Current_Events: March 2006 Archive Page

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday. --Ben Domenech Resigns (post.blog)

That was quick.

Finally Upgrading to MoveableType 3.2 (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I've had a rather hellacious weekend. I upgraded the MovableType installation at blogs.setonhill.edu to version 3.2 on Friday.

The actual upgrade went very smoothly, but it took most of the afternoon for me to get the anti-spam protection to work decently.

The spam-blocker I had been using, MT-Blacklist, did just what I said -- it blocked unwanted spam. But the built-in spam filter in MT 3.2 simply marks the spam as "Published, "Unpublished" (awaiting moderation), or "Junk." But there's no easy way for me to print out the last 10 "Published" comments that have been added to the system.

If you ask the system to give you a list of the n most recent entries that have been commented on, that list does not exclude the "junk" comments. The end result is that list is pretty much useless, because we're getting hundreds of junk comments for every legitimate comment. The system works pretty well from the perspective of the individual blogger, but at the moment the upgrade has killed the "Recently Commented" feature of our blogs.setonhill.edu portal.

Well, not actually dead... but it takes so much time to wade through thousands of comments each time I want to update the main page, that I fear it will make people think the main page has frozen. I'm sure there's some way to do solve this problem, but as much as I like that "Recent Comments" feature, it's not crucial.

When I get some more time, I'll submit an MT support ticket.

Far more frustrating was the realization that my curricular websites are broken. I finally tracked down the problem... in the past, it was apparently acceptable to use the MTEntryDate template tag in an archive template. Thus, when I wanted to print the date of an entry that appears in a list of all the entries that appeared in a certain month or on a certain day, I used MTEntryDate. A little time with Google revealed that MT 3.2 now requires me to use MTArchiveDate in those archive contexts. This took me several hours of work to recover.

My parents are in town this weekend, so fortunately I've had help with the kids, and I've been able to throw a lot of time into this problem. I even managed to get away with the family to a Slovenian dance hall for some polka dancing.

But on top of all this, I've spent even more hours this weekend working on two projects related to Colossal Cave Adventure.

One is a chapter on Adventure that I promised to submit to a collection of essays being published in honor of a former mentor of mine. I would have sworn that I sent in a rough draft of that essay weeks ago, but I got a very polite, very urgent letter asking me to please, please, pretty please submit something as soon as possible.

The other project had been on the back burner since classes started in the fall. Last summer I went to the real Colossal Cave, and while I wrote up some of those experiences in an article I submitted last fall to a forthcoming book on ecocriticism and videogames ("Playing with Mother Nature"), I have also wanted to publish some material online in venue that is readily accessible to online researchers. A few days ago, I learned that Will Crowther and Don Woods (creators of Colossal Cave Adventure) will be honored at the Game Developers Conference this week. Sadly, I haven't been able to update my curricular website since January, so I won't be able to update my own Adventure resources by then, but I figured this is a good time to start getting my notes together, just in case I encounter something in the press coverage that needs correction.

When former Gizmondo executive Stefan Eriksson wrecked his million-dollar Ferrari on the Pacific Coast Highway last month, it simply seemed like a fitting metaphor for the death of his hapless handheld - the destruction of one expensive piece of machinery to mark the end of another.
--Gizmondo Bizarro (Game Revolution)

If all the news reports are accurate, the Gizmondo game system seems to let you race a Mercedes SLR, crash a Ferrari, manage the careers of special agents as they rise from eldertransport rent-a-cops to homeland security agents, and elude the authorities via a luxury yacht.

The first fully-automated performance of the 1924 Futurist/Dadaist/Cubist composition "Ballet mécanique" by George Antheil takes place this weekend in the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, on the Mall in Washington, DC--in conjunction with the larges exhibit in history on Dadaist art.

Programmed by composer/author/music technologist Paul Lehrman, and using robots built by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) under the direction of Eric Singer, this will be the culmination of eight years of work bringing Antheil's almost-forgotten work-for xylophones, bass drums, electric bells, siren, airplane propellors, and 16 player pianos-back to life. And it will be LOUD.

Featuring computer-driven player pianos by Gulbransen, and software from Mark of the Unicorn running on a Macintosh G5 computer, the installation will reside on the Mezzanine of the Gallery through March 29, playing a ten-minute version of the Ballet mécanique at 1:00 pm every day, and additionally at 4:00 pm Monday-Friday.
The grand opening of the Ballet mécanique installation will take place at 1:00 pm on Sunday, March 12. JUST ANNOUNCED is a special PRESS EVENT at 4:00 pm on Saturday, March 11, when the piece will be previewed to CBS News, PBS, and other news organizations. The public IS INVITED!

More information about the Ballet mécanique can be found at http://antheil.org. LEMUR's website is http://lemurbots.org. The National Gallery of Art is at Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue. Admission is always FREE. Their website is http://www.nga.gov.

In other exciting news, BAD BOY MADE GOOD, the documentary film by Paul Lehrman and Ron Frank about George Antheil and the Ballet mécanique, will have its broadcast premiere on WETA-TV Channel 26, Washington's PBS station, on Sunday, April 9th at 3:00 pm. Dates for other broadcasts will be announced soon.Bad Boy Made Good (http://antheil.org)

I just got this e-mail. I wish I could see this! Someone in the DC area, please go to this and let me know what it's like!

If you think steam punk is cool, it looks wimpy next to Ballet Mechaniqe, which was punked out on steam long before steam punk became retro.

The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms. --Study: Few Americans Know 1st AmendmentYahoo!|AP)

I'm blogging this with my students in mind (*fake cough sounding like "pop quiz"*), in the service of the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge (*fake cough sounding like "pop quiz"*), with which we can all work towards bettering society for all its members (*fake cough sounding like "pop quiz"*).

D'oh!