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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
Grief, relief, and guilt about the shootings at Northern Illinois U
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. Madelyn celebrated with PINK GRITS!
I’m getting faster; some sparklines show it
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.
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]