Now, as any self-respecting Computer Science degree-wielding person should, I, too, think it’s important to celebrate the day named after the world’s very first programmer.

For me, the first math teacher I remember making a big difference was Shirley Theis – who taught me Algebra in 8th grade at McKinley Middle School in Redwood City, CA. Mrs Theis, an energetic dynamo in her mid fifties, was a deeply motivated and caring teacher, who expected a lot out of her students, but never in a disciplinary manner. She was full of enthusiasm, which projected out and infected even the most timid or disaffected student: in her class, you couldn’t be just a sack of potatoes planted in your seat.

She often lead class in a nearly theatrical manner – pacing back and forth, egging students on by eagerly repeating their partial responses, getting exponentially more excited if the student was on the right track, barely containing herself from jumping up and down in anticipation of that lightbulb going off — and yet just as quickly waning in her enthusiasm,becoming a personified caricature of hopelessness and despair to let you know the instant a response was starting to go astray.

It may have been the only math class I’ve ever taken where there were group assignments – we would work with a partner or a few classmates in trying to figure out an assignment, first trying it solo, and then putting our heads together to figure out why our answers disagree and which is the right one. I believe it was Mrs. Theis who succinctly captured a value I hold in high regard: “it’s not about how far you go – it’s about how many people you bring with you.”

There was one other mathematics teacher I had in my life who clearly stands out: it was Professor Evelyn Silvia who had a comparable level of enthusiasm and energy, and from whom I had the pleasure of taking the first upper-division math course (Math 108 – Intro to Abstract Math) during my second quarter at UC Davis. Dr. Silvia was the real deal – she cared, gesticulated, encouraged us to question why something was true, and had an approach to the demanded we each take ownership of our education. The book for the course, Introduction to Abstract Mathematics: A Working Excursion by D.O. Cutler and E.M. Silvia was a blue workbook – each of us had our own copy, and there were blanks left out for us to write our own answers to the exercises. The fact that the book had blanks for me to fill in was so inviting, there was a kind of “working mathematician” approach that came with it with that it made me really enjoy and look forward to working through the material. I still have mine.

Dr. Silvia was incredibly sharp, not just intellectually but also interpersonally. Not only could she could gauge when the class was lost, but she also had a knack for spotting if something was affecting you outside of class. She was really committed to helping you not just as a student, but as a person. I remember spending hours at Mishka’s, or Cafe Roma, or the CoHo, reading and writing, wanting to do well and not let Silvia down, because she invested so much energy in placed a great deal of trust in us.

So thank you both, Shirley Theis and Evelyn Silvia – you both encouraged me to grow a lot as a person, challenged my concept of what it means to be a student, and by your example provided a template of what it means to be an effective teacher, which I’ve imitated and embraced with pleasure in my own teaching.

(tagged scipy to spread word of Ada Lovelace day to Planet SciPy)

I’m finally getting to the point where I realize it’s a problem that, for example, even when I’m texting someone, I try to get all of the spelling and punctuation correct.

It’s slowing me down.

I’ve had a lot of half-written blog posts that, after stepping away from them for a short while just don’t seem significant enough. I try to only publish pieces that either I think about for a while, or that I’m not hearing/reading others write about. But I’m always mindful about adding noise. The way I see it, when it became super easy for anyone to publish online, a lot of content flooded in that I simply don’t care for. Same idea with web 2.0 – because of Ruby on Rails, Django, and other web frameworks, writing a fancy (but useless) website became super easy – and now we’re oversaturated with them¹. So there’s this internal tension: I think there’s too much crap-content out there but at the same time my internal filter keeps me from publishing anything. I rarely express my thoughts about what I find important in writing anymore. Others don’t seem to make such a big deal about self-filtering, and are much more prolific writers/bloggers/coders, etc.

So here’s a new acronym-sized motto to help correct this behavior, which is starting to get sprinkled in comments in the software I’m writing for my research: LTS. Life’s too short.

LTS has been showing up in my code coments

I wasn’t always this careful about what I publish. I’ve had some form of internet presence (as embarrassing as it may seem now) since I was in middle school. It started in one of those geocities neighborhoods, I don’t even remember any details right now, probably because my brothers helped me to set it up. I didn’t use my real name until I started a poetry website freshman year in high school.

I used my full name, because I wanted to express my thoughts and have them be connect back to my persona, not a pseudonym that I might grow tired of. I was quite explicit about this at the time. And I didn’t filter myself, I just counted a total of 20 poems on there which were written in the course of a year. None of them really make me cringe, and some I’m still quite proud of.

I had nothing to gain by hiding behind an alias. I think that attaching my real name somehow made my thoughts sincere. I started blogging socially my senior year in high school (livejournal), and looking back on the first entry there, I was just trying to capture day-to-day events and thoughts. Vim, THE editor, is mentioned five times in the first two entries . But there are some very candid and thoughtful remarks in there, too.

It’s kind funny to have your more than 10 year old website cited in a Yahoo! Answer to the question: “What is the best way to live life to the fullest?”.

My first website recently cited in Yahoo! Answers

And I’m very grateful for my many friends and colleagues who, by their example, continue to give me the courage to release my thoughts and code out in the open. Thank you.

As I was putting my finishing touches on this post, I found a recent entry on Scot Hacker’s blog titled “(I Don’t Care About) Facebook and Privacy” that covers similar ground: “For me, it’s simple: If what you have to say shouldn’t be said to the whole world, then don’t say it online.” I agree, and it’s a more sensible standard than my “everything you say will forever be connected to you, so don’t screw it up!” But just to be clear, this should only apply to things you intend to write up and release: I absolutely oppose Eric Schmidt’s dismissal of privacy. Eric says, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Due to its construction, it bears striking similarity to Scot’s quote above with which I mostly agree. But to me, Eric’s statement is a 1984-sized world apart.

Anyway, hopefully I’ve adequately explained my “publisher’s block”, and there are many related topics left to explore, but this is where I’ll have to end this post for now. LTS.

1. Though this problem will probably sort itself out with time. I didn’t intent to write about this now, so I’ll just keep that remark without developing it further
2. in fact, Elaine absolutely refuses to read anything on that site anymore, despite the fact that frequently, her google search string is verbatim the same as the question which comes up as one of the top results

I’m about to give this Lightning Talk at SHDH20.

I went to Linux World Expo today and played with one of these upcoming One-Laptop-Per-Child project’s XO-1 laptops at the Creative Commons booth.

Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid (cc)

While OLPC is a noble effort, I think it still feels like another example of trying to solve a problem with technology where technology is not the bottleneck. For example, I was bummed that they took away the hand-crank power-supply a while back because I think this severely limits who’ll be able to eventually use these. The UI and networking stuff is pretty novel, but my overall impression is that it’s too gadgety. I felt pretty lost in all just the buttons on the keyboard, but then again I only used it for 20 minutes and this wasn’t made for me. With that said, I’m not holding my breath, but it could be a great thing if this takes off. I say “could” because technology by itself just isn’t enough¹. This is a point I keep coming back to again and again.

1. A point the OLPC project acknowledges in their vision.