Trends and Issues in Extension

October 1, 2007

It’s been a busy month

Filed under: Fun — thomas.69 @ 10:24 pm

I’ve had a busy month that’s kept me away from posting. My family is continuing to deal with flood damage and lot’s of administrative stuff to deal with at OSU Extension. Time to get some stuff posted!

March 13, 2007

How Many of Me

Filed under: Fun, General Extension, Tools — thomas.69 @ 9:43 pm

I found this neat little tool on James Robinson’s “new” weblog. James seems to share his name with 11,630 other people in the US. Unfortunately at least one of them is on the TSA watch-list (see his post here). Anyway, I started to play with How Many of Me just for fun. Then the Extension programming wheels started to turn and I began to think about how I could use this tool in my programming. Some initial thoughts include:

  • An icebreaker
  • An “after break” tool
  • A meeting starter (different from an ice breaker in that you know and are familiar with everyone around the table)
  • A way to see how many other folk like you are out there in the US…or how few
  • A tool to understand the power of large groups

As of 3.13.07 there are 28 other Jerold Thomas’ in the US and 2,066 Jerry Thomas’. Try it. Then try your significant other, parents, friends, etc. Check out the stats page.

August 14, 2005

Statistics Quote

Filed under: Fun — thomas.69 @ 3:02 pm

From Quote of the Day comes this reflection on statistics from Evan Esar……

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

July 24, 2005

World Community Grid

Filed under: Fun — thomas.69 @ 3:21 am

The World Community Grid is a distributed system to by-pass the cost of expensive mainframes or supercomputers by using shared, individual computers. See this post for more details of how it works. You download the software, and the grid uses your computer power during the time period that your computer is turned on but not being used. I classified this under the "fun" category, but it really is a humanitarian effort that advances science. Similar programs include Seti@home and Folding@home.

A participatory way of gaining computer power to conduct needed and important research. Are there other ways of using the same concept for Extension programming? A good use of your "down" computer time to advance science.

July 16, 2005

How to Keep Your Ice Cream from Being Stolen at the Office

Filed under: Fun — thomas.69 @ 1:58 pm

Having trouble with inter-office ice cream theft?? Cooltools has the answer here.

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