001-08:00

Great documentary!

Books Play When Folks Are Away!

2012-01-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE

Looking Deeply Into Nothingness

2012-01-09T19:43:00.000-08:00

The universe is awesome!

Watch This Fascinating Demonstration On Why You Can't Always Believe What You See

2011-12-26T11:11:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE Disappearing dots! This is really a cool illustration of the fact that our mind is always processing the scenes it sees and creating a little bit of reality of its own.

Fingerprint Analysis: ImageJ Style!

2011-12-17T12:50:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE Since I'm teaching Image Processing in the Spring semester it might be fun to try this out. ImageJ is a powerful image processing tool developed by people at the National Institute of Health SEE HERE It's quick to download and easy to use. Check it out.

Awesome Slow Motion

2011-12-06T17:11:00.001-08:00

Join the Blue Angels for a Hi-Gee Ride! Passenger passes out 3 times!

2011-12-01T08:48:00.001-08:00

SEE HERE The backseat of an F18 can be pretty grueling if you're on a ride with the Navy's exhibition team, the Blue Angels! Check out the videos here for a sense of the experience. There are five videos and they give you a pretty good sense of the experience.

Bridgewater College in 3ds Max

2011-11-30T16:37:00.001-08:00

This is a fun Senior Seminar Project by one of our CS students ...

College or Entrepreneurship? Your Call ...

2011-11-23T04:53:00.001-08:00

SEE HERE College is the traditional route to the workplace among at least knowledge workers. But with the high cost and for some majors, low payoff, perhaps there are other models to be considered.

Metal Structures As Light As Air?

2011-11-22T19:17:00.001-08:00

SEE HERE Give this a look. Wow! The question obviously is how expensive is this stuff going to be and what are all the applications that it lends itself to?

Cooler and Cooler Carry Your Own Computing Android Environment

2011-11-21T17:56:00.001-08:00

SEE HERE WATCH HERE MORE

Feynman: Science

2011-11-19T19:10:00.001-08:00

If it disagrees with experiment it's wrong!

Feynman: The Character of Physical Law

2011-11-19T19:06:00.001-08:00

Feynman: No Ordinary Genius

2011-11-19T18:35:00.001-08:00

Feynman

2011-11-19T18:26:00.001-08:00

Richard Feynman, One of My Clear Minds

2011-11-19T17:22:00.001-08:00

The combination projector/computer comes closer

2011-11-16T12:19:00.001-08:00

Consider that with a small enough computer chip set and a separate screen projection system you can have a computer that doubles as a projector and can fit in your pocket almost before you know it. I've been waiting for this one and here it is! SEE HERE for more.

How to make a Khan Academy style video!

2011-11-11T19:50:00.001-08:00

Khan Academy Flipping the Class

2011-11-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

Awesome Demo of Quantum Locking of High Temperature Superconductors

2011-10-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE for a little more.

Turn a Nook Color Into a Full Android Tablet

2011-10-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE My son Steve called me the other day to tell me about this (among other things) and it sounds rather cool. I'll have to think about it. I have a Nook color and it might be fun to turn it into a tablet.
UPDATE: 10-23-11 Well I've been fooling with my Nook-Color Android N2A and it's interesting but now I have to learn all about Android and the particular version and that's proving to be a bigger learning curve than I expected. There seem to be a lot of ins and outs about the Market store and apps and fooling with the thing's settings and what not. But so far it has been fun.

OpenClass LMS from Google and Pearson ... Worth a Look!

2011-10-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

The video is hype ... so the question will be "Where's the beef?" and "Does this live up to the hype?"

10 Reasons Why Not ...

2011-10-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE This is classic ... the ten excuses in the software world not to do stuff.

The Emerging World of Artificial Intelligences

2011-09-24T15:47:00.001-07:00

SEE HERE AI writing evaluation ... really! Check it out here.

Nothing like a Song to Raise Your Spirits

2011-09-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

John and Laura singing Digari-Doo

AC-130 Fire From the Sky

2011-09-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

This reminds me of the gunships that I saw in Vietnam when I was there in 1970. Some of gunships could put out an incredible rate of fire. I remember the Cobras working the green line that would fire high rate of fire and rocket bursts. Just the thing when NVA units were sneaking out of the jungle to mortar you.

This Talks About Giving a Presentation

2011-09-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE Awesomeness and how to develop it.

Seabreacher Awesome!

2011-09-03T13:23:00.001-07:00

I Don't Think I'd Have Done This!

2011-09-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

It's one thing to stand behind your product, but this is going beyond the call of duty. I bet that particular panel got a lot of inspection before the test.

Galaxy E-zine

2011-09-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially of the 30's, 40's, and 50's. I'm currently reading a book of short stories by H. L. Gold, titled "The Old Die Rich and other Science Fictions Stories." It's a great read and Galaxy and Astounding, later renamed Analog were always my two favorite science fiction magazines. It was because of science fiction that I become both a scientist and a writer.

Science Fiction — Influencing the Future!

2011-08-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

I'm a science fiction fan myself, especially the science fiction of the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Then New Age came along and wasn't as interesting to me. But I still like space opera and some of the hard science fiction that is still out there.

The Shroud of Turin Dating Should Be Redone

2011-08-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Things Are Getting Interesting on the Battlefield

2011-08-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

Technology is making the battlefield of the future a whole lot more interesting and safer for the guys that have the technology. The guys that don't have the technology are in a bit more trouble.

Clip About the Face of Jesus History Channel Presentation

2011-07-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE The Shroud of Turin is quite a mystery regardless of its authenticity. Here is a YouTube summary of the History Channel Special "The Face of Jesus"

Playing with JGrasp

2011-07-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

We did linear data structure animations and trees showing how the tree being constructed varied as we walked through the code. Very fun! Very cool!

Bayesian Statistics

2011-07-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

Cruis'in In a Golf Cart Is Cool!

2011-05-31T19:36:00.000-07:00

Touch Panels that Feel Like Buttons? — May Be Able To Touch Type On These Soon!

2011-05-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: On Fairy Stories

2011-05-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

The role of myth to know and recognize truth. A kind of story that resonates the soul even when poorly told — and that is myth!

Pledge of the Computing Professional

2011-05-20T17:46:00.001-07:00

Pledge of the Computing Professional

2011-05-17T11:56:00.001-07:00

Mother's Day: Remembering Mom

2011-05-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

Moms are usually not appreciated enough. It's hard to be a mom, especially when your kids are being a pain in the butt. I'm the oldest of ten kids and was a particularly exciting experience because while I was still in the womb and mom and dad were stationed in Hawaii, the Japanese attacked.

Mom and I (inside) were evacuated. Mom used to tell me stories about seeing dad on the deck of the cruiser Detroit waving to her as they were escorted back to the mainland. Then she was pretty much alone in San Francisco, not knowing anyone. I came along on the day of the Battle of Midway and then mom had me to contend with and she'd never taken care of a baby before. I was also a little bit premature. She said I was a blue baby, whatever that means. Mom and I got on well enough. The walls of the apartment must have been very very thin because everyone in the apartment referred to mom as "tinkle darling" from what she would say to me trying to get me potty trained.

As I grew up she was always supportive of my interests. She encouraged my drawing and art and she encouraged my writing. She didn't even get too angry at me when Tom (my younger brother next in line) and I decided to make a death ray and focused it on the backyard through the window. We'd wound a coil of wire from my papers (I had a paper route delivering the Cleveland Press) and we put the ends of the wire in one of these screw in sockets in a floor lamp. As the great scientist I directed my minion, Tom, to turn on the light while I stood safely back by the door. Tom, ever fearless, did that and the wire glowed red and I swear the bedroom lights dimmed, and then the wire melted and glowing drops of metal dropped down onto the hard wood floors. They etched little wiggly black groves in the floor. It makes me wonder if they are still there in that Cleveland Heights house?

Dad wasn't so understanding and gave me hell saying I might have burned the house down and took me down to the basement to see the fusebox which was a really primitive affair because the house was so old.

Mom didn't like my interest in pulp science fiction and she always tried to improve my reading putting me onto many of the great authors that still form a part of my literary landscape today. Mom died in December of 2002, but I still miss her. She was always my biggest fan and always enjoyed listening to my stories. She was a remarkable woman and you can find out more about her at my sister Mary's blog. SEE HERE

Don Williams on the Hypostatic Union

2011-05-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

If you love poetry this is very cool!

Fascinating Way of Making a Shroud of Turin Copy

2011-04-22T19:39:00.001-07:00

Gaming and Learning: Making the Future

2011-04-22T17:52:00.001-07:00

The Epic Win as a motivational factor in becoming good at something, or how gaming is making people virtuosos in something ... urgent optimism, blissful productivity, epic meaning, super-empowered hopeful individuals (at least in the on-line world),

Heritage Foundation Insert On Taxes

2011-04-22T11:55:00.001-07:00

Via: Heritage Foundation

On-Line Tutors? Hmmm....

2011-04-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

Probably should be compared to Piazzza and Khan Academy. HERE

Researchers Claim to Have Gotten Control of Quantum Dots

2011-04-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE Are quantum dots on the way now? ... Moore's Law continues ... the beat goes on!

Greenfoot Kinect Interface: Fun Application!

2011-04-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

SEE HERhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifE

Awesome Demonstration of the Willys Jeep

2011-03-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE Disassembly and reassembly of a Willys jeep in about 4 minutes. They just don't build-em that way anymore.

Dancing Robots

2011-03-12T13:12:00.000-08:00

SIGCSE 2010 R0bot Hoedown ... fun!

1 MW Laser fires 100 ns Pulses: Shades of Buck Rogers

2011-03-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

Hobbyist creates laser weapon ... sort of! Check it out at slashdot.org HERE

Coding for Relevance

2011-03-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE Computer Science doesn't have to be irrelevant. Projects can meet real life by making a contributions ...

BLACKSBURG, VA. - A Virginia Tech software engineering class in 2009 was discussing world problems and how computer science might offer solutions when a student piped up with a personal gripe.

"You know what I hate?" the student said, according to assistant professor Eli Tilevich, who was teaching the class. "I never know when the bus is coming."... and then there's the rest of the story ...SEE HERE

Shroud of Turin Presentation

2011-03-03T18:17:00.001-08:00

SEE HERE

The Amazing Girandoni Air Rifle

2011-02-28T07:51:00.000-08:00

This is a fascinating account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The triumph of perceptions protected the expedition. Fascinating!

The Future Visualized In Glass

2011-02-21T13:54:00.001-08:00

HP Webcam HD-4110 Capture with Jing

2011-02-19T10:47:00.001-08:00

http://screencast.com/t/MwIBPR6JQZSP
Well that wasn't quite what I expected so I went back to try to figure out how to generate embed code and I think I got it now.

Well that seemed to work so now I can create a video and plug it into Spitzenpopper or my other blogs. Cool!

Sheer Amazing, Nothing Less!

2011-02-14T13:46:00.000-08:00

RIP Ken Olsen

2011-02-11T11:55:00.001-08:00

SEE HERE The passing of an era of adventure as computer shrank from massive machines to something you could put in your pocket.

Shuttle Evolution

2011-02-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE Worth a look! The whole shuttle evolution through take off which is when the sounds starts.

Is Genesis Concealed In the Chinese Language?

2011-02-08T11:26:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE Somewhere in my library I have a little book about this fascinating speculation. This powerpoint presentation presents the intriguing suggestion that you can unpack Chinese glyphs and find Genesis. Decide for yourself!

The Human Mind Is Simply Amazing

2011-02-06T17:02:00.000-08:00

The unbelievable talent of an autistic man drawing Rome.

Amazing Use of Adult Stem Cells

2011-02-04T18:55:00.000-08:00

Sistine Chapel In Virtual Reality

2011-01-23T17:58:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE The wonders of the digital age. Here's the Sistine Chapel in all it's impressive artistic ambiance. Click on the link and wait for it to load and then you can spend a good deal of time examining the wonderful artwork.

Check Out the Khan Academy

2011-01-20T12:42:00.000-08:00

SEE HERE Digital learning "on-line" all the time. This is an interesting initiative. See HERE for a Jeb Bush moment.

Check Out Piazzza Below

Guy Steele: Designing By Accident

2011-01-04T15:11:00.000-08:00

Guy Steele : Designing By Accident
1:07:12 - 3 years ago
Many design efforts rely on the addition of features. But often the best breakthroughs happen by subtraction, an extreme example of this phenomenon was the development of Scheme. In this talk, Guy Steele will explain what he was trying to do, what went wrong, and why what went wrong was a good thing after all.

Guy Steele: Growing A Language (1998)

2011-01-04T14:18:00.000-08:00

Growing a Language, by Guy Steele
53:30 - 3 years ago
Guy Steele's keynote at the 1998 ACM OOPSLA conference on "Growing a Language" discusses the importance of and issues associated with designing a programming language that can be grown by its users

NASA Robonaut ...

2010-10-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Max McLean on His Adaptation of The Screwtape Letters

2010-10-01T08:11:00.001-07:00

Randy Pausch "Time Management"

2010-09-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

Chess In 1851

2010-09-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE

Speed Chess Is Totally Insane, but Fun!

2010-09-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

Screwtape from Max McLean (Letter #12)

2010-09-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a short excerpt from The Screwtape Letters as Max McLean interprets it. Quite a marvelous production. Our oldest son treated us to it when it was in Washington last year on the occasion of our 40th wedding anniversary. HERE's a column about it. Screwtape's secretary Toadpipe is played by Australian actress Elise Girardin as a mime, with no spoken lines but all the more eloquent for that as she illustrates with posture and posing the ideas Screwtape is projecting. This is a wonderful performance and you should see it if you get the chance.

Is the iPad Approaching the Dynabook level?

2010-08-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE Now that iPad is here there is research afoot to see if it is useful for doing the kinds of things that Alan Kay's Dynabook vision envisioned. We'll see, but it seems as if sooner or later we have to get there.

UPDATE: 8-19-2010 I went and saw one up close and personal at the JMU College bookstore and spent some time with it. The long and short of it, is that the iPad is cool. As a web browser it's great and fun. As a computer it's not all that hot. The touch screen just doesn't make it as a keyboard and if you can do text entry easily and fast then for touch-typists like me at least, it's a loser! I guess I'll wait to see what the next round of technology brings.

You Can Still Have Fun On Airplanes

2010-08-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

First Comment on the Thread: (at least when I copied the embed code) was:

If this happened on a US Airways flight, the plane would have returned to the terminal and everyone on board would have been dragged off to jail.

Fun is NOT tolerated on US flights!

Ironic/sad that the Germans are more able to loosen up than the Americans.

Belloc Singing

2010-08-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

Recording made in 1932 of Belloc singing.

G.K. Chesterton In His Own Speak

2010-08-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

I had not seen this recording of G.K. Chesterton before so I was thrilled when I ran across it on the BLOG which my sister runs. We both attended the 29th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference sponsored by the American Chesterton Society. This year's conference was themed with the 100th anniversary of Chesterton's book of essays: "What's Wrong With The World."

Here's another recording of Chesterton which also includes the first.

A Mirror Without a Mirror: Two Twin Babies Laugh At Each Other

2010-08-04T15:25:00.001-07:00

I just thought this was adorable so I put it up.

Do You Like Cars? How about Ferraris?

2010-07-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

What you do if you have too much money to know what to do. Get a really hot car and pretend to be cool.

JavaOne Conference ... and We're Almost Out of Internet Addresses ... the Countdown Begins!!

2010-07-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

Amusing! Meanwhile we're running out of web addresses ... this could be a serious problem, actually this is a serious problem, one we may actually have to fix soon. People have been gabbing about it for years and now it's actually on the doorstep. SEE HERE

Focus Project Prezi from Powerpoint

2010-07-27T19:04:00.001-07:00

You can use the arrow keys or your mouse to fool around with the Prezi. This one is basically a power point that was converted to a pdf file and then put into Prezi and given a set of navigation arrows. I also converted one slide to a series of frames and linked the frames in. It's a fun thing and you can find it HERE

Prezi

2010-07-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is just a cut at embedding my first Prezi, a rather boring combination of three elements, an image from my Weedless Garden blog, a text title, and a youtube video. So let's see how this work. If you're interested in Prezi you can find it HERE

Richard Feynman In His Own Speak

2010-07-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

HERE's ONE ON PHOTONS
QUANTUM BEHAVIOR
PARTICLE INTERACTIONS
MEANING & WHERE IS IT ALL LEADING
HERE ARE THE MESSENGER LECTURES Courtesy of Microsoft
THE LAST JOURNEY OF A GENUS
THE NECESSITY OF ANTI-PARTICLES
THE PLEASURE OF FINDING THINGS OUT

Can You Speak Klingon? Do You Want To?

2010-07-22T12:14:00.001-07:00

SEE HERE This is amusing. I'm definitely a Trekkie but more of a Federation Starship Officer type not a Klingon, or any of the other myriad alien races that populate the galaxy in the StarTrek universe.

A Little Ajax Dynamic Content from Deitel iw3htp4 text

2010-07-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE This is a book that I use for CSCI-330 Scripting Languages. It's really a wider deal than that and has a nice progressive feel as it takes the reader through XHTML,CSS, JavaScript, XML, AJAX and lots of other technologies along the way. We touch many scripting languages in the course of the text. This example comes from the first Ajax example in chapter 15.

HERE's Figure 15.8 which pulls images onto the page

And HERE is the AddressBook application.

DoJo Toolkit app Fig15.11 HERE

More Alan Kay, Here Recapitulating the History

2010-07-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Wow! It's hard to realize that history has so compressed progress that the world we are entering is only a few decades old. Kay recapitulates the history for those who were not there.

Alan Kay: Doing With Images Makes Symbols

2010-07-19T08:55:00.001-07:00

Alan Kay is the father of "Dynabook" a seminal vision which led to the personal computer and beyond.

UFO Over China, purported to by July 9, 2010

2010-07-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

So what is this thing. Alternatives: 1) Totally fake, 2) some sort of hypersonic experimental vehicle with shockwave, 3) a meteor or something ??? I don't know what it is and so far have failed to find anything that explains it. Interesting!

The Shroud of Turin Focus Project

2010-07-16T21:06:00.001-07:00

Here's another short video which shows Petrus Soons' "holographic" three-D image of the shroud face and mentions his conviction that the Hebrew letters for "lamb" have been found under the chin of the image. HERE IS THAT VIDEO

Classroom of the Future

2010-07-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

SEE HERE This is a piece that came into my mailbox in today's mail updates. One of my Focus Projects is The Classroom of the Future. The objective or vision, is the envisioning of the classroom of the future, what will be the ultimate classroom of the future? How will it work? What has to happen to move us from where we are to where it is in the future? I don't know the answers ... in fact that is what Focus Projects are all about, finding answers to vision oriented problems where the answer or even the path to the answer may not be particularly obvious.

Here's a LINK to the little presentation I gave on Focus Projects this past semester.

How To Make a Cloud Chamber

2010-07-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Visible Analyst

2010-06-29T10:40:00.001-07:00

Potato Bugs

2010-06-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

Since I was avoiding work this morning, like every morning during the Summer when I'm off school and don't feel motivated to do any, I started researching "Potato/buds/ and Potato/bugs/" ... my dad used to tell us how he would vacation with his family in Wisconsin on a farm and pick potato buds|bugs. I guess I didn't listen too carefully. So I prowled around this morning with that question wandering around in my head. A little internet research revealed that potato buds are not a problem but potato bugs are ... so I guess that answers that question. The picture is from a web-site that talked about picking them early in the morning when they had not had time to wake up and get active chomping the plants down to the ground.

Fooling Around With Styles In Blogspot

2010-06-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

Font-Size 10 pt and color gold

Font-Size 15 pt and color tan

Font-Size 20 pt and color goldenrod

Color worked but size didn't ... hmmmm...

Color Tan h1

Color Goldenrod h2

Color Gold h3

Color Red h4

Rocket Man Exists!

2010-06-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

Check it out! Great Run.

What's Your Favorite Programming Language and How It Stacks Up

2010-06-17T11:47:00.000-07:00