I warned my audience my talk was likely to be disjointed and somewhat all over the map, which it was. I had black and white versions of the workshop handout, a ten page PDF on the web.
I managed to walk through RSA as a topic, emphasizing how the "war stories" could be interesting to a teen audience. However, I started in Lithuania, praised Nordic cultures (thinking of Allen's Viking talk), kept emphasizing what science fiction writers hadn't foreseen: that computer languages would give rise to world ethnicities in some way.
I mentioned the PGP chapter and the fact that NDS uses this technology for DirectTV (hoping to get to Lionel's PowerPoint, about powers of ten, during the retreat this weekend). I yakked about (SQL | ~SQL) per yesterday's posting, whipped through the Pycon 2009 Chicago slides on one of four desktops, ran some hypertoons.
When I got to the slide on 4D my thoughts sort of trailed off. I waved a plastic MITE around, said using more gear around math class was going to mean better eye candy, in terms of polyhedra, and once we get those in the picture, there's just no avoiding these MITE thingys. Or so one would hope. I also promised more outdoor activities, i.e. "math as an outdoor sport" (a hook to GIS/GPS topics, dodeca-cams etc).
There's some sadness and exhaustion in our family. We miss our Dawn and those happier times together. I'll give Tara some time off today. I should probably get a haircut. Good talking to mom yesterday, and to Laurie.
I only make so much sense and no more, sans additional corroboration outside of esoterica.
Duane said he was sorry the schools weren't able to do more in this area. I told him not to worry about it, that we'd do more with television, but I know what he meant. Jeff asked probing questions about motivation, i.e. why would students care to know any of this stuff? Steve wondered if I really intended to flash through a porn site in Chicago as a part of my storytelling (I was on the "HBO rating" slide, talking andragogy vs. pedagogy). Answer: no, they already know about that site.
I did tell a couple good jokes and some worthy stories. My lore is pretty strong I'm thinking. Jeff taped the whole thing and I walked out with the recording on my memory stick. I'll do some editing, see what I might salvage.
Glenn was out celebrating his son's birthday, glad of that. Great seeing Sam Lanahan again. I took lots of pictures of his latest flextegrity design. He, Barry and Jeff talked about sailing a lot, the best moorages, racing. Usually it's power boat talk in the evenings, so this was somewhat new.
FOSS boss gatheringVancouver, Canada
June 11-12, 2009
