I used to say that PowerPoint slideshows were the fan-fold-paper computer banners of the 1990s. Similar:More modeling in #blender3d. Very happy with reflections and lighting. (The teacup is a po…DesignAny Interaction with a Service Dog Is DistractingThe director of our counseling and accom…AcademiaTime lapse movie shows exoplanets orbiting star HR8799, 133 light years away. (Published…
With great power comes great responsibility. Looks like I need to create a new unit on design. @jessiedylan @abbfleck @goudyliv84 @KatySny Similar:Jury Duty UpdateI’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-…GovernmentWhat kids do when Dad won't hand over the iPod So I’m not being selfish… this is …EducationI'm no longer surprised, but still want to document.This is…
Does anybody know of any local (within an hour or so of Greensburg) professional or college productions of Shakespeare this fall? I’m taking students in my “Shakespeare” lit seminar to see Seton Hill’s “Comedy of Errors” in September. “Romeo and Juliet” at Pitt Playhouse in mid-December is too late for me. Similar:Syllabusing Like a BossAcademiaReading…
One year ago today, NASA’s Curiosity rover touched down on the surface of Mars and began studying the planet. The rover may be lonely out there on its first birthday, but it won’t go entirely without celebration: NASA has repurposed Curiosity’s soil analysis system to play the tune of “Happy Birthday to You” out loud for…
The lineup is solid, no doubt about it, and speaks to the health of and the prospects for what’s come to be called “long-form journalism.” (Why long-form instead of just “long,” I couldn’t tell you. But, as long as I’m in a parenthesis, I can say that another positive development is the arrival of several…
I took my kids to a water park all day, and spent it completely off the grid. This is big news. The Washington Post Co. agreed Monday to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four…
I made a lot of impulse Kindle purchases during the phase when so many books were $9.99. I’ve never bought an iBook… whenever possible, I buy via Kindle instead, as a consumerist means of protesting Apple’s meddling with the price of books. US regulators have called for Apple to be forced to cancel certain e-book…
If I ever over-react to a tweet, I hope the tweeter is as understanding as Hilary Sargent. Politico’s Ben White changed his Twitter profile photo yesterday to a new photo, which showed him kind of smirking (or something). A week or two ago I yelled at Business Insider for not including Ben White in some…
Businessman John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, has entered into an agreement to buy The Boston Globe for $70 million, a massive drop from its record $1.1 billion price two decades ago. Similar:Elementary, Dear Data (TNG Rewatch: Season 2, Episode 3) When a holodeck bet spawns a fict…Rewatching Star Trek: The…
The kids and I enjoy nerdy board games. (I love both of you very much, but when we play Star Trek Monopoly, Daddy is ALWAYS the captain’s chair.) Similar:MS-Word's helpful "View -> Focus" mode delays stress-related breakdowns.You won’t usually catch me saying anythi…CybercultureDogmeat and I may yet win this game. Yes, this was the decisive…
To summarize the findings: because they didn’t teach to the test, the professors who instilled the deepest learning in their students came out looking the worst in terms of student evaluations and initial exam performance. To me, these results were staggering, and I don’t say that lightly. Bottom line? Student evaluations are of questionable value.…
The idea that generations of Shakespeare scholars got it all wrong appeals to the Saturday morning “kids rule!” ethos, where the kids smirk into the camera, adult authorities are easily duped, and the bad guys foreclosing on the pizza parlor can be thwarted by dumping a bucket of water on their legal documents. Similar:When your…
Filing this wonderful resource for the next time I introduce students to the subject. Before beginning our journey to learn HTML and CSS it is important to understand the differences between the two languages, their syntax, and some common terminology. As an overview, HTML is a hyper text markup language created to give content structure…
I didn’t expect a pseudo-Elizabethan rendering of Star Wars to be great literature, but the R2 soliloquies add an unexpectedly amusing new narrative layer. So far, I can say the “Chorus” character is overused, too frequently walking onstage and delivering lines of exposition that ought instead be woven into the expanded dialogue between the characters.…
I asked my #geekling whether she was ready for bed; with her mouth full of mouthwash, she imitated Capt. Pike’s two-flash no. #tos #startrek Similar:Long Live the LARPers — My daughter plays the antagonist in this award-winning 48 Hour Fi…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku7wzUtO…AestheticsUntil next term, I have zero more unmarked assignments. #fistpumpUntil next term, I have zero more…
Just finished watching a two-part episode of classic Star Trek. I know all the old episodes backwards and forwards, since as a kid I made audiocassette tapes of the after-school reruns, and listened to them over and over. (The writers were never confident that the special effects would be any good, so a character always…
I keep a silly personal blog devoted to a six-legged toy that both my kids have outgrown but which still amuses me. I sometimes use that blog, and that toy, in classroom activities, and occasionally students develop an affection for what I called a “hectopus” (combining “hexagon” with “octopus,” though I concede “hexapus” would have…
Just as early filmmakers couldn’t have predicted the level of ongoing interest in their work more than 100 years later, who can say what future generations will find important to know and preserve about the early history of software? While the notion that someone might go diving into some long outmoded version of Word might…
RT @THATCampPGH: @DennisJerz Registration is open for #THATCamp #Pittsburgh! Spread the word…. Similar:And the girl has succeeded in getting me to wear t…And the girl has succeeded in getting me…TweetsI'm no longer surprised, but still want to document.This is really noteworthy. Today the Pre…Current_EventsJury Duty UpdateI’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-…GovernmentDesert Bus: The Worst Video…
Every second is a deadline, every instant is a potential publication. Mistakes like this happen, and a healthy organization focuses on how to fix the system to avoid the problem, rather than on whom to blame. It looks as though they’ve fixed it, but for a glorious 16 minutes this was the Chicago Tribune homepage.…