Archive for July, 2006

Gearing up for fall

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

I’m teaching English again this fall, but I’m not sure which class I’ll be teaching yet. It will either be English 101 or English 102. These are both freshman writing classes. In the 101 class, students read essays and then craft their own in response to them or on other topics but [...]

Not dead yet

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

The coding bug bit me this weekend, so I hacked around on wheatblog (wB) a bit and decided to release the changes as version 1.1. The previous release went out in October of last year. This new release includes the same comment spam protection I’ve been using here for a month or so [...]

Public schools not so bad after all…

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

I’m a product of public schools and public a public university, so I was happy to hear yesterday of a recent study, commissioned by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, no less, and conducted by ETS–the folks who brought you the SAT, GRE, and every other standardized test you can think of–found [...]

Don’t don’t don’t let’s start, this is the worst part

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

While I was waiting in line and the local Subway today at lunch, I saw Tony Snow on CNN and a banner across the bottom reading, “Snow: Lebanon deserves peace and democracy” across the bottom. And I thought, “Oh, God, is Bush going to drag us into yet another Vietnam? Isn’t one [...]

Q3 Resolutions

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

I’ve been lax on officially setting down my resolutions for Q3, even though I’ve had them jotted down in my notebook since before July 1. I’ve been afraid to commit to them, for whatever reason. But here’s the rundown:

Cardio at least five days per week
This means 20 minutes or better on the elliptical. [...]

KT Tunstall

Monday, July 24th, 2006

A good bit of my motivation for interviewing Steve Lawson was the amazing good use he makes of looping technology. I’m into looping as well, but what Steve does with it is sublime. Recently, I discovered KT Tunstall (who says VH1 never did anything good for me). This live clip from her [...]

Lest your ego get the better of you…

Friday, July 21st, 2006

Here’s a nice graphic of the population of the entire world, represented in pixels–you among all the rest. This should be in a textbook on using visual aids. For you non-designer and/or non-geeks, there are (on most monitors at least) 72 pixels in an inch.
No someone go do one that represents [...]

Another bassplaying.com interview goes live

Friday, July 21st, 2006

My second interview for bassplaying.com went live today. This one is with phenomenal UK solo bassist Steve Lawson.

Pushing spying under the rug…

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

An EFF press release reports that a new proposed bill from Senator Arlen Specter would be “a rubber stamp for any future spying program dreamed up by the executive.” This is our lap-dog legislative branch in action. Rather than hold the president responsible for ignoring the law, they’ll just bend the law around [...]

Why write when you can steal

Sunday, July 16th, 2006

I’m not sure if plagiarism is on the rise across the board, but I know I see it more regularly in my classes these days. I can count on at least one blatant rip-off paper per semester. I only teach two classes, so that’s a fairly high ratio.
I doubt most of [...]

personal weblog of James “Wheatbread” Martin