Ryan Wilcox: High School

The Margin Is Not...

Sun, 17 Oct 2004 23:19:37 GMT

In email correspondence, or in forum postings I sometimes take a shortcut and say "the margin is not big enough to contain..." (when I don't have time to explain something, or it's too elementary or complex for me to deal with in that communication.) I knew this snippet was from a math proof of some kind, but as math was not one of my stronger points in high school I wasn't able to recall the exact reference this quote makes. However, google to the rescue. Today I finally found it on the web: it's a reference to Fermat's Last Theorem where Fermat mentions that he has a "truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition (his theorem) that this margin is too narrow to contain." In high school I had study hall in with the Calculus (I) class (which, contained 3 or 4 of the students in my class, along with 3 or 4 students in the grade above.) One day they were watching a video on Fermat's Theorem, so (instead of doing my work), I watched as well. The video was on the search for the solution proving the theorem correct (or disproving it, as the case might be.) In 1995 this theorem was proving using modern techniques ( techniques that didn't exist in Fermat's time. I remember only fancy computer graphs and something about 3D space (and obviously they didn't have fancy computer graphs back then.) ) The question remains: did Fermat have a viable solution to his theorem, or was the puzzle forever unsolved (by him), until we did it with modern mathematics here in the 20th century? Wow. A little math, a little history, and a little Latin in that post. I feel the scholar.

Pre High School: Locker Memory

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 03:23:24 GMT

This isn't a high school memory at all, but it's a memory of school, and that qualifies... because I saw it does. When I was in about 4th grade or so, the school added on another wing. This additional wing doubled the size of the school (or so) and was in construction for, probably a year or so. Around that time my classroom was very near where they were building this new addition - and for some reason at that time we had lockers that were out of our classroom. These lockers were positioned on each side of a fairly narrow hallway - so we had to contest with people on each side, people in back, as well as the dust and dirt from this new addition. This arrangement was less than ideal (it was a fairly narrow hallway), but I remember it being extremely accelerating - we had outdoor lockers. Previously our lockers were inside our classrooms, but now we got to go out of the classroom to get our lunches, coats, whatever. I haven't specifically looked for them lately, but I suspect that the lockers are long since gone. That section of the hallway I believe is the domain of the high schoolers, the lockers back in their respective rooms. I may be wrong however - I have no clue what's in that space now.

Quick Memory...

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 12:47:44 GMT

In the interest of "how do I kill a few minutes", I post the following: One of my more interesting memories of high school is from senior year, when the entire boys soccer team decided to dye their hair. Now, this wasn't professional grade stuff at all - more like 50 cents a bottle. Like washable spraypaint for your hair (it even came in those same aerosol cans). Now, while we were deciding to do that, the skies got darker and cloudier... and right around the time that we decided to go out on the field to warm up, the rain started coming down. So, the washable spraypaint goes running down out uniforms, out of our hair, into our eyes - just in general makes a big mess. Come to find out, after the game, strange haircolors like that are (or were) against the rules of the game (I don't know if these were league rules, or PIAA) - if it hadn't have been raining, we would have had to go and wash the dye out of our hair. I think we have some pictures somewhere, of one of two people with strange color dye running down their jerseys. I also thought it was a pain to get out... of the uniforms.

alumni.ncalions.org?

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 03:10:24 GMT

Someone today got me thinking - it would be great to have a place where alumni of NCA to gather and put up random stuff about... well, whatever. Now, creating a website requires a lot of HTML markup, access to the server, and more hassle than it's really worth, right? Technically yes. Practically, well, there are ways around that. There are things out on the Internet called wikis. In a nutshell, these wikis let anybody, anywhere, anytime, edit any page on them - all in a very easy manner. If you want to try out a wiki for yourself, you can use the wiki @ wilcoxd - register yourself as a user, and play around editing your "info" page, or creating pages yourself. Yes, you can easily create your own pages on a wiki. If you're still trying to visualize what a wiki is, think of a bulletin board system - we've all used these online forum things on the Internet. Ok, know what I'm talking about? Now take away the Message-reply-reply-reply hierarchy. Now add the ability of anybody to edit anything anywhere. You have a wiki. You may ask yourself - how can we prevent hackers from editing our stuff? Well, we don't - one of the wonderful things about a wiki is that it takes very little work to change a page. Wikis also (normally) keep track of what changed (and give you a way to undo it). So, if someone makes an inappropriate change ("I 0wnn j0o00 u s4ck0rz", etc), it's easy to change it back. Given the easy editing/creation capabilities of a wiki, I think it would be a perfect match for a distributed, uncoordinated effort such as "an NCA alumni website". It solves the problems associated with websites of the kind ('how do we register/link/track/sort/display everybody, and still keep it easy for people toregister'), and allows the individual classes to take initiative and use the wiki as a springboard into other things - such as reunion planning, general 'where is everybody' information, collaboration in any number of things. Currently there is an alumni section, but it's not exactly useful. To be truly useful it needs to be editable by members of the classes themselves. Say I (class of 1999) want to put something up in the current alumni section - I would have no idea where to start, who to contact - or if I did, I would just throw up my hands in despair because it was Just Too Much Effort. With a wiki's instant access, always editable nature, I can hop on, change one thing, and be done with it with 2 clicks. So, gentle reader, what do you think? Is this a good idea, or does it have as much hope as a horseshoe peddler in downtown Detroit? Make yourself heard! Comment ("taunt"), email me (the little envelope at the bottom of the page), or send me an IM with your thoughts, feelings, suggestions, etc. Comments in this entry are prefered - then everybody can read your thoughts on the topic. I'll see what I can do to get this going initially if there's enough feedback here.

There

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 03:49:04 GMT

Now this category should look similar to the front page.

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 03:30:28 GMT

5 (+ 1) of us got together a few weeks ago. I snapped some pictures with my digital camera, but this was probably the best one.

High School Memories

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 03:07:48 GMT

My 5th year high school reunion is fast approaching, and one of the main organizers of the reunion is collecting our memories - stories we have from high school. I thought I'd go the extra mile and post some of them on this blog. First, it's a good, central location for them all - easy to reference, etc etc. Secondly, I though they might be fasinating to some people. So, I'll try to post a story from high school about every week or so... it'll get me to remember some of this stuff, and maybe it'll be an extra incentive to post on the 'blog more.