General technology, not anything in particular
Earlier this month I met with several dozen people at Georgetown University to discuss an unusual question: should educational technology become an academic discipline? Carl Straumsheim wrote up a fine account, not to mention the bits where he interviewed me. The meeting raised some rich questions, and the main topic is quite stimulating, so I […]
The 6502 is the classic CPU. This chip is found in the original Apple, Apple II, PET, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Atari 2600, and 800, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Tamagotchis, and Bender Bending Rodriguez. This was the chip that started the microcomputer revolution, and holds a special place in the heart of every nerd…
Recently we started a series on the components used to assemble a circuit board. The first issue was on dispensing solder paste. Moving down the assembly line, with the paste already on the board, the next step is getting the components onto the PCB. We’re just going to address SMT components in this issue, because…
Where does open education stand in 2016? On April 14th Cable Green, many participants, and I explored this question on the 11th Future Trends Forum. The chat box went wild with observations, lightning-fast links, and questions. Twitter discussion went well, so I Storified it here. You can find our video and audio recording at YouTube, […]
via Open education’s long revolution: Cable Green on Future Trends Forum #11 — Bryan Alexander
Mike Caulfield’s essay on Open Educational Resources, and what it would take to have remix/re-use resource for even courses of niche majors.
Herbert Simon, a Nobel Laureate known for his work in too many areas to count, used to tell a story of two watchmakers, Tempus and Hora. In the story Tempus and Hora make watches of similar complexity, both watches become popular, but as one watch becomes popular the watchmaker expands and becomes rich, and as the other becomes popular the maker is driven slowly out of business.
What accounts for the difference? A closer look at their designs reveals the cause. The unsuccessful watchmaker (Tempus) has an assembly of a thousands parts, and for the watch to be working these must all be assembled at once; interruptions force the watchmaker to start over again from scratch. For a watch to be finished the watchmaker needs a large stretch of uninterrupted time.
The other watchmaker (Hora) has chosen a different model for her watch: she uses subassemblies. So while there are…
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There was a time in the late 80s and early 90s where the Amiga was the standard for computer graphics. Remember SeaQuest? That was an Amiga. The intro to Better Call Saul? That’s purposefully crappy, to look like it came out of an Amiga. When it comes to the Amiga and video, the first thing that comes to…
via Digital Images And The Amiga — Hackaday
In 1994 when I first matriculated into Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester NY, the Media Center there had a number of Amiga 1000 and one Amiga 3000 computers used exclusively with the edit bays and video editing rooms there. I remember using a Genloc box with an Amiga 1000 to generate titles with drop shadows for all my grad video projects. It was amazing how easy it was to do amazing things that would take another 6 years or more to do as easily on iMovie on the Mac. Those were the days.
When [Dr. Moddnstine] saw a 1978 General Electric TV in the trash, he just had to save it. As it turned out, it still worked! An idea hatched — what if he could turn it into a vintage Chromecast TV? He opened up the TV and started poking around inside. We should note that old…
via Chromecast Vintage TV Is Magic — Hackaday
Seems like everyone wants to make their own version of the “Console Living Room” ala Jim Groom formerly of University of Mary Washington.
Last week we had Gardner Campbell on the Future Trends Forum, and the discussion hurtled along. Gardner, participants, and I explored pedagogy, the power of the hyperlink, data, instructors, institutions, eportfolios, language, students, assessment, a great card deck, our personal histories, and a lot more. Twitter activity started well, became excited, then spilled over past the […]
via Future Trends Forum #9 with Gardner Campbell: full recording, notes, and Storify — Bryan Alexander
Over a dozen special-purpose accelerators compatible with next-generation OpenPOWER servers that feature the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) were revealed at the OpenPOWER Summit last week. These accelerators aim to help encourage the use of OpenPOWER based machines for technical and high-performance computing. Most of the accelerators are based on Xilinx high-performance FPGAs, but some…
via Several CAPI-Enabled Accelerators for OpenPOWER Servers Revealed — AnandTech
Bear with me as I step with trepidation into philosophical murk with this question: If one accumulates a great deal of small quantifiable things, does it necessarily, by accumulation, equate to something larger, more complex? Huh? Get to the tl;dr dude! No way. I am never that organized. I might not even be sure what…
via Piles of Things — CogDogBlog
I originally saw this photo above at the National Museum of the American Indian. While Alan Levine’s using it metaphorically (on his CogDogBlog) I would rather tell you what it is. It’s bison skulls collected and piled taller than a barn. Who killed them? Why did they kill so many of them. What purpose could killing so many living things serve? Let’s pin that one on a form of ethnic cleansing of the prairie lands. Lands that already given to the Indians in trade or out of threats of violence to get off more valuable land. But even that wasn’t enough. Every treaty and agreement was further eroded and re-evaluated. Indian Schools were put into operation. And bounties were placed on killing as many buffalo as one could shoot. So that’s what people did. Can imagine a “rancher” these days if someone drove though even just the public “grazing” land and proceeded to shoot the cattle? Wouldn’t you imagine law enforcement being involved, someone investigating the killing of the rancher’s livestock? But not so when it was buffalo and on the prairie lands. There was no investigation, no involvement with law enforcement. Extincting the bison was a choice, and all the people in power got on board. It’s so crazy that this ever happened anywhere on this planet. But it did.
Carpet Bomberz Inc. 