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^zhurnaly - Random - Recent Changes - Running Logbook - Help - RSSHey Mark, Just passing through and thought I'd take a moment to sign your guest book. This is some editor you've developed with all the check boxes and options. Very nice layout.
dar
(not mine! --- credit Bo Leuf for the cluster wiki framework --- I just like to type a lot ... ^z)
Hello Zimmermann's
You are definitely an interesting bunch. Well maybe more excentric and odd than interesting. Very strange pages....my eyes are blurred from reading as much as I have. As a new father the notion of home schooling really intrigued me and I was curious how it is all turning out. So I read and I read and I read some more. I guess it worked out pretty well. The pages could use some color and a bit of design. But you get your points across.
Glad to see that your are all developing so well.
As for me and my family...we will stay more conventional. As I was never much of a student I doubt I would be any more structured as a teacher.
I will still teach lessons of live.
But those will all have to happen before and after school and on holidays and family vacations.
good luck with it later
jg
Dear ^z,
I was googling the other day (for "the best is ever the enemy of the good") and came across the following note on this page of yours [1]:
FORTRAN --- Likely his first serious coding came in the summer of '69 at SMU during an NSF math enrichment session. Free computer time was a delightful distraction from the theorems of linear algebra, probability, and number theory; the refrigerated machine room and steel-gray card punch machines fit the monastic environs. ^z burnt processor cycles on a CDC mainframe doing, among other frivolities, Monte Carlo computations of pi to a few decimal places.
Hey, I arrived at SMU for my freshman year in September 1970. We had a DEC PDP-10 and a UNIVAC-1108 then, and I think they'd both been there for at least a year. But way back in the back there was a wonderful CDC-1604. On the day I arrived, about a week b4 classes started, I got taken to that room and pretty much never left it since. (Although I subsequently became a "10 freak" and spent the next 12 years of my life following the latest models of DEC-10's around the country). They didn't tell me there was an assembler, I really thought the only way to program it was in binary through the panel switches. I thought the mnemonics in the manual were just to make reading it easier. I cognited that it would be cool to write a program to interpret mnemonics from punch cards, and wow, with some effort it could even handle labels and then you wouldn't have to recode all your addresses when you added a few instructions in the middle of a program! THEN they told me about the assembler. I wrote a Simpson's rule integrator in binary and keyed it in b4 they told me that.
Anyway, I'm wondering if that was the CDC mainframe u were referring to. Is there anyone else in the world who remembers (and possibly fondly so) that machine? I didn't think it had a Fortran compiler, but then, I didn't think it had an assembler! Perhaps there was another CDC machine before the -10 and 1108, I don't recall. I know two years later the -10 and 1108 were taken away (by mean 'ol Sam Wylie) and we got a CDC 7600 or was it an 8600, something like that. And a bunch of staff, grad students, and students like myself all left in anger to go elswhere, and some Purdue guys led by Denis Frailey took over. Not important now.
What I am really looking for is someone who remembers that back computer room and the 1604. That was my first machine, the loss of my virginity, etc. Do you remember it? I will never forget it. 4K words of real cores! 48 bit words at that! Wow! Did you know any of the people, in particular, Bill "wimpy" English, the high school kid who ran it? How about Roy (Neil) Ferguson, Steve Glanville, Claude Overstreet, Mike O'Hagin, Hal Stout, Bill Wagers, Cliff Heming, John Hemphill, et al.?
Just checking for some nostalgia. Any thoughts?
Sincerely,
Steve Bush
http://www.steve.bush.org
PS: The most interesting, kind of cosmic, phenomenon, relating to my finding your site while searching for "The best is ever the enemy of the good", is that the first time I was told that was a moment key to my life, and it happened just down the hall from the 1604. I can't remember if it was Cliff Heming or John Hemphill, but one of them told me that if I kept striving for the kind of perfection I was striving for I'd never get anything actually done! To this day I remember that moment, as its a constant characterization of my life. A year ago, while reading a biography of Charles Babbage, the author used the phrase "The best is ever the enemy of the good" (Voltaire), which I had never heard before, but instantly realized it applied perfectly to my life and that original moment back at SMU, around 1972. Different words were used then, and now these new words seems so poetically to say the same, so important, thing.
Well, that's probably more than u want to waste time reading just now, so if you haven't hit the delete key yet, I thank you for listening, and feel free to hit it now!
Steve.
I've set up a license Primarily Public Domain http://www.primarilypublicdomain.org that I suggest for this Wiki and can work with stuff like the following (clicking on the links will get you to a page with everything that has been clicked through from). Andrius Kulikauskas http://www.ms.lt
Hello! I had a first look around in this wiki, just wanted to drop a comment. - Nice peaces of philosophy which is also my interest. I added your URL to my Noo Wiki, see Philo Sophy, it is a more puristic information orientated wiki, small but growing community, serves as my only Knowledge Management and PIM tool, open for all topics. - Florian Konnertz, florian.konnertz@web.de -- Florian Konnertz
(I don't know who you are. I found this site quite accidently while i was going through extreeme chaos. the words and the ideas help me to releave lot of chaos. thanks to whoever you are i am now addicted to this site.)
Today is the day I asked my wife shelly to married me. the place was demontreville and the temperature was cold. she said yes I gave her a ring and kryston.
Something romantic
I was merrily strolling through wiki world, stopping from
time to time along the road to smell the roses, when I took
the "path less traveled" and found myself at ZhurnalWiki.
Here are wild, yet well planted tiny beams of light gardens.
Is it home at last? (noowiki looks enticing, too)
Hi Mrs Decker,
I liked the writing about old pictures. I thought it was funny when you were talking about the picture when you were a hippi. - joey combopiano
good job mrs.Decker. we think you did a great job
Good job-matt forne and matt white
some of your witings have inspired me to write more!!!!!!!!
I loved those writings. They are really great!!!!!!!!
I hope that you will make many more for me to read.
your favorite student ever ever to cross your tracks,
Matt Forne
Your writings are very inspiring. You should write more and get a book published
Your Favorite Student Ever -- Zach L
Hi Mrs. Decker. You rule at teaching Language Arts. I am in your 4th period and you liked my poem. I like the door story that you are reading to us in class.
Hi Mrs. D! I love your writing, when you get your books published and they're all best sellers and writers for the New York Times hate you because they're so jealous of you, you must remember me and send me signed copies. Thank you so much for putting up with 4th period's noise and all that, and thanks for reading all the stories I forced you to read.
~Tara K.
Hey Mrs. Decker!
You are a gr8 language arts teacher! I will miss you so much next year when I'm in eight grade! I'll be sure to visit you as often as I can. You are such a great inspiration to your students.
Journal writing has helped me so much! It has helped me became a better writer!
You are such a great writer! I can't wait to tell people that I knew you before you were famous!
Luv Always,
Jess the healthy eater
Hey Mrs. Decker!!! I will miss u over the summer. I will come and vist u as much as I can!! Well I got to go. C ya next year.
Mrs. Decker I miss you so much. Good luck with your stories! You're the best teacher ever!!! Thanks for inspiring me! When I grow up im gonna be just like you, its my destiny! Hahahahar.
The one most like you,
Sari Smith
re PolioSummer:
You are a great writer - Jeff Q.
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What a striking memory, Judy!
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good job mrs. decker loved it...u r the best teacher ever
This was a great writing. I could only imangine what happened. -- Zach
Mrs. Decker,
You are the best writer in the whole world! You have to finish your story that you were reading to 4th period! We are all going to miss you at the end of seventh grade! You are the best and keep up the great writing! See ya next year! We will all be back to visit.......no matter what Mr. Lohse says!
-- Ajla Glavasevic
Mrs. Decker!!!!
That is soooooo SWEET!!!
When I get married you have to write me one!!! -- Ajla Glavasevic
Your voice is reading each passage to me...you are a wonderful storyteller!
hi ms.decker its tim nice website see you later.
Hi Ms. Decker! This is Emily. I like your website! Your writing is really really good, (allthough some of it is beyond my vocabulary). Well, see you later.
Hey Mrs. Decker, it's Tara (yes I know school's out but you know what? I don't care, this is a great website). This is really cynical, it's really cool.
Yo yo yo, Mrs. D! Just joking, excuse my bad english. I love the way you write, it has a major impact to anyone who reads it. -Sari
Howdy Ms. Decker...its tim...im just chillen in team HR...i was bored so i thought id read some of your book....i like it a lot...i cant imagine how you could live like that while you were young...but anyway...im out...goodluck in the future years
hi!!....my name is Audrey Ann Hayes...and i am at the age of 13 years old and this isnt just one ordinary girl here i have excellent writing skills other peeple have read my writing and they love it...but it isnt exactly books that i am good at writing it is more like poems about a page long and they are fantastik ..."if i do say so my self" I love to write it is so much fun and there has been many experiences in my life that makes it even more fun to write about so i was wondering if i could send my poems to u.........and maybe you could help me.........i don't know what i will do if i don't find any one that will even glance at my writing... if i find a publisher i will just keep writing but if i don't i will be giving up on my life long dream!... :(
mrs. decker is the best 4real
For the Body Mnemonic, I learned that trick in a way that apparently Leo Tolstoy also did. Starting with the knuckle of the index finger on the left hand, and counting knuckles and hollows, you get January, February, etc., until you run out of hand at the little finger knuckle, and June. You then reverse direction, starting with the little finger knuckle as July, and count back toward the index finger.
Perhaps not as intuitive as the method you learned, but it lets you use the index finger of the right hand to keep track of where you are, remembering to double-tap the little finger knuckle.
Mark, I came upon your pages while searching for something else, and as soon as I saw your ^z sign, I recognized it and had to sign in. I like your entry on "Ontology Recapitulates Philology," which is more philosophical and less dry than "specification of a conceptualization recapitulates the study of ancient texts and languages." And keep working on your "Zhurnaly Red" entry - bon mots are not fashioned overnight (if nothing else, it would make a fine name for a wine).
It does not surprise me that you have been doing the Wiki / blog thing far ahead of others in our little community, and I look forward to wandering through your site at random in the future. Cheers, Richard -- MacDurk
(correlates: Judy Decker, BodyMnemonic, PersonalProgrammingHistory, ...)