Scale of the Universe (Flash)

..., Exometers, Petameters, Terameters, . . ., Meters, ...,  Picometers, Femtometers, Attometers, ...

"This is an interactive flash animation that lets you zoom in and out on objects in the universe to get a sense for their relative sizes.  Who knew that a giant earthworm could grow to be 7 meters long!"

The Tilde (~): Unix and URLs

Image via Wikipedia

UNIX

In a Unix pathname, the tilde (~) is an abbreviation for the "path to your home directory".

Example (not using ~): 

/home4/susanQ/public_html/110/ is the Unix path to Susan Queue's 110 folder on shell.uoregon.edu.

Example (using ~): 

~/public_html/110/ is the Unix path to Suzie's folder on shell.uoregon.edu

URLs

In a URL, the tilde (~) has a related but different meaning: it stands for the path to your public_html folder on the web server.

Example: 

http://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~susanQ/ is the URL that corresponds to the Unix path /home4/susanQ/public_html/

Example: 

http://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~susanQ/110/ is the URL that corresponds to the Unix path /home4/susanQ/public_html/110/

NYC Mayor Bloomberg Will Learn JavaScript In 2012

Code Year 

"250,108 people have decided to learn to code in 2012. Why not you?"

The mayors of NYC and London are among them:
Mayor Bloomberg Will Learn How To Write Code In 2012

Codeacademy website

The Tilde (~) in Unix & URLs

Image via Wikipedia

UNIX

In a Unix pathname, the tilde (~) is an abbreviation for the "path to your home directory".

Example (not using ~): 

/home4/susanQ/public_html/110/ is the Unix path to Susan Queue's 110 folder on shell.uoregon.edu.

Example (using ~): 

~/public_html/110/ is the Unix path to Suzie's folder on shell.uoregon.edu

URLs

In a URL, the tilde (~) has a related but different meaning: it stands for the path to your public_html folder on the web server.

Example: 

http://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~susanQ/ is the URL that corresponds to the Unix path /home4/susanQ/public_html/

Example: 

http://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~susanQ/110/ is the URL that corresponds to the Unix path /home4/susanQ/public_html/110/

Taking Care of your Laptop (NYT)

 Good advice for taking care of your laptop: Make Sure the Problem is not in the Chair.

UOwireless Network: How To Bypass Login

Image via Wikipedia Q: I have to log in every time I use uowireless. How do I set it up so I don't have to log in every time?

A: Go to wireless.uoregon.edu and run the setup process to enable UO Secure. Using the UO Secure wireless network remembers your password and encrypts information sent between your device and our network.
From https://it.uoregon.edu/

Web Apps w/o Programming: If this, then that (IFTTT)

IFTTT. Put the internet to work for you by creating tasks that fit this simple structure:if this then that.

Web Apps w/o Programming: If this, then that (IFTTT)

Image by alex drennan via Flickr
IFTTT. Put the internet to work for you by creating tasks that fit this simple structure:
if this then that.

 A Web Tool That Lets You Automate the Internet. (NYT)

7 Ways to Automate Your Life With ifttt. (NYT)

The Death Of Music Industry

The Dark Side of Digital: Disruptive

Pig Latin Encoder

To encode a word in pig latin, we need to handle two cases as described on p. 277.

The following function is a partial (but not complete) solution.

For example, how does it encode swing? rhythm? Aardvaark? CIS?

/* return word w encoded as pig latin */

function encode(w){
  if(w.search(/[aeiou]/) == -1 || w.search(/[aeiou]/) == 0)
     return w + 'way'
  else
     return  w.substring(1, w.length) +  w.charAt(0) + 'ay'
}

MISC PIG LATIN NOTES

var w = 'oops!!'
var punct, bareWord, pLatin, ans

//peel off punctuation
punct = w.substring(w.search(/[!,.]/), w.length)
bareWord = w.substring(0, w.search(/[!,.]/))

pLatin = encode(bareword)

ans = pLatin + punct

Test Cases:

Eighthstreet, gym, myrrh, aeon, llama, kvetch.

gnome, bloom, brew, clue, snow, smart, wrench.

rhythm, crypt, rhyme, gypsy, strength, scrimp, shrimp, schlep, shrapnel, splice, sphygmomanometer, strap, scrap, spring,

Pig Latin koans: Xylophone, tsktsk, eau de Cologne.

Final Exam Review Problems

Image by sashamd via Flickr

• (1) Write an alarmClock() function that accepts an integer representing the day of the week (Mon=1, Tue=2, ... Sun=7) and returns a string: On weekdays the clock tells us to get up, and weekends it tells us to snooze more. On Monday, the clock adds some extra harassment to get us out of bed.
  
  Examples
  
  alarmClock(2) => Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to school we go...
  
  alarmClock(6) => Hit the snooze button!
  
  alarmClock(1) => Daylight in the swamps! Up and at'em!
  
  Strategy: Use an else-if (See fig. 11.7, p. 203; dice.html)
• 
  
• _______________________________________________
  
  (2) Write a bowlingScoreFeedback() function that accepts a bowling score 0 .. 300 and returns one of these messages:
  
  300: "most triumphant!"
  200..299: "pretty good!"
  50..199: "making progress!"
  0..49: "better take up Scrabble!"
  
  Examples
  
  bowlingScoreFeedback(250) => pretty good!
  
  
  bowlingScoreFeedback(25) => better take up Scrabble!
  
  _________________________________
  
  (3) Suppose you want to get a table at a hip restaurant: The variable "style" represents the stylishness of your clothes and "bribe" represents the bribe presented to the Maitre'd.
  
  The Maitre'd is satisfied if style is 8 or more and bribe is 5 or more.
  
  One way to code this up is to write the "satisfied" expression as a straight translation of the problem statement, and then put a ! in front of it:
  

  //Say something mean if not satisfied
  function maitreD(style, bribe){
  if (! ((style >= 8) && (bribe >= 5)) ) {
     return "tant pis pour vous"
  else
     return "Ainsi, s'il vous plaît"
  }

Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars

Google's book search is clearly on track to becoming the world's largest digital library. Will it support scholarly research as well as bricks-and-mortar libraries? Metadata will be the deciding factor.



Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars, by G. Nunberg.

Vinton Cerf, 'Father of the Internet,' UO Video Channel

Vinton Cerf is an American computer scientist who is the "person most often called 'the father of the Internet'." His contributions have been recognized repeatedly, with honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Wikipedia)



Cerf presented a lecture, "Tracking the internet into the 21st century" at 11:00am on October 17 in the Ford Lecture Hall of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on the University of Oregon campus. Andrzej Proskurowski, CIS Head, introduced the speaker.



For video of the actual lecture, please see the UO Libweb archive.



For additional information about the lecture see Distinguished Lecture Series - Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century.