See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Like most of the faculty on my campus, I typically just use the ELMO as an overhead projector to show handouts, but without having to go through the trouble of making a transparency, since it will project anything you put on it. In my mind, it’s even easier to operate than a PowerPoint presentation, and…
Publisher sales reps inform Wal-Mart buyers of games in development; the games’ subjects, titles, artwork and packaging are vetted and sometimes vetoed by Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart tells a top-end publisher it won’t carry a certain game, the publisher kills that game. In short, every triple-A game sold at retail in North America is managed start…
On one level, blogs are little more than personal journals posted on the Internet for all to see. They provide a forum for teachers to share ideas with colleagues around the world or simply talk about themselves and others. But under a wider lens, the sometimes funny, sometimes searing blogs paint what may be the…
He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. —Robert Frost —Birches (Bartleby) When I was…
Half-Life 2 Mod: Week 7 — Gleaming Translucent Chandeliers, Detail of Railing, Heavy Object Designing (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) This week I finally managed to make my chandeliers look decent. Previously I had placed an invisible light-emitting entity inside a solid translucent block, but that unfortunately left the outside edges of the block looking very dark. So…
According to the nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization, within the broad category of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, including hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web; kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms; computer art installations, which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects; conversational…
—how to make 3D lemurs out of clay (Google) According to my server log, someone came to my site after searching for “how to make 3D lemurs out of clay.”I was curious… and I used my finely honed Google searching skills to find “miniature lemur sculpture.” I’m not sure that I’m a better person for having…
Games today are many times more complex than games were even a few years ago. Recreating every three-dimensional point of a complex cave environment is going to take an artist several orders of magnitude more time than dropping a few rough dots on an Atari 2600’s 196×160 screen and calling it a cave environment. Similarly,…
Prices will be roughly comparable to DVDs — $20 to $30 for new releases, $10 to $16 for catalog titles. Now doesn’t that bother some of you? I‘m sure it bothers exhibitors, those that own multiplex cinemas. —Scott Rosenberg —Movie downloads an evolutionary idea? (Monsters and Critics.com)
Email as a collaboration tool sucks. Everyone knows this. Everyone says it. Everyone writes about it. And everyone agrees that its inefficient, it’s chaotic, its silo’ed and its full of spam. Yet, in spite of these shortcomings, we can assume with confidence that email is still the preferred method of “collaborating” and sharing information with…
Andrew Swinand, executive vice president at Starcom Worldwide, a major advertising-buying agency, said during a panel discussion that newspapers could do more to harness their presence online, such as getting more participation from audiences. Swinand also said his firm would like to buy advertising across newspaper websites but had difficulty doing so, and had to…
Content rules. It did ten years ago, and it does today. People don’t use things they don’t understand. Writing for the Web is still undervalued, and most sites spend too few resources refining the information they offer to users. Jakob Nielsen —Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First (Alertbox)
Rather than the familiar panels consisting of three 15-20 minute papers, a pitcher of water, and a brief Q&A (time permitting), these meetings were structured as “electronic poster sessions.” Multiple presenters stationed around the perimeter of the room in front of easel displays and laptop computers demonstrated their projects and spoke to anyone who stopped…
“It must be true. I read it on the internet.” Au contraire, mon frere. Internet hoaxes have been around for as long as the internet itself, and we never run out of people willing to fall for them. —10 Best Internet Spoofs
6. Adventure Microsoft (1972) —Top 10 adventure games of the 20th century (Adventure Classic Gaming) What the hell? Microsoft didn’t even exist in 1972.
All code operations, despite their metaphoric faculties such as “call” or “return”, come down to absolutely local string manipulations and that is, I am afraid, to signifiers of voltage differences. Formalization in Hilbert’s sense does away with theory itself, insofar as “the theory is no longer a system of meaningful propositions, but one of sentences…
As children, we spend much of our time in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make-believe for the real surroundings that we are just beginning to explore and understand. As we play, we learn. And as we grow, our play gets more complicated. We add rules and goals. The result is something we call games. Now…
Fine example of a WW II Enigma cipher machine in a very good condition and a great history; full functional. Year of construction 1941 by Manufacturer Chiffriermaschinen Gesellschaft Heimsoeth and Rinke, Berlin. The Enigma machine is placed in an oak woodwork case. Three high-quality, all-metal, matched rotors and an Umkehrwalze ?B?. The rotors are continuous…
Calling All Bloggers (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 3) Mike Edwards and Clancy Ratliffe led a very productive special interest group on weblogs. The project I had agreed to work on last year, seeking NCTE support for proposing some sort of official statement about the professional and pedagogial value of weblogs, fizzled. The NCTE had its…
Changing Literacies/Changing Mindsets: Communicating Across Digital Difference (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 3) I had written a different session down in my conference planner, but I’m glad I want to this one. Sally Chandler brought two of her undergraduate students from Kean University, and together they presented what they learned about the nature of research with…