I have no problem with baby pictures, but thought this was an amusing write up (by a former student). But really, who doesn’t love a baby photo? I do. It’s the perfect way to share in the cuteness of a child, but not actually clean up after one. I’ve followed the lives of some of…
Fantastic series of photos, showing sci-fi spaceships digitally inserted into photos that appear to have been taken at real airshows. To be more believable, we probably need to see more poorly-framed, snapshot-style “here’s my kid standing in front of a Moonbase Alpha Eagle,” but this was still a lot of fun. Sci-Fi Airshow: Guided Tour.…
There’s a lot of interest in infographics nowadays, but doing them correctly — and making them look simple — is not easy. From 9to5 Mac: Nielsen released smartphone purchasing data yesterday that depicted Apple grabbing more than a third of the total smartphone market in the most recently surveyed month. Android was over 50 percent. That is almost…
This sounds like a brilliant way to repurpose antiquated technology and improve pedestrian life. The city has converted 10 public pay phones in three boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens – into free Wi-Fi hot spots, infusing a blast of modern technology into some of the city’s most notably outdated infrastructure. The project is considered…
Today, I managed to get in a couple of hours of web development and PR/social media work that is stretching my skills a bit. The new pack of iPad styluses I ordered from Amazon has shipped. I’m caught up in the online faculty development class I’m taking. My inbox is brimming with opportunities to collaborate and connect…
Summer vacation means if I am telling my kids steampunk bedtime stories, and the story requires an ether-powered vehicle larger than a life pod, but smaller than the ship-of-the-line where most of the plot takes place, I can visit Wikipedia to look for a class name — I like “sloop” — and then dash out…
Do we really need Justin Bieber to make this story relevant? They’re steampunks, part of an international movement that’s a mashup of do-it-yourselfers, ahistorical recreationists and science fiction aficionados who are happily reliving a past that never was. The Victorian era was “a wonderful era when people were still being surprised by the world,” says…
Orla Reynolds Design. Similar:After decades lost, Star Trek’s original Enterprise model may have been foundLong before sci-fi shows created their v…DesignInterview: Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer – Boing Boing GadgetsBoing Boing interviews Bjarne P. Tveskov…AestheticsAnother delightful section of #steampunk control panel, for a personal #blender3d project….AestheticsMore modular low-poly background buildings. I’ll do some…
How does this one site come up with so many simple ideas that people want to spread far and wide? What’s their secret? The answer, in short, is that BuzzFeed’s staff finds stuff elsewhere on the Web, most often at Reddit. They polish and repackage what they find. And often—and, from what I can tell,…
Stop drinking from random bottles, child! Similar:Empathy in a Downtown Sub ShopSitting in a downtown sub shop. A half d…CultureIn November 1999, I was blogging about books, camomile tea and Skylon 4, the death of Star…In November 1999, I was blogging about …CybercultureA study in breaking news headlines.For the UK Guardian, the news is the…
I “liked” this when I first found it on Facebook, which means I helped spread it. So then, here’s to the editors of Tails, who found themselves unjustly ridiculed. So a few days ago a photoshopped cover of Tails magazine landed on Food Network Humor — a pretty funny comma failure — and our tipline lit up. We were skeptical,…
A student project explores a niche of the games market, for a class taught by Infocom legend Brian Moriarty. The video game industry has expanded rapidly in recent years, growing from a 9.5 billion dollar industry in 2007 to a 25.1 billion dollar industry in 2010. This growth is due to the common interest that…
Annette Vee posted a very helpful resource on code studies. With the recent uptick in the “everyone should code” movement, it seems that everyone’s now talking about computer programming as a new form of literacy. The terms by which people refer to the concept vary, but the central idea is shared: computational literacy; computational thinking;…
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, ‘This,’ said I, ‘requires an extra dram of milk, my favorite pour.’ To the icebox I aspired, motivated to admire How its avocado pigment complemented my decor. Then I grasped its woodgrain handle – here I opened wide the door; – Darkness there, and nothing more.…
I certainly tell my literature and video game students that they’ll have to study texts that they might not choose to pick up on their own, and I remind my journalism students that part of their job is to find what is important and make it interesting to the reader. I deliberately teach my “new…
I was at a “serious games” conference several years ago. During a crowded seminar, where I found myself seated on the floor because there were no open seats, one of the industry types was frowning because an educator kept speaking critically of testing. “If you don’t test,” asked the pragmatic businessperson, “how can you assess?”…
In 1975 a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built the world’s first portable digital camera by cobbling together parts scavenged from a Super-8 and a cassette player. Baffled colleagues asked, “Why would you want to look at photos on a TV?” —The Pocket Camera Moment | Raw File | Wired.com. Similar:The Host (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch,…
Atwood, on his blog Coding Horror, miffed by the “everyone should learn to code” meme, likens coding to plumbing. It’s not for everyone. “Look, I love programming. I also believe programming is important … in the right context, for some people,” he writes. “But so are a lot of skills. I would no more urge…
If you were a kid during the ’80s and read any books at all, you probably read at least one Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA), probably by either R.A. Montgomery or Edward Packard. And if you read one, you read more than one. They were addictive, candy for our brains, but also, they empowered us…
It’s also a cultural climate where audiences are increasingly used to thinking of books as media companions — popular film series like Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games, or TV series like Game of Thrones, all feel richer to fans if they read the books as well as enjoy the films. Designers of text-based…