The History of English continues with the Norman invasion. Tasty fact: cow, sheep & swine came from English but beef, mutton & pork from the French.

I love learning about the history of English. I love the Open University and I especially love the fact that they put all of their courses online. It’s almost enough to make me want to finish my OU degree. In … Continue reading →

When I was a teenager, I thought there was nothing that I couldn’t do if I worked hard enough at it. Except art and music. All my attempts at drawing ended in tears and my attempts at playing the recorder … Continue reading →

I finished the book. A few of Bach’s points stand out as especially significant to my own life. But first, I want to talk about his story about his fellow testers at Apple. At first I thought I would learn … Continue reading →

I just started reading James Bach’s Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar. Buccaneer scholar is Bach’s term for someone who takes responsibility for their own education rather than having it handed to them by the authorities. The book is an odd … Continue reading →

After working much too late last night, I sat out on my newly-laid patio in my new Adirondack made from freshly-chopped-down, endangered, rain-forest hardwood wrapped in a scarcely-needed blanket with my daughter on my lap sipping rum and milk respectively. … Continue reading →

I’ve wanted to write a physics engine for years and messing with Squeak made me want to try it in Flex. It wasn’t quite as easy as Squeak but it wasn’t too hard. (It probably needs flash 10 to work) … Continue reading →

Took the kids to the Exploratorium today. It’s currently my favourite museum. Better even than OMSI (although they don’t serve beer at The Exploratorium. How come that hasn’t caught on outside Portland?)  I wish San Jose had a decent museum. … Continue reading →

They teach way too much english and history in school and not nearly enough physics (but that’s the topic of my next blog). But the one subject that they really need to teach more of is rhetoric. Jay Heinrich believes … Continue reading →

Regular readers know that I am a big fan of Better Explained in which Kalid makes mathematical ideas accessible. Today’s installment: Integration is just multiplication when one of the operands is changing. Most people grok integration as area under a … Continue reading →