Responsive Web Design

Heard people talk about "Responsive Web Design"... at first had no idea what they are talking about. Isn't all web site supposed to be responsive? Who would design something that is not responsive and just show the hour-glass icon?

Then later I saw some job opening having that as a bullet. Now that makes me look up what this is.

Oh so it is some style techniques so it responds to what type of device you have. After all, a web page nowadays can be seen on various browsers and also tablets and phones and you want to show things differently.

So you need some clever css techniques. Here is that landmark article: http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design

More in depth discussions, for example: http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/12/guidelines-for-responsive-web-design/#more-75660

Did you just say "how the heck am I supposed to know?" That's a good question. Usually I focus on coding and let somebody else worry about styles. But I need to have some idea what people are talking about.

Goodbye Windows XP

I've read SO MANY "Tech news" article on the end of support for Windows XP. And in most of these articles there are reminders saying Microsoft has made Vista, 7 and 8 since XP. (You must live under a rock if you don't know) So update or virus will get you.

Now if you really bought a machine in early 2000s... you probably need a new machine altogether. You get a decent machine for less than $500. Unthinkable price when XP was first out. You can turn your old old machine into Linux... or just to play old games.

Now, are Microsoft's patches invincible? How many XP machines get infected even if they have all the patches? Even with latest anti-virus running you still can get virus. In general you just DO NOT surf the wild web on Windows machines... too risky. Go only to well known sites. Try a more robust thing such as Android or Chromebook. There is NO registry for virus writers to hack.

Oh and they say 95% of the ATM machines are Windows XP.

Now are the ATM on the web? I suppose they make some webservice call to update your account somehow. Are banks doing anything about it? Doubtful Well they are not adding some smart card chip in credit card for more security. If it cost them money, even little, banks won't do it.

I thank Windows XP for years of faithful service. the oval start button was a eye-opener. It used to be a boring rectangle from Windows 95/98/2000. See, that upgrade worked well. People get prettier stuff from 95/98. It was a positive upgrade eXPerience.

Missing plane

So the Malaysia to Beijing plane just... vanished. No distress signal, no explosion reported, nor anything that can detect its whereabout. The stolen passports add new mystery.

Could it be a some terrorist act and a bomb that went off that instantly destroyed the plane? Could it be the communication system got turned off? It is not likely a terrorist event... as terrorists should have demanded something or make a statement? But yikes, this is insanely close to the Kwunming incident... so that probably should not be totally ruled out.

Could it be picked-up by a UFO? and it will eventually release it? Could it got into some sort of space-warp and ended up in another space-time? Ok I know it isn't likely.

But I got a suggestion for the designer of the black box flight recorder... How does installing a permanent GPS device sound??

Free Wifi

Came across this on a shared Facebook link.

Ugh, gotta solve something ugly to get a password?!

But waita minute there is really nothing to solve here. This is looking the Fourier Series of a function!

This is basically saying rewriting a function as a sum of whole bunch of sine and cosines.

See here for the bottom of this post.

And sadly, I still don't know much about the Fourier Series. I know electrical engineering students need to know this (and still can't find electrical engineering related work after graduation). This stuff is beyond the scope of me being able to read-about-and-learn-on-my-own.

It seems like there are certain knowledge that must be learned through a person and not from dead text. Just what is the human factor? I supposed that it is that I can STOP the human teacher for additional questions if I get lost, or have the teacher draw some pictures or give me an example... something dead text cannot do.

On Math Common Core

Saw some griping about the "Common Core" in education on Facebook.

Rant in progress..... Common Core I HATE YOU and your dumb freakin rules! Thanks to the "brilliant" people who created this ridiculous curriculum my son has no idea what the heck he's doing! I'd love to see them work out these math problems they way our kids have to! Why isn't the way I was taught good anymore? How am I suppose to teach my son how to do word problems when they want the solutions to look so backwards! Example of math homework:

Since I do not know this gentleman I am not going to respond to him and all his friends.

Yes, this "new way" is ridiculous.

Oh here is one gentleman explaining just what this "new" way is doing:

The new way is demonstrating how to add from 12 to 32 by easily understandable smaller steps which are either to next 5s or 10s and lastly to the destination number. Then the added numbers are finally added to get the answer. The way makes sense, isn't it? At least it shows how to get from 12 to 32 by smaller steps

Look folks, math is timeless. There is no "new" or "old" way to do any problem. The goal is to solve the problem, and get the answer.

To the gentleman who tries to explain the "new way", thank you. But these aren't "easily understanding smaller steps". Line up the digits, subtract: 3 - 1 = 2. What smaller steps do you need? And if I ask you to subtract 1000 - 10 are you going to add up your intermediate "easily understandable smaller steps" of 5's and 10's?

In math, we prefer quick method when possible, and the "old fashioned" way is quick.

To the parent: If I were you I'll go challenge the teacher to give me some merit of the "new way". Otherwise the student should just use whatever ways to get the answer. The student should be able to remain using the "old fashioned" way. If the teacher do not agree I'll go to challenge the principal.

To the student: I would pull out the good old number line and explain: subtraction means how many steps you need to jump from 32 to reach 12. You can jump one long jump of 20, or jump little jumps like the "new way" is doing. The idea is to find out how many jumps was needed. Nothing beats the number line in explaining addition/subtraction.