Many things in the world are awful, but my latest #Blender3D work on my #steampunk control panel brought me great joy over the weekend

One of many steampunk control panels I’ve designed for pleasure. Similar:On Stephen Hawking, Vader and Being More Machine Than HumanIn one version of Hawking’s eulogistic s…CybercultureWhat Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-GeeksI’ve been following the frustrating slow…Current_EventsDon’t Text While Parenting — It Will Make You CrankyThe study summarized in Time Magazine lo…CultureEntire staff…

In September, 2001 I was blogging about…

With a grant from UWEC, I was able to invite foundational computer game designer Scott Adams to a seminar on Storytelling in Computer Games. I used tiny analog tape recorder at the speaker’s podium, and later worked with my student Matt Hoy to post a hyperlinked transcript to go along with the audio. (This was…

More Evidence that Choosing a Typeface Is Important

Similar:A pie slice from the ring surrounding the ballroom, from the #steampunk bedtime stories I …AestheticsAmusing Reference to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Imagine a scenario in which circumstan…AestheticsMy mother-in-law invited me to try out the 60- year-old tape machine that belonged to my f…My mother-in-law invited me to try out t…AwesomeProfit and Loss (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch,…

Delightful interview with a former Setonian editor-in-chief who’s now doing SEO

As a student journalist, Jessie totally revamped the print publications and the website, unifying them with design elements from the Sisters of Charity (the religious order that founded our school) and rounded rectangles that echoed the interface of the iPads (which were at the time a brand new part of SHU’s student technology plan). The…

Star Trek Graphic Design: Six journalists and surprising discoveries about their agency logos and costumes

After an intense 2 weeks prepping for fall classes, I’m all set. So when I woke up this morning I lazed in bed, and my thoughts wandered to the scene in Star Trek: Generations where a pack of reporters interview Kirk on the bridge. I started wondering whether the logos from that scene were one-off…

See How Vaccines Can Make the Difference in Delta Variant’s Impact

Here’s a great NYT “interactive” story that points out, if there’s an outbreak of the virus in a community where most of the people are vaccinated, most of the people who catch the disease will be vaccinated, simply because most of the people have been vaccinated. (I remind my students that if there are more…

Sharing a root beer float with your dad doesn’t fix everything that’s wrong in the world, but it sure does help.

Similar:Saints and Poets, Maybe They Do SomeI wrote the following in 2004, when my s…DramaAnnie — Cabinet TomorrowMy 10yo daughter Carolyn played Annie in…AmusingAnother section of #steampunk control panel. #neovictorian #design #aesthetics #blender3d …AestheticsA Christmas Carol (WAOB Audio Theatre)I had a great time a couple years ago re…CultureMy colleague @crissycp once again left an amazing…

My new inspiration as I work on my syllabuses

I applaud you, person who, halfway through the job, asked, “Why am I drilling these handrails directly into the sidewalk when I can just stick them into the ground?” Similar:John Speed’s 1611 map of #medievalyork features a “scale of paces.” My #unity3d placeholde…AestheticsPrepare to lower the personnel deployment gondola from the forward eployment bay, two…

In August, 2001 I was blogging about…

Broken Links and Poor Information Architecture (and of course the link to that article had broken, and the site taken over by low-value clickbait… but the Internet Archive preserved the original article) Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys (satire from the Onion, from an alternate timeline where typefaces get the respect they deserve) Boys and handwriting…

Sights, Sounds, and Smells of Elizabethan Theater

Somewhere during my education I picked upon the meme that “Shakespeare’s contemporaries referred to ‘hearing’ a play, not ‘seeing’ a play,” and I regularly trot it out to emphasize how growing up in an auditory culture meant that the average Elizabethan probably got a lot more out of casually attending a Shakespeare play than the…

Blender 3D Flyover of Fantasy Steampunk Spacecraft

When my kids were small, at bedtime we had interactive “blimpship stories,” set in a steampunk world. I would set up the latest plot developments, each child would pick a character they wanted to focus on, and I would play the DM as we role-played for 15-30 minutes. These stories grew amazingly complex and developed…

He couldn’t get over his fiancee’s death. So he brought her back as an A.I. chatbot

The death of the woman he loved was too much to bear. Could a mysterious artificial intelligence website allow him to speak with her once more? […] There was nothing strange, he thought, about wanting to reconnect with the dead: People do it all the time, in prayers and in dreams. In the last year and…

In major step, UCSF scientists translate unspoken words of paralyzed man into writing

The “neuroprosthetic” technology involved installing a credit-card-sized electrode panel on the surface of a volunteer’s brain, then collecting electrical signals as the person — a man completely paralyzed by a brain-stem stroke 15 years ago — tried to form words. Over a period of several months, scientists worked with the man to develop a catalog…

That Class Where Stanford Profs Projected Hundreds of Zoom Students on a Video Wall

Of course, not all institutions happen to have a video wall that’s 32-feet wide and 8-feet tall. But Stanford already did, in its Wallenberg Hall. So the three professors reached out to the university’s director of classroom innovation, Bob Smith, to see what they could rig up. No matter how big your screen, Zoom can…

What does a professor do, other than lecture for a few hours a week?

Wow, this response! 😮 We really do have complex jobs, huh? My doctoral research was on burnout, & I won’t say that is UNRELATED to the graphic either. Here’s a slightly updated version. And as per requests, link to a PPT version you can download & adapt https://t.co/8v8jPhObx5 pic.twitter.com/0ciTJd5sRM — Dr. Susan Wardell (@Unlazy_Susan) June…

Steampunk flag for the United States of Britannia (from the alternate history my kids and I made up during bedtime stories)

In the steampunk world my kids and I made up for bedtime stories (from about 2007-2013), Benjamin Franklin’s discovery of ether technology was the bargaining chip that forced King George to grant the 13 colonies full membership in the new kingdom of United States of Britannia. I’m working on a Blender3D model of the flagship…

When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray

Somewhere today a headline writer is wearing a happy little smirk. Moray eels can hunt on land, and footage from a recent study highlights how they accomplish this feat with a sneaky second set of jaws. —New York Times Similar:If you think I'm wrong that the media fairly covered the Cannon Hinnant murder, but you're…Plenty…

A Successful Failure: The TI-99/4A Turns 40

My family had one of these when I was 12 or 13. The games I remember include a Pac-Man clone called “Munchman,” but I think I remember learning BASIC, blocky computer graphics, word-processing, and using a speech-synthesizer. The TI-99/4A was a great computer to learn on. I remember making a Star Trek combat simulator (based…

1993: Curses (Aaron A. Reed’s “50 Years of Text Games”)

The latest in Aaron A. Reed’s monumental project” 50 Years of Text Games” focuses on Graham Nelson’s programming language Inform, and in particular his game “Curses.” “You have to get a coin from the temple of zeus to buy the ekmek,” explained one responder. “To do that you need to use the rod of luck.…

In May, 2001 I was blogging about lanuguage, design and Cliffs Notes

In May 2001, I was blogging about Business and the English language (a humorous rant against business jargon) — Clint Witchalls, Spectator Some features you may need on your computer (like “Extend Deadline” and “Read Bosses’ Minds” The Creator of Cliffs Notes has Died (though I know you won’t read his whole obituary) “Telling the…