You got me! Yeah, I wish I could find it there, too, or in my kitchen.
On my list? Same as every stinking year. Nobody gets these for me:
A Secretary
More Time
My book shelves (night stand, counter, desk, filing cabinet, …) groan under the weight of the Unread. I need time to read it all. I need a secretary to sift through all the piles of time-related papers I don’t get to and help with scheduling. Ok…DO the scheduling.
Nine-thousandth cousins four million times removed.
As I recall it was because it was thought that fossils should only be studied and removed by scientists. Apparently no one bothered to note that the formation they’re found in there extends for over a mile in one direction and an unknown distance in another, or to think ahead and realize that fossils would just fall into the county ditch.
As for safety, the only incident I can remember in over thirty years of sixth-grade classes going there was a teacher tapping a bit too enthusiastically with a rock hammer and knocking off a chunk of material big enough to hit her in the shins.
A high school and junior high near where I attended grad school did the one million pennies thing. One where I went to university went for one million bottle caps (sorting carefully because someone was offering prizes for certain sets of whatever was written inside the caps).
I pretty much jumped straight from 7 to 10 - but dabbled enough in 8 and 8.1 to know what you’re talking about. Everybody finds a way to make it useful wherever they’re at!
Decent ORC software for regular word text is very good. Get into mathematical notation, and it all falls apart, I think. One would think that there is specialize software that could do better with it. What are blind and VI people in math-related fields supposed to be doing?
“So sorry. You don’t have access to that information by virtue of a disability.”
Kurzweil has been in the OCR business for a very long time. Their ancient machine at my library is mind-blowing. THey can probably deal with math, too:
My go to for years but I have to say I am hating my iPhone because of the many ‘upgrades’ which are only fun if you like a steady diet of problem solving while pursuing common activities. I got a new MacBook Pro about a year ago and the thing is so thin that if I try to actually use it on my lap or anywhere except a hard surface all sorts of weird things happen like what I’m typing will suddenly go elsewhere in my document.
Whatever we get used to has the advantage of being familiar. I wonder if anyone can recommend a smart phone they like a lot?
Prof surely understood that a significant number of students would develop the conceptual hooks in the lab that they needed to make sense of the text book.
In my university days I got into the habit of resting my hands on the bottom of the keyboard. But laptops have a pointing device pad there and touching it does what you describe, so one of my requirements for a laptop has always been the ability to disable the touch pad. HP laptops that I’ve had have had a feature where double-tapping in the upper left corner of the touch pad turns it off, except for this last one which requires going into the device manager.
I have an iPhone 7; the updates only bother me when they insist on being installed right in the middle of something. But then I only use my phone as a phone, a notepad, and a camera, with an occasional web search. I’ve been thinking about jumping up to maybe a 10, though I haven’t looked at features yet.
Thinking of recommendations, does anyone know if some company will build a custom laptop? I want an actual hard drive plus a SSD, I’d prefer an AMD over Intel, at least a 17" screen. I don’t think I need better than a Ryzen 5 3600 but I’m not sure. At any rate, HP doesn’t have a laptop that meets what I want for the first time in almost twenty years.
Oh – I also need a keyboard with the letters baked in so they don’t wear off so fast!
Just looking at books, Emily Smith’s book The Science of the Good Samaritan looks interesting. She was recently on the Biologos podcast. And a couple of books I did not get last year are still on my list:
Biblical Critical Theory by Watkins and Keller
Surrender: 40 Songs One Story by Bono
Also:
The God of Monkey Science by Janet Kellogg Ray (also a recent podcast)
I got lucky a while back and got some laptop that works well. Was 3-4 years old. But had windows 10 pro or something on it. Paid $20 or something for a ticket and ended up getting like #11. It was based off the ticket who got to go first and get one item from a business that was updating or something. I forget the details now. But the laptop works good. Going to use it for this tool and die class I’m starting in January. Supposed to take 1 year to complete but some have completed it in as short as 4 months but also have to clock in 3000 hours though I’m already at around 2700 hours. Then it’s an $8 raise. Which is a decent amount for one year. Plus they will pay you 3 hours a week of overtime to do the classes.
I quite liked a Quaker Astronomer reflects: Can a scientist be religious, by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, as well as The language of god by the big cheese himself.
For those enjoying novels, I’d recommend Angels and Demons, the prequel to the Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Controversial choice I know, but hear me out. I understand that the latter book has ruffled a few feathers in Christian circles (But there’s a time and a place for that discussion, and personally, I think this thread and the run up to Christmas is neither). But I quite like the Robert Langdon novels because when you read between the lines, the interplay between Science and Faith/Spirituality/Philosophy (Call it what you like, I use the terms interchangeably because I feel that they are different iterations of the same ideas) is a theme that crops up time and time again in the Robert Langdon novels. So often, you could set your watch to it. (Maybe a possible future podcast episode/blog post? Fiction that explores science and faith) But I digress, again. Of the ones I’ve read, Angels and Demons is the best example I can think of. @jpm I realise this response is potentially a controversial choice, but I hope you understand that I wouldn’t even dream of suggesting it unless I genuinely felt there was something to be got from it.
Looking for family games as well. We play one called Beasts of Balance that is pretty fun, but is pretty techy and needs an iPad or similar to play, and a card game called Grounded for Life that is fun with reading age kids, sort of Apples to Apples for older kids but adults enjoy also. Any games you guys like?
Not much help I’m afraid but we play cards every day using regular playing cards for Rummy or Giant Two mostly. My wife and I play Wordle and Quordle most every morning too. Comparing notes over breakfast is the usual. I don’t care for any computer games otherwise. Oh, with my dog I play ball everyday and sometimes a little frisbee but again, not much help in that.
For out annual Christmas gathering with friends we’re doing a gift exchange. Everyone is senior so we got a copy of The Midnight Library as it will be interesting to talk about.
If one has a party of people into team word games, not only is there “Codenames” which might have reached classic status by now, but along a similar vein, I was also introduced to “Decrypto”, which I’ve actually used in a few classes at school - if you have around six people or more (two teams each with a bare minimum of two, but more are better so that you have somebody to discuss with). The rules to that can sound a bit complicated at first, - but like Codenames, it’s easy for newbies to just join in with an existing team and easily catch on as play progresses. And best of all - I can set it up without needing any equipment or any actual purchased board game. Some pencils, and a couple scrap sheets of paper are just about all one needs! Can PM details if anyone’s curious - or you can probably just Google “Decrypto” and find the game rules for yourself.
