Right now I am passing through the Oracle Academy programs. The designed curriculum are using Alice and Greenfoot for developing familiarities with programming world. Me myself think that it is a great way for introducing programming in a "fun" way. Maybe anyone else have thoughts on this.

I will speak with a point of view from Indonesian with Javanese ethnicity.

Most of Indonesian peoples can speak at least 2 languages. Our local or regional language and national language.

Me myself can use 4 languages: Javanese (native), Indonesian (native), English (intermediate), Japanese (beginner), Arabic (beginner). For the Javanese language there some tiers of politeness but the usage in society can be generalized to polite Javanese (kromo) that we use when speaking to elders and rough Javanese (ngoko) that we use with our peers.

I have read some articles that speak about language effects on mind or point of view. But since I was small I learned more than two languages I cannot really differ them. Something a kin to the expression of "asking a fish what is water".

Based on my own feelings and experiences there are some nuances that accompany each language that I have known. I cannot describe them with words yet, but a language would be appropriate on different settings, medias, and intended audiences.

There are some language usages that are not appropriate when used in a different settings but sometimes of course there are some usages that would also help exploring the meanings

I am doing one of the fasting systems in islam. I have been doing it for around two month.

What i am experiencing in observing this are mainly good things, which are:

- I can controll my eating habits into a good systematic way, in sahoor and iftar. Before I would eat regardless of time or my hunger level, it is just difficult for me to moderate myself.

- My state of mind seems improved quite a lot. I am more aware of my self, my being, my hunger, and many other aspects in my life.

- I can taste food a lot more better, before I would just stuff anything as long as it is there. After I got used to the fasting, I am more selective of what I eat and enjoy each bite with great gratefulness.

Of course there are several times that are difficult for me when I am doing it. But they are far out weighted by the better things.

This is based on my own experiences and they may differ with other people's.

same with me, my first reaction is

WHAT KIND OF SORCERY IS THIS!?

1.Technology 2.Gaming 3.Programming

Did you ever heard of cold reading?

hey thanks, i just googled it.

I knew something about it (like reading expression or something, from watching 'the mentalist'), but i did not know what it was called.

but CMIIW the technique used in the linked app is categorized as 'hot reading' right? because it somewhat gather information from our "browsing history". Somewhat same technique used by google for user 'profiling' maybe?

just a little bit of assumption.

The hot reading is researching information on you directly which is less relevant in this case as you don't leave implicit traces of "I love reading Konan Doyle" in your researchable browser history. You may have visited some Konan Doyle sites but you can still do it for other reasons than actually liking his books so any such attempt will include a lot of guesswork.

No, it's exactly cold reading, because it tries everything and encourages and watches your reaction (with javascript) to determine which things it was throwing against the wall were relevant to you. It's an ePsychic™:)

Thanks, i have been wanting to read his book for a while.

On the side note, is this book free? if it is not i would like to buy it sometime.

I am also wondering , Richard Hamming has died in 1998 right? if his books is distributed electronically (like in ebooks) is it violating his copyright? (i don't really understand about ebooks copyright)

So, in indonesia (bill gates recently came here) mosquitos really thrive in all regions. One of the most common and dangerous disease caused by them are (known locally as) "Demam Berdarah" with the literal translation is "Bloody Fever", i don't know if it is the same with the "dengue fever" stated in the article (i have a bad English). This disease is very dangerous especially in rainy season, when there are very many water puddle everywhere and the mosquitos breed. Sometimes hospitals have a very tough time here when the patients start flowing in a very large volumes. So i am grateful to bill gates for giving a grant for solving this problem

> One of the most common and dangerous disease caused by them are (known locally as) "Demam Berdarah" with the literal translation is "Bloody Fever", i don't know if it is the same with the "dengue fever" stated in the article (i have a bad English)

Using wikipedia, the Indonesian "Demam Berdarah" article is linked to the English "Denge Fever" article, so probably.

There is a whole group of such illnesses; the general term is haemorrhagic fever:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemorrhagic_fever

Ah yes, it appearantly so it is the same "Dengue Fever". The most common ones here in Indonesia is the ones which caused by mosquitos named "Aedes Aegypti".

We were tought in primary schools here to always be vigilant for this kind of particular mosquitos. They are characterized by a certain colour, "Black and White" stripes on their body.

also, in Brazil we call Dengue and the main prevention tactic is indeed to eliminate the "water puddle everywhere" so the mosquitoes can't breed. So, very probably the same.

Yeah, every rainy season there are some kind of campaigns here to bury or burn garbages, regularly clean or change water containers, etc. To minimize the breeding grounds for the mosquitos.

So anyway, where is NeoEmacs?

*i am going to run now.

"NeoEmacs" is guilemacs, putting emacs ontop of the guile vm. look at the GSoC project.

Oh, i just learn about this.

But when i search google for this guilemacs there are no definitive information for this project (as in where i download the program?).

So based on my little browsing, vim and emacs have some kind of different problems? (or are they even problems?)

Vim has the benevolent dictator who prefer supporting backwards compatibility to developing features. And Neovim try to address that.

Emacs is using a "hacky emacs lisp" and "guile emacs" tries to incorporate a scheme based improvement on the backend.

Thank you everyone for the suggestions and insights. After contemplating with the choices i have decided to go through with restructuredtext, and pickup latex bit-by-bit to incorporate scientific parts (it turns out you can do some inline latex in restructuredtext).

here are some factors that drive my decision:

- i can start writing content right away without much initial learning

- rst can be read/revised by my other peers with more ease than full blown latex document.

- i can use latex parts (equations, typesetting, etc) inline with rst, and i can learn latex bit-by-bit on the way

- there some libraries/program that can make attractive presentations using rst (http://regebro.github.io/hovercraft/#/step-1)

so i will use rst and learn latex on the way.

sounds like a very nice application, i see there are some pricing models (personal, pro, and teaching) which i think is excellent if i am using latex.

but is there a free (limited) plan for someone like me who still trying to learn latex.

Yes, you can sign up for free (https://www.writelatex.com/signup), and there's a lot you can do with a free account.

thank you, i will look into it