The BBC offers a pleasant bit of retrophilia. (Thanks for the link, Robert.) Mrs Huggins tried using a computer about 15 years ago and the memory is still raw. “I had four pages of instructions I had to learn, to send [my previous employers] the stories. Then the blooming thing blew up and they told…
From an article I published in 1997, back when I thought I was pretty hot stuff to include postage-stamp-sized video clips on a website. The website also featured a Java simulation of the outdoor pageant that celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi (which is today). The outdoor theatrical event in the medieval city of York,…
Seton Hill recently unveiled a new home page. The internal pages all seem to be unchanged, so the changes were not radical, but they were welcome. I have a little quibble with this semi-transparent fold-up menu. The menu itself is a good idea, which lets the designers re-use the artwork created for our print and billboard…
My first day back in the office since submitting final grades last Tuesday. Part of it I spent familiarizing myself with some new features in Blender3D, such as an easy way to give objects fur (or grass). I never noticed the wave modifier before — that’s how I got the purple cube to start jumping…
#6 is devoted to Infocom text adventures: And the fact is, the classic Infocom games (I have left it to the reader to pick his or her favorite, as there were so many of such a high quality that it is folly to pick one for this list) were just tremendous entertainment, mainly for two…
Thank you, Rosemary, for sending me this interesting visual essay on the persistence of digital memory, from Instructables.com: Want to make a flash drive that nobody in a modern office would even think about taking? Hide it in a pink eraser and it’s secure in this digital age. Install windows 7 from USB Similar:Today I…
Blender3D is an awesome, insanely powerful, and completely free 3D design tool. I’ve been playing with it for about two years now, and while it took me a while to get used to the interface, I’m getting very comfortable in it. I’ve already posted blog entries about designing cabinets and a walking hectopus, but I…
Boston Globe: Without a robust study of literature there can be no adequate reckoning of the human condition – no full understanding of art, culture, psychology, or even of biology. As Binghamton University biologist David Sloan Wilson says, “the natural history of our species” is written in love poems, adventure stories, fables, myths, tales, and…
A thoughtful post about the fate of film criticism. Much of this boils down what happens when film criticism leaves the world of print journalism and adapts to the TV — not only in the content of the review but the context of celebrity/insider/gossip in which movies are presented to the public. (Armond White, New…
According to Metafilter, “Nothing signals the death of a trend like an article in the NY Times Style section.” Even his clothing — an unlikely fusion of current and neo-Edwardian pieces (polo shirt, gentleman’s waistcoat, paisley bow tie), not unlike those he plans to sell this summer at his own Manhattan haberdashery — is an…
Jason Lutes: With every step “forward” in any area of human endeavor, something is gained, and with rare exception there is a concomitant loss. I feel this keenly in video game design, as the cutting edge of graphics slices into the future, opening up new and ever hotter arteries of experience for the player, but…
The idea isn’t new, but the phrasing is clear and effective. Todd Alcott: Just as movies began as novelties shown before “real” entertainment, or as nickel entertainments in amusement arcades, well, that describes the early days of gaming as well. Movies went from Train Arriving at a Station to The Great Train Robbery in twelve…
Reuters: To launch next year as a massively multiplayer online game, or MMOG to those in the gaming community, Lego Universe will let players create online versions of themselves and interact with each other. Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary. Similar:The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker their way up…
The Weekly Standard does not like The Newseum. Our terrific country offers lots of ways to make a living, but with the possible exceptions of movie acting and architecture, only modern journalism would have the nerve to celebrate itself with something as gaudy and improbable as the Newseum. Similar:The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5,…
Nerdvana: ROFLCon (From Leeeeroy Jeninks to Bert is Evil to LOLTrek to Tron guy, old friends come back from the abyss; good thing too, because I’ve got more than 15 minutes of love for our favorite memes of yesteryear. Mix up a bunch of super famous internet memes, some brainy academics, a big audience, dump…
Geeky awesomeness from the Steampunk Workshop. Similar:Today I didn't save the world, but I did help a student while power-walking at the mall.Quick visit to see my mother and siblings.Things Past #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 8) Odo confronts his reputation as a…Trials and Tribble-ations #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 6) Trivial Time…
Back when the box art had little to do with the way computer games looked, you got used to the cognitive disconnect between the two media. My brain still hasn’t fully processed Infocom Diskgate, when I come across a trove of Atari 2600 cartridges that resemble games I played, but the boxes seem… different. Here’s…
Wired: An enterprising photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, captured a series of snapshots — a filmstrip — of a horse trotting and definitively settled the question in the affirmative. You can see the horse in-motion and check out the geeky tech from this magazine piece on high speed photography. Fast forward 130 years and we can now…
My former student Mike Rubino makes a good point about the encrustation of social networking icons that are clogging up the interfaces of content-rich websites. Now, instead of a website having the normal “E-mail this article”; “Print this article”; and the occasional “Digg this article” link, it’s got a slew of other services. You have…
I love the retrofuture. The year I was born, 1968, Mechanix Illustrated offered this prediction of life in the year 2008. I’m still waiting for my flying car, but some of the other predictions were remarkably accurate. The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal…