Overheard at Quora: “Why after all these years is Moodle still so ugly?”

Moodle is a free course-management tool that many schools (including mine) use to manage the online components of courses (including computer-graded quizzes, discussion forums, and the submission of online papers). The tool is powerful, but the interface offers a bewildering array of options, so that casual users are often dismayed by how many checkboxes it…

An Evening with a Board Game and Grandma

By the way, I won. Similar:Added multiple swappable upper storeys. Next I will make slightly fewer variations of a sl…Added multiple swappable upper storeys. …AestheticsLego-Building Tween Refers to "The Hobbit" TextMy daughter, having just received a hand…AestheticsNew "Adventure" Details from Will Crowther in Mammoth Cave BookThe new book from the University of Kent…BooksThe Fantasticks (Oct…

Yes, I do feel rather awesome right now.

Lost brand-new earbuds. Reached in pocket of freshly-washed pants & found old earbuds. (They work!) Looked down & spotted new earbuds. #win Similar:More #blender3d #steampunk control panel details. #blender3dartAestheticsNature walks 2012 and 2018.AestheticsGoogle 1407Philipp Lenssen and I had a bit of fun i…AestheticsLearning How to Love My Daughter Image description: A teen girl in a…

Fun With Charts: Scale Matters

At first glance, this chart makes it look like food stamp usage has gone from almost nothing at some unspecified time in the past, to some huge amount over a span of who-knows-how-long. Only a fraction of the visitors to the site will click on the chart to see the scale, which reveals that the…

Zork: The Great Underground Empire

A blogger has started chronicling a journey through the classic 1980s computer game, Zork. Before King’s Quest and its successors took the realm of adventure gaming into colorful graphics, adventure titles were solely text. Infocom specialized in these during the 80s, including the Zork series, Planetfall, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But Zork,…

Stop Clubbing, Baby Seals

Similar:Half a Life (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 4, Episode 22) Lwaxana Meets CogsworthRewatching ST:TNG The teaser sets up an…CultureRubric for the Rubric Concerning Students’ Core Educational Competency In Reading Things I…Sadly, this only barely counts as satire…AcademiaThat time three-year-old me spotted a Mary Cassatt painting at the Art Institute of Chicag…My mother had a framed…

Tolkien v. Orwell: Who understood modern surveillance best?

Interesting set of observations exploring the limits of omniscience and the sheer scale involved in watching an entire population. Failures in empathy lead to misinterpretation of anonymous rebellion in plain sight. Tolkien’s most potent and intimidating image of centralized surveillance, the Eye of Sauron atop a tower, taking in the whole world, has resonated with…

It’s Finally Ironic (You’re Welcome, Alanis)

Sample, improved lyrics: “An old man turned 98 /He won the lottery, and died the next day (from a severe paper cut from his lottery ticket).” Similar:Independence of the press: the "essential ingredient of liberty" (Alexis de Tocqueville)Culture‘Hunger Games’ to digitally recreate Hoffman filmmakers behind the “Hunger Games” mo…CybercultureComing up for the girl is another…