Build Up To Something

Congratulations on your marriage

Steven Choy — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:12:20 +0000

To my brother:

Philip Greenspun’s Online Home

Steven Choy — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 16:14:44 +0000

I recommend good websites more often than good books. I particularly like those websites that well reflect the knowledge and personality of a single individual. By reading those websites, I can learn much from great minds and great people.

Philip Greenspun’s presence at philip.greenspun.com is one of those great websites.

Biography of Philip Greenspun

Philip Greenspun has been in and around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1979. He alternates between teaching traditional electrical engineering classes and teaching “Software Engineering for Web Applications” (6.171), a course that he co-developed with Hal Abelson. This has been a successful course at MIT and is being used by computer science departments at 20 other universities around the world. Greenspun is the author of two textbooks used at MIT, including Internet Application Workbook (available at http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application-workbook/). Greenspun is an instrument-rated private pilot and has flown his Diamond Star across most of the North American continent and two-thirds of the Caribbean islands.

Photographs courtesy Philip Greenspun

Philip Greenspun’s Weblog is also a good place to visit.

Paul Graham: What Business Can Learn from Open Source

Steven Choy — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:44:59 +0000

Paul Graham recently gave a keynote speech on Oscon 2005 (O’Reilly Open Source Convention - August 1-5, 2005 - Portland, Oregon). I listened to his talk via IT Conversations. Here is the link: Paul Graham - An OSCON 2005 Keynote.

Graham pointed out and discussed the three big lessons that business can learn from open source and blogging.
(1) People work harder on stuff they like.
(2) The standard office environment is very unproductive.
(3) Bottom-up often works better than top-down.

He also predicted that the old paternalistic employer-employee relationship may finally be ditched by the force underlying open source and blogging.

If you would like to read on this topic rather than listening. Here is the link: What Business Can Learn From Open Source (A Paul Graham’s essay that is derived from a talk at Oscon 2005.)

Paul Graham is the author of On Lisp, Ansi Common Lisp, and Hackers & Painters; was co-founder of Viaweb (now Yahoo Store); discovered a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired many present filters; and is one of the partners in Y Combinator. He has a PhD in computer science from Harvard and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia in Florence.

This is my second post talking about Paul Graham. The first on is “Great Hackers According to Paul Graham.”

Creators of Little Fighter 2

Steven Choy — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 15:21:14 +0000

My 4-years-old son loves to play Little Fighter 2 very much. One day when I searched the Web about how to set up the game so that it can connect to my another computer at home, I came to this page and learnt that the creators of this great and free game are two Hong Kong young guys.

Little Fighter 2 (LF2) is a game developed by Marti Wong and Starsky Wong. They once were undergraduate students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Now, Starsky Wong is a PhD student in his third year at the Computer Science Department of UCLA. And, Marti Wong is a programming team lead of a technology company.

Great Hackers According to Paul Graham

Steven Choy — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 02:01:53 +0000

Paul Graham wrote an essay about what great hackers have in common. Here are some quotes.

Their defining quality is probably that they really love to program. Ordinary programmers write code to pay the bills. Great hackers think of it as something they do for fun, and which they’re delighted to find people will pay them for.

What do hackers want? Like all craftsmen, hackers like good tools. In fact, that’s an understatement. Good hackers find it unbearable to use bad tools. They’ll simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure.

Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. Not just because it’s better, but because it gives them more control.

Along with good tools, hackers want interesting projects.

Along with interesting problems, what good hackers like is other good hackers.

I like this interesting essay of Paul Graham. I also like his recent book Hackers & Painters. Note that the word “hacker” means different thing from differnt people’s viewpoint.

To the popular press, “hacker” means someone who breaks into computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To programmers, “hacker” connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants– whether the computer wants to or not.

Weblogs on Education Technology: My Selection 2

Steven Choy — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 02:00:33 +0000

In my previous post, I put down a number of my favorite weblogs about learning, technology and education. I continue to add more in the following.

Stephen’s Web by Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes is a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata as well as the emerging fields of weblogs in education and content syndication. He is perhaps best known for his daily research newsletter, OLDaily (short for Online Learning Daily), which reaches thousands of readers across Canada and around the world.

EdTechPost

It is about technologies for learning, thinking and collaborating. EdTechPost is maintained by Scott Leslie, an educational technology researcher and emerging technology analyst.

Weblogg-ed

The Read/Write Web in the Classroom. This weblog is maintained by Will Richardson, blogvangelist and Supervisor of Instructional Technology and Communications at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, NJ. This site is dedicated to discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, audiocasts and other Read/Write Web related technologies in the K-12 realm, technologies that are transforming classrooms around the world.

XplanaZine

It is about Instruction, Innovation, and Immersion. Topics of interests include online learning, literacy, technology, arts, ideascape, and students.

Teaching and Developing Online

Author: Darren Cannell, Location: Canada

Education/Technology - Tim Lauer

I am the principal at Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. I use this site mainly to make notes to myself about technology and how it can be used by teachers and students to gain a greater understanding of their world, and as a means to tell their stories…

Weblogs on Education Technology: My Selection 1

Steven Choy — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 15:10:30 +0000

The following is a list of weblogs about learning, technology and education. They are my favorite weblogs on the topics. I just put the list here for sharing and for recording purpose. I plan to re-organize the outside links in my weblog.

Abject Learning

Reusable media, personal publishing, and petty battles with rivals over power and money…
Person: Brian Lamb, Office of Learning Technology, The University of British Columbia, Canada.

Couros Blog

Alec Couros is Coordinator of Instructional Technologies, Faculty of Education, University of Regina, Canada.

EduResources Weblog

Higher Education Resources Online. This weblog focuses on locating, evaluating, discussing, and providing guidelines to instructional resources for faculty in higher education. …

elearningpost

elearningpost is an intelligent digest of daily links to articles and news stories about Corporate Learning, Community Building, Instructional Design, Knowledge Management, Personalization and more. …

elearnspace

This site and blog explore elearning, knowledge management, networks, technology, and community.

Incorporated Subversion

Social software, online education and james farmer

Learning for 2020

Albert Ip’s Journey to understand what life will be in year 2020 and how we should prepare our next generation to cope with life at 2020. Location: Australia

Teach and Learn Online

Leigh Blackall: Things to do with network learning, flexible learning, and online teaching and learning.

I will continue to add more when I get time.