Archive for February, 2008

O coffee

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

I am now drinking my first cup of coffee since Saturday 2/23.
O Coffee! Thou dost dispel all cares, thou are the
object of desire to the scholar.
This is the beverage of the friends of God; it gives
health to those in its service who strive after wisdom.
(via Brendan)
Why did I deprive myself of the elixir of [...]

More on the XO

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

To date, Madelyn’s XO use has been limited. She’s just too little; she wants to whale on it and play with the antennas. So she can’t use it alone. Not to say she doesn’t get it; she’ll “type” and say, “I’m checking my email.” And she can move and follow the pointer using the trackpad. [...]

Sought

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

is the past of search, right? Or is that seek? Searched? Whatever. I’m happy to say I am on one fewer committee; my college hired a manager (read: geek) to take care of our electronic classrooms and build a student worker program directed at first-line technical support. I’m going to be involved to ensure a [...]

Northern

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

Grief, relief, and guilt about the shootings at Northern Illinois U

Pink grits!

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. Madelyn celebrated with PINK GRITS!

Running spark

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

I’m getting faster; some sparklines show it

Nice work, Joe

Monday, February 11th, 2008

Very good news today: my student Joe Weinberg has been accepted into two excellent doctoral programs. Well-deserved, Joe. I bet writing that thesis just got a little easier.

Tufte, Beautiful Evidence

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Edward Tufte’s most recent book Beautiful Evidence follows in the tradition of his previous books, arguing for visual displays with high information density. Much of the argument is by example, annotated reproductions or redrawings of images Tufte identifies as “graphical excellence.”
Beautiful Evidence introduces the idea of sparklines: “Why not also construct data graphics that work [...]

Odds and ends Sunday

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

The Easterling-Dilger household is bustlin’ these days, so bloggin’ sometimes has to take a back seat.
I’m very, very glad to say I’m reading a fair amount these days. I’m halfway through a second reading of Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence, which has some very good bits. Lisa Gitelman’s Always Already New is next, and for fun Shipley [...]

Unixtrix: Backup

Friday, February 1st, 2008

I back up my files remotely using rsync. For the Mac Erin and I share, on which we keep gobs of pictures, video, and the like, that’s not feasible given our limited bandwidth. Erin is good at archiving files to DVD, but it’s time consuming. So we established a quick and dirty way to keep [...]