History: March 2004 Archive Page

--Old School Moveable Type (MGK)

Real moveable type. Ever since I investigated the meaning of the name of the character "Shurdlu" in Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine, I've had a longing to learn how to use an old-fashioned printing press -- one that actually presses the paper. As much as I love the power of "push-button publishing for the masses," there is still something to be said about the care that must go into getting it right when one uses a real printing press.

Since it was initially packaged with every Mac shipped, it's likely the majority of buyers used it as a quicky Rolodex, if anything. But HyperCard's biggest win was a very low entry threshold for those who wanted to build their own 'stacks' - combinations of user interface, code, and persistent data. There were plenty of examples to suggest ideas, and all the code was open for tweaking. This did enable a burst of creativity by users, many of them educators and artists with no training in programming or database.

The proliferation of ideas created its own confusion. What was this thing? Programming and user interface design tool? Lightweight database and hypertext document management system? Multimedia authoring environment? Apple never answered that question. --Tim Oren --A Eulogy for HyperCard  (Due Diligence)

Individuals and groups need to remain vigilant in finding and naming bad science and bad therapy. Our guide isn't Foucault, but Aristotle, who saw virtue in the mean behavior. No one wants to live in a world in which there is a deficiency of social control. Bad guys need jails. Drug addicts and the mentally ill need treatment. But neither does anyone desire a world of excessive social control. Yet, to find that mean (and Aristotle recognized this too) is hard work, the product of all our best thought. But it is the only way to the ethical life. John Spurlock --Therapy, Psychometrics, and Eugenics(!) (The Blue Monkey Review)

People have developed all kinds of classification schemes (the signs of the zodiac, enneagrams, the four humors, Meyers-Briggs...). I prefer to think of such things as harmless fun, like the "good-netural-evil" and "chaotic-netural-lawful" polarities in Dungeons and Dragons -- these rough guideines help gamers role-play in their fantasy campaigns.

I find the Meyers-Briggs types useful in helping me interpret other people's behavior, and maybe helping me to predict how someone else might respond to me... and even to help me work against my tendencies (for instance, since high school I've known that I score in the middle between "introvert" and "extrovert" in the Meyers-Briggs test, but only recently did I realize that I am an extrovert with my family and in the classroom, but an introvert with my professional colleagues. This weekend at the 4C's was the first time I really felt comfortable going out with groups of people doing things that everyone else seems to do while at academic conferences. I even went bar-hopping for the first time in my life -- though it was a spectator sport for me, since I don't drink. (Incidentally, I've observed that bloggers have even more trouble staying on a single subject, the more alcohol they consume.)

Why do we feel the need to classify ourselves and each other? Especially when most of the classificaion systems -- like the one based on the four bodily humors -- have done far more harm than good. The theory of humors was responsible for the bloodletting and leeching and other "treatments" that claimed plenty of victims throughout history. Illnesses that existed only on paper and in the mind of "doctors" led to sterilization and lobotomy and electric shock therapy.

Andre Torrez has found a way to use some new technology to get in touch with an old friend.

He's been spending a lot of his down time -- in airports and waiting for friends -- playing old-school Infocom interactive text games like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. --Daniel Terdiman --Bots Open Door to Gaming History (Wired)

It's good to see contemporary free IF mentioned in Wired, though it would be nice to see it mentioned in some context other than nostaliga for a fondly remembered but now long dead genre.

I'd have no idea this article headline was about interactive fiction if I hadn't seen it linked in a cluster of IF articles on Appunti Disordinati di Viaggio

Remediate The Alamo!Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I had the pleasure this afternoon of playing hooky from the 4Cs, and accompanying two Canadians on a visit to The Alamo.

My wife and I had visited San Antonio (among other Texas cites) during our low-budget honeymoon (10 years ago this July), and I really wished I could have had the whole family with me -- the Riverwalk is so pleasant, and my son Peter (age 6) would enjoy the military history.

I had no idea that San Antonio is gearing up for the premiere of the new Alamo movie. Street barricades, tents, and movie set lighting were being set up in front of the Alamo. The movie title was etched into a big obelisk shaped like a silhouette of the building's distinctive front, and technicians tested the special effect -- flames shooting through the letters. TV crews were setting up, and photographers were prowling.

We circled the outside of the building, and caught the ending of a presentation delivered by Alamo employee Pete Huertas, who delivered a stirring oral rendition of the battle, told from the prospective of the American defenders who died in after sustaining a 12-day artillery barrage from Santa Anna. The most notable figures are Jim Bowie, Davey Crockett, and the young Col. Travis -- the latter of whom is undisputably the favorite here in Texas.

After attending two days of conference papers delivered by experts in rhetoric and communication -- some of whom mumbled into their notes, apologized in every other sentence for how badly their presentation was going, cut themselves off in the middle of their presentation without even starting in on the conclusion, or went way over time (thus excluding the possibility of questions from the audience) -- seeing a good rhetorical performance was a welcome relief.

Don't get me wrong -- it wasn't every presentation that was bad. (For the bloggers who are reading this, don't worry, I wasn't thinking about your presentation... all the blog-related talks have been good, and most of the others as well.)

Huertas, standing outside, off to one side of the complex, gestured expansively towards the church building, where Davey Crockett's Tennessee volunteers planned to retreat after Santa Anna's forces entered the compound. He described Santa Anna's motions from the perspective of the Americans trapped in the fort, attempting to place us all back in history.

His presentation did not vilify Santa Anna and his Mexican forces, but it did glorify the Americans. He emphasized the desperate messages that Travis sent out to the regional and state authorities, pleading for reinforcements; and he emphasized the government's failure in coming to help. I explained to my Canadian companions the unique history of the Republic of Texas, formerly an independent nation, and still a fiercely independent culture, suspicious of the value of depending on the government rather than on independence and ingenuity.

Huertas told me he was a junior teacher for 23 years. He gave up on the state educational system because he said it was geared towards teaching students to pass tests, rather than expanding their minds.

When I mentioned the delicate cultural role of interpreting the historical events surrounding the siege of the Alamo, in an increasingly multicultural society that may not wish to hear the same messages in which the losing American forces are glorified and the winning Mexicans are pretty much faceless and nameless. (except for Santa Anna himself), Huertas responded that he wanted to "go ahead with what I know to be true, in spite of Hollywood."

At this point, Huertas' boss saw me taking notes, and Huertas told me that Alamo employees have been told not to talk to all the reporters who are here to cover the Hollywood premiere.

Later, in a museum setting in one of the side buildings, volunteer docent Max Knight gave a more objective description of the battle, carefully sourcing and qualifying all his claims about where the bodies of Travis, Bowie, and particularly Crockett were found. Bowie was ill upon his arrival at the Alamo, and quickly turned command over to the young Travis. Legendary accounts of Bowie's death have him whipping out his eponymous bowie knife (which, according to one exhibit, is credited with killing Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula) and defending himself to the death; but Knight drew our attention to the lenght of the Mexican bayonets and pikes, and asked whether we really thought a bowie knife would be much use. The Mexican accounts of Bowie's death had him shaking in fear beneath his blankets. Knight said that Bowie would indeed probably have been shivering from his sickness, and may have been able to fire the pistols Crockett gave him, but that's all we know for sure. (He dismissed the story supplied by a woman who claimed to have been a nurse tending to Crockett at the end of the battle.)

Knight noted that Disney's movie presents Crockett surviving the siege, not torching the powder kegs and dying in a heroic explosion, as in John Wayne's portrayal). Texans can be very possessive of the stories about their icons; and since Crockett is on record as giving a speech promising that he would defend The Alamo to the death, his survival (and subsequent execution) problematizes that legendary material.

The convention floor is closing now... more later.

Update, 27 March: Something I didn't notice when I was here before was a monument bearing a poem in traditional Chinese characters, donated in 1914 by Shiga Shigetaka, who saw parallels between the siege of the Alamo and the siege of Nagashino Castle in 1575.

No assembly lines. No wireless Internet service or lattes Most work was done with hand or horses. Unlike modern ?death march? projects, 27 people actually died in the course of engineering the Brooklyn bridge.

Modern web developer	Washington Roebling's team
3 week / month release cycle	14 year release cycle
Electricity	Horses
Coffee, doughnuts and air conditioning	Water and the elements (think muggy NYC summers)
Carpal tunnel syndrome	The bends
Layoffs	27 Deaths

If nothing else, the Brooklyn bridge is a reminder of what difficult projects are truly like. Sitting at a desk all day arguing through bug triage meetings might be frustrating, but it'snothing compared to what these people had to go through.

--Programmers, designers and the Brooklyn Bridge (UI Web)

Via Tomalak.

"Miller belongs to the generation that was politicised by the failure of capitalism to deliver on its promises, and disillusioned by the failure of Communism to provide a morally viable alternative. Unlike many members of that generation, he did not scuttle into the conservative camp, but tried to rescue the idea of justice from the mire of Stalinism and what he saw as the shallowness of the youth rebellion of the 1960s. What he hung onto is expressed, oddly, in a section of Timebends in which he talks about revisiting his old university at the height of the 1960s revolt, and finding himself warning the students that, however wonderful it felt to be there, they mustn't forget that the FBI was among them and someday they might have to account for their actions." --David Edgar feels Gottried's Arthur Miller: A Life does justice to Miller's works, but not to Miller's life. --Back to Reality (London Review of Books)

--Graphical User Interface Gallery Guidebook (Politechnika Szczecinska, Akademickie Centrum Informatyiki)

Here's part of a screen capture, showing the development of the "file manager" icon in Windows, from the original release to today. (On the site, clicking the icon takes you to another page that has screen captures of the interfaces for the various applications.)

The development of the icon reflects the change from files existing on floppy disks (which needed to be regularly swapped in and out of the early computers) to the metaphor of the file cabinet (presumably more familiar to computer users than the computer).

This page demonstrates how the development of the icon seems to lag behind the technology. How many websites still use what looks like a dot-matrix printer as the icon for "print this page"? The second to last icon in the list above looks like a PC Junior from the late 1980s, with its tiny horizontal cabinet. I guess they wanted enough room to emphasize the screen instead of the CPU, which is a sign that computer users were expected to think of the screen when manipulating their files, not the bits in the CPU (or the papers in the metaphorical file cabinet). The rightmost icon, which shows a flatscreen monitor and a tower case, is for Windows XP Professional; clearly Microsoft expects those users to have cutting edge equipment. The mouse icon has the center scrolling wheel and the keyboard has the curvy wrist rest -- both are recognizably Microsoft computer accessories.

My computer, like those of most on our campus, is black -- but Microsoft probably isn't interested in having its icons make users think of Dell. Does any Windows user actually own a flatscreen monitor with a plain white frame?

These were the men who broke out of Nazi Germany's supposedly escape-proof camp Stalag Luft III on a moonless night in March 1944, creating one of World War II's most enduring legends and inspiring a classic war film.

The Great Escape itself was 60 years ago but Squadron Leader Jimmy James, one of the 76 who escaped through the tunnel code-named Harry, clearly remembers the moments as he waited underground to scramble to freedom.

--Soldiers Relive WWII Great Escape 60 Years On (Reuters)

Ordinarily I don't like war movies, but this is definitely one of my favorites.

I think it's odd that Reuters filed it under "entertainment," but that's just my opinon.

The link will expire soon...

Blips, bloops and beeps emit from the room that houses the exhibit, where a dozen video-arcade games from the late 1970s and '80s are lovingly arranged in chronological order, each lit with a single spotlight. Three free tokens, good for one game play each, are included with museum admission. Additional tokens may be purchased for 25 cents each.

Buy a bagful of those tokens, because these games are just as addictive as they were back in your misspent youth. --Michelle Delio --When Space Invaders Ruled Earth  (Wired)

From the online exhibit:

Back on store shelves, video-game companies are discovering what the music industry has known for a long time: the past can be mined for profit. The classics are being cloned, emulated, compiled, enhanced, and updated for a home market made up of children craving novelty and post-boomers binging on nostalgia. --Carl Goodman

those in the humanities tended to distrust the technology, and those in the sciences often considered humanities-applications to be wasteful of a precious resource.

Specific kinds of projects, however, were more readily assisted by 1960s technology, even if character-sets were inadequate because computer-printers had either an all-uppercase or upper-and-lowercase character-set that was designed to represent standard English language. Nonetheless, medievalists, despite their graphic needs, generally made the heaviest use of the technology, often to assist preparing editions of manuscripts --A Brief History of Computer Concordances (CCRH)

Just taking a little break from videogame blogging...