With all the rain last week, the mountains above Pasadena show a lot of snow on their peaks. The view from my office window overlooks JPL's new Flight Projects Center.
Tellico uses the Yaz library for accessing z39.50 servers, which are used by many libraries for bibliographic access. Yaaz 4.0 was just released, so I wanted to check to see if Tellico still compiled with the new version.
I'm happy to report that no source code changes are necessary for Tellico. While the bump in the Yaz version means a library ABI compatibility, it's still source-compatible.
Looks like there's an American Idol contestant from Vonore, Tennessee, which is not far from where I grew up.
Vanessa Wolf is her name. I think I've been on that bridge before, though I've never jumped off of it.
Coker Creek, where I grew up, is smaller than Vonore, I think.
I meant to post this video of Colt McCoy after the BCS National Championship game, in which he was hurt badly enough to miss 3/4 of the game.
I admire his answers and composure.
I finally got around to fixing the blog feeds, which had not been updating since I moved to Movable Type 4. I got rid of the old RSS feeds, in favor of Atom feeds. Most feed readers won't care about the difference. I'm using 301 redirects, so everything should work correctly.
And...(drum roll)...I enabled comments...I think. We'll see how that goes...
Kim and I had a bit of a surprise one morning, a couple of days after Christmas. We came downstairs to find that our fish had proliferated!
We have eight little platys swimming around now. I'd thought that some fish either kill or eat their young, but so far, these guys seem to be doing ok! They're very small and hard to see. I thought we had six for a while, then saw a seventh, and Kim spotted the eighth. I wonder if they're able to even eat the regular fish food flakes?
We have three adult platys right now, one of whom still looks rather big. I suppose it's possible that we might have even more babies soon. Maybe I should have asked the pet store for males!
Steven Paul Lieva writes in the LA Times blogs about being a fanboy of The Big Bang Theory. I'm a fanboy myself.
In the face of all that, I would like to put forth the modest suggestion that scientists, as a group, are just as sane and socially capable as any other group of people. Which makes it a wry twist, I suppose, that I would also like to propose that the hit CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" is the finest and best fictional portrayal of scientists in any current media -- and a series that is carving out a spot for itself in the annals of television comedy.
Hear, hear! I actually know a few socially-capable scientists at work!
The writers of the series have sculpted full portraits of their characters and polished them with a giddy exploitation of their human frailties as well as compassion for them. Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Rajesh have become completely relatable to the large audience; some of the audience, of course, may connect to the nerd factor, but certainly not all.
My wife has even gotten into the show, and we've evangelized a few of our friends into fans, as well. I do have one hold-out of a friend, who doesn't seem to find the show very humorous.
The article has some great photos of the cast, check it out!
Update: the science advisor for the show has a blog, too!
I read an interesting article on bilingual education, which focused on California. "The Bilingual Ban That Worked" gives a pretty good history of the evolution of California's bilingual education and explores how to determine what has worked.
Hispanic test scores on a range of subjects have risen since Prop. 227 became law. But while the curtailment of California's bilingual-education industry has removed a significant barrier to Hispanic assimilation, the persistence of a Hispanic academic underclass suggests the need for further reform.
The Hill reports that the House of Representatives will work eight days in January and nine days in February.
"The House vote schedule for 2010 allows ample time for us to build on our work from this year, so that we continue creating jobs and addressing our nation's long-term fiscal problems," Hoyer said.
Continue creating jobs? What planet is he on...
I've used the same hand-crafted style for my blog almost since the beginning. I was bored this weekend, so I went looking for Movable Type template sets. There are really not many at all! Especially not compared to the number of themes for Wordpress.
I switched to the Mid-Century theme by Jim Ramsey. And now I may try to figure out how to exactly start tweaking it for my own needs.
As a side effect, comments are now enabled.
; "Snow Above JPL")