Crazy English is a language "teaching method" of increasing popularity in China led by a guy named Li Yang. It uses very cultish techniques to teach english via large rallies. Here's an example: Here are some further reasources: Crazy English 11/21/2007 on Language Log Crazy English Again 4/23/2008 on Language Log Crazy English on Wikipedia

There are services such as LoudTwitter that will submit digests of your twitters to LiveJournal, TypePad, or other blogging service/software. Wordpress has plugins that will do that. However, my experience with LoudTwitter has been that it is fairly unreliable. Thus, I coded up a fairly rudimentary python script that will grab that day's twitters and post them to LiveJournal, or elsewhere. You can find it here: Twitterchive v1.0. Edit the twitterchive.py file to include your Twitter username and password. Requirements:

• Python
• A POSIX-compliant system (such as Linux or Cygwin)
• python-twitter
• Charm, a LJ client in Python.
Copy the charm and ljcharm.py files to the same dir as Twitterchive. Copy the sample.charmrc file to ~/.charmrc. Alternatively, just run python setup.py install, and edit twitterchive.py to change the call to ./charm in main() into just charm. Edit ~/.charmrc to include your livejournal username and password. I recommend you follow the procedures described therein and only use the md5 digest of your password in this file.

Official Gargoyle Roadmap, calluh callay! Currently, Gargoyle consists of 3 parts:

• Gargoyle POI Server (GPS)
• Gargoyle Extraction Agent Service (GEAS)
• Gargoyle Personal Agent (GPA)

At the moment, only GPS is truly usable, and even that is to a very limited degree. A proof of concept for GPA was posted, and most of a v0.2 was written, but that codebase will be abandoned. GEAS is for now just a whole bunch of ideas without a single line of code. What follows is a breakdown of what each component of Gargoyle is, what features are implemented, and what features are planned.

Read the rest of this post »

Version 0.2 of the Gargoyle POI Server (GPS) is now ready. The latest source code tarball is here: Gargoyle POI Server v0.2. (Warning, almost no documentation and only basic comments) Requirements: python, web.py, CouchDB, couchdb-python But, what is it? A POI is a Point of Interest. That is, it is an atomic element of geospatial information. The Gargoyle POI Server is the backend server to the Gargoyle Personal Agent (previously introduced under the name Gargoyle alone). GPS is written in Python using web.py as the frontend, and CouchDB for data storage.  Web.py was chosen because it is small, fast, and output format agnostic. CouchDB provides schema-flexible storage and potential scalability. It will also support robust access from many Gargoyle Personal Agents (GPAs) as well multiple Gargoyle Extraction Agent Service (GEAS) instances. At the moment, the system can output the POIs either in KML or in rudimentary HTML. The interface chosen is a simple RESTful interface. At the moment, only GET is supported. POST will be implemented soon. Here is the syntax for using the server once running (to start a server at port 8080 just run python locator.py: To view the POIs for userid in the square created by 45.000000,47.000000 and 45.000999,47.000999 (format is latitude, longitude)

http://server:8080/l/userid/45.000/47.000

If you want it in KML use this:

http://server:8080/l/userid/45.000/47.000?kml

To add a POI to userid with an expiration date on May 1st:

http://server:8080/a/userid/45.000123/47.000456/1.3/POIname/POI Description/2008-05-01

The third number is the Altitude. Optional elements are in italics, and include the altitude, the description, and the expiration date (default is 3 days). The userid can really be anything. Ideally, it's just a long-ish hash that can't be easily gussed. This simplifies access, and offers a measure of privacy. For now, if you want your POIs secret, you can encrypt their contents in whatever way you wish. Access control is planned, and will be implemented in a future version. Coming really soon: GeoRSS output for easy Google Maps mashups. For planned development, look at the upcoming Roadmap post.

I am one of the lucky 500 who will be attending the historic (meaning it will either be amazing or flop magnificently)  ROFLCon at MIT this weekend. I will be live-blogging it on twitter, as well as making posts here when I can off my Nokia N800. You will definitely find me at the following panels:

•  Friday 3:30 pm – Track 2: Building E15: Bartos Theatre – BEFORE THE LOL with Jason Scott I have met Jason Scott many times and he is a wonderful and wholly entertaining speaker. He is best know for creating textfiles.com and the suprbly interesting BBS Documentary. You can find his blog at http://ascii.textfiles.com.
• Saturday 1:30 pm – Track 1: Room 26-100 – INCUBATING THE MINDVIRUS: MEME INFRASTRUCTURES
• Saturday 1:30 pm – Track 3: Building E15: Bartos Theatre – ***MYSTERY EVENT***

Here's the rest of the final schedule. Drop me a line if you're going to be there and want to meet up!

"next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh say you can see by the dawn's early my country 'tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

e. e. cummings

Gargoyle will now use CouchDB as its data storage backend. This will allow for rapid develpment, as well as easy adaptation to evolving scheme requirements. Releasing code for POI storage on couchDB within the next two weeks.