Google is our friend.

Take a look here:

Notice that Word is at the bottom of the list.

It could have been 'DOC', 'DOCX', 'Microsoft Word', or anything other than 'XPS' and it would have landed closer to the top.

I am disappointed that they refer to OpenDocument as OpenOffice though.
I'm a fan of OpenDocument, but I'm not a particular fan of OpenOffice.
It's slow and ugly.

Back in the days of MS Office 2000 I was a fan of OpenOffice because the menu system - and most especially the help system - I found to be much more intuitive. I still think that their help system is wonderfully easy to use (most of the time), but in light of the ribbon interface of MSO 2007, OOo just doesn't measure up.

I primarily use google docs, however, so I don't bother with either.

In the case that I want to make a flier or handout, or anything with graphics, I always use OpenOffice Draw. Both Writer and Word give me far to much trouble when I insert pictures.

The textbook conspiracy.


First of all, textbooks are difficult to read. They usually use a glossy paper which is difficult to read in any sort of light due to the glare.

Second of all, they have 2 inch margins, just for the sake of increasing the size and weight of the book.

Third of all, they're hard cover and meant to be laid flat on a desk. You can't easily hold them in your hands and read them. This induces excess strain on the neck and makes the glare worse.

Forth of all, they're too heavy. That's due to problems 2 and 3.

Fifth of all, they're mistaken. Most textbooks are riddled with anomalies and errors. I think this is done on purpose so that instead of a simple Errata, they can justify the next release. It's also likely that they write them to be outdated as quickly as possible.

Worst of all, they aren't geared towards students or teachers. The adhere to nearly no principles of technical writing, teaching, nor well understood psychological practices.

Seventh of all, the numbering systems don't match up. Why is it that the homework for section 3.6 is at the end of the chapter? Why is diagram 3.43 is section 3.7?


Here's a challenge for you: Take any text book you have to a copy shop. Have them chop the margins off the book and replace the binding with a spiral binding. You've just lost 5 pounds. So much easier to carry, turn pages, use.



And while I'm on the subject of education: Isn't it interesting that you have to have a teaching certificate to teach in elementary school, yet the majority of college professors don't have formal training in teaching, psychology, or communication? And I'd say about a quarter to a half of them are downright terrible teachers. Only a few are actually qualified to teach.


It's much easier for a real teacher to teach something that he doesn't know than for an expert to teach something he knows all too well. The wonderful thing about a real teacher is that a teacher can learn anything and teach anything. It's not about being an expert, it's about acquiring information and communicating it in a fluid manner.



Just get home schooled, fall in love with something, get good at it, and do it.



[Edit & Addition] The worst worst is actually that they're by and large "text" books. "Text" is one of if not the least effective medium of communication.

And it's not fair to make a complaint without suggesting a solution. How about small picture books with matte pages that focus on narrow topics.

Although book machines are a new invention and I think BYU is one of the first (and only) places in the world to have one, I can see them becoming coupled with the internet and mix'n'match blog posts becoming a better form of text book.

Imagine if you could blog on a subject and get $0.50 every time someone printed it as part of their curriculum?

P.S. This is why I tend to stay away from blogging. I feel rather strongly about a rather large number of things and once I start a rant, I'm going to finish it...

I recently discovered that my driving time becomes more enjoyable (and productive) if I listen to Google Tech Talks.

I was rather fascinated by Go. The idea that the first argument to a function definition should be the object receiving the message just makes sense. Duck typing makes sense. It's a great paradigm.

Tonight I starting looking at the Getting Started guides on Erlang for the first time. I've been meaning to do it for a while, but I just hadn't. I feel that having had my eyes opened by Python, then Ruby, and then Go have prepared more to more readily understand so many new concepts.



I see that Yukihiro Matsumoto was definitely right that the way you approach solutions to problems has much to do with your natural language. Certain constructs of human language and grammar are more conducive to certain thinking patterns. Background and culture play a huge part too. I can see that Erlang was written from the perspective of a certain mind-culture.

Computer science is so awesome...


The more I get into this stuff, the more I believe that it is a truly creative and expressive medium - an art more than a science.

I'm still putting together a toolkit for myself to be using on web development. I've been missing a good MVC framework for javascript. Just recently I stumbled upon several interesting projects in development.


I discovered Jaxer a long while ago (perhaps even during the beta stages). Although I'd prefer to use that than PHP, I think that the number of libraries available for Ruby make Ruby a better choice.

More importantly, mixing client logic and server logic is something that just doesn't sit well with me. I'm of the opinion that clients and servers should be separate. I just don't see how you could adequately follow the data-service paradigm while mixing client/server logic. I'd rather use my own public api and know that it works for everything a customer would need (including a working demonstration - the application itself) than have the convenience of coding things just once.

http://activerecordjs.org/view.html

http://code.quirkey.com/sammy/

http://code.google.com/p/jquery-jstore/

http://benalman.com/projects/jquery-bbq-plugin/

http://helma.org/wiki/Helma+NG/

I still want to do more research into CouchDB before I settle on which frameworks to mix and match from.



I also want to look into Sinatra and DataMapper.

http://datamapper.org/why.html

There are a bunch of websites that BYU's IT college likes to pretend are private for some sort of reason.

I'm here to dispel that myth and make it so that next time I google BYU XXX I either hit the site itself or this blog post...


A lot of the IT sites... under ET... wth?
http://www.et.byu.edu/groups/

IT347
http://www.et.byu.edu/groups/it347/IT347Root.htm
http://www.et.byu.edu/groups/it347/Schedule.htm

IT355
http://www.et.byu.edu/groups/it355/

IT210
http://www.et.byu.edu/groups/it210web/


because it when you're trying to google to find a class because you can't remember the URL, but it's not there.

P.S. frames suck too, don't use them.