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Winning, but before a true prize even existed

This year, 2024, marks the 42nd year (should be 43 years in a row since the tournament was canceled in 2020 due to COVID) that I have picked at least one NCAA men’s basketball bracket. I have copies of many of them, including the one from 1981, when I picked my Louisville Cardinals to win the championship. That was the year they lost their first game on a halfcourt shot. Some people might be deterred after that jarring experience, but not me! Then again, I was only 5 when it happened.

Figs are fun

figs are fun

It is really remarkable that after writing online stories for 25 years, I have a topic today that I’ve both never written about and something I know more about than almost anything else.

That thing is figs.

How did we get to this point? My uncle had a fig tree in his backyard, and we lived at his house 16 years ago. Coincidentally, my father-in-law also had fig trees, so when we bought a new house 14 years ago, we accepted a gift of a fig cutting and planted it in an auspicious backyard location.

Book review: "The Genesis Machine" by Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel

Great book that runs the gamut of synthetic biology

The term "natural" used to be substantially easier to apply to basic items like fruit and animals. It is both exhilarating and frightening to consider "improving" genetic material, but humans have a knack for putting their marks on everything imaginable.

Super Recognisers unite!

During high school and college, I worked at Kentucky Kingdom amusement park in Louisville, Ky. Besides battling racuous crowds and the blazing heat, one thing that was interesting to me was trying to keep track of the different people I was seeing throughout the day. As a games attendant (a.k.a. carnival barker), I would attempt to personally say things to people that I saw multiple times, whether at different games or at different parts of the park. This was mostly just a sales tactic, and I think the customers likely thought I was training to have my own magic show.

Knitting

I did this. It is fun.

From the Archive

Don't let Web navigation cause too many detours

I'm sure you've seen it: A Web site that has an amazing design, with bright

colors, animation and various neat effects. But after the awe goes away (10

seconds later) you begin to wonder: Where am I supposed to click?

A large portion

of Web designers have this problem. They think the more creative they

are, the better the Web site becomes. While uniqueness is key

to making a site design stand out, it is important to remember the end user.

That's you! Forgetting that Internet pages should be geared toward the

Happy Pi Day

Today, March 14, is Pi Day. Well, according to the Wikipedia entry about it, March 14 is the unofficial celebration for Pi Day, because the date is 3/14. Other countries read dates a little bit differently but it seems appropriate due to other factors, listed by Wikipedia:

I almost forgot about the memory tournament

In case you missed it (or somehow, didn't even know it existed), the Eighth Annual USA Memory Championship was held March 12. Ram Kolli, a 24-year-old computer science student at Virginia Tech, placed first and now has the opportunity to compete in the World Memory Championship in London on August 13-15.

Your chance to pick up a copy of "The Developers"

I've decided to go a little different route with "The Developers" than your normal let's-just-sell-in-the-bookstore approach. There are numerous reasons I'm trying this, but it comes down to two major ones:

1. Bookstores end up taking a huge portion of the money.

2. Bookstores bury books that aren't being sold at record-setting paces.

Search engine optimization is a pizza cake

I hope at least a few of the 17 people who read this column are interested in building their own Web site, or already have, or would want to if all the letters on their keyboard weren't missing.

The trouble with starting from scratch on the Internet is it's tough to find your newly created URL in the search engine. The good news is there are ways to make it easier. The bad news is you will need more than just the return and shift keys to accomplish this.

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