Doug Engelbart talks about how he taught his kids to ride a bike:

It turns out, you don’t have to steer if you just get a gentle, even back and forth see-sawing motion going with the handlebars as you roll along, the back and forth motion usually corrects the tilting soon enough and you won’t fall. In fact, someone with little or no bike riding experience at all can just see-saw their handlebars as they pedal and mostly not fall.

So this is how Doug taught kids to ride. First he would show them how he could see-saw his handlebars back and forth while he pedaled slowly on his bike. Then he would ask them to try the same thing as he walked alongside, holding onto the bike loosely just to help it maintain a reasonable speed, and to keep it/them from falling when they over- or under-corrected. As long as they kept moving forward and see-sawing the handlebars, they would naturally start to get a feel for this direct relationship between tilting, steering and untilting, and gradually start refining the motions, and pretty soon off they’d go.

I thought it was pretty cool.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

I went along as a counselor-ish person on my school’s freshmen trip to Big Bend National Park! To go I had to write an essay that was reviewed by our Head of School. Seven seniors went on the 9th grade trip and two on the 10th grade trip.

Everyone–teachers, administrators, students, and seniors–had an amazing time. Although there was some excitement–a student was lifeflighted in stable condition after tripping on the sand dunes and being in intense pain for awhile because of a prior surgery that left a bar in his chest–everyone grew closer together and more comfortable around each other, while enjoying the outdoors, fulfilling some of the main goals of the trip.

• Pictures from the trip: adamfeldman.smugmug.com
• The tribute video slideshow: http://vimeo.com/2928146 or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHQp7y73a38

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

The new WhiteHouse.gov is already live (broken links and all). Check out this big difference (via http://codeulate.com/?p=24):

Obama’s two line robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

Bush’s robots.txt (too long to put here – 2324 lines).

In a way it says something about the two administrations commitment to transparency and openness.

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Tag clouds of various inaugural speeches (via ReadWriteWeb).

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Was Condi Rice the first African-American President today?? A Constitutional law scholar answers.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

So here’s what’s happened so far:

• Flight from Houston to Denver on United to make our connection on Frontier to San Francisco took off 50 minutes late. Our connection time in Denver: 50 minutes! Michael & I sprinted through two terminals and somehow made it!! Our flight was supposed to take off at 5:55 and we boarded at 6:05 as they closed the door. We were sooooo happy and exhausted.
• Got into line for the keynote around 10:30pm. We were 11-13th in line. Chilled with a lot of awesome people (I’ll get links up to everyone’s site/twitter later). A few are below, more to be added later:
1. The Flappie guys from TastyApps came by with t-shirts, buttons, and stickers!
2. Met plenty of people such as a guy from TUAW, @adamjackson, @alexbrooks, @deedeewarren.
• Got our tent set up right on the sidewalk. Surprisingly no cops came by the whole night to tell us to take it down! Michael got 3-4 hours of sleep, I got two. It was freezing outside–I’m a Houstonian, I don’t like 40 degree weather!!
• Got into Moscone around 7:15-ish. It was waaarmmm inside! . Got seated around 8:50
• Nothing of note at the philnote. I impulsively bought iWork today, we’ll see how much I end up liking it!
• Visited some booths afterwards then napped for 4 hours

More Macworld news later!

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Annnnd He’s Back! I’m headed off to Macworld and CES tomorrow (today….). I will be camping out before the keynote on the streets of San Francisco starting around 10pm or so. I’ll be twittering this whole week, along with the 495834958 other twitter-ers attending the tradeshows. I’ll get some pictures up during the show, and video later! I am super excited.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

A NASA dude made a great presentation on why we explore . Take 5 minutes and read it!!!
I also put it up on scribd.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

I voted!

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

My new favorite GMG comic:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/56184387

For those of you who have no idea what garfield minus garfield is, go check it out now!

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Look closely:

Look closer:

I am scared:

Source:http://bread-and-honey.blogspot.com/2008/10/wtf-broccoli.html

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

In general I care more about the instrumental rather than lyric qualities of the music I listen to (I tend to ignore the lyrics, I know, very shallow). However, for many of the songs I really like, I have found something really deep and special in the lyrics.

Handlebars by Flobots

A recent addition to my list, the song has inspired me with a lot of thoughts about society, government, and the world over the past few months since I first heard the song. Listening to the song is a powerful experience, but I first truly understood it once I watched
the music video.

Everytime We Touch by Cascada

This song is one of my favorites to go crazy to because of its instrumental qualities. It’s “Everytime we Touch,”, what more can be said??

It’s All About The Pentiums by Weird Al Yankovic

It’s me! It’s a funny tech song and I love the somewhat insider nature of the humor and how Weird Al’s parodies are well put together.

99 Red Balloons by Goldfinger

While the picture painted by this song is bleak, this song has always pushed me into a thoughtful state in which I contemplate the nature of the world. This song is really what made me see what a mad world we live in.

You Gotta Tap by Audiobody

Audiobody produces by far my favorite instrumental songs. While You Gotta Tap has some lyrics, to me it’s all about the sound of this song. The band was first introduced to me in the video above – the famous Diet Coke & Mentos experiment. More often than not, when I’m driving home from school alone, I’m jamming out and enjoying being alive to some loud Audiobody.

Mad World by Gary Jules

There are a ton of versions of the song between the original Tears for Fears version, Jules’ cover that he made for inclusion in Donnie Darko, and one of my personal favroties, the 2004 a capella cover by the Yale Whiffenpoofs. Also, I have a powerful conviction that we are truly in a mad world, however much sense we think we see.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

I photoshopped this a few months back….

CCTV: For the Greater Good

Original image source: uniplex.net

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Meta-Commentary

Source: http://mentalfruition.com/random/bloody_hell.jpg

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.