About

Your host

Who I am:

• Retired Associate Professor
• Programmer (currently Python and C++ but other languages as interests arise)
• Higher education critic (especially contemporary CS in higher ed)
• Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction
• Twenty years of university teaching at three universities with very different student balances

What I value:

• Lower-carbon life choices
• Teaching students how to apply the methods we have rather than asking them to speculate on possible applications of research
• Good teaching—which is, at its heart, one of the hardest tasks in the world
• Immediate dissemination over the slower pace of academic publication
• Presenting a few good options rather than an exhaustive list

What I wish I did better:

• Graphic design
• Anything related to programming or teaching—there’s always more to learn

Why you might want to read this blog

I’d rather write about all my professional interests in one place and let readers choose the parts that interest them than separate my writings across multiple venues.

This inevitably leads to a scattered topic list. Skip the parts that bore you or are outside your interests and enjoy whatever parts give you value.

As a blog, many of these entries are penultimate drafts rather than final statements. I write them to further my understanding. There will be omissions and mistakes in nearly all of them. When I find egregious errors I go back and fix them but I may not fix or even be aware of the smaller ones.

If you see an error or issue, add a comment at the bottom of the relevant post or email me at ted@kirkpatricktech.com.

On the other hand, I’ve no interest in writing about my non-professional life, so you’ll find nothing here about my hobbies, politics, or personal life.