Open Education (Education Aggregator)

I wrote a very brief blog article some time back about an education aggregator. That aggregator is still up and running, but I figured I would also write down an actual education website you can visit to expand your knowledge.

The site I visit the most often is MIT's OpenCourseWare. Here you can find, as the site says, "Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT." You can search through the content in many different ways, such as by class and topic. It has an impressive array of videos, assignments, tests and solutions. For instance, if you are taking first year calculus in University and are having trouble or are trying to go over certain materials, checking out their single variable calculus might be a good idea. For many of the lectures, a textbook is not required; generally a textbook is only needed for the assigned problems. The exams provide another conduit for practice questions when you are studying for an upcoming exam.

There are many more sites dedicated to providing and organizing course material to help you learn. I just thought I should post MIT's, as I have found this to be one of the most useful. Has anyone else found other sites on par with MIT's?

Oh, OpenCourseWare Consortium has an impressive list of institutions that are participating in the open learning movement, so checking this out can give you a huge list of new schools to explore as well.

Learning: Knowledge, the Future, and the Universe

Learning has always been something that I enjoyed doing. I remember as a child, I would look forward to getting a new workbook. I would sit and do it for hours on end. Learning has just always felt great to me. When I was in Grade 9, I got my first science textbook for class. The moment I got home, I sat down and started working through it. I worked for the rest of the day and had it entirely finished. The science classes for the rest of the year did seem quite slow after that, but there were always enough interesting facts thrown in by the teacher to keep me paying attention.

It's hard to describe how learning makes me feel; I find that very few people ever understand. I will be learning something new, when all of a sudden, I can feel the pieces fit together perfectly with other things I had learned, and I get the most amazing feeling. It is an addictive rush that I imagine is quite similar to the rush a sky diver or mountain climber gets. I will get tingly all over, overcome with such a great amount of emotion. Sometimes my eyes will even water from my amazement. It's one of the greatest feelings I have ever felt, and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

An example was in a calculus class. I was sitting in a lecture, and all of a sudden I got to a point where I realized that almost all the math I'd learned throughout my life had just been applied in a problem to come out with a solution that, to me, fit perfectly together. It gave me this immense sense of awe over the universe. It made me feel so tiny and so large instantaneously. On the one hand, I felt that these amazing laws fit so naturally together that everything must be guided by them, including myself, and that I was just a pawn of these forces. But on the other, I felt as if I had just taken a peek at the gears of the universe, and that anything was possible.

I like to think of the people who derived the ideas I'm learning. Often, the underlying ideas come from hundreds of years ago, which is astonishing to me because they didn't just learn it, they were enlightened enough to see that it needed solving, and created a method to figure it out!

The more I learn, the more frequently I find that I become amazed. When you're little, very often, you find yourself wondering what the point of the work you're doing is. But, as you get older, if you stay the path, you find out that all these seemingly worthless things you've acquired turned out to be the most vital aspects of understanding life. Thus, life long learning is not only important for your future career, but also to maintain a certain amount of awe for the world in which you live in.

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been looking forward to 'The Accidental Billionaires', that new book by Ben Mezrich, since the day I learned of it. It's set to be released on July 14th, but I managed to get my hands on it today, a week early. I'm about half-way through it, but I figured I might as well come here to gloat.

Intel's New Ad Rocks!

I just saw a new ad from Intel, and it's a surprising new move. Here it is:


There's a few more, but that's the one that really stands out (in my opinion).

Au revoir!

Awesome Video

I came accross this video and thought someone else might enjoy seeing it too.

Base Jumping in Terminal Velocity

Java Plugin in Firefox, and Vista 64 Bit

I recently started using Windows Vista 64 bit, and was having problems getting java working on Firefox (32 bit, official build). It worked fine on Internet Explorer, and all the settings seemed right. To get it working, I had to go into the Java Control panel (if Java is not in windows control panel, go to something java with IE and right click it at the bottom on the taskbar to get to it), then go to the "advanced tab", then to the Java plug-in menu, and disable the next-generation Java plug-in. Firefox immediately started working after that.

Hopefully this is useful to someone.

Microsoft CES: Windows 7 Beta Available Now

A heads up for all you people waiting for the Windows 7 beta!

I'm watching the CES keynote from Steve Ballmer, and he just announced that the beta is now available to MSDN and Technet users. There has been the leaked version going around, but I just decided to wait for the real deal (the bandwidth for downloading it twice would be killer on my connection). I can see it up on Technet and MSDN. According to Engadget, for customers who want to try it out, it will be available this Friday.