Increasingly book vendors provide options that allow us to purchase e-books instead of print when both are available. We’ve now formally committed to purchasing e-books when given that choice. —UMD Libraries Similar:Social Media Companies Aren’t Liberal or Conservative. They’re capitalist.Facebook cares more about scalability—th…BusinessSesame Street Is Moving to HBO, and the Symbolism Is CrushingI’ve been fascinated…
Have I mentioned lately that I have awesome students? For a “Creative Critical Presentation” in my online American Literature survey, English major Tyler Carter created A Message from Hester Prynne, a 9-minute video that explores Hester’s psychology and spirituality, through music, dance, poetry, and cinematography. All the technology Seton Hill offers to its students would…
My daughter delivered the opening “Marley was as dead as a doornail” speech as the narrator in the Stage Right! homeschool production of A Lyrical Christmas Carol. My son played Scrooge. The show was great. During the bows, I was already pretty misty-eyed when my daughter threw her arms around Scrooge and proudly announced, “He’s…
Dictating student feedback, I said “Would a rational person argue against your claim that Poe is a Gothic poet?” My Mac typed: “What irrational person would argue against your claim that hoe is a Gothic punk?” Similar:The Horror… The Horror! How Music in Horror Games Effects Player ExperienceFrom one of my students, a blog-based pr…AcademiaAuthor…
At the head of the team is a grizzled old engineer who’s been at Apple forever. He’s surly and crude, always making vulgar jokes about iPads. But the company can’t afford to get rid of him—he’s the only one who understands how to operate the furnaces in the iTunes boiler room. Then one morning the…
It’s funny because it’s true. Senior Tech #1: How To Master Texting Similar:Bing's AI chatbot helped me solve a technical problem, then showed me manatees, then denie…I was searching for how to change the de…AcademiaCommonly Misused Words: ALL RIGHT and (Slang) ALRIGHT For more on ALL RIGHT, ALL R…AmusingScience Fair VictoryIn this photo from the…
We looked at every story we geotargeted during the months of July, August, and September 2012, focusing on the ones that the localized NPR Facebook following liked, shared, and commented on at a high rate. From this group of successful stories, we identified similarities which allowed us to create nine distinct content categories. We…
The Irish have a weakness for puns, and this is as evident in the Book of Kells as it is in Finnegans Wake, although in the former the puns are for the most part visual, for no monk would think to tamper with the Gospel texts…. Thus on the recto of folio 180, a line of…
The Hobbit stood out from the adventure games of the day in three ways, the first of which was its use of graphics. Many scenes in the game included a colour image that may have drawn at painfully slow speed but still offered a far richer experience than the text-only adventures of the day. The second…
Current US law extends copyright protection for 70 years after the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). Under those…
I asked my 10yo why she was moping. “Because I don’t want to be a dancing mushroom,” she said, in a tone that added an unspoken “duh!” Like most of her theater friends, she is on pins and needles, waiting for Stage Right to announce the cast list for next month’s production of Annie “What…
My favorite story comes from the week I held my office hours in the Brother Gorch Pool Hall. Named for the Congregation of the Holy Cross monk who spent decades in charge of our student center and sometimes played pool with students, it was the perfect location for office hours the week we discussed William…
The Search for IT Relevence – YouTube. Similar:Disruptions: Texting Your Feelings, Symbol by SymbolBeing a word-oriented thinker, I don’t h…AestheticsAmazon’s Tactics Confirm Its Critics’ Worst SuspicionsThis week, as part of a contract dispute…BooksProgress over 11 years of Blender3D practiceOver the past few years I have created l…AestheticsInfinite Scrolling: XKCD's Creative Insight on a Common Interface…
Fan Video Win Similar:Second Skin (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 5) Is Kira a Cardassian sleeper age… Rewatching ST:DS9 Quark notices D…MediaThe Best of Both Worlds, Part 2 ( #StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 1) Your res…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break …PersonalThoughtful Gestures Sometimes Speak Louder than WordsShe ended up waiting out…
Similar:No interior yet. Getting there. Gotta start somewhere. Low-poly background detail for a me…No interior yet. Getting there. Gotta st…AestheticsStage Right's 'Seussical' offers songs, messagesThe Tribune-Review does a great job cove…Current_EventsNovel defined: a term used by some students to mean “any text we study in English class”AcademiaMe Checking into My #4C19 Conference Hotel RoomI’ll just…
The 18th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition has ended. Congratulations to Marco Innocenti, whose “Andromeda Apocalypse” took first place! The top three games were: Andromeda Apocalypse, by Marco Innocenti Eurydice, by Anonymous Guilded Youth, by Jim Munroe The winners of the Miss Congeniality contest were: Guilded Youth, by Jim Munroe Escape From Summerland, by Joey Jones…
Wonderful story! I still remember that chilly December day, sitting in science class. I’d finished a worksheet early and decided to get a TIME for Kids magazine off of Mrs. Estevez’s bookshelf. It was the 2008 Invention Issue, but that wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye. In the magazine, there was an article…
It’s not surprising, then, that being a woman in geek culture was for a long time a profoundly gender-deviant act. “Girl” and “geek” were a zero-sum dichotomy: to claim space in one, you had to relinquish equivalent claim to the other. Recently, though, there’s been a dramatic change: a sudden surge not only in the…
A handful of vignettes communicating the point that mobile use of the Web is on the rise. It’s a challenge to teach students everything that will truly benefit them in a changing world, so for now all I can do is touch on how to use CSS to deliver different versions of a website for…
Have I mentioned lately that I have some really awesome students? Here’s a narrated screencast, presenting a progress report on a term project that involves programming in Inform 7 to create a text-adventure game designed to teach student journalists how to cover a campus event. This is what a 21st-century English major can do, given…