Category Archives: vtclis13

April 2, 2013
2:57 am
by: lilengineerthatcould

How will we build a Third System of education?

I have recently been reading about, as Mike Gancarz puts it in Linux and the Unix Philosophy, “The Three Systems of Man”. This is, to my understanding, a fairly well documented and often-observed concept in software design, possibly first referenced … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in ece2524s13, education, GEDI, learning, linux, second-system, third-system, unix, vtclis13

March 26, 2013
4:17 am
by: lilengineerthatcould

Digital amplifier: the tweet heard ’round the world

Sometimes, in the face based modern world we live in, it feels like we’re living in the future. But all it takes is the watchful eye of the Internet, and specifically, its uncanny, sometimes disruptive tendency to amplify lurking social … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in culture, Diversity, ece2524s13, technology, vtclis13

March 21, 2013
3:00 am
by: lilengineerthatcould

We are the medium? (director’s cut)

A couple weeks ago while reading Laurel’s, “The Six Elements and the Causal Relations Among Them” I had a bit of a moment at …the orthodox view of Aristotle’s definitions of spectacle and melody leaves out too much material. As … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in communication, ideas, meaning, message, vtclis13

March 19, 2013
3:56 pm
by: lilengineerthatcould

About Time: Idioms About Time

TL;DR: In the comments below please post, in your native language, or a non-English language in which you are fluent: how you would ask someone what time it is, and the literal word-for-word translation into English how you would ask … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in ece2524s13, idioms, language, time, vtclis13

March 19, 2013
2:19 am
by: lilengineerthatcould

About Time

Reading the “Time Frames” comic about depicting time in comics made me think about Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos in which he uses several metaphors and visualizations to help explain the nature of this thing we call time. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in relativity, time, vtclis13

March 11, 2013
8:09 pm
by: lilengineerthatcould

Humans in the loop

Today’s hot article in the local twitterverse is a New York Times piece called Algorithms Get a Human Hand in Steering Web. I discovered it from a tweet by @GardnerCampell, also a beautiful retweet by @mzphyz: Above all: Algorithms are … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in algorithms, computing, ece2524s13, Psychology, vtclis13

March 7, 2013
5:24 pm
by: lilengineerthatcould

Are we all ice skaters?

Gliding through life, blissfully unaware that there is an entirely different world just below the surface. The times we do break through unexpectedly the shock is so much that it often kills us. And so we learn to fear thin … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Life, meaning, metaphore, self-awareness, social issues, vtclis13

March 5, 2013
4:27 am
by: lilengineerthatcould

Are we sacrificing creativity for content?

I decided to become an engineer, before even knowing what “engineering” was, because of a comment my 4th grade art teacher made regarding an art project. I’m pretty sure she meant it as a complement. The concept of “<insert form … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in art, code, creativity, ece2524s13, expression, programming, vtclis13

March 4, 2013
8:35 pm
by: lilengineerthatcould

iBreakit, iFixit

This past weekend ended up being the weekend of repairs as two lingering problems increased to a point that they could no longer be ignored: The drain pipe of my bathroom sink completely detached itself from the sink basin. The … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in DIY, ece2524s13, ifixit, MPB, repair, vtclis13

February 28, 2013
4:52 am
by: lilengineerthatcould

Creative writing, technically

A number of recent conversations, combined with topics-of-interest in both ECE2524 and VTCLI, followed by a chance encounter with an unfamiliar (to me) blogger’s post have all led me to believe I should write a bit about interface design and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in collaboration, ece2524s13, hidden stories, tools, version control, vtclis13, workflow, writing