thank you, applecare

I just talked to AppleCare -- my mac is waiting for parts, but this is a good thing! They are installing a new motherboard and cpu. They don't make the 667 mHz CPU anymore, so I'm getting an upgrade to 867 mHz, free. Yeah!

I send virtual kisses to my brother, who said, "it's a laptop; get the applecare."

I am so excited for Tiger. They're exposing some of GLSL for image manipulation in hardware -- it's part of Core Image. Real-time image manipulation in hardware, specified in a high-level standard language... Ohh, it's so beautiful. I can't wait. But will Tiger include general GLSL support? GL_ARB_shading_language_100? Please? I want to write GLSL shaders on the mac! Badly!

coloring outside the lines

When i was in kindergarten, we did a little art project probably in December: the teacher drew an outline of the digits "1980" on a piece of construction paper for each of us, and told us to color in the numbers. I drew little mice inhabiting the holes in the nine and the eight and the zero, with their little tails hanging over the edge of the holes. The teacher kept coming over to me and telling me to draw inside the lines. I didn't; instead I gave one of the mice a little red and white striped sweater and a hat.

In fourth grade, the teacher assigned homework: to list the primes under 50. My dad showed me how he could write a program to calculate and print out all the primes under 500. He explained how the program worked, and I got it. I proudly brought in the dot-matrix printout, and the teacher told me I had cheated. I was told to redo it, by hand and independently, and I was ashamed. (For the record: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, and 47.)

Mrs. Humphries, Mr. Stockholm -- I'm glad I didn't agree to be constrained by your version of right and wrong. Brute-force calculations are for people who can't think of a better algorithm, and coloring inside the lines is for people without any more interesting ideas.

Dana's research comps!

Dana Tenneson, the Ph.D. candidate who's been doing the heavy lifting on ChemPad, is presenting his researh comps tomorrow morning at 9 at Brown. An ongoing miscommunication about requirements culminated this weekend in Dana believing he has to hand in a paper describing his research at the same time that he presents the research orally, tomorrow morning. He wisely decided to go off communications since yesterday afternoon, so he can just get the work done without distractions. But I wrote to Andy to clarify/beg for clemency, and it turns out that the paper is not due until next week!. I'm trying to get in touch with Dana to let him know that he only has to do the presentation, not the paper, but he's done such an effective job of turtling that he's unreachable. Poor guy; he works so hard and his work is so good, and he gives himself such a hard time over it. Dana, if you're out there, read your email!

I have no idea how Dana's doing the structure determination for ChemPad, but I know it's not easy, and I know that his code is beautiful.

The current version of the ChemPad tutorial looks very nice, if I do say so myself.

the genius bar

I'm getting psyched for another experience with Apple customer service, namely, the Genius Bar. I made a reservation this morning to go by the CambridgeSide store this afternoon, and then a certified Genius will help me and my poor little mac. At best, they'll sell me a screwdriver with which I can open the case myself and re-seat the airport card and optical drive; at worst, they'll take it in for service right there.

I realized that I'm not going to be able to afford a new mac for a long long time, but also that it's not acceptable that the c key on my keyboard is stuck, there's effectively no cd/dvd drive, and no wifi. At the same time, a co-worker pointed out yesterday that when I leave Brown, they might want the superpowered laptop and tablet PC back, leaving me with only the powerbook. Trying to get a computer job with a malfunctioning/decaying computer is just not feasible... so I'm going to invest some time and possibly a tiny bit of money in getting my mac fixed.

It's embarassing to misspell my own name! The sticky "c" key means I keep typing "sasha" instead of "sascha."

So later this afternoon, I'm driving up to CambridgeSide (a mall with much easier parking than Cambridge itself) and then I'll get my very own genius for half an hour. Then, as the timing works out, I'll have to drive back down to Providence in rush hour traffic. If it makes my "c" key work again, it will be worth it.

A Publication!

I think this makes three, or four:
Next-Generation Educational Software:
Why We Need It and a Research Agenda for Getting It

by Andries van Dam, Sascha Becker, and
Rosemary Michelle Simpson

"The dream of universal access to high-quality, personalized educational content that is available both synchronously and asynchronously remains unrealized. For more than four decades, it has been said that information technology would be a key enabling technology for making this dream a reality by providing the ability to produce compelling and individualized content, the means for delivering it, and effective feedback and assessment mechanisms. Although IT has certainly had some impact..."