Working hard in AP class

My Advanced Placement students, particularly Adam, were working very hard today (sarcasm). Check out the Text-to-Speech abilities of Windows. Go to Control Panel->Speech -> Text-to-Speech tab.

Whatever you type, a scary robotic voice will try to say out loud for you. You can change the voice and the speed.

I think they use this technology on books for the blind. So it's fun and important!

Do you sleep with your cellphone under your pillow?

Recent study suggests many high school aged students sleep with their cellphone under their pillow on vibrate, and text all night long. Do you?

The New York Times now has an article Texting May Be Taking a Toll in their health section about this very same thing:

"The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

It's hard. You don't want to be "left-out." But you also don't want to be sick.

Our Sorting Video on YouTube

Here's a youtube video my students made after learning about sorting methods in our programming class. I think they had fun doing it, and maybe learned a little deeper. (It's better with the audio. Does anyone know how to get the track "authorized?")

When is a Tweet not a Tweet

Astronaut Mike Massimino, in the space shuttle Atlantis, is sending tweeting on Twitter from space. Or is he?

"Astro_Mike", as he is known on Twitter, wrote "As I closed my eyes to sleep last night I thought, 'These eyes have seen some beautiful sights today' ". More than 300,000 followers (growing exponentially every hour) are hooked. The media is hooked.

But others argue that he's really sending messages from the on-board computer to an assistant on earth who is posting the tweets for him.

Does this count as "Tweets from Space?" It sure is close, and fascinating, and as close as I'll ever get to experiencing space.

New Names for Windows

Here are a couple of new names for our favorite operating system, Windows:

Windoze - For when it is taking forever to do what you wanted, and you doze off

Window$ - For when they want you to pay for an application that is probably free somewhere

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i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch atCmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in awrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer bein the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raedit whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed erveylteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and Iawlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

iPhone Apps - Write your own!

We're trying to learn how to write applications for cellphones. Prof Max Buot of Xavier Univ came and talked to us about his fun/success in writing a statistics app for his students to use instead of a calculator. As part of that discussion, we learned about 3 very funny applications:

1. Sam new about an app called "I am rich." It's just a stupid screen saver of a red gem, but it costs $1000 to download. So if you have it, you must be rich!

2. I had heard about an app that you play like a flute. You blow across the speaker and use the keys to make different sounds

3. We wondered if anyone had made a "seizure" application yet. We do this in QBasic, where you change the background color rapidly. Be careful!! It's not called the "seizure" app for nothing.

What kind of app would you like to have?