Category: All

All posts across the whole website belong to this category. They might also belong to some other categories as well, but this one holds all of them. Hence the descriptive name – All.

Welcome to Cyprus traffic violations

Cyprus Mail reports:

OVER 2,000 traffic violations were recorded last weekend by two fixed speed cameras installed on Grivas Dhigenis avenue in Nicosia.

Just give it a minute to sink in. Two thousand violations. In only two days. Recorded by only two fixed cameras (fixed means people know where and when they are).  These numbers are mind-blowing.  And yet what does the police decide?  Here’s what:

Deputy head of the Electromechanical Services Department (ESD) Loucas Timotheou said that no one would be prosecuted or fined, for now.

I think this basically explains the attitude towards the traffic laws.  Furthermore:

Timotheou told the Cyprus Mail that the weekend traffic violations caught by the cameras could add up to €100,000 in fines. “Of course, it’s not about the money. It’s about protecting people and making drivers obey traffic laws,” he said.

Two things that catch my attention here are:

  1.  Isn’t Cyprus trying to survive a bad economy, scrubbing for money everywhere? Why 100K in two days is completely ignored?
  2. How exactly are you protecting people by recording videos of violators and not issuing fines?

Is INPUT tag valid when used outside of a FORM tag?

Here is an update from the “learn something new every day” department – using <input> tag outside of (or, in other words, without) <form> tag is perfectly valid.  It’s valid in the newest HTML5 spec, and it was valid with earlier versions of HTML and XHTML too.

Interesting, that today was the first time I came across this, after doing HTML for almost 20 years.

Code.org – Learn an hour of code

Maxim mentioned code.org to me a couple of times last week, but I didn’t have the time to check it out.  Today, however, he said that “Learn an hour of code” was his homework for the computer class.  That got me quite interested.  After all, I was exploring looking for an easy way to get him (and some other kids) into computer programming.  We’ve tried bits and pieces of online tutorials here and there, YouTube videos, and I’ve even took a swing at it myself – all for nothing.  It was all too boring and broad and it always required plenty of effort to get into.

code.org

And I’m happy to report – that’s where Code.org succeded.  These guys have found a way to explain things in a very simplistic manner, with immediate practical exercises, which utilize drag-n-drop instead of typing (even a seasoned programmer is rarely a touch typist in my experience), familiar surroundings of Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies games, and short, yet motivational explanations of core concepts by computer industry celebrities, like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.  There also a familiar gaming incentive to the experience, with badges and achievements, but those aren’t the core motivator.

We’ve spent about an hour with Maxim, going through tutorials and doing exercises.   So far, it was a perfect balance of fun and education.  But for me, it there was also another important aspect to this.  I could finally show to my son what I do at work (well, not exactly what I do, but close enough).  Explaining programming with words and showing bits of code and chunks of website never looked too appealing.  Now however he has a better idea.

And for the first time he is actually excited about programming.  So much in fact that I could barely get him to go to bed.  We had to make plans for tomorrow to continue to calm him down a bit.

Thanks code.org!  You guys have done an amazing job.  Keep it up!