Archive for January, 2009
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
Came across this site a few days before Barack Obama’s recent inauguration into the presidency. This website, developed by the St. Petersburg Times, aims to catalog all of the promises Obama made during his campaign. In doing so, the Obameter keeps track of the status of these promises, whether Kept, Compromised, Broken, Stalled, In the Works, or with No Action. I think the Obameter is a creative way to view this information in comparison to standard news outlets. It’s fun to see the progress he’s made in keeping the promises he announced during his campaign. It will be interesting to watch the status of these promises over the next four years. As of the time of this writing, Obama has kept 1 promise, compromised 1, stalled 1, and has 17 in the works. Obama’s yet to break any promises, but he still has 485 to go.
My predictions? I will guess that at the end of 4 years we’ll see something like 200 kept, 100 compromised, 50 broken, 100 stalled, 100 in the works, and 150 no action taken. Think I’m wrong? Think you can do better? Let’s discuss it in the comments. Then in four years we can come back and see who was right. 
Monday, January 26th, 2009
I know that this story is all over mainstream news sources and is making its way around the Internet, but I just couldn’t resist writing about it. If you haven’t heard, a girls’ basketball team in Dallas beat out another team 100-0 in one of its recent games. That is, this team completely annihilated the other team, allowing zero points on the board. Of course the coaches and players involved received an immediate and intense reaction to this game. The school that won the game, The Covenant School, subsequently submitted an apology on their website, stating that “a victory without honor is a great loss.” This story has flooded the news in the last several days, likely due in large part to the “learning differences” of the Dallas Academy girls. The school that lost the game focuses on students who experience ADHD, dyslexia, or similar struggles. In fact, the Dallas Academy team has not won a basketball game in several years.
I guess I’m not sure what I think about this story. On the one hand, the girls on both teams (including the winning team) are probably taught to never give up. From what I’ve read, neither team did so. On the other hand, as a Christian school, Covenant must have thought that something should be done to make the game a little less of a blow-out. So I don’t know. Do you have a more developed opinion than I do? I would love to hear your thoughts on this story in the comments.
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
I came across this about a month ago and was amazed by it: Chris Harrison, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon, along with Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor, developed a gorgeous visualization of all of the over-63,000 cross-references in the Bible. In this graph, books and chapters of the Bible line the bottom bar, while arcs connect different chapters to each other across the main area of the image. You’ve got to see it for yourself — it is elegant and simply amazing. Check it out: Visualizing the Bible.
Additionally, you can scroll down to find a few visualizations that he has created which graph the people and places found in the Bible in a very unique way. I also recommend taking a look at some of his other visualizations, appropriately found on his Visualizations page.
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
I discovered an application the other day and couldn’t resist sharing it. I’ve been looking for a cool program to catalog the books I own or have read. I’ve considered purchasing Delicious Library, but I decided that it was a little more intense than what I was looking for. The other day, I came across Books, a free application that does just what I was looking for. Using a built-in camera, Books detects the bar code on your book, scans it, and retrieves data on that book from Amazon or any other source which has it. You are then able to fill in all sorts of details about ownership of the book, condition, etc.
What’s even more exciting, the author of this application is working on a whole new project which will create a platform to allow users to customize the ways that they use Books. Read about that – it should be a really great piece of software.
To be honest, I scanned about 50 books right when I downloaded the application simply because I liked the little “blip” sound that was played as each barcode was scanned. If for no other reason, this app’s worth a shot. If you’re looking for a free alternative to more expensive cataloging software, Books is for you.
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
Just upgraded this blog to WP 2.7. I’ve already upgraded another blog to 2.7 so I’ve played with it a little bit, and I really like the new look and feel of the backend. If you haven’t upgraded your blog yet, you really should. The backend is very sleek and fun to use. Overall it’s a great update.
For those who care, I’m having some problems with automatic upgrading of plugins. I think there’s something wrong with the permissions and WordPress’s ability to create temporary files and directories. I’ll figure it out someday. There’s not much help online, which is mostly why I’m putting it off. Check out this WordPress Support page for more information on my problem.
Now for the interesting part. I’m thinking about working on the design of this blog. The template just isn’t doing it for me anymore — it’s just too plain. I’m not exactly what I’m going to do with it or when, but something’s going to happen. I’ve considered ditching the LetsMoveToTheMoon feel, but I think I’m going to keep it. It’s pretty unique, and I like the name. A future design will probably be built around that idea. This redesign is probably pretty far off, though. Look for it early summer.
Pretty boring post, I know, but I figure it’s good to get some blog news in once in a while. I’ve got a good idea or two for some summertime series, though, so stay tuned. If you’ve got any thoughts on WP2.7, the automatic upgrading, or the design of this blog, let me know in the comments (particularly if you can help with that plugin problem).
