The K12 Geek

Another quickie:

Looking for your textbook as an eTextbook? Save a tree and check out CourseSmart.com - they might have it.

Just a quickie - but some really interesting and innovative uses of stop-motion video can be found at Smashing Magazine.

Happy New Year!

Full URL:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/31/50-incredible-stop-motion-videos/

Spent the holiday with the family last night and found out one of my nieces is on an educational trip of a lifetime: riding to Panama via motorcycle! This was due to her boyfriend getting a “Globetrotter Grant.” Check out a small bit from Daniel’s explanation - as I think most of us understand something about an ‘addiction to social interaction:’ (via Twitter, Facebook, Skype, etc.)

Addicted to social interaction, I experience considerable joy when people unite. So naturally, it was this very drive towards cultural awareness and integration that ignited the preliminary thought process that ultimately resulted in a extensive and complex ride on my motorcycle.

I also work, practice counseling and attend graduate courses at Texas A&M which is where I stumbled across an opportunity offered by a unique group of A&M alumni that share a passion for international travel. Led by Peggy Amante (the benefactor) the Globetrotter Grant Board consists of 9 of the most open-minded and generous individuals I have ever met (read more about them and their travel grant at www.globetrottergrant.com). In February, I approached this board with a proposal. My plan was simple. I wanted to ride to Panama. On the way home, I wanted to climb and summit every highest point in all 7 Central American countries on the way home. They loved it!

And so Daniel and Lauren’s adventure began — and continues — check out their blog at ridewithdaniel.blogspot.com

Incredible! Here’s a pic from on top of Volcan Tajumul:

I happened upon a link to Cluuz.com on CNN today - a search engine geared towards the semantic web. Being an inquisitive guy, I figured I’d do a vanity search. The results included photos from my first webpage created back in 1998. Be sure to give it time to load for the full, glitzy rendition with animated GIFs. (Thanks, Wayback Machine!)

You see, the Cluuz.com search is a bit different than Google:

The Cluuz search engine is different from traditional search engines in that we don’t only show the links to result pages but we also show entities (people, companies, organization, phone numbers, concepts, etc.) and images that are extracted from within the search results. It is like peering into the documents to see ahead what is important. This helps you find the results that you are looking for faster.

What got all this nostalgia churning in me was a few vacation photos from Antigua that I posted back in 1999. You see, my Cluuz.com vanity search actually showed them in the results — along with some interesting links and charts to other people, companies, concepts that I’m linked to. I was quite suprised to see a link to John Scala show up in my results. I interviewed him, just briefly, nine months ago for a podcast.

This illustrates the idea, and the power of the semantic web. CNN’s article reports:

The idea behind the semantic Web, very broadly, is that things on the Internet will be described with descriptor languages so that computers can “understand” what they are.

An object might be a marked as a car part or a person, for instance. If objects were thus identified, an enormous network of linked data would emerge and machines, with their vast processing speeds, could suggest surprising and useful links that the human mind could never come up with, posing the possibility of a new sort of artificial intelligence.

The semantic Web, when and if it fully blooms, will complement, not replace, the current Web. What’s missing so far are enough fun ways to use it.

Well, I had some fun with it!

I’ve been a bit nostalgic this week since I just turned forty — so, using the Wayback Machine, I took a look back at the evolution of my web presence from 1998 to recent years. Perhaps I’ll do this again in 2018 — who knows how that will look/feel/sound. Until then, I leave you with this cute, (but annoying,) animated GIF from my page in 1998.

If anyone out there is brave enough to share their webpage URLs from years past, leave a comment — I’d love to see them!