The New Mexico landfill or “Atari Dump” where the game console maker buried its mistakes — the biggest being the game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — will be dug up by game developer Fuel Industries, which hopes to make a documentary about the project. Also known as the “Atari Graveyard” or the “E.T. Dump”, the desert…
Below is a snippet from “Texty Cloak of Darkness,” which aims to use prose conventions to emulate game-state changes and alternate endings (in a medium designed to be linear). Since our encounter, such as it is, has already begun, it may as well happen in a place. The foyer of the opera house is where…
Earlier this week, the Computers and Writing folks discussed the decline in the use of the word “computer” in MLA job ads. The decline is more than offset by a rise in related terms, so the discussion appropriately focused on the value of “computers” as an umbrella term. (In our daily lives, we increasingly use…
“The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news,” The Sun-Times tells Channick in a statement. “We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements.” “I think I would read that to…
I am working on some conference papers that touch on coding as a liberal art. While reviewing classics, like Stephenson’s In the Beginning Was the Command Line and Knuth’s approach to “Literate Programming,” From the insightful and quirky “A Mathematician’s Lament,” by Paul Lockhart. A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he…
A few months old, but still interesting: entrepreneur and digital culture promoter Diana Kimball responds to a hacker brainstorming session. Alex Payne recently posted a picture of this whiteboard from Hacker School, and it rings wildly true to me. I was interested and encouraged to see that the question “What scares us the most about programming?” elicited more…
A father learns the Postal Service website is no help in teaching a new generation of snail-mailers where the stamp goes. “Get your computer. Go to USPS.gov (turns out it’s really USPS.com).” If he saw for himself – on the screen – how to properly mail a letter, maybe he’d get it, I thought. Unfortunately, the…
I have a Yahoo account that I use when a website or a local business insists I must provide an email address. Over the years, it has gotten clogged with spam. The filter is actually pretty good, so I can always find what I need, but it’s not usually a service I check more than…
A pleasant little success story. “TEI” is the “Text Encoding Initiative,” an international effort to define and standardize the digital representation of texts. [I]n 2006 I first noticed that the TEI guidelines encouraged the use of ISO5218:2004 to assign sexuality of persons in a document (with attributes being given as 1 for male, 2 for…
Because my beginning journalism students often use the phrase “when asked about” as a default (lazy) transition when introducing quotes, I created a scenario in which President Bush apparently expresses a desire to be a cuddly bunny. In the example, a child reporter gives him two options — would he rather be a robot or…
A thoughtful response to “Creative People Say No.” Here’s a different idea about how creativity and success works: you have to say ‘yes’ for a long while before you can earn the right to say ‘no.’ Even then, you usually can’t say ‘no’ at whim. By the time you can say ‘no’ indiscriminately, then you’re…
To be honest, I’m not optimistic that there’s a way to gain the recognition that many academic bloggers have longed for without destroying what I believe is the real value of academic blogging, which is in many ways about pleasing yourself, escaping the targets and the quotas and the faceless bean-counters; about communicating and sharing…
When I was a master’s student working as a PR writer for the engineering school at the University of Virginia, I had the chance to interview Randy Pausch. His phone rang numerous times while we were talking. The first time it happened, recognizing that I was imposing on his time, I asked, “Do you need…
I submitted my final grades a few weeks ago. Yes, it was a great relief. Yes, the pace of my job changed drastically. But I still have plenty of work to do before I get a chance to rest. Yes, I did take a whole day off last Friday, in order to help move boxes…
Several students on Maureen Vissat‘s M-term trip to Italy are blogging their experiences. DJ Beckage See also Kandy Experience Across the Pond Italy2013 L’Italia è per gli Innamorati SHU Italy Trip « blogs.setonhill.edu.
Update: This feature no longer seems to work. WEB APP Write or Die Online Word Goal Time Goal —-5 min10 min15 min20 min30 min48 min1 hour1 hr 15 min1 hr 30 min2 hours Consequences: Gentle ModeNormal Mode Kamikaze Mode Electric Shock Mode Grace Period: ForgivingStrict Evil
User Generated Education.
The first thing to think of when building a responsive site is simplicity. Web designers love to show off that they can design the hell out of a website. They fall in love with their code and all the cool things that it can do. “I think the challenge for me is to use…
“Iffy Cloak of Darkness” is based on the “Cloak of Darkness” specification — a very simple pattern, designed to help programmers compare the strengths and weaknesses of various coding environments. “Cloak of Darkness” is not going to win prizes for its prose, imagination or subtlety. Or scope: it can be played to a successful conclusion in five…
“Scratchy Cloak of Darkness” is based on the “Cloak of Darkness” specification — a very simple pattern, designed to help programmers compare the strengths and weaknesses of various coding environments. “Cloak of Darkness” is not going to win prizes for its prose, imagination or subtlety. Or scope: it can be played to a successful conclusion…