That’s a video from a “theory” computer science course – a type of course that all computer science students have to go through (at the University of Illinois, they are the _73 courses – 173, 373, and 473). There are some lucky students who find these courses fun and interesting, but most students find them extremely challenging. The topics that are covered in these classes are, however, the basis of computer science (or computational science, which is separate but similar), as this video is explains really well.

To get to the BIS interface for your carrier, just search “[carrier] BIS” in Google. For example, search “Verizon BIS” to get to https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw

If you set up your email on your device, however, you probably get this message:

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

I struggled with this error for a bit, until I found these two resources. The second one shows how to enable your account to use the BIS. Note, however, that the “Create User Name” option is now in the Menu (click the menu button once you’re in the Email Settings) on the Blackberry Tour. Once you set this up you should be good to go for your BIS account.

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

How to change the login mode for a BlackBerry Internet Service 2.4 account

For example, the NCHS of the CDC website can be accessed at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/Default.htm or at the much better looking URL http://www.cdc.gov/nchs.

Just some helpful advice. Please take these annoying little parts off of web addresses so that it looks cleaner. Thank you.

We’re approaching the two year anniversary of when Doug, Nathan, Joe, Kelsey, and I built a huge backyard screen for the showing of High School Musical 2 on August 17, 2007. Check out the movie below, see the article on Lifehacker, and get ready for another showing on the huge screen sometime this summer.

Lifehacker: Build Your Own Outdoor Movie Theater

If you have two monitors like I do, you may like to have full-screen flash videos playing in your second monitor. There is a problem, though, that as soon as you click in a different window, the Flash goes to non-full screen. In other words, you can’t browse and have full screen flash on your second monitor.

There is a fix for this “security feature,” though. (Disclaimer: Adobe claims that this feature of auto-minimizing is integral to computer security, so proceed with caution)

1. Make sure you have Flash player version 10.0.22.87 (you can see this version information here).
2. Open NPSWF32.dll (probably located at c:\Windows\system32\Macromed\flash\npswf32.dll) in a hex editor.
3. Go to address 0×136340 and change byte 74 to EB.

I have tried this, and it works great. Original source here.

Anyway, a biproduct of the new web interface is that my Firefox extension NetID Lookup was broken for about 7 days. It is now fixed, and you can go to http://addons.mozilla.org to get the latest version (1.3). Thanks, and please provide feedback if you use and enjoy this simple extension.

The key is do not forget to install the dictionary. Both the Windows installer and the pre-compiled dictionaries for Windows are available on the Aspell Windows website. Don’t go to the main Aspll page – they only have the links to the UNIX dictionaries.

After you install Aspell and the English dictionary, you should be able to go to Plugins > Spell Checker, define where the DLL is located, and then you’re ready to start spell checking!

One interesting thing about dealing with Lenovo, the Chinese company who purchased the PC division of IBM in 2005, was the shipping log. The laptop actually originated from China (Shenzhen to be exact). The shipment went from China to Alaska, was held up in customs, then to Kentucky, to Illinois, and finally to my house. Luckily Lenovo shipped the laptop via expedited shipping so it didn’t take as long as it could have.

So far I love the laptop. It is very solid, and the feel of the keyboard is amazing. One “small thing” that I have noticed, however, is the placement of the left Ctrl button. On my old Dell laptop and on most desktop keyboards the Ctrl button is the leftmost buton on the keyboard, making it easy to locate when I need to use it for a shortcut (Ctrl+c for copy, Ctrl+t for new tab, etc.). On this laptop, however, the button on the bottom left is the Fn button. How entirely weird! I have to re-train my hand for my keyboard shortcuts, which is a small thing, but still annoying. Sometimes the smallest things are the most noticeable.

Update: Lenovo has finally listened to the community and began a discussion on their Design Matters Blog about this issue.

So, I did a quick search and found this nice little registry edit:

1. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

2. Create a new 32-bit DWORD value on the right-hand side with the following values:

• Name: NoInternetOpenWith
• Value: 1

This causes Windows to never open that useless prompt ever again. Thanks, HowToGeek.com.

There’s a lot of documentation out there on the Twitter API, but it was hard for me to find a small quick script to do this seemingly simple query, so I’m providing the one that I wrote.

Let me know if/how you like it. Code is here: twitter_script