socks with crocs

Moving On…

Noah Manneschmidt — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:53:11 +0000

In my quest for possibilities in personal web design, I have moved on to a site at:

http://www.psoplayer.com/

Everything should be almost the same at a glance for the time being, with the exception of some new features. Hope to see you there.

Soon to move, again

Noah Manneschmidt — Wed, 23 May 2007 03:57:32 +0000

Hopefully this will be the last time I feel the need to do so, but I’m currently silent because I’m working on moving to my own dot com and hosting solution. So far I have almost everything in place, plus some new AJAX-y goodness in store.

Sick of DRM

Noah Manneschmidt — Fri, 11 May 2007 05:45:53 +0000

This is just wonderful. I’m tired of all this DRM hubba-hubba by now. Today Bob Zitter, an exec. from HBO, came out to the public with this brilliant idea: DRM is getting so much bad press because of the name. “Digital Rights Management” is just too negative. Instead we should change the name to DCE: “Digital Consumer Enablement” That way everybody will accept it and piracy will stop forever! Yay!

Actually, no, I don’t think so. From the comments on slashdot:

I’m not going to call it piracy anymore. I prefer Consumer Choice Enablement. CCE allows consumers (not customers, since you won’t be paying for the service) to enjoy content not only in ways they haven’t before, such as on portable video players like the iAudio A2, but at a more reasonable price than they have been offered in the past. This is also a win-win situation for the content creators as it alleviates all packaging and most distribution costs, as well as providing excellent word-of-mouth advertising for FREE!

DRM doesn’t make sense anymore. Corporations have lost touch with both artists and the consumers. Artists don’t what their work associated with such an encumbering experiences, and consumers definitely don’t want to deal with it. They must not understand that half the world is fed up with it, because I can’t see why else they would keep coming up with these ridiculous schemes.

Actually, I’m afraid that part of this battle is consumer awareness. I don’t think that the average iTunes user is aware that the Green Day song they just bought is coming in a locked up little box that they can’t do anything with other than load it onto their little iPod or burn it to a CD. What if they wanted to use it in a powerpoint slideshow for a class. That would be some kind of oh-so-illegal, and now with this wonderful FairPlay technology that they probably never saw coming, they can’t do anything of the sort. That 99 cents was for their ears only. However could they have known?

As for me, I would go back to using iTunes, maybe even buy an iPod, in an instant if the whole iTunes store went DRM free (which it may, and by extension, I may, very soon). I’m not even going to consider anything in HD-DVD or BluRay until the waters have calmed dramatically.

End of semester grades

Noah Manneschmidt — Sat, 05 May 2007 04:35:54 +0000

Pish… I should have done better in Java. Maybe if I hadn’t accidentally slept through as many quizzes or completely not turned in one of the four programs. I was actually expecting worse, but I can live with it I guess. I plan on acing next year’s C++ class though.

300 in Mushroom Kingdom

Noah Manneschmidt — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:08:34 +0000

I just had to share this with you guys, because Scott Ramsoomair is a genius.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=231

The Making of a Great Teacher

Noah Manneschmidt — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:28:41 +0000

Think back to when you were in high school. This time left you a lot of fond memories. The sports games, the friends, the food, the smell of the dissections, that one time in health class with the STD pictures. Hopefully though, you had the experience of having a class with a teacher who went above and beyond. Someone who did more than just trying to get everyone ready for the state administered final. Someone who went about changing the way you thought about a particular subject, and made you break the mental boundaries you thought you had. If this was an experience that you were lucky enough to have, hold onto it. This memory is that of a great teacher.

A great teacher is not made just by how easy their class is, or what the average grade of students coming out of the class is. There is some bit of how well they can get you to learn the material. And by that, I don’t mean just to regurgitate for a test, but really know the material, by heart. The goal of a great teacher is to bring their students into a state of learning, but this is a kind of learning that cannot be measured by tests. Learning begets Knowledge, Knowledge begets Understanding, and Understanding begets Respect. A great teacher imbues in you a genuine respect for the field of study, regardless of whether you like the subject or not.

Last semester I had a class that I should have dreaded. Of all classes: an honors literature class just seemed like the worst idea for me to take in about eight different ways. For me, a computer science major, English is about on the opposite end of the spectrum from I enjoy studying, but in the end in this class I learned far more than I did in any other class. Did I enjoy the class? Somewhat. Did I end up with a good grade? I passed. Do I now know the material of the course? Better than I did before. But none of these were the real point of this course. I came out of that class with more than just a knowledge of a couple of foreign books and a renewed disdain for writing essays. I gained a respect for great literature and the study of the English language that I probably would never have received anywhere else other than with Professor Craven.

Introduction to Speech really wasn’t a class I was eagerly anticipating either. I never had much love for the thought of listening to, or especially delivering, speeches, but now at the end of this semester, I can honestly say I look forward to Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm. While I can’t say I enjoy writing or delivering speeches any more than I used to, I have gained an appreciation for everything that goes into making a great speech and for the power of unfettered words.

As I make the brush strokes on the canvas of my own life, painting the way for my future career, I cannot help but take notice of the the marks some of my teachers have left behind, colorful and true. I remember Ms. Howe, crazy though she was, Mr. Beckett, who loved knowledge almost as much as the daily Jumble puzzle, Ms. Arapakos, boy, did I ever hate her class. I can see their colors and shapes gladly contributing to the grand collaboration. These ideas beyond academic knowledge, hopes and dreams. I remember their faces, how much they loved what they were getting paid to do, a kind of art that changes lives. Sometimes, I dream of the challenge; could I be a great teacher? I can think of nothing more gratifying than passing on the knowledge and understanding to those who will shape tomorrow. It would be my part in making the future a better place. This is something I want to be a part of. This is why I want to be a great teacher.

New title: socks with crocs

Noah Manneschmidt — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 06:11:38 +0000

That’s right, you’re looking at a new theme and custom header by yours truly. I do like to wear socks with crocs occasionally. It only makes a very comfortable shoe even more comfortable.

There are those who say that no matter how comfortable they are, crocs still make you look like a dumbass. I just want to turn that statement around. Even if they make me look like even more of a dumbass, they’re that much more comfortable. If you’re too self-conscious to try it yourself, then that’s your own problem and I won’t try to argue it any farther.

You can only wear them with socks every once in a while and for not too long or the socks will get all nasty and ruin the magic. It’s one of those ‘too much of a good thing’ situations.

What else do you do every day to end up looking stupid for the sake of comfort?

Constantly Finds Jesus?

Noah Manneschmidt — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:21:04 +0000

Apparently there’s these strange billboards around New York with just these bits of text on them:

THE ALGORITHM CONSTANTLY FINDS JESUS
THE ALGORITHM KILLED JEEVES
THE ALGORITHM IS BANNED IN CHINA
THE ALGORITHM IS FROM JERSEY

Supposedly it is some kind of viral marketing campaign for a search engine, most likely Ask.com, but they seemed to not take into account the fact that it’s so cryptic, for anyone to figure out what it’s about, they would have to turn to the internet to find it. If you google any of them, the most things that come up are just other bloggers talking about it, so the ads really aren’t getting them anywhere. Instead a coalition of xkcd readers band together to blog the one-liners and link them to xkcd in an effort to drive it to the top of google results, because anyone curious enough to remember it, take it to a computer, and google any of these is probably the type to like xkcd anyway.
Or maybe xkcd could even end up with the credit for it in the end. Who knows?

I’m starting a webcomic

Noah Manneschmidt — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:57:25 +0000

What started earlier this semester as a comic strip itself, has now become a serious discussion of turning the hilarity of our nerdy conversations into a webcomic. With others supplying mad MS paint skills and myself taking over the webmaster position, this could really happen. Whether it will be worth a laugh or not is another thing entirely. We’re still throwing ideas around as to how to get it drawn and what to call it. So far it’s easy to tell that it will be drawing a lot of influence from XKCD as well as VG Cats and possibly Ctrl+Alt+Del. We’re thinking about, since each of us will be a character in the comic, having each of us draw ourselves whenever we happen to make an appearance in a strip, keeping the art unpredictable and inconsistent, but it’s new, and you know the internet is all about new, so we might just try it. It seems like the most likely place to have it hosted for the moment will be here on WordPress, since it’s easy to set up, cheap (free for now), and is easy to move to a dot com later if such a thing were to be desired.

Who’s up for some Rock Paper Scissors?

Noah Manneschmidt — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:50:01 +0000

It’s nothing much… Just a little Java program I wrote for fun on the side one day in a couple of hours. You will need Java installed on your computer to run it, though I would expect most people already do.

Download