smart computer use?

I stumbled across an interesting read at the Early Ed Watch blog today that got me reminiscing about all the educational computer games that I played back in the ’80s and early ’90s. I was a kid during that time, being born in 1979.

Computer gaming was reaching the classrooms, and I logged my fair share of Number Munchers hours. Imagine that. Learn and play video games at the same time. It was novel concept back in those days.

From Early Ed Watch I worked my way over to an article titled “The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s“. What a good read.

From Educational Games Research:

People who grew up playing videogames are influenced by them, especially when designing games of their own. Those who played through the 1980s are reaching their professional prime, and the games they played in school are worth examining. Here we’ll take a look at what I consider to be the top ten most influential educational games from the 1980s.

I guess I fall into this category of people who grew up playing video games in the 1980s. I must read on. This is getting interesting…

After reading about and being reminded of the classics like Sim City, Number Munchers and Oregon Trail, I just want to play some of these games to see what my impressions of them are now as opposed to how I thought they were awesome when I was a kid.

This guy over here named Justin uncovered a couple links to both Number Munchers and Oregon Trail. I had to try to see if I could get them running.

First try was Number Munchers. Nuts. I can’t seem to get their emulator plugin to download into FireFox. The download fails.

Well, maybe I can get into the Maxis site where Sim City can be played online for free. Good times.

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Ah yes, drunken emails. It’s too easy to just type out all kinds of crazy stuff and email it out to those who probably don’t care when you have had a few too many drinks and find yourself in front of a computer.

Many people have fallen victim to sending emails while drunk. The drunken email situation has prompted one Google engineer to develop an application called “Mail Goggles” that prevents users from sending drunken emails.

From TelecomTV:

Called ‘Mail Goggles’ the application is a product of the fecund, albeit booze-soaked mind of Google Gmail engineer Jon Perlow whose own weakness for late-night, liquor-fuelled missives turned-off one too many potential sweethearts.

Here’s how it works. Before a lost weekend, the user activates the Mail Goggles app which blocks emails from being sent during the specified hours unless the reveller can correctly answer 5 “basic” maths problems within a few seconds: if you are too pissed to pass the quiz ­ no email.

By default the app will kick in during prime post-party hours weekend nights to the wee hours.

Haha, yeah that’s good stuff.

Even if you are good at drunken math, this will probably be enough of a deterrent to at least make you think a little more before sending those drunken emails on a late Friday night.

I guess I’ve never really had a problem with sending drunken email, but if I did, I’d probably lump in this application along with my ticket to AA.

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So… Google now has it’s own mobile phone. The Google G1. Yeah. I guess I’m not really that excited personally. I thought that the iPhone and Blackberry were good enough options for smartphones myself.

So what’s the big deal about the Google G1 phone?

According to the Guardian, the G1 is faster at downloading from the internet. Here’s some other comments about the operating system, which I found to be interesting:

The real difference between the two devices, however, is likely to come from the openness of Google’s operating system, called Android, which enables tech-heads to design ‘widgets’ for the phone. There is a button on the G1 that takes users to an application marketplace (think iTunes without the music) where they can download anything from a virtual compass to a barcode reader that uses the phone’s camera to read barcodes on items and then connects to the internet to find the cheapest price for them.

This seems to be a key point. The possibilities are endless when an open platform is available.

Another common thought that is flying about right now is that the G1 isn’t very visually sleek. From USA Today:

That said, in an era when good looks and fashion count nearly as much as the smarts, especially with consumers, the 5.6-ounce G1 won’t win any beauty contests. The hardware is frankly homely-looking next to an iPhone or one of the newer Research In Motion BlackBerry’s. The device, which is made by HTC, comes in black, white or brown.

If you check out the pictures of the device you’ll probably agree. Also, is it me or does this phone look big?

Well, for now I’ll stick to my Blackberry. This looks interesting nontheless.

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I frequently go through stages where I feel like I’m in a rut when it comes to keeping on top of projects. One thing that I find to be important to keeping out of ruts is keeping my workspace fresh.

Fresh?

By a fresh workspace, I mean this: don’t let your workspace feel stale and non-maintained.

• Don’t just let stuff pile up do something with those piles, stay familiar with them. Don’t have a pile on your desk or work area that you look at and say “I’m not really sure what is even in that pile of stuff”. If you don’t need it file it and get it out of the way.
• Clean your workspace. Use an air can to blow dust off it the desk and shelves. Get rid of garbage. Don’t let coffee cups and water bottles and pop cans stack up.
• Change it up every now and then. Subtle things. Put up new pictures on the wall, take some things down, etc.

What I do.

I like to try to put up new posters or pictures every now and then. I don’t let the bulletin board go unrevised for periods of time. I’ll also try to switch up music often. Keep it fresh. It seems to keep me more motivated.

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Haha. I don’t know why this one made me laugh. Once I noticed it, I thought it was quite hilarious.

The funny thing is this:

• I am first told that the message is exactly 2148991 characters long. This is a very specific and large number. This computer is showing me that it knows insane details that a mere mortal human should not care about.
• I am then told that a certain amount of characters from the beginning of the message are being shown to me. 106496 to be exact. So exact, that the computer adds “or so…” to the estimation of characters that are being shown.

Come on.

Don’t think that I don’t know what you are up to, you program. You are a lot smarter than you lead us to believe… you can’t play it off.

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