Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 120)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we get awesome, get science and get musical.

• First, the vlogbrothers host the Project For Awesome every year and this video is (a few of) the highlights from 2013.
• Next, Hank enjoys some holidays and his favourite, nothing to do day, thing, answering science questions. #amI1percentnacho
• Finally, Ben Chan, as a guy in four boxes, plays a parody on the themes from Final Fantasy.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 119)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we reverse engineer our own typesetter and answer real questions about real vlogbrothers.

• First, we have two videos from Computerphile looking at "The Great 202 Jailbreak". This is a good look at the spirit of inventiveness that makes computer science interesting and at how complex a thing that seems simple, like printing*, can be.
• Then to round out the volume Hank Green did Question Tuesday with his parents. Answering the most important question, how was John Green as a child.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 118)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, it's time to feel the music.

• First, it takes fourteen instances of Mr. Smooth McGroove to cover "The One Who Bares Fangs at God" from Xenogears.
• Next in the further vein of video game music to make the hair stand up on your (well, my) arms, Caitlin and Vaughan cover Time's Scar from Chrono Cross
• Finally, Slamacow produced a video to Laura Shigihara's "From the Ground Up" which tells a beautiful story about love, life and rebirth.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 117)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we get out our sciencing tools and get our feet wet.

• From Sixty Symbols we see what happens when physicists decide they want to do something interesting on a Friday afternoon. The science is interesting, and the visuals are awesome, though I have to confess to some jealousy since if I go outside on a Friday afternoon I'm probably goofing off.

January 2016 Project Update

Somehow, it's been six months since my last project update. I've been pretty busy for the last six months, but mostly on things for the PhD and teaching. Around here I haven't managed to get much done.

As far as the "actual job" goes. I'm hoping to finish the PhD this year, although it'll be December if I do get it all done this year. I'm getting closer though and I've reach the point where I really just want to get it done and and get on to anything else.

The teaching has also been interesting, since my last update I've been working primarily on new ways to teach new computer scientist the basic tools that we expect them to be able to use (like text editors and the Unix command line). That has been a lot of work but I think may also lead to some things that I'd like to do in the future. You may even see me talk about it more here in the next little while.

As far as getting projects done, I haven't. I've managed to do a little work but really haven't managed to put anything to bed. Finishing things is definitely not my strength.

Granted finishing things is never easy:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.^[1]

— Tom Cargill, Bell Labs

(Stolen ... borrowed ... excerpted ... from Wikipedia)

I think I also sometimes distract myself by giving myself too many options about what to work on *looks at the two page todo list*.

I'm going to try for the next little bit to focus when I'm working on my project stuff. I'm also going to try to make sure that I put the bulk of my time into getting the PhD done.

To manage that I'm going to try to have one active project at a time (well two, but hold onto that thought). For now, I'm going to focus on finishing the sketch fiction first. I'll get to the perler projects (coasters and sprites) when I have a little time, but for now we can call them "on hiatus".

Also I have absolutely no idea what those other two and a half projects were going to be. I should really consider writing things down. On that note, if I come up with more brain crack*, then you might see a project post for a project that I'm not really going to start on.

The "other" project is going to be "blog as blog project". For the last year I really tried to get two posts out a week. Over all I haven't done too badly, but I feel a bit like I use the blog as an excuse to not work on other things (like my PhD and other projects). I'm going to scale back to only one "YouTube Favourites" a week (on Friday). This was always technically the plan with the assumption that I'd be filling Tuesday and the other days with other posts, but that hasn't been the case and that's okay.

I'm going to set the deadline for the sketch fiction for February 9th, 2016 and in the mean time you'll have a fresh batch of favourite videos on Friday.

* he says if as though he didn't have another page in the todo list of "long term" projects in the book with the todo list.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 116)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we swear, we share and we care (honestly that was the best I could come up with using the thesaurus... sorry).

• First, Michael from Vsauce has some bad words to say to us.
• Next, John Green talks about how the Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria handles the phrase Don't Forget to Be Awesome, how trade marks work and how not forgetting to be awesome doesn't become less awesome when it gets shared.
• Finally, Yungtown needed to put some words about his crushing crush into song. Which he did along with the very awesome Satchell Drakes.