That’s right if you act now, you can build your own Genes for free, all you need is Microsoft Word and a free download from Codeplex. This open source project works inside of MS Word, and if you are smart (and you must be since you are reading this blog) you could easily use it for a science paper at...

I hope you have successfully downloaded and installed Trident Workbench, with the Word Add-in, which is a cool way to document your research.  You will also need to have SQL Express installed on your system, with SP1 installed.  Keep in mind, as a non-commercial researcher, you should have...

I just got back from the Foundation of Digital Games (FDG) Disney Cruise, and it WAS GREAT! I had great conversations with some of the best game researchers and professors on the planet, and we all couldn’t use our cell phones or do email without paying a bunch of money. ACM held the conference and the...

In the previous post, I talked about the units of measurement class in Chris Smith’s BurnedLand program. We are continuing down this path because units are an important part of most scientists and engineering disciplines. The reason we are going down this path is that I am demonstrating how F# could...

Quiz answers Is the “let” keyword only used for values? No, the “let” keyword is used for values and functions Is the “let” keyword only used for functions? No, functions and values are treated the same way in F# If I write the line of code: let TimeBump = 1.0<ft>*3.0<m>, will I get a context...

It was a quiet weekend here at Dana By the Sea, our neighbor’s son has apologized, of course in most any other neighborhood or time, his actions would have been of little note. But in these times of tightly packed urban neighborhoods and news like the recent shootings everyone is nervous. When I was...

WOW! Take a look at the press pass (the news organ for Microsoft) at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/mar09/03-24NASADataPR.mspx NASA press release: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/mar/HQ_09-067_Microsoft_WorldWide_Telescope.html The deeper detail of the data share is to be revealed...

Apparently this cartoon was all to true with respect to the Mars Climate Orbiter. However, for some reason I am certain that there were no women wearing sexy pantsuits on the navigator team for the MCO. If I am wrong leave a comment. Hi ho: Well like Tim Buxton said at the Mix09 keynote today, the transition...

OMG: Slide Rules and F#, ‘sup with that? World of Twitter, Facebook, $300 computers running Windows 7, why would I even mention this arcane tool? F# and Slide Rules have something in common: Dimensional Analysis. In F# you can use dimensional analysis to implement your programs. What does this mean?...

Information science and computer science pretty much control the programming classes and curriculum at the universities, colleges and trade schools. Most of the training is either to implement and manage systems or how to write programs and think about new problems and solutions. It is all good and needed...

Well continuing my effort to bring F# to the Engineers, one of the things that Engineering students look for is the move from graphing calculators to solving problems in a way that doesn’t require an expensive tool like MatLab or Mathematica, although both are excellent tools. When engineers leave school...

No picture today, the Community server didn’t want to host it. What the F#, umm, does that work? Oh well, I’ll stick with it for awhile. After all blogs like this are not broadly read, so I figure I can talk about anything I want to. Ok, on to curriculum and pedagogical discussions: So what should a...

OMG! I got pulled off my usual job of doing a bunch of things and have been focused on getting students involved in the Imagine Cup Software Design Invitational in the United States. Then it was Christmas and I ate to many cookies, etc. Finally I ignored my one comment from a int19h, and when you get...

In the example I used in the past post utilized the "let" command and it didn't have any data type, what's up with that? Oh it gets worse, the identifier (not variable) are immutable. That is the memory location of the identifier cannot be modified. To create an mutable identifier you have to declare...

F# has many interesting features, such as the use of lists, maps, and so forth. There are many blogs and websites dedicated to discussing the computer science side of F#, and for good reason the language supports these types of efforts. However, what about the rest of the computational users, for instance...

I just tested the IM capabilities of the Popfly server, and it works! Slowly, you have a delay of a few seconds when the messages are sent and received. But to do our tests of the Sensor Touch, we can live with that. Remember this is a test of concept, not the final product. The best research product...

It can be difficult to get started, and fortunately there is a web page that you can use to start experimenting with an accessible web page. You will have to use the View Source to check out the code, on IE7 you would use the Page button and then select the "View Source" you will see the HTML. It is...

There have been a bunch of movies and even more stories where the bad guys or good guys are able to interact physically at a distance. Usually there is violence involved, but what kind of fun can we have? Well I am assuming that everyone who wants to take apart their Xbox controller to use it in our...

Well the Olympics continue and the Chinese are really showing off their abilities with a real leadership in Gold Medals. And it is a good thing that Michael Phelps, a resident of California, showed up since it appears that he currently has won a large percentage of the US Gold Medals. Gymnastics is about...

Ok, my first post isn't directly about Microsoft Research, but I though that this would be pretty cool, and I get to use the word Olympics a lot in this blog. I realize that using the word Olympics is a way to cheat on the search engines, this does lead into my general theme of this blog. So for the...