How One Teacher Turned Sixth Grade Into An MMO Editor’s Note: Ben Bertoli is a long-time Kotaku reader and commenter, a lifetime, dedicated video gamer and a sixth-grade teacher in Indiana. He reached out to Kotaku this past week to share the story of how he turned his class into a role-playing game. The enthusiasm and motivation of the children in Bertoli’s class evoke the success stories seen in gamified experiences such as Fitocracy. Here, Bertoli explains his creation, ClassRealm, how it works and what motivated him to develop it. Video games and education. I wouldn’t be as well read as I am today if it wasn’t for video games. As I was describing my video-game-related teachings to my buddy Courtny, we began talking about incorporating gaming into education. I worked on my classroom system for a month before I had it completely devised. Knowing I could get some supportive and insightful feedback I even ran the idea by my pals on Kotaku. 1. Many students were thrilled right off the bat. Participation skyrocketed on the first day.
Make your own RJ45 dongle for many PCMCIA network cards If you look closely, you notice 4 green traces leading out of the left side of the transformer. They lead ultimately (with a minimum of side-trips) to the dongle connector. While a lot of other stuff also leads to the dongle connector, these four are the lines that carry your network data. ** No transformer on your netcard? If you looked and looked, and are certain there is no transformer on your card, you may be right. It might actually be inside the manufacturer's dongle, in which case you're out of luck So, now you've probably narrowed things down to 4 wires. ** This is very delicate work! Determine sending vs. receiving pair, and polarity No easy ride here folks, you have to figure it out by trial and error. You've now narrowed things down to 1 pair left to attach, and only 2 possible ways they could be hooked up. Does it work? Once you are satisfied that everything works, mix up some epoxy and apply it liberally to hold all your wires and solder joints in place. Finished product
The Right Way to Respond to Failure My wife Eleanor and I were visiting some friends on a Saturday when their nine-year-old daughter, Dana*, came home. She was close to tears, barely holding it together. “Oh sweetie,” her mom said. “What happened at the swim meet?” Dana is an excellent swimmer. She trains hard, arriving at swim practice by six most mornings and swimming some afternoons as well. It isn’t like that for all her endeavors. “I was disqualified,” she told us. We were in the foyer of the house and she sat down on the bottom stair of the staircase, her swim bag still on her shoulder, staring into space, almost expressionless. “Honey,” her dad said, “there are a lot more swim meets in the season. I told her, “The fact that you left the block prematurely means you were at your edge. “Every swimmer on every team has been disqualified at some point,” Eleanor said. Nothing we said seemed to have any impact on her. Then her grandmother Mimi walked over. At that point, Dana began to cry. But she didn’t need any of that.
9 Fitness Tips to Help You Build Muscle, Lose Fat and Become a Better Athlete If you are in the fitness and bodybuilding world for some time, you’ve probably seen there is a ton of information about training, nutrition and supplements on the internet, magazines, television… Some of it is very useful, but unfortunately, most of it is very misleading. Often, when people find themselves overflown with information, they can pick bad advice, or even fail to act, mainly because they get confused and don’t know what is good and what is bad for them. So if you are just starting – here are a few fitness advices to take you the right way. For the experienced ones – this info will serve as a reminder and to help you stay on track.1. Isolation exercise have their own benefits, but compound movements are the foundation of every weightlifting program and absolutely vital for your success. 2. A workout can work perfectly, but won’t work forever. 3. This may look confusing, but think about it, why you should train your legs? 4. 5. 6. Cardio can be very beneficial for you. 7.
PoE (Power over Ethernet) How To - NYCwireless by Terry Schmidt WARNING: Don’t try this unless you have some electric clue. 12v isn’t going to kill you, but you may cause serious damage to your access point and other equipment. Don’t blame me if something goes wrong. I’m not an electrical engineering major, I’m just a networking guy who wanted cheap PoE modules, and decided to write about how I did it. A number of Access Point manufacturers (Lucent, Symbol) are now offering Power over Ethernet add-on’s for their Access Points. The 12 volt Apple Airport and the UGate 3300 use a 2.5mm Inner Diameter and 5.5mm Outer Diameter Coax DC Power Jacks. 1. Soldered DC Male Coax Power Plug New 2 Port Housing Opened 2. DC Plug Mounted in 2 Port Housing 3. Finished 2 Port Wall Mount Jack 4. Left DC Female Plug Center RJ45 Crimp-able Plug Right 1 Port Wall Mount Jack Also refer to wiring diagram at bottom of page. Finished 1 Port Housing Wiring 5. Both Jacks Open and Done. Both Jacks Closed and Done UGate 3300 and 250′ Feet of Ethernet Cable Using PoE Power
47 Mind-Blowing Psychological Facts You Should Know About Yourself I’ve decided to start a series called 100 Things You Should Know about People. As in: 100 things you should know if you are going to design an effective and persuasive website, web application or software application. Or maybe just 100 things that everyone should know about humans! The order that I’ll present these 100 things is going to be pretty random. Dr. <div class="slide-intro-bottom"><a href=" CF "Ice Breaker" Questions Great questions designed to help people in small groups get to know one another. If you could live in any sitcom, which one would it be? What was in your high school locker? Best dessert you have ever had? Something interesting you might not know about me is . . . What was the most embarrassing thing you have done while on a date? Editor, October 2008: I have disabled the Submit Question feature. Editor, January 2016: This list has been available since 1998!
the 5-in-1 network admin's cable ethernet / crossover / modem / null modem / Cisco console featured in the premiere edition of Make There is nothing worse than showing up for an on-site visit without the correct cable you need for a job. For quite some time I've been carrying a single CAT5 ethernet cable in my laptop bag along with "the world's shortest crossover cable" and an RJ45 coupler. But after putting together four simple custom adapters, I now have an ethernet cable, a crossover ethernet cable, a modem cable, a null modem cable, and a Cisco console cable all by carrying around just one standard ethernet cable. Do you find yourself toting several of these cables everywhere you go? Here's how to make your own: RJ45 pin 8 has to connect to both 1 and 6 on the DB9 connector. Here's how to use it: DB9/RJ45 - ethernet - coupler - Cisco adapter Remember that the Cisco adapter is not reversible. Notes: This solution is somewhat similar to the Yost wiring standard which I have long found to be quite useful. Extras:
An Overview of Cryptography As an aside, the AES selection process managed by NIST was very public. A similar project, the New European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity and Encryption (NESSIE), was designed as an independent project meant to augment the work of NIST by putting out an open call for new cryptographic primitives. NESSIE ran from about 2000-2003. CAST-128/256: CAST-128, described in Request for Comments (RFC) 2144, is a DES-like substitution-permutation crypto algorithm, employing a 128-bit key operating on a 64-bit block. A digression: Who invented PKC? 3.3. Let me reiterate that hashes are one-way encryption. Hash algorithms that are in common use today include: Message Digest (MD) algorithms: A series of byte-oriented algorithms that produce a 128-bit hash value from an arbitrary-length message. A digression on hash collisions. Without meaning to editorialize too much in this tutorial, a bit of historical context might be helpful.
Psychology of Color [Infographic] Perhaps no choice is as vital to marketing as color. Whether you are selecting the color for a product or for your email marketing campaign, color has tremendous impact on all of us. Subconsciously, we associate different colors with different things. This infographic examines the psychology of color and looks at some common associations of different colors. While color can be appealing to us visually, a lot more is going on behind the scenes than just an aesthetic. Embed This Graphic On Your Site <img src=” alt=”Psychology of Color Infographic” />Infographic by <a title=”WebpageFX” href=” Embed the Psychology of Color Infographic The psychology of color directly plays into consumer behavior. When you are looking at the best visual choice for your next project, this color infographic should be a handy guide. Marketing with Color Psychology