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©2001 Andy J. W. Affleck
Saturday, September 08, 2001
 
It's the end of a long week, my first in the new job. Tomorrow morning I board a plane and head back to my family. I miss Jack and Ann a great deal, I hate being away from them for even this long. I know this winter, when we expect to do this regularly, is going to be very tough. But for the next two months I'll be working out of home mostly and will get to see them much more.(12:19 AM)

 
Savage Plays Oswald The Octopus. We love this cartoon. We love everything on Nick Jr. for that matter. Yeah, we're parents...(12:13 AM)

Friday, September 07, 2001
 
ReplayTV. Oh wow... I must own one of these. I must.(8:16 PM)

 
Happy 1e9 Day!(8:07 PM)

Thursday, September 06, 2001
 
Viking Data Still Cause Stir About Mars Life(1:24 PM)

 
Meteor Was Really Space Junk, Magazine Says. Dang it! I was up at that hour and in Washington DC... I missed the show.(1:22 PM)

 
New Evidence of Early Humans Unearthed in Russia's North(11:25 AM)

 
Evidence Found of Black Hole at Center of the Milky Way(11:23 AM)

Wednesday, September 05, 2001
 
Indisciplinary Education: A Pedagogy of Nudges. This looks at the use of the web in education. Specifically, this weblogger.(8:59 PM)

 
Scobleizer : A Tale of Two Classrooms. I've been trying to blog this all day but the site wasn't reachable for a good chunk of the afternoon. Odd. Anyway, still more for me to read tonight...
Update: (8:15PM) -- Read his piece. I agree with a great deal of what he says. Saymour Papert talks about the same things in his books. Especially The Children's Machine in which he says that computers have largely failed education because we have not gone anywhere near far enough. Computers must be allowed to completely revolutionize schools to the point where every concept of how schools work and operate are changed. We should not be forcing computers into the current model of schools.(5:16 PM)

 
Dear Web Diary, SO Much to Tell! (washingtonpost.com)(5:11 PM)

 
The Map That Named America May Now Call It Home "The only known surviving copy of the first map to bear the name of America, often called "the baptismal certificate of the New World," has found its way to America from Germany as an acquisition of the Library of Congress."(5:01 PM)

 
It's not very often I have days where I blog so much. It seems like today just has a lot of activity in the technology in education field where I work too. But it occurs to me that a major drawback to this blogging software is that all of what I am blogging is lumped together: Tech in Ed stuff, personal anecdotes, Mac news, Red Sox rants, etc. What I need is a way to group things. I could create multiple blogs and have a Tech in Ed page, a Mac page, a personal page, etc. But that really reduces the friendliness of this site. I'd love to have each day have sections, individual boxes of content and I can assign a given entry to one of those boxes. Anyone know how this can be done?(2:55 PM)

 
More from Chris Ashley who wrote the article immediately below this item.(2:52 PM)

 
Weblogging: Another Kind of Website. I'm going to have a lot of reading tonight. I'm just skimming these and blogging them if they're interesting. Tonight when I get home from work I'll go in-depth and write up my thoughts.(2:50 PM)

 
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification: Today this was submitted as a recommendation by the W3C.(2:25 PM)

 
Fool.com: [Dueling Fools] Apple Core of Ailing PC Sector(2:23 PM)

 
Distance Learning Yet to Hit Home(2:15 PM)

 
BBC News | SCI/TECH | Delhi children make play of the net "In the slums of Delhi, an experiment has shown how illiterate street children can quickly teach themselves the rudiments of computers and the internet."
Update: (8:30PM) -- This reminds me (and this may be stretching things a bit) of something I read in Matt Ridley's excellent book Genome. He describes how research has shown that children learn new languages much quicker than adults can. This has been known for a long time. What's interesting is that where groups of people of different backgrounds come together and pidgin languages form, there's little grammatical structure and it is hard to express difficult concepts. But within a generation this changes: children learning the pidgin growing up actually create grammar and build rules. There is something in children which lets them learn these new paradigms easily and quickly -- and to improve upon them too! So, extrapolate this out to the article above and I think it's this is a shade of the same thing: children learn new communications easily and quickly, including web surfing. Can you imagine if they had some way to change the way the web or the browser worked? Now THAT would have been incredible!(2:14 PM)

 
Schoolblogs.com. I just found this and wanted to blog it and, later, read through and grok what's going on here. If this is what I think this is and they are doing what I think they are doing, this is VERY exciting for education... I'll write more later.
Update: (8:22PM) -- It is exactly what I think it is! Using weblogs as a tool for education is a fantastic idea. Earlier today I had a long conversation with a colleague at work (on day 2!) about this. I believe that weblogs can be revolutionizing if used correctly. Right now my thoughts are still too diffuse but I'll think about this more and write more at a later date. I'm actually consider using weblogs as part of a larger project I'm being asked to spec out at work.(2:13 PM)

 
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - Red Sox dispute Pedro claim of minor tear in rotator cuff. Dan Duquette is an idiot and he is ruining the Red Sox. He must be fired and he must never be hired to work in baseball again. Period. Dammit.(12:40 AM)

 
`The Fantasticks' to Shut for Good. I was in this play in High School and it is my favorite of all the musicals. I've only seen it at the Sullivan St Playhouse twice and should try to go once more before the end. I'm very sad about this.(12:35 AM)

 
Embryonic Stem Cells Turned Into Blood Cells (washingtonpost.com) "Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison guided stem cells into blood cells by surrounding them with chemical cues and nutrients that signaled the immature cells to morph into every type of regular blood cell -- red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets."(12:26 AM)

 
Apple Expands as PCs Cut Back "Brand in the PC industry ain't worth much," said Roger Kay, a senior analyst with market research firm IDC. "They want Apple when it's Apple, but they don't care about Dell, Compaq, Gateway, or IBM."(12:23 AM)

 
On Monday, the 3rd, we flew from Providence to Baltimore (thank Gods for Southwest Airlines!) and our friend Chris picked us up and took us down to to his new northern Virginia home which was quite nice. We grilled, we hung out, and picked up Liz and Eric who were flying into National and had good Mexican for dinner at Guapo's. And on the 4th I started the new job. I was nowhere near as nervous as I would normally have been. I guess the fact that I'd been to the office before, had been working for them remotely for months now, and did the same work I've been doing all along anyway helped. And that's that. Tomorrow (it's midnight as I write this) is day two.(12:16 AM)

Tuesday, September 04, 2001
 
They should have used a different font...(2:21 PM)

Sunday, September 02, 2001
 
We're in Cranston, RI now. Tomorrow morning we fly to DC. Ann will start looking for a place for us to move and I will start my first day of work on Tuesday. So, updates will be a bit sparse until I get settled. Here's hoping that the folks I'm staying with have a wireless network at home (I believe they do...)(8:56 PM)

 
Maybe I jinxed us. Maybe we're cursed. Maybe it was just bad timing. But just a day after I put up a whole page about our garden we had the Great Aphid Indicent of 2001. Here's how it went: Ann went out to pull out the mystery gourd plant now that we know what it is and have decided that it's nice to have gourds but the plant is ugly and is taking over the Universe. That's when she found that it was covered with aphids. When she began clipping it, they began to swarm. Tiny little bugs all flying around. Tiny little bugs flying to and landing on our other plants. Uh oh. We got nasty with them. I went online and checked with my friend google on remedies for aphids and found that a solution of 1 part Murphy's Oil Soap, 1 part rubbing alcohol, and 9 parts water in a spray bottle will do the trick. And it did! But, all the same, Ann went crazy and tore up half the garden removing the things that were past their prime or looked just nasty. It's a bit sparse now but we'll go shopping for some mums and other nice autumnal plants and fill things in.(8:51 PM)

 
A Meteor's Remnants Draw a Posse. Well, it's not here... :)(2:03 PM)

 
Gore Gets a Tepid Nod From Donors(2:00 PM)

 
As Cable Applies Pressure, Network TV Spouts Expletives. Huh. On the one hand, it is true that shows for adults (in adult timeslots) should be more adult in nature (that is, be able to be more adult if that makes sense) but on the other hand, broadcast reaches everyone regardless whereas you have to actually pay for and bring cable into your house (then again, you have to actually pay for and bring a tv into your house so maybe there is little difference...)(1:52 PM)

 
Boston Globe Online / Sports / Here's a pitch to have the ace shut it down. I agree completely. With a miracle, the Sox could make the postseason but the smart move would be stop trying now and start working on next year now. Let the injured get healthy and start really working the rookies to get them ready. We need strong new players next year and the time to start training them is now.(1:30 PM)


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