Speed of a Meme

Scott Eric Kaufmann is trying to experimentally measure the speed that a meme can travel around the internet.  I saw it mentioned in Political Animal. You can participate by linking to the original article. Kaufmann is tracking mentions in Technorati.

Laptop Upgrade

I own a Dell Inspiron 6000 which has served me well for a couple of years. I have seen no reason to buy a new one, but I have wanted to keep it running well, so I have embarked on a series of upgrades. The first was a memory upgrade from 512MB to 1280 [...]

Ubuntu 6.10 Installed

I took some time this evening to install Ubuntu 6.10 on my desktop. I had heard that some people were having problems doing an upgrade so I did a clean install. I have two computers, a desktop and a laptop. I consider the laptop to be my primary computer, so I experimented with the desktop. [...]

Power Bar at O’Hare

Yesterday when I was returning home from Chicago, I saw a new feature at O’Hare airport. By gate B14 there are is a small installation with four stools and eight power outlets. It is meant to allow people to charge their laptops and cell phones. It seems like a great idea to me, but they [...]

Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak!

I took a quiz online to see what kind of accent I speak with.

What American accent do you have?
Your Result: Philadelphia
 
 
Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you’re not from Philadelphia, then you’re from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you’ve ever journeyed to some far off [...]

Taking Pictures

I have been taking more pictures than usual lately. I have taken a lot of the girls’ bunnies, but I am most pleased with some shots I took of the area last Sunday. It was a beautiful fall day. I took a shot right outside my house, because the sky looked so blue with [...]

A Small Teaching Breakthrough

Helping my daughter with her high school physics homework is a much different activity than lecturing to 200 students. I had a real insight last night into the kind of mistakes that students make. The problem was a classic block on a turntable problem. The turntable accelerates at a constant rate and the question is [...]

Who Needs to Be Able to Program a Computer?

I have been trying to organize my collection of digital photos. It goes back to 1999 when I had some film photos put on CDs when they were developed. I now have over 1400 photos that take up 1.6 GB. I need to back up all of these photos and set things up so that [...]