Probably the weakest of my three compositions, this one lacked any kind of focus, not really drawing the viewer to any point in any really meaningful way. The next step will be to unclutter the image and focus on two of the strongest elements, which are probably the bolt and the foil piece at the bottom.

"Call of Duty: Vanguard" is a first-person shooter for the Nintendo Wii set in World War II. The game offers several multiplayer options for play in split-screen mode. This review will evaluate one of these options, "King of the Hill."

Okay, here we go! Another semester is starting up, and I am busy. I'm taking 18 credits right now and teaching one class (CC lab) and co-teaching another (Community Media Design) with Karl Mendonca. Thesis fits in there too, plus another secret project I'm working on with a former teacher.

I've been doing some testing on barcode scanners, and it looks like I can get the one I just received from eBay to read off a number from a fairly crowded field of others on a strip where each is only 1 mm high. This could make an efficient length and circumference measuring device, once I test it more thoroughly. I present the larger idea in class Monday night, so feedback from that will be very helpful.

William is an amazing young man from Malawi who powered his home with a windmill of his own design. Check it out. Note that, though it's hard to see in the video, he got a standing ovation from the crowd.

After a what amounts to full year of preparation, bootcamp is underway, and I'm helming a code class. Time to put up or shut up.

So far, things are going pretty well. After a shaky start with the blogs, it looks like most of the students are rocking on them, and we're starting to see some outstanding work posted. They're tired (weren't we all, way back in 2006,) but they seem to be getting on.

Here are my students' blogs:

Akiko Rokube

Carlos Lopez

Elie Stevenson

Fengyu Hao

Jessica Johnson

Pasquale Chieffalo

Jia Zhang

Joana Kelly

Joanna Zdeb

Lynn Maharas

Michael Thibodeau

Rohini Metharam

Stephanie Mendolia

Wai Sze

Our Mill of the Mind project, in which Sims are subjected to the deprivations of the Milgram experiment, got a mention in ARTnews. Awesome!

This is pretty awesome. The Pleech Instructable was nominated as a finalist in Instructables' Laser Cutter contest. If I win it, I'm donating this mad machine to the school. If not, enh, it's still pretty cool. Seems like this is the year for homemade wind power!

A new cell phone? Ho-hum. A new cell phone running on free software? It's been done, but you've got my attention. A new cell phone running on free software, using completely open hardware? And they'll give you the tools to bust it open and make it easy to solder stuff onto its I2C port? RAWK!

Kinda makes you wonder... what would YOU hook up to a cell phone, if you could? Gets me wondering about some of the tech I saw in Malawi, particularly in the health sector.

So, I'm here in the waiting area for jurors in the Superior Court in Jersey City. I'm up for grand jury selection, which ordinary would be really cool, but is pretty bad news for me right now. If I get picked, then I'm on the hook for one day a week for 11 weeks, which pretty much disqualifies me from teaching bootcamp and would seriously endanger me in a few of the classes I'm taking in the fall--in fact, I'd fail out of them by failing to attend.

I'm going to throw myself on the mercy of the court and try to get myself excused or, at least, postponed until next year.

I'm blogging this from a cafe here in jc. This N95 has proved to be a true geek swiss-army knife. Just needs an RSS reader, and I'd be all set!