As part of a new role at work, I’ve been researching aspects of funding for education in the United States. A recurring phrase is evidence-based interactions. I’m going to explore some of the facets of this idea, from its definitions and origins, to potential ramifications of its increasing usage in education.
This post is a placeholder for those future investigations. The educational landscape is of interest to many people, and learning about some of the guiding tenets can help explain a lot of the situations states are finding themselves in. I’m excited to be diving in.
I was messing around with animation this past week. It’s always been an interesting process to me, and I’ve messed with a few hand-drawn animation apps on the iPad in the past. However, any small skill in drawing left me a long time ago. I also had a particular goal that amounted to animating with a vector image I had built using Inkscape.
Lo and behold, I discovered the concept of vectortweening. It’s essentially an interpolative animation process that takes advantage of the mathematical niceties of vector images. Instead of needing to draw every individual frame, you can “skip” frames. You tell your animation software that at frame 6 your vector assets should look this way, and at frame 12 they should look that way. A little voodoo occurs (which I assume could be tweaked depending on the software), and you get all the frames between 6 and 12 automatically generated.
This was an amazing find. After a bit of searching, I installed Synfig. A few minutes later, I found the ability to save an Inkscape project as a Synfig animation project. In other words, the image I’d created became vector assets that could be animated using this new tool. Within twenty minutes I learned enough basics to make my little animation, and the rest was tediously adjusting points.1You can see the number of control points that get created when you convert text to a vector image in Inkscape. Luckily, I didn’t have to touch those, but moving an object with that many control points does make for a bit of a slow process.
Control points on a selected object in Synfig.
This was a really interesting process. I love getting new tiny tools under my belt, and this is just another I might be able to bank on in the future. Regardless, I had a good time and learned something new about the world.
Footnotes
1
You can see the number of control points that get created when you convert text to a vector image in Inkscape. Luckily, I didn’t have to touch those, but moving an object with that many control points does make for a bit of a slow process.
There are some excellent tools for organizing all aspects of an entity, whether it’s a single person, a hobby project, or an entire business. Services like Notion have come into vogue as trendy startups available to the masses, with a promise for greater expansion. I got into the world of Notion last year when I accepted a new role at work, which required greater coordination of people and projects. While my resulting setup was vital to my success, it’s put me in a bummer of a position nearly a year later.
A couple years ago, I made a concerted effort to get back into reading. I’ve started tracking the books I’ve read since college, and have a goal of reading at least 24 books each year, or about 2 per month. While I do enjoy buying books, and I have several shelves of books still to read, I’ve discovered a few other sources for those who don’t want to buy individual books or want potentially more convenient ways of finding new books. Since I do most of my reading on my phone or Kindle, I’ll focus on eBook sources.
Admittedly, this post is ripping off a conversation that happened on a work Slack channel the other week. Here’s the general idea: If you count in a particular way, there are 12 options for how to put on your underwear, and 12 (ordered) options for putting on socks and shoes. Since there are the same number of options, we can create a bijection between the two scenarios. In other words, each choice of underwear arrangement will correspond to exactly one choice for socks and shoes.
The question is what bijection is “natural”, for whatever definition of natural you choose to have in this strange scenario. Let’s explore it a bit.
I’ve been revisiting A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Django, which goes through the Django library, a Python tool for developing websites. I had tried it a year or two ago, but it just didn’t click. This time around I’ve found greater success precisely because many of the code examples are outdated and will not run without modification. While I may have more to say about using Django some other time, this experience has instead made me consider the efficacy of teaching using poor or broken examples.
Right around Christmas last year, Erin showed some interest in VR. My guess is it was fueled by talk on Cortex, where CGP Grey has discussed what he considers to be the vital acquisition of an Oculus Quest 2. I was totally on board with getting one, but our Christmas spending had been accounted for. Also, they were out of stock everywhere.
The other week it popped back into my mind, so on a whim I got one from Best Buy to surprise Erin. It’s been a hit. However, it’s worth considering both the present and future of VR, and specifically Oculus, now that we have seen the light.
While last week I wrote in broad strokes about moving in general, this post is being written in a bare bedroom in San Diego on one of my last nights “living” in this city.
