Blue skies smiling at me Nothing but blue skies do I see Last week, Bluesky seemed to really take off. What's Bluesky? The simplest answer is that it's another possible Twitter, or do I have to say X, alternative. Like many others, I left Twitter shortly after Musk took over. Actually, I just stopped using it. I didn't actually deactivate my account until relatively recently but other than logging on to do that, I hadn't been on Twitter since late 2022 or so.

We finished up the trip with a few days in Amsterdam. Sitting in our hotel now writing this post and trying not to stress out over the elections until it's time for dinner. Getting to town was a little hectic. Turns out there was a train with some mechanical issues on the line so two thirds of the trains into Amsterdam from Leiden were crowded. It only slowed us down by about a half hour but it was a little hectic and much more crowded than I would have liked.

Before heading off to the Netherlands we had one more day in Belgium. In Antwerp Specifically. We stayed one night right across from the railway station which is particularly magnificent. First stop, the Plantin Moretus Museum. This museum focuses on two 16th century printers - Christophe Plantin and Jan Moretus. The museum, which is based in their homes and printing business covers the history of the family, the evolution of their printing business and the industry in general as well as the development of technology.

After Paris, we spent a few days in Belgium. We have a friend there - Helen, who teaches at the International School. Helen and Devorah taught together at the Manhattan Center for Science and Math back in the day and while I got to see Helen on my last visit here with Batya last year, Devorah hasn't seen her for almost a decade. This was more of a visiting part of our trip than a run around like chickens without heads touring part but we still got in some good stuff.

Devorah and I are finally on our first overseas retirement trip. Our hope was to make up for lost travel time in retirement. We've already gotten away a bit - a few days in Charlseton SC and a couple of local driving trips but this is our first retirement biggie. Started out in Paris. Left Monday evening and got in Tuesday at around 6:00am local time. Went right to the hotel.

Language wars in tech are common. Java vs C++, Functional vs OOP. If you're doing functional is your language functional enough? So to in CS Education. What's the best language for CS0? For CS1? Drag and Drop or text based? Functional? Object Oriented? Compiled? Interpreted? The battles rage on. One particular "war" that I've been a part of deals with the idea of a language's being authentic or real. I've been a part of this on two fronts.

I spent last week in San Francisco. I didn't leave my heart there but the entire trip was indeed heartwarming. I was there with members of the Stuyvesant Alumni Association for a StuyCS/Tech meetup. As one might imagine, many tech inclined graduates from any school end up in the Bay Area and Stuy is no exception. Sure, the majority of StuyCS grads stay in New York and help drive New York's tech sector but plenty decid to "go west.

I usually listen to podcasts on my morning run. For the past couple of weeks I've been listening to 99% Invisible's series on The Power Broker, Robert Caro's incredible biography of Robert Moses. Arguably the best book on New York City not to mention urban planning and politics. Amazing book. I read it a few years ago, well, actually listened to it at the same time as Natan - our own personal father son book club.

Last Thursday, I was back at Stuy. I was there along with members of the Alumni Association to host Stuy's first tech meetup of the season. I guess that's the first "official" project I'm working on since retirement. In the past, there had been various issues with Stuy's assorted alumni associations (yes, there were at one time three competing entities) but for the past few years they've been under what we can call "new management" - people I both like and trust so I'm happy to be working with them.

I haven't blogged for a few weeks. Part of the reason is that I haven't felt that I've had too much to say. That's in part because it's summer time and in part because I'm no longer teaching so that means no new experiences with students, no new stories, and, at least right now, no new CS education adventures. Part of it could also just be that I'm following the trend - fewer CS Ed bloggers blogging less frequently.