See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
We are no longer talking about shovelfuls of dirt on the coffin of computer-enforced copying restrictions; that sound you hear is the beep-beep-beep of the dump truck backing up to the grave site. —Rob Pegoraro —The Sound of Copy Restrictions Crashing (Washintgon Post) When I think about all the expensive engineering that Microsoft embedded into Vista,…
It’s now common for companies to Google potential employees to uncover peccadilloes from the past. It took me all of 30 seconds, via Google, to discover one applicant’s very public infatuation with indecorous sexual escapades and another’s unhealthy fondness for abusing industrial strength pharmaceuticals. Needless to say, neither was hired. —Jim Louderback —On Media in…
The VSTF process converts display of text such as this first sentence from the U.S. Declaration of Independence into this: —Visual-Syntactic Text Formatting: A New Method to Enhance Online Reading (Reading Online) Fascinating. The indented version really does seem a lot easier to read, perhaps chiefly because the first word in each line is often a…
In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). “After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles,” he said. —Americans and Japanese Read Faces Differently (Live Science)
They came from all over the world, poles in hand, and feet ready to inch more than half a mile across a high wire strung over the Han River in a spine-tingling battle of balance, speed and high anxiety. —Bo-Mi Lim —Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo (Yahoo! | AP (will espire)) This is a news…
Some linguists are worried that the proliferation of text messaging among students may hurt the development of formal English. Johnson does not agree. “I don’t buy it,” Johnson said. “I think students can distinguish between different contexts. What they would say with their friends is different from what they would say to an instructor.” Text…
Police arrested a college student Tuesday suspected of opening fire in an off-campus apartment during a dispute over a video game console, killing one man and wounding two others. —Calif. Student Arrested in Shooting (AP | MyWay (will expire))
But I should have expected that. The IF Comp, an annual contest to see who can write the best text-based game, offers a vast treasury of interactive fiction, and many of the entries over the past 13 years are truly fantastic. Some, like Vespers, are lit-geek works of art, putting the bulk of commercial games…
—atari-and-controllers (jackrabbit.etsy.com) Via join the dots.
Vetting Comments Strangers Post to Class Blogs (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I always enjoy telling my students when I start noticing comments that people who aren’t in our class start posting comments on the course weblog or individual student weblogs. Sometimes the poster is someone who took the course in the past and is recalling with fondness…
Digg Takedown, Obama Takeover, Army Blog Squeeze (Jerz’s LIteracy Weblog) This is the last week of classes, and I’ve got deadlines galore (3 conference proposals, an annual report, a departmental proposal, and an article submission that I’ve been sitting on for a week). So I won’t have much to say, but I still thought it was…
On the night of Monday, April 23, the magazine’s editorial system crashed, wiping out all the work that had been done for its June issue. The backup server failed to back up. —Richard Pérez-Peña —Business magazine fails to heed its own tech advice (International Herald Tribune) What makes this a “dog bites man” story is the…
—Map of Online Communities (XKCD: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language) Thanks, Josh, for the suggestion. (This is just an excerpt from the full map.) I’m going to have to give this site some attention when grades are in… I wish the artist could draw people instead of stick figures, but the jokes are…
I Think, I Want, I Know, I Feel, I Google (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Google Hits: I think (369,000,000) I want (275,000,000) I know (257,000,000) I feel (128,000,000) I hate (51,200,000) I love (270,000,000)
A large focus of the book is the internal machinations of game production, and the demands it places on a writer. For example, a basic shooter may only require a few weeks of work on the writer‘sbehalf for the basic story, while a full-blown RPG could have the writer coming back time and again to…
The vast majority of gamers know life is not a Doom level – these rules are merely simplifications and abstractions that streamline very complex actions for smoother gameplay. We know when someone is shot in the head they do not lose 20 hitpoints. Games are not an excuse for their worldview, but rather a useful…
Contestants had to stand with their hands behind their backs until a bell sounded and a message appeared on an overhead screen. The winner was judged on whoever’s message — checked for exact punctuation — reached the judges first. The text tests ranged from “faster than a speeding bullet…” and “what we do in life…
Make the logo as big as you can Make the logo bigger, yeah! That logo isn’t big enough So make the logo bigger Bigger, bigger, make it big! Make the logo bigger! —Make the Logo Bigger (Burn Back) Awesome heavy metal spoof of a naive request that web designers hear from their clients all the time.…
While many teens post their first name and photos on their profiles, they rarely post information on public profiles they believe would help strangers actually locate them such as their full name, home phone number or cell phone number. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of teens with profiles (63%) believe that a motivated person…
Rumours that Chiang, 23, was the mass murderer swept across the world after links to his gun-obsessed blogs were posted on social networking website Facebook and similar sites. More than 180,000 people visited his sites, with many noting the similarities between him and the man described in accounts of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Some went…