For confessionals or tapdance routines vertical video is fine. When my students do multimedia projects I remind them that the video screen in our classroom is horizontal, so if they do use a vertical video there’s plenty of room for them to add infographics and annotations. Or they can actually edit a vertical video. If…
Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words they’re processing. […] A trained and tested LLM, when presented with a new text prompt, will generate the most likely next word, append it to the prompt, generate another next word, and continue in this manner,…
Look what I found on my shelf in a closet. #history #archaeology #media Similar:Yesterday we took advantage of a rare free day.At the Carnegie Museum of Art. AestheticsStarting my “Writing about Literature” class by having students react to a John Donne sonn…PersonalOops. I’m going to bed now. I’ll fix it tomorrow.Oops. I’m going to bed…
This was before the printing press, so books were copied by hand on parchment, which made them expensive and rare. Most people didn’t read much, especially for pleasure. Instead, they listened to books at group readings for entertainment. Pero López de Ayala wrote at the end of the 14th century, “It also pleased me to…
Book historian Irene O’Daly notes that the passage crossed out in a medieval manuscript matches where the scribe accidentally turned two pages while copying out a printed book, showing that manuscript culture continued to exist even after the printing press was introduced. (It’s the third of three examples she uses.) Similar:T.S. Eliot: "when we do…
I’m sure the good-apple cops will fairly and thoroughly investigate reports about someone stealing newspapers containing a story about alleged rapes at an underage drinking party at the police chief’s house. Nearly all the copies of a small-town Colorado newspaper were stolen from newspaper racks on the same day the Ouray County Plaindealer published a…
Ascending the path to High Hrothgar? No, just the steps from the parking lot at the appropriately named Seton Hill University. (It’s 101 steps, by the way.) Similar:This class has been everything that I expect it would be and I cannot believe that we are …Some days are slogs. Some weeks are slo…AcademiaHaving a rough…
This is offensive, deeply troubling, and, sadly, totally predictable. Julian Dibbell documented similar behavior 30 years ago in his article about sexual assault in the text-only virtual world LambaMOO. (Content warning… sexual assault in a multi-user virtual environment.) A woman has revealed she was ‘virtually gang raped’ by four male avatars in Meta‘s Horizon Worlds –…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The Ship On a mineral survey of a planet that just happens to look like Southern California, O’Brien trades playful barbs with crewman Muniz. Unlike most episodes where the leads have all the fun, this mission is fairly crawling with random crew we’ve never seen before. An unidentified ship appears randomly and crashes…
In general, I find Canvas a fairly decent system, but after a particularly frustrating hour wrestling with rubrics, I decided to spend two more hours blogging about my frustrations. I would expect a drop-down list to be populated with all the rubrics I’ve already created for my current class, and it would be a nice…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Worf and O’Brien want to search for overdue Sisko and Dax, but Kira invokes the Defiant’s standing orders to guard the station. When the captain’s damaged runabout turns up, we learn Starfleet wants him to prove that, per Odo’s intelligence, Gowron is a Changeling. Quark shows concern for Odo: “That’s one depressed ex-changeling.”…
I voiced Jack Rollins, writer of the popular holiday songs “Frosty the Snowman” and “Here Comes Peter Cottontail,” in another “Whispers of the Past” documentary focused on Scottdale, Pa. Similar:A Grave Tale (a short story I narrated for WAOB Audio Theatre)A Grave Tale (WAOB Audio Theatre) Wri…LiteratureTom Bissell writes a letter to Niko Bellic…
“Be straight like a board!” My father is pressing me flat against the ceiling from my nose to my toes, and I’m squirming with laughter. His hands are so strong. I remember him helping my little fingers spread Limburger cheese — we called it our “buddy cheese.” My father worked as a…
POV: You are coding the automatic doors on your fantasy neovictorian cruiser personal project and you notice the strikeplate in the doorframe does not line up with the door latch. #unity3d #blender3d #revision #qc Similar:The Forsaken (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 17) Lwaxana Troi and the station c…Rewatching ST:DS9 Bashir is hosting t…CultureDress…
Similar:I played hooky from work to see Wild Robot with my familyI played hooky to go see Wild Robot this…AestheticsAP Style tips on "neurodiversity"EmpathyWondermark: In Which There Is a TauntingWondermark AmusingBen Franklin Sings about Your Rights as a PhotographerIf you’re legally present on a public st…Amusing‘I saw the possibility of what could be done…
As a grad student in the 1990s, I chose to focus my dissertation on the years 1920-1950, on the theory that works published during that time period would fall out of copyright during the prime of my academic career. I imagined that one of my ongoing scholarly projects would be to publish free, annotated editions…
Similar:"Jewish priests do this. It's where Leonard Nimoy got the Vulcan sign," says the geekling,…CultureIn November 1999, I was blogging about books, camomile tea and Skylon 4, the death of Star…In November 1999, I was blogging about …CybercultureI ordered a box of composition books. Low-tech response to AI.I felt like a capitalist, buying in bulk…AcademiaBeam…
Right now I can move the player around but the NPCs either just stand there or run to a random location and stop. Similar:If I don’t hang my own artwork on the walls of my #steampunk fantasy ship-of-the-line, who…AestheticsMy student journos are meming it like bosses.PersonaliMovie Glitch: Unplug Removable Media before Using iMovieI spent a…
George Joseph Jerz, born on September 3rd, 1933, the son of Joseph and Clara (nee Kuta) Jerz, died peacefully in hospice care at Sunrise at Fair Oaks in Fairfax, Virginia on December 5th, 2023. He grew up in Chicago, Illinois, was interested in gymnastics and weightlifting in college, and then after serving in the military,…
Hello, I’m Dr. Jerz, I’ll be your server tonight for Christmas on the Hill. Similar:Sold out opening night of Mamet’s Oleanna. Chilling. Gasps from the audience. Office furni…Sold out opening night of Mamet’s Oleann…PersonalFor God's sake John, sit down!CultureA Christmas Carol — new audio adaptationBooksI'd like to speak to the manager. Yes, I'll wait right…