Published on Friday 17th March 2006 .
Just a few hours ago I thought I was pretty awesome because I could solve measly little 9×9 sudoku puzzles. Then, my co-worker sent me to Newsweek.com where you can now get 16×16 sukoku puzzles. That’s right: sudoku in hex!
I found out that The Daily Sudoku also offers 12×12 and 16×16 monster puzzles, but your grid size depends on the puzzle’s difficulty. For now, I am content with trying out Newsweek’s Mega Sudoku puzzles. They print directly from the Flash applet, and they even include a solution on the page that can be conveniently folded behind for reference later 
Published on Thursday 16th March 2006 .
Like those in Illinois, teachers in Florida are required to take a certain amount of coursework to maintain their teaching certificates or licenses. For the vast majority of teachers I know, this is no big deal. The coursework also exposes them to new ideas which they can incorporate into the classroom.
For some, however, a few credit hours of courses every few years is too much of a hassle. According to this story at CNN.com, in Florida it is six education credits every five years; I don’t know Illinois’ requirements. Six teachers were terminated and twenty-six others resigned after getting caught purchasing transcripts from a former Florida teacher’s company.
William McCoggle’s company, Move On Toward Education and Training, claimed to offer continuing education courses. In reality, McCoggle sold transcripts to teachers, which would be used as proof for having taken a professional development course. I’m not quite sure why continuing your education would be so tough for someone who works in education, especially when that education can lead to higher pay and promotions.
Published on Thursday 16th March 2006 .
After spending yesterday at home sick, missing my daily web reading and other stuff, I was delighted to see that astronomers found a double helix in space. It has been dubbed a "DNA nebula," and it is the first known extraterrestrial example of such a geometry. From the article at SPACE.com:
Magnetic forces at the center of the galaxy have twisted a nebula into the shape of DNA, a new study reveals.
The double helix shape is commonly seen inside living organisms, but this is the first time it has been observed in the cosmos.
"Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm," said the study’s lead author Mark Morris of UCLA. "Most nebulae are either spiral galaxies full of stars or formless amorphous conglomerations of dust and gas—space weather. What we see indicates a high degree of order."
These observations, made with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, are detailed in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature.
The article continues to explain some of the physics in forming such a nebula. It’s fascinating, and it makes me wish for a career change again.
Published on Tuesday 14th March 2006 .
I was asked that earlier today when talking about my blog. I answered, "rarely," or something similar. And that’s true. I just finished testing some software for a lab at work. We’re having some training at the school in about twelve hours. I used VNC and Remote Desktop to control a few computers at work to make sure the appropriate software was installed and working. Now, it’s one of those rare times that call for sleep.
Published on Monday 13th March 2006 .
For the few people who frequent the halfway house, but have not been here in the past couple of days, the normal operating hours have returned. Chris has almost completely recovered, and we’ll be doing corned beef and cabbage on Wednesday, in early celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. That is all.
Published on Sunday 12th March 2006 .
Mark Chang has a great post called The Five Buck Idea. He offers an easy-to-follow guide on creating a successful startup with a five buck idea. That’s right, startups don’t need to bring about world peace or feed the millions of starving children around the globe.
Startups just need an OK idea (a five buck idea), a niche market and a nice interface. Then you wait for the buyout from the big guys like Yahoo!, Google and eBay. Want evidence? He ends his post with a slew of examples, including Flickr, del.icio.us and MySpace. I had no idea Fox spent $580M on MySpace, what Chang refers to as "the place animated GIFs go to die."
Published on Sunday 12th March 2006 .
You’ll have to pardon the pun, but I just saw a video of a running ASIMO robot. The robot that comes closest to mimicking the movements of humans when they walk can now speed up to a brisk jog. Honda even has a promo site to show off the new moves. Here’s the original video I saw on Google Video:
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