Yesterday at a office product store, I was impressed to see pens made from recycled bottles. Now that's another good way to re-use some of that garbage. A while ago I also saw some pencils made directly from recycled newspapers. All good.
I got several other ideas to reduce garbage.
1. Don't lose it
Ok kids, a pen contains some very concentrated ink. It is an EXCELLENT invention. Imagine you have to write with feather-ink pens like Thomas Jefferson. You have to write a lot to use up the ink of just one pen. Theoretically a pack of 10 pens can be used for a very long time... Try not to lose 1 pen a day... and use a brand in which the inks actually come out (so you don't have to throw-and-curse it when you most need it.
2. Mechanical pencil instead of pencil
Mechanical pencil is also some excellent invention. Buy one and all you need is add additional lead and no sharpening. Young kids should probably stick with pencils first though... Someone should invent a BETTER eraser than the traditional worthless red eraser for the regular pencil. If you need pencil (if ever), use a mechanical one...
Kids of the future... will they ever need pens in college? or use some stylus on some hard-to-imagine future Touch Pad machines? But nothing beats the flipping of papers in going over your notes... In my college days, I can't even afford a computer. I go to the labs.
I am glad to see many people have how-to-reduce-garbage in mind. Also, the recent trend in reduced plastic in plastic water bottles is good. how about NO plastic at all? Boil that water... use a faucet filter... or buy a gallon instead of 12 oz bottles.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
The Hostile Party Goer for the Math Professor
A friend forwarded me an excellent essay about math that I can't agree more.
What are you going to say to this hostile party goer?
I'm going to say, "well you have never done anything with it cause people already done a lot with it and you just don't know."
The quadratic formula opens up a new chapter in mathematics... it opens up a new chapter in human civilization!
Without the quadratic formula you can't solve quadratic equations if you can't factor the quadratic involved (and civilization is just stuck then). Quadratic equations do show up in real science, a simple example being Newtonian mechanics... d=vit+(1/2)a t2. Ancient mathematicians challenge each other about whether solutions exist or not.... quadratic formula enabled math to go forward beyond solving the simplest equations. It opens up branches of mathematics involving (brave new world of) complex numbers.
Please do not belittle any academic people, especially at parties.
And I am not going to ask the professor the glorious details of his research of algebraic topology either.
What does that have to do with mathematics education? Well, when I occasionally meet people at parties who learn that I am a mathematician and professor, they sometimes show a bit of repressed hostility. One man once said something to me like, "You know, I had to memorize the quadratic formula in school and I've never once done anything with it. I've since forgotten it. What a waste. Have YOU ever had to use it aside from teaching it?"
What are you going to say to this hostile party goer?
I'm going to say, "well you have never done anything with it cause people already done a lot with it and you just don't know."
The quadratic formula opens up a new chapter in mathematics... it opens up a new chapter in human civilization!
Without the quadratic formula you can't solve quadratic equations if you can't factor the quadratic involved (and civilization is just stuck then). Quadratic equations do show up in real science, a simple example being Newtonian mechanics... d=vit+(1/2)a t2. Ancient mathematicians challenge each other about whether solutions exist or not.... quadratic formula enabled math to go forward beyond solving the simplest equations. It opens up branches of mathematics involving (brave new world of) complex numbers.
Please do not belittle any academic people, especially at parties.
And I am not going to ask the professor the glorious details of his research of algebraic topology either.
A meaningful Christmas
MERRY CHRISTMAS! The world suddenly filled with joy as people celebrate Christmas.. it is time where shopping malls are filled even most shoppings can be done online. Some people party like crazy, some even drink a lot and drive and die. Yes Christmas is important as it fuels the economy. Perhaps we should take a look at Christmas again... and have a more meaningful Christmas.
If you believe in Jesus... Look, Jesus never asked you to celebrate Christmas or exchange presents. Even the (mysterious) wise men didn't come every year. His 12 disciples never bother to buy Jesus anything. Also, you better know that the day of Jesus's birthday is actually not specified in the Bible and there is no Santa or Christmas tree either. How I wish the angels come sing again.
If you don't believe in Jesus... you are celebrating the birthday of a fictitious person? Do you want to celebrate birthday of Mickey Mouse also?
Good ways to spend Christmas
Christmas is a great reason to get together with your family. Go ahead, gather at grandpa/grandma's place.
Take a family picture.
Help the needy. Donate a few cans for food drive. Donate to charity.
Bad ways to celebrate Christmas
Spend a tremendous amount of money on gifts to people who already have everything
Meaningless loud party with not-so important people
Christmas suddenly puts the world in JOYOUS mode to temporarily relief from news violence happening everyday in the world. "Peace on Earth" filled Christmas hymns (comes from Luke 2:14), but unfortunately is far from reality.
Happy New Year.
If you believe in Jesus... Look, Jesus never asked you to celebrate Christmas or exchange presents. Even the (mysterious) wise men didn't come every year. His 12 disciples never bother to buy Jesus anything. Also, you better know that the day of Jesus's birthday is actually not specified in the Bible and there is no Santa or Christmas tree either. How I wish the angels come sing again.
If you don't believe in Jesus... you are celebrating the birthday of a fictitious person? Do you want to celebrate birthday of Mickey Mouse also?
Good ways to spend Christmas
Christmas is a great reason to get together with your family. Go ahead, gather at grandpa/grandma's place.
Take a family picture.
Help the needy. Donate a few cans for food drive. Donate to charity.
Bad ways to celebrate Christmas
Spend a tremendous amount of money on gifts to people who already have everything
Meaningless loud party with not-so important people
Christmas suddenly puts the world in JOYOUS mode to temporarily relief from news violence happening everyday in the world. "Peace on Earth" filled Christmas hymns (comes from Luke 2:14), but unfortunately is far from reality.
Happy New Year.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Blog stats
I noticed blogspot now offers a statistics gadget to show how many visitors. (I put it in right column, bottom). Wow I didn't know I have that many. Well those are probably web spiders and stuff, not real people.
How do you do your OWN website statistics? Of course nowadays everyone uses google analytics.
One way is filters. I learned about filters the hard way, through humiliation from a job interview, "so you never used or heard of filters?"
How do you do your OWN website statistics? Of course nowadays everyone uses google analytics.
One way is filters. I learned about filters the hard way, through humiliation from a job interview, "so you never used or heard of filters?"
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
A for Apple, B for ball...
Many Children books attempt two goals: teach the alphabet and numbers.
A for Apple, B for Ball, etc, and 1-2-3.
Numbers are abstractions. Children first need to associate something with first... like 1 apple, 2 apples... before they can deal with the numbers 1 and 2.
Now the alphabets... many books must give an example starting with each letter. A for Apple, B for Ball. I don't understand this "for" here. This "for" means, "here is an example".
Sure, everyone can come up with a simple word for each letter, except X.
X... what is a good example?
Gee, besides Xylophone or X-Ray, it is hard to come up with anything else.
X-Ray is too difficult concept for kids?
Xylophone... long word for kids, little-used instrument. How come this instrument doesn't achieve the status of a piano that kids flock to take lessons? This is exactly the same percussion concept. 4 notes at a time sounds better than 2 I guess.
Dr. Seuss dominated the Children book market. But I have to say.. I DON'T LIKE THE WACKY STORIES.
These are wacky rhymes, not even fable stories, these wacky books are Thing 1, Thing 2,... Thing N
A for Apple, B for Ball, etc, and 1-2-3.
Numbers are abstractions. Children first need to associate something with first... like 1 apple, 2 apples... before they can deal with the numbers 1 and 2.
Now the alphabets... many books must give an example starting with each letter. A for Apple, B for Ball. I don't understand this "for" here. This "for" means, "here is an example".
Sure, everyone can come up with a simple word for each letter, except X.
X... what is a good example?
Gee, besides Xylophone or X-Ray, it is hard to come up with anything else.
X-Ray is too difficult concept for kids?
Xylophone... long word for kids, little-used instrument. How come this instrument doesn't achieve the status of a piano that kids flock to take lessons? This is exactly the same percussion concept. 4 notes at a time sounds better than 2 I guess.
Dr. Seuss dominated the Children book market. But I have to say.. I DON'T LIKE THE WACKY STORIES.
These are wacky rhymes, not even fable stories, these wacky books are Thing 1, Thing 2,... Thing N
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
7 Programming Languages on the rise
Infoworld wrote an article on 7 Programming Languages on the Rise. (It is annoying to click through the pages, click on the print link for a 1 page view)
Let me talk about each one too.
1. Python.
I blogged about this language before.
A first look: it is a lot like C with indentation instead of braces, with read-eval-print interactive mode.
I did not know it is big in the science and engineering.
2. Ruby
People are crazy about this gem... Remember Ruby itself is not big deal but Ruby + Rail is... I think its biggest charm is to generate some skeleton code for you. But why can't you generate your own and have to learn a new language? Does it simplify MVC or is it MVC with your favorite Java framework a bit too difficult? It also lets you do many magical things with few lines. It is a bit of a learning curve if you ask me. I am willing to learn (if you hire me to do Ruby) I wish I can share your enthusiasm.
3. MATLAB
For statistic people who needs to analyze large amount of data, Excel doesn't cut it. I know nothing about MATLAB
4. Javascript
Of course this one is one the rise! AJAX everywhere. Javascript is here to stay. Amazing what people are already doing with it. This is the true cross platform language.
5. R. I have seen R (and S-PLUS) in my computer science class!
ANOTHER LISP like read-eval-print thing.
6. Erlang. Not sure what this is at all.
Another functional language... eew this one looks hard
7. Cobol
You've gotta be kidding? Probably not good to invest in such poorly constructed language.
So Java and C# are not on the rise? Microsoft keeps rolling out new .NET versions. Java has programmers needing to update themselves for a decade+.
All these so-called rising language (besides Cobol) seem to belong to functional languages. Read-Eval-Print.. defining functions and expressions on the fly. People LOVE to write un-named lambda functions on the fly. Naming it doesn't hurt, ok?
Sure, each language has its unique syntax and twists, most languages try to create their own C-descended language + functional features + more....
Groovy/Grails should be on this list?
Of all the languages here, Java remains my favorite general language. I'll add Javascript for client side things for web apps.
But I am AGAINST JSTL, Custom tags. I am not super comfortable with annotations.
I am against wacky syntax invading programming language like LINQ.
All boils down to... statements, conditions, loops, calling methods from libraries.
To do MVC easier, we don't need new languages but some effective tools to generate skeleton codes.
About analyzing huge amount of data... yea, you need tools specific for that such as MATLAB.
Go ahead, pick and choose your favorite language for your work.
Let me talk about each one too.
1. Python.
I blogged about this language before.
A first look: it is a lot like C with indentation instead of braces, with read-eval-print interactive mode.
I did not know it is big in the science and engineering.
2. Ruby
People are crazy about this gem... Remember Ruby itself is not big deal but Ruby + Rail is... I think its biggest charm is to generate some skeleton code for you. But why can't you generate your own and have to learn a new language? Does it simplify MVC or is it MVC with your favorite Java framework a bit too difficult? It also lets you do many magical things with few lines. It is a bit of a learning curve if you ask me. I am willing to learn (if you hire me to do Ruby) I wish I can share your enthusiasm.
3. MATLAB
For statistic people who needs to analyze large amount of data, Excel doesn't cut it. I know nothing about MATLAB
4. Javascript
Of course this one is one the rise! AJAX everywhere. Javascript is here to stay. Amazing what people are already doing with it. This is the true cross platform language.
5. R. I have seen R (and S-PLUS) in my computer science class!
ANOTHER LISP like read-eval-print thing.
6. Erlang. Not sure what this is at all.
Another functional language... eew this one looks hard
7. Cobol
You've gotta be kidding? Probably not good to invest in such poorly constructed language.
So Java and C# are not on the rise? Microsoft keeps rolling out new .NET versions. Java has programmers needing to update themselves for a decade+.
All these so-called rising language (besides Cobol) seem to belong to functional languages. Read-Eval-Print.. defining functions and expressions on the fly. People LOVE to write un-named lambda functions on the fly. Naming it doesn't hurt, ok?
Sure, each language has its unique syntax and twists, most languages try to create their own C-descended language + functional features + more....
Groovy/Grails should be on this list?
Of all the languages here, Java remains my favorite general language. I'll add Javascript for client side things for web apps.
But I am AGAINST JSTL, Custom tags. I am not super comfortable with annotations.
I am against wacky syntax invading programming language like LINQ.
All boils down to... statements, conditions, loops, calling methods from libraries.
To do MVC easier, we don't need new languages but some effective tools to generate skeleton codes.
About analyzing huge amount of data... yea, you need tools specific for that such as MATLAB.
Go ahead, pick and choose your favorite language for your work.
Monday, December 6, 2010
...Before You Die
I saw a few book titles with "...before you die." Such as "1000 Places to See Before You Die", and "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die". A few days ago, I saw 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die..
You get 1 or 2 game description on each page... from classics such as Pac Man to modern day beautiful games. Half a page isn't enough to mention the great fun of certain great games (such as the Street Fighters).
To go to 1001 places, sure you can buy some plane tickets, 1001 movies to see... sure someone has those DVD or online. But how do you play some old games? Yes there is the awesome MAME for old arcades classics.
But isn't the "before you die" title a bit depressing?
Sure, go to great places, taste great foods, see great movies, play great games. THEN YOU DIE.
Imagine how fun it is to be at the 1000th great place, great dish, and great video game, knowing that you will die after it.
Why can't the titles be simply "1001 Great Places To See", "1001 Great Movies to See", and "1001 Great Video Games?" Yes, I'd like to hide the "Before you die" part. Why mention death?
Before you die... figure out your meaning of life.
You get 1 or 2 game description on each page... from classics such as Pac Man to modern day beautiful games. Half a page isn't enough to mention the great fun of certain great games (such as the Street Fighters).
To go to 1001 places, sure you can buy some plane tickets, 1001 movies to see... sure someone has those DVD or online. But how do you play some old games? Yes there is the awesome MAME for old arcades classics.
But isn't the "before you die" title a bit depressing?
Sure, go to great places, taste great foods, see great movies, play great games. THEN YOU DIE.
Imagine how fun it is to be at the 1000th great place, great dish, and great video game, knowing that you will die after it.
Why can't the titles be simply "1001 Great Places To See", "1001 Great Movies to See", and "1001 Great Video Games?" Yes, I'd like to hide the "Before you die" part. Why mention death?
Before you die... figure out your meaning of life.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Fed up with some incomplete tutorials
There are good people who put good Spring tutorials on the web. But there are also some who only gives incomplete snippets. Every tutorial and book out there should give complete, runnable examples (that I can drop in my webapp folder in tomcat and see it run) But many don't.
If no things for me to run and see it working, it is not good enough.
I guess I need to write my own, BETTER THAN ALL, easy-to-understand, runnable tutorials for the benefits of struggling programmer-mankind. Screw anyone who tells me "there are many out there!" But none of them are mine, none of them as good. If you are going to do it right gotta do it yourself.
If no things for me to run and see it working, it is not good enough.
I guess I need to write my own, BETTER THAN ALL, easy-to-understand, runnable tutorials for the benefits of struggling programmer-mankind. Screw anyone who tells me "there are many out there!" But none of them are mine, none of them as good. If you are going to do it right gotta do it yourself.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Anti-Christmas Billboard
A billboard sign saying "You KNOW it's a myth". Details here.
If you have to put up a billboard if you don't believe in anything... you will need a lot of billboards. Opinion: there is no need for such billboards... and there is no need to vandalize those billboards either.
Jesus never says anything about celebrating his birthday, and no birthday party was ever mentioned for 33 years of his life on earth. Even the day Dec 25 wasn't specified.
Gift tradition? It is probably from the wise men who visited, but they didn't visit every year. Also it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Don't like Christmas? just don't celebrate.
Like Christmas? KNOW that things like Christmas tree, Santa, Red nose Reindeer are not in the Bible. Read glorious details in Luke chapter 1 and 2.
If you have to put up a billboard if you don't believe in anything... you will need a lot of billboards. Opinion: there is no need for such billboards... and there is no need to vandalize those billboards either.
Jesus never says anything about celebrating his birthday, and no birthday party was ever mentioned for 33 years of his life on earth. Even the day Dec 25 wasn't specified.
Gift tradition? It is probably from the wise men who visited, but they didn't visit every year. Also it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Don't like Christmas? just don't celebrate.
Like Christmas? KNOW that things like Christmas tree, Santa, Red nose Reindeer are not in the Bible. Read glorious details in Luke chapter 1 and 2.
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