Ada Lovelace Day Spotlight: Radia Perlman

The next time you visit Facebook, do a search on Google, waste time on YouTube, or do anything online, stop and thank Radia Perlman.  It's her algorithm that makes it possible for data to traverse the Internet, thus earning her the nickname "Mother of the Internet". Dr. Perlman is a Fellow at Intel, and has …

Apparently I am a trendsetter

So, last week was the annual SIGCSE conference (SIGCSE = Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education), and I don't know/remember the whole story, but it had something to do with something the keynote speaker said that became a running riff at the conference.... Anyway, that's not important.  What is important is that I, apparently, …

UI design: the Rodney Dangerfield of CS?

I met with my Comps* group yesterday to discuss extending their project into the spring as an independent study, with the hopes that the extra 10 weeks would improve the software to the point where it could be released to the public.  I asked them to brainstorm and prioritize what they would do with the …

Writing as research

Writing is not just something that should be done at the end of the project---it can play a crucial role in idea generation and in creative thinking about problems. In this post, I examine how I use writing in my own research to be a better researcher.