Dylan’s blog

Three orders of magnitude!

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:43:46 -0700

When I travel by airplane, I prefer to start my trip on foot, rather than car. There's an air of wonder about traveling when you step from your front porch, belongings in hand, headed for a destination thousands of miles away. When you do it by ca...

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Wonderful educational materials from the NSA

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:21:26 -0700

Speaking of crypto treasure-hunts and math circles...I just found these educational materials from the NSA. There are dozens of lesson plans for topics ranging from probability to geometry. They're very complete, including clear instructions for t...

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Crypto-treasure hunt birthday party: a great success!

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:33:35 -0700

I was surprised to hear Audra wanted "codebreaking" to be the theme of her party this year. Maybe she missed math circle, or maybe there's cryptography in the air, maybe she knew it would bring Dad even more into the party preparation than normal ...

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Who's complaining about no Jetsons?

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:36:44 -0700

It's a common thing for folks to say "hey, it's 2009 fergoshsakes, where's my jetpack?" And to some degree, I agree. However, I think we take a lot of amazing stuff for granted. The Internet, for example, has evolved into a knowledge and collabor...

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Is it just my weird brain...

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:52:32 -0700

Galois moved downtown last week. I love it! Our new space is gorgeous, and conducive to both concentration and collaboration. Downtown is just so alive...it's invigorating. On the trivial side of things, this sign is outside our window, and i...

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Perhaps a little overboard?

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:15:16 -0700

In the past few months, the seriousness of my "coffee hobby" has escalated. I bought a coffee roaster, a "Gene Cafe," and I installed a PID-controller, which is a computer-controlled thermostat. While I don't think that everyone I know should fol...

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Simplify Media is cool

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:30:09 -0800

Simplify Media is a tool that lets you listen to your home iTunes library from work (my "killer app") and it also lets you choose up to 30 people to share with as well. You might think the RIAA will be all over these guys to shut it down, but th...

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A lunch with David Byrne and Brian Eno

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:04:34 -0800

I grew up admiring David Byrne and Brian Eno. From the great music they've made to the incisive social commentary to being consistently ahead of the curve in both technology and cultural trends (the good ones). I found the audio clips attached...

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Fall 2007 math circle concludes

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:25:25 -0800

It's been too long since I updated the blog with math circle news...quite a lot has happened: Binary arithmetic We did two days on binary numbers. Five students sat at the front of the room, each holding a card with dots. From the right, movi...

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Math circle! (weeks 2 and 3)

nobody@vox.com(Dylan) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 07:50:37 -0700

We've had two more math circle sessions, and I (at least) enjoyed both of them quite a bit. The second session (which was really the first official session), I slightly repurposed an activity from "computer science unplugged". We took turns bei...

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