The Linguists - Tonight (Feb. 26) on PBS
I just saw this in a magazine - tonight on PBS (10pm EST on my PBS station):
The Linguists is a hilarious and poignant chronicle of two scientists—David Harrison and Gregory Anderson—racing to document languages on the verge of extinction. In Siberia, India, and Bolivia, the linguists confront head-on the very forces silencing languages: racism, humiliation, and violent economic unrest. David and Greg’s journey takes them deep into the heart of the cultures, knowledge, and communities at risk when a language dies.
Before airing on PBS, The Linguists world premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and screened at more than 40 festivals worldwide. The Linguists is produced and directed by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger of Ironbound Films, and based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0452417 and 0438121 and by the Nonprofit Media Group.
Databases are boring
As some may know, I love computers, I love everything about them. I like writing and reading on the computer - the wealth of information is amazing, I like smaller programming tasks (for now), I enjoyed Java, HTML, CSS, my current excursion into ASP.NET and VB.NET, I enjoy working with images and video. But there is one thing that I could never warm up to and that is anything related to databases. Databases bore me - just the thought of gigabytes of data makes me yawn. Unfortunately, the ASP.NET class at Davenport also covers some database stuff. It makes sense I guess, most web-based programs are connected to a database somewhere be it an online shop or a customer list, a service list or what-not. Have I just not found the right approach to it to see the beauty of databases?
So far, I have enjoyed every single chapter of this book, but now I have to force myself through pages and pages covering SQL, ADO, ODBC, COM, OLE and I can’t seem to finish. What’s up with all the acronyms? I have to fight through at least another 50 pages going on and on about data connections and sources, queries and relationships, propertiessssssss - sorry, my head hit the keyboard when I feel asleep typing this. Can anyone help me? What am I not getting? Is there a way to make this more enjoyable? It’s not like I need much - heck, I have spent hours of my life watching my hard drive defrag and download progress bars grow.
Oh well, back to the ADO.NET model….
Captain Sully
I have been in love with this story since it happened, and while it’s not related to anything else, check out Captain Sully and the Crew on Letterman in case you haven’t seen it yet:
Localization: Engineering Software for a Global Market
Here is a PDF that I printed from a Powerpoint presentation. This PPT was part of a presentation I did during my CS350 class (Introduction to Software Engineering). I have also added it to the company intranet as a quick reference for new developers - apparently, localization is rarely touched in CS classes.
If you work in software localization, have a look at it and let me know what you think. Is there something I should add?
Localization: Engineering Software for a Global Market
If you like to use this for anything, it would be nice to mention me as the creator. I have spent a lot of time creating this and you wouldn’t want to be credited for someone else’s work, would you?
Something funny happened on my way to work…
…well, maybe funny is not the right word. On my way to work, there was a truck in front of me and all of a sudden, something fell off the truck to the right and into the ditch. A second later, I saw a tire - the whole thing including rim - bounce down the highway and then off into the median. I was freaking out, what if more crap comes falling off the truck to hit me? I was swearing up a storm about some idiot dump truck driver who didn’t fasten his load properly! The truck pulled off to the right and in passing I noticed it was crooked - and it wasn’t a dump truck but a Comcast bucket truck and he actually lost two of his wheels WHILE DRIVING. I have no idea how that happens but I believe that getting hit by a truck tire including rim while drive 70mph on the highway must be a real blast - probably not the best way to start your day! Thank God nothing happened!
And in case someone is wondering why it got a little quiet around here, I am really busy with my ASP.NET class. Seems like this is the first class at Davenport that is challenging enough to keep me from blogging! I spent the last two weekends working through the chapters, doing examples and homework. This is a condensed 7 week class and we are doing what you are usually supposed to do in a whole semester, so it is 70 pages a week while still working full time. I am glad I am really enjoying this class and that the weather sucks anyway, otherwise I would be miserable.