Author archives: Mike
Four most common questions (From a question at the talk yesterday...)
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Young Coders.
I mentioned the 4 most common questions I get about the laptop, here they are, simply pulled from my recollection, I haven't tried to count all the questions I receive these days:
1) What gives you the right/why aren't you feeding the children/why are you imposing western material culture on the children?
2) How can ...
Librarians Rule (Organised, efficient and effective...)
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Young Coders.
Rochelle I mentioned yesterday as having been instrumental in introducing me to people who went out of their way to introduce me to people who could make decisions about institutional commitment. One of those people who went out of their way was Simone.
She took me on a dizzying trip through the various departments and ...
First day of the conference goes very well (Despite being jet-lagged...)
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Young Coders.
I wound up having to drink about 6 coffees this morning at the conference just to keep from falling asleep. The trip from Albania took 14 hours yesterday, and I wound up waking up at 3am this morning.
Made a considerable number of great contacts, lots of people interested in helping. Probably the stand-out though ...
Bit of Sightseeing on the Last Day (Amphitheatre in Durres)
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Vindaloo.
Soni and her mom wanted to give me a treat today, so they took me up to Durres, which is about an hour's drive (bus ride) away. There's an amphitheatre you can climb all about. It's more of a "beach" destination, apparently, we didn't actually get out to the beach, but we went to a ...
Talk went reasonably (This trip funded by Soni's dental surgery budget...)
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Vindaloo.
Talk at the University of Tirana went reasonably well. I'll upload the presentation slides to the wiki ASAP, it's just a slightly more refined version of the talk at U of T, with more of a general introduction as people here generally haven't heard of the project.
Soni's dental work went less well. Very involved ...
Global Warming isn't even on the radar here (And other little observations from Tirana...)
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Vindaloo,
Young Coders.
We've been in Tirana since Saturday afternoon. All in all it's about what I expected as an experience. Spent most of the time in "visits" with family. Really enjoyed having coffee with Soni's two doctor friends. Ilir's Physic's professor was nice too, though I'm afraid our discussions of how to address problems in the country ...
Rome fills up cards fast... (3 hours per 500MB)
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Vindaloo.
Hit the colloseum, Palantine's palace and the Fora this morning. Ran out of space on the camera even with rather sparing use once we hit Palantine's place. Another bug showed up on the billing system, will have to work on that this evening I suppose.
Right now we're recharging the camera and Soni's batteries, then ...
Abandoned building in a park (Machiavelli's palace???)
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Design Theory,
Knight Errant,
Vindaloo.
Highlight of yesterday's wandering was actually a wrong turn. We were wanting to get to the Pitti gardens (and then the Pitti palace, and then...) but missed the little side-gate that is the entrance to Pitti and went through the "main" gate. There was this grand building at the back of the park, and another ...
Days in the Italian Countryside (In Florence now...)
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Design Theory,
Vindaloo.
Arrived in Florence yesterday. Spent the first four days of the trip with Soni's brother, sister-in-law and niece (my niece pretty soon (I'm Jagi Maku :) ). Great people, very fun and relaxed. There are 355 pictures just of them (mostly our niece).Running into the limits of the camera rather frequently, mostly zoom-related (can't ...
Off to Italy... (Well, after lunch...)
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Vindaloo.
We're pretty much packed up, just have to drop the three computers in the luggage, pack up the MP3 players, check the cameras and otherwise assemble the panoply of gadgets that seem to have attached themselves to the trip. Turns out that travelling with someone else means that you take 4x as much luggage as ...
Mike C. Fletcher, the VRPlumber, is a philosopher of design turned computer programmer based in Toronto, Canada. He works primarily in the Python programming language, and maintains a large number of Open Source software packages. You can reach him at: mcfletch@vrplumber.com.