How do you tell a story that people know, or maybe just think they know? Each of the newsrooms featured here this week took on that question in different ways. In Los Angeles, the LA Times made a game to go with project on sea level rise. The Chico (California) Enterprise-Record made a podcast to…
Friendly advice… If you are practicing with your new green screen backdrop, don’t wear a plaid shirt with blue-green in it. I’m not happy with the lighting… the foreground lighting is pretty good (some spare photography lamps — much better than the fluorescent ceiling lights) but I don’t like the shadows on the backdrop. I…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. Unfrozen humans from the 21st Century annoy the crew while the Enterprise investigates the destruction of several Federation outposts near the Romulan Neutral Zone. The episode begins and ends with the cryonics story, so technically it’s the A plot, but there’s little at stake. Nobody…
I try to watch this every July to commemorate the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Based on a true story, The Dish focuses on the staff of the Australian radio antenna charged with relaying the TV signals from the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The story was exaggerated here and there for dramatic effect, but does…
Similar:Bird flight simulator. The boy goes for altitude and distance, the girl does stunts.In the bird-flight simulator at the Pitt…CybercultureThe girl’s first day on set filming for “The First Day of Summer” Carolyn plays a teenager who’s outsi…CultureCaptain Gearheart inspects progress on his #neovictorian #steampunk æther cruiser. Now fea…https://youtu.be/VXz7kspFimM AestheticsBureaucrats Put the Squeeze on College…
50 years ago today, three humans were on their way to the moon for the first time. Todd Douglas Miller’s documentary “Apollo 11” uses lots of found footage (including longer cuts of iconic sequences I know well, and plenty I’ve never seen before) arranged on split-screen multi-angle shots, woven together with low-key graphics and the…
In July, 1999, I was blogging about: (July 19) Florence, Italy — Librarians stumble across a bag of Dante’s ashes, lying on a shelf. [more | Digital Dante (U.Va)] (July 20) “That’s one small step for [a] man“…one grammatical goof for mankind? [RealAudio] [transcript] Did Neil Armstrong flub the first sentence spoken on the soil of the moon?…
While contemplating what sort of body language I could give to a robot character I’m designing in Blender 3D, I started wondering about the shrug. I remember reading that kissing seems to have developed from the behavior of giving young offspring pre-chewed food, and sticking your tongue out at someone echoes what babies do when they don’t like what’s in their mouth. Raising your hand in greeting shows you aren’t carrying a weapon. But what’s a shrug?
Viral app FaceApp has been giving people the power to change their facial expressions, looks, and now age for several years. But at the same time, people have been giving FaceApp the power to use their pictures — and names — for any purpose it wishes, for as long as it desires. To make FaceApp…
The Society of Professional Journalists has compiled the following resources in light of the increasing sexual misconduct allegations against high-profile male journalists. These are for journalists everywhere, but especially for those being harassed, those whose employers don’t provide employee training or those colleagues who know harassment is taking place but aren’t sure what to do…
Just spending an August evening with the boy. Similar:Next up for the girl: Cherry in "The Outsiders" (March 6-15)BooksThis happened the last time an eclipse was visible in the area. My students left the room,…Pinhole projection. Personal"Orphans" was amazing. Powerul, funny, cruel, humane, empathetic. I was speechle…PersonalSlicing up a massively detailed trimsheet to simulate reflections…
It’s a logical fallacy to suggest that where two sides disagree, the truth must lie in the center. It doesn’t matter how many people believe in Bigfoot or essential oils or the city of Boston — popular opinion won’t make something factually true. (Though of course, well-meaning people can disagree over values, such as whether…
Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans. “Saltpeter, John!!!” Similar:Fallout Monopoly with the boy. PersonalA tale of two headlines: CNN and Fox shade their reports of UFC crowd's reaction to TrumpHeadlines from CNN and Fox shade in diff…Current_EventsThe Life and Times of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯But, in addition to symbolizing despair,…CybercultureThings may be awful, but at least an invasive species of…
I rather enjoyed recording this oral interpretation of the Declaration of Independence for WAOB Audio Theatre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzVQeAUIdHM&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR22qfKVNroqFkRrs3fgvWwpHMpEFZvdaNB_-tskGCm-IltxB3ByKKnpu8s Similar:It's unfair to treat every gaffe as evidence of malice or incompetence. But were Trump's d…Public officials misspeak all the time. …Current_EventsTSA Agent ConfessionIt was May 2007. I was living with a boh…CultureThe Chronicle of Higher Education Announces…
The president of the US bonds with Vladimir Putin over journalists: “Get rid of them.” This is not normal. This is not right. Donald Trump joked with Vladimir Putin about getting rid of journalists and Russian meddling in US elections when the two leaders met at the G20 summit in Japan. As they sat for…
Spent a relaxing evening in playing solitaire chess puzzles with the boy. Similar:Lining up for Honors Convocation 2016. #setonhillAcademiaI know that look.This was my 9yo today. She doesn’…AmusingGames Without Frontiers: Victory in VomitWired reviews Mirror’s Edge When you ru…AestheticsRobot wars: 100 years on, it's time to reboot Karel Čapek's RURI was honored to play Alquist…
The girl (blue skirt and pigtails), who just finished her junior year of homeschooling last week, is in the dance ensemble for this professional production of “Beauty and the Beast,” which opens tonight (in a sold-out show) at the St. Vincent Summer Theatre. I spent a few summers doing PR for the Heritage Repertory Theater…
Workspace for an in-progress Unity3D tutorial. Installing the Unity Hub. (Unity.com documentation) Tutorial Assets <- Download, unzip Place in [YourUnityProject]/Assets Video Tutorials: Unity3D Game Spaces for Beginners (#CWCON 2019 #e11) Similar:Quotations: Integrating them in MLA-Style PapersI touched up an older handout on citing …AcademiaIt’s been a while since something got me into a movie…
I’m brushing up on my Unity3D skills, and created this simple hedge maze game. When I decided to let the player shoot books instead of bullets, I turned on the physics (so the books bounce and roll), but I forgot to tick the “use gravity” checkbox, so they float. (Music: “Dreaming of Flying” by Celestial…
As the humanities decline in the United States, the country is losing the craft of understanding, losing its capacity for citizenship. Even educated people are increasingly unable and unwilling to distinguish between fake and real information, becoming a community that cannot understand itself as anything more than a circulation of figures. Self-righteousness takes the place…