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A Minute Minute Minder

Today I delivered the opening keynote address at the 4th Panhellenic Conference on Computer Science Education. For a number of reasons (more on that later) I wanted to keep track of my progress during the presentation. For this I put together a minute minder that displayed the time from the presentation's start and the slide I should be in. I could thus adjust my pace to finish as planned.

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Using and Abusing XML

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

— Alexander Pope

I was recently gathering GPS coordinates and cell identification data, researching the algorithms hiding behind Google’s “My Location” facility. While working on this task, I witnessed the great interoperability benefits we get from XML. With a simple 140-line script, I converted the data I gathered into a de facto standard, the XML-based GPS-exchange format called GPX. Then, using a GPS-format converter, I converted my data into Google Earth’s XML data format A few mouse clicks later, I had my journeys and associated cell tower switchovers beautifully superimposed on satellite pictures and maps.

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