Forget WALL-E and GORT. Forget sexy Summer Glau and Tricia Helfer in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Battlestar Galactica. OK, don’t forget them. But check it out: Long before Autobots, Fembots, and the Urkelbot, PGA SF authors obsessed over electricity-, steam-, and clockwork-powered machine-men or “robots” (a term introduced in 1921) that might free…
I was digging through my archives and came across this e-mail from caver and author Roger Brucker, responding to my request for anything he might remember about the well house — described so vaguely in Will Crowther’s 1976 game “Colossal Cave Adventure,” but such a real-seeming place. The wellhouse was one of a series of…
Nick Montfort just e-mailed a link to his brilliant textual interpretation of Star Wars. Great use of characters in a purely linear narrative environment. Similar:What happened when I showed vintage Mister Rogers to my 21st-century kidsThey discovered TikTok. And Fortnite. An…CultureGreensburg student wins Shakespeare contest A Greensburg student did the Bard pr…CultureA 27-Story Vertical Forest…
This NYT overview of the NASA craft designed to replace the space shuttle is a great example of 3D animation in a news context. Similar:Minnesota authorities can't arrest or threaten journalists after judge approves settlement… A federal judge brokers an agreement i…Current_EventsUPDATE: BREAKING: 'Star Wars' Returns — 'Episode 7' Slated For 2015 And More Movies…
I read on Metafilter that publicists for the upcoming movie Coraline have sent beautiful hand-crafted boxes to 50 bloggers. I just finished reading the Neil Gaiman / Dave McKean book (not quite as good as their The Wolves in the Walls, but creepily delightful nonetheless) to my kids last week, so I was curious. Absolutely…
For the first time this year, I asked my school to buy me a laptop (a Dell Latitude XT, my first-ever tablet computer). I also asked for a new monitor, and it’s a beauty. I’m pretty pleased with my setup. Of course, it’s fun to set up your office when you don’t have any immediate…
Crapwrap, for a personal touch. Bored of perfectly folded paper and exquisitely tied ribbon? Fancy adding a more ‘personal’ touch this year? Then why not have your Christmas presents CrapWrapped™ at Firebox. This exclusive, uniquely shoddy gift wrapping option involves us wrapping your pressies in a slapdash fashion. Similar:when someone say ur joke louder than…
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has cooperated with a game developer to produce a Second Life memorial to Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass,” a series of state-sponsored anti-Jewish riots in 1938). I haven’t visited the site yet, but it looks like there’s a deliberate attempt to distance the player from the experience, by casting the…
Called Muxlim Pal, it allows Muslims to look after a cartoon avatar that inhabits the virtual world. Based loosely on other virtual worlds such as The Sims, Muxlim Pal lets members customise the look of their avatar and its private room. Aimed at Muslims in Western nations, Muxlim Pal’s creators hope it will also foster…
This interesting post on WRT ponders the case of I Love You, Beth Cooper, a novel that presents its protagonist, Denis Cooverman, with a status bar. Like a health meter, the reader knows how much body Dennis has remaining at any given time. Reading the book becomes the experience of seeing how far we can…
In the past, I have pointed out copy-editing weaknesses at Story Book Forest at Idlewild Park, in southwestern PA. When I was last there, shortly before Halloween, my son stopped in his tracks and said, “They repainted the Little Miss Muffet Sign!” And he was right… they repainted some of the signs. Just now, when…
Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams. We’d encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms. I never did get around to sampling Lively, since the initial reviews I…
Wired reviews Mirror’s Edge When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you. When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot — precisely as they do when you’re vaulting over a hurdle in real life. And when you tuck down into a somersault, you’re looking at your…
So what exactly are the barriers of entry for great thinkers (or groups of thinkers) to leave their mark on games? What must happen for games — or interactive entertainment, if you will, to mature as a medium? While no one knows the answer to this question, many people (and companies) have stepped up to…
Many professors will spend countless hours putting together elaborate and voluminous course packets of photocopies for classroom use (I used to be one of them). And now, it is more frequent for technologically minded teachers to file-share large numbers of PDFs through password protected sites on campus. This is so wrong it hurts. We are…
Via The FPP — first-person painter! I wish the creator hadn’t chosen to go eerie with the mood, that seems like cheating a little… it’s so easy to go scary. Still, it’s beautiful And it’s an XNA-developed title. Interesting. The Unfinished Swan – Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo. Similar:In October, 2002, I…
One of my freshmen recently submitted a paper about how to overcome writer’s block. It reminded me of this story, which I came across many years ago and was able to find again fairly quickly with Google. Fun stuff. The purpose of this sentence (which can also serve as a paragraph) is to speculate that…
From Wired: Similar:Snarky Error Message Comments on "the transience of linked information in the internet age…Arent you glad you didnt cite to this we…AmusingMr. Chen Goes to WuhanA Chinese media personality with over ha…CultureThe Mystery of Charles Dickens by Joyce Carol OatesDickens is so brilliant a stylist, his v…AestheticsHow Not to Hate Shakespeare The problem…
Jim Munroe, a Toronto indie new media author whose work I’ve been following for some time, recently published this useful article on building an audience. Of course he mentions self-published print zines and blogs, but he also mentions another subject I’ve been introducing my students to this term… 6. TEXT ADVENTURE VIDEOGAMESAnyone out there play…
Blogging this to assign for my students to read when the current unit is over. Not surprisingly, the Web serves the first function of a local paper exceptionally well. They deliver information instantly, and articles can be updated and corrected in real time. What is surprising, though, is the unfortunate and neglected condition of most…