Ready to mash up gaming and teaching at Computers and Writing 2013. Press X to Teach. Similar:Does the phrase "based off of" make you shudder… or shrug?Jerz > Writing >&nb…AcademiaMechanical innards for a Steampunk set piece. #Blender3D #greebleshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oChXOu8C…AestheticsStudy finds AI tools made open source software developers 19 percent slowerCoders who used AI self-reported that th…BusinessBureaucrats Put the Squeeze…
Set phasers to “nerd”! This summer I’ll be schooling the kids on classic Star Trek and Babylon 5. Similar:I've spent 8 hours with 24 different Verizon agents who keep transferring me back and fort…It’s not a Verizon Wireless issue. It’s …BusinessWhat if thinking is underrated?What if the most underrated skill in sch…AcademiaTips to Improve HappinessKing…
Similar:Rocky Horror Show Live 2012 — Stage Right GreensburgThrow toast at the actors and get spaced…AmusingMy 13yo and 18yo enthralled by WarGames.Wife likes movies. Son likes military th…CulturePICT's production of Jane Eyre has its first preview tonight.PersonalNo, This Beach Photo Doesn't Prove The Media Is LyingHave you seen this image mashup being ci…Current_EventsLast day filming…
[W]hen Japanese and American fourth and fifth grade children were asked why they shouldn’t hit, gossip or fight with other kids, 92 percent of the American kids answered “because they’d get caught or get in trouble.” Ninety percent of the Japanese kids asked the same question responded, “because it would be hurtful to someone else.”…
Teens often work on laptops with track pads, making interactions that require precision — such as drop-down menus, drag-n-drop, and small buttons — difficult. Design elements such as rollover effects and small click zones are also problematic, if they’re usable at all. Small text sizes and dense text make reading difficult. Combine these elements with…
As a plucky new faculty member I wrote a critique of an early design for the online journal Kairos. My article was snarky in form (I invoked Mystery Science Theater 3000) but serious in intent (“The overdesigned Kairos site perpetuates the myth that online rhetoric is necessarily complex and arcane,” with the earnest bold text in the original). They hypertext…
It’s rather hard to believe it took them so long. DC Just Announced Plans For Choose Your Own Adventure Style Digital Comics. Similar:The 1931 Histomap: The entire history of the world distilled into a single map/chart.This “Histomap,” created by John B. Spar…AestheticsOregon Trail: How three Minnesotans forged its pathRawitsch, a lanky, bespectacled 21-year-…CultureThe school mocked.…
Chris Person posts a link to this very clear critique of news reporting that blames violent video games and movies for real-world violence. One Author Breaks Down the Reality of Violent Games in the Media. Similar:Teaching Snapshot: First Amendment FreedomsAcademiaEditorial: Video Games and The Great Train Robbery Through the development of crosscuttin…AestheticsIncredible archer shows his…
It’s your resume, only better: Everyone has a resume. But a blog allows you to highlight the skills on your resume, times ten. For example, if you’re a writer, you can flex your writing muscles and post examples of your creative writing. Even if you’re a tax accountant, you can write your thought-provoking opinions on…
The iPad Mini and the ChromeBook are just loaners, but it was fun to arrange them this way. Similar:Maybe Star Wars 7 won't suck, but I'm not holding my breath.I was burned in 1999 when I saw The Phan…HomeA New Talent EmergesI tried hard to frown disapprovingly whe…HomeComputers and Writing Conference 2013Where a nerd can…
Last year, NASA announced that the Curiosity rover had found preliminary evidence of an ancient streambed, indicating that water once flowed freely on Mars. After a few more months of study, that preliminary announcement has been confirmed – Curiosity has found the remains of an ancient stream. —Forbes. Similar:Mr. President, stop attacking the pressReagan recognized…
The New Mexico landfill or “Atari Dump” where the game console maker buried its mistakes — the biggest being the game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — will be dug up by game developer Fuel Industries, which hopes to make a documentary about the project. Also known as the “Atari Graveyard” or the “E.T. Dump”, the desert…
Below is a snippet from “Texty Cloak of Darkness,” which aims to use prose conventions to emulate game-state changes and alternate endings (in a medium designed to be linear). Since our encounter, such as it is, has already begun, it may as well happen in a place. The foyer of the opera house is where…
Earlier this week, the Computers and Writing folks discussed the decline in the use of the word “computer” in MLA job ads. The decline is more than offset by a rise in related terms, so the discussion appropriately focused on the value of “computers” as an umbrella term. (In our daily lives, we increasingly use…
“The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news,” The Sun-Times tells Channick in a statement. “We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements.” “I think I would read that to…
I am working on some conference papers that touch on coding as a liberal art. While reviewing classics, like Stephenson’s In the Beginning Was the Command Line and Knuth’s approach to “Literate Programming,” From the insightful and quirky “A Mathematician’s Lament,” by Paul Lockhart. A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he…
A few months old, but still interesting: entrepreneur and digital culture promoter Diana Kimball responds to a hacker brainstorming session. Alex Payne recently posted a picture of this whiteboard from Hacker School, and it rings wildly true to me. I was interested and encouraged to see that the question “What scares us the most about programming?” elicited more…
A father learns the Postal Service website is no help in teaching a new generation of snail-mailers where the stamp goes. “Get your computer. Go to USPS.gov (turns out it’s really USPS.com).” If he saw for himself – on the screen – how to properly mail a letter, maybe he’d get it, I thought. Unfortunately, the…
I have a Yahoo account that I use when a website or a local business insists I must provide an email address. Over the years, it has gotten clogged with spam. The filter is actually pretty good, so I can always find what I need, but it’s not usually a service I check more than…
A pleasant little success story. “TEI” is the “Text Encoding Initiative,” an international effort to define and standardize the digital representation of texts. [I]n 2006 I first noticed that the TEI guidelines encouraged the use of ISO5218:2004 to assign sexuality of persons in a document (with attributes being given as 1 for male, 2 for…