Wednesday, July 02, 2003 :::
Another Trip
Anyone want to go to macword expo? You need to be over 18 to get into the exhibit halls (sorry to the youngins) but you can win free stuff .. I won my cube at a mac expo :).. ::points to forums::
::: posted at 6:29 AM
Wow.. so much to say
The conference has been really amazing - Yesterday I had lunch with (and then dinner) with the group of guys responsible for bluej as well as a publisher from Pearson Education (a subdivision of AW, the current publisher I work with). I think I see some major projects coming down the line for this summer.
Dinner last night was at a taverna on the water - absolutely gorgeous and the food here is amazing. The sun set over the water as we were eating and they just kept bringing more and more food. I had octopus, stuffed squid, some kind of light flakey fish, and of course the pasteries for dessert were absolutely amazing.
This morning Donald Knuth gave the keynote address and talked about bottom up computer science education - advocating that students learn machine language first before anything else. Definately an interesting idea.. not sure how I could implement it - although he has created a virtual 64 bit machine that has a standard set of operations.. maybe the programming team will play with it a little. But I met Don yesterday while waiting on a line and talked for a little bit - he is truly an amazing man. He wrote/is writing a series of books called "The art of Computer Programming" which is held to be the "treatise" for computer science. (In other words these books are going to live on for a long time - he laid them out almost to be like euclid's elements where it works its way through all that is computer science)
Greece itself is starting to grow on me. I am starting to be able to sound out some of the greek words and have learned how to say simple things like thank you ( ephkhariso - thats spelled phonetically). Even though there is a completely different alphabet once you learn to sound out the letters the words are pritty recognizable if you have ever studied latin root words, and possibly some other languages. you would probably have the best chance to make use of your latin background here... :)
Caught up on some blog reading this morning.. sounds like you had a great weekend - would have made cheeky proud. And eventually you will create your own collection of EMT stories... I have a few good ones - but the batman story does kind of win out at this point. and as for you glad to see you are enjoying yourself again... :)
::: posted at 3:36 AM
Monday, June 30, 2003 :::
Post Day 1 of conferencing
saw some really cool things - got the newest version of alice.. remind me to do some stuff with vortec.. started rewriting ap curriculum.. having lunch with Michael Kolling (bluej guy) tomorrow.. definately in full speed conference mode.. :)
OO and have great ideas for over the summer ap assignment.. will be posting soon :)
::: posted at 10:41 AM
Official Day 1 of the Conference
Ok - so the person who was supposed to speak this morning didnt show up so they are starting us 20 minutes late. No big deal (a little extra sleep in the morning never hurt anyone) although jet lag is a b***h. Its really 2am in the morning in NY (which makes it about 9am here).
Met some interesting people yesterday, Rich came to the reception last night and I am glad. I feel a little bad about ditching him for parts of the conference, but I think he will find things to do. Sat at a little cafe last night and just watched the lightning roll across the Agean sea - soo beautiful, the water was splashing up over the edge of the walkways (no.. no beach)
Europe is definately quite a different place. Every building is about 6 stories (maybe 7 or 8) but not much higher, the first and possibly second floor are businesses, while the upper floors are apartments. Every apartment has a balcony with TONS of plants and beautiful things growing, and sometimes draping down - its like the buildings have gardens growing up the sides. The roads are sooo narrow (even worse than in the village in NY) and apparently most are one way. Its so odd, you will be walking along in what qualifies as modern (probably 50 - 100 years old) and turn the corner and there will be the remains of something from centuries ago. Its absolutly amazing how the city has grown up around these ancient things, and yet manages to preserve them.
Well, off to the first day of conferencing.. talk to you all later.. :)
::: posted at 2:06 AM
Sunday, June 29, 2003 :::
::Waves from greece::
After walking around 1/2 of thessoloniki this morning I finally found the conference site...
More to come later now that I know where I can get internet :)
::: posted at 2:47 AM
