Computers are pretty dumb, but they’re dumb fast. Computers are near-omnipotent cauldrons of processing power, but they’re also stupid. They are the undisputed chess champions of the world, but they can’t understand a simple English conversation. […] [On SHRDLU:] Every human sentence had to be transformed into a logical syntax that represented its meaning. The…
In the past few days, I’ve read a few of those head-shaking “you won’t believe how poorly college students write” essays, which always make me uncomfortable. They typically quote student “mistakes” out of context — maybe the assignment was to brainstorm or take risks, rather than produce polished gems; maybe the student is not a…
There’s a lot of interest in infographics nowadays, but doing them correctly — and making them look simple — is not easy. From 9to5 Mac: Nielsen released smartphone purchasing data yesterday that depicted Apple grabbing more than a third of the total smartphone market in the most recently surveyed month. Android was over 50 percent. That is almost…
Even though I got it for free, a Bamboo stylus is not cheap, meaning that I worried about the cost of replacing it if I lost it, so may have used it less frequently. Deciding whether the convenience of using the stylus is worth the risk of losing it ets up even more mental effort.
So it would seem then that the solution should involve either becoming more careful, which would require more effort, or getting a supply of cheaper backups, so that losing any one stylus is less of a big deal.
This Colorful Stylus Bundle is priced at about $1 each.
[caption width="300" caption="The little stubby ones are awkward, but better than a finger. They work just as well as $20 models." align="aligncenter"]
[/caption]This sounds like a brilliant way to repurpose antiquated technology and improve pedestrian life. The city has converted 10 public pay phones in three boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens – into free Wi-Fi hot spots, infusing a blast of modern technology into some of the city’s most notably outdated infrastructure. The project is considered…
My daughter is thrilled to be part of this talented cast. (She plays young CMHWHLB.) Similar:U.S.S. Requin — Extended Tour of the Cold War Submarine at the Carnegie Science CenterSoon after WWII began, the USS Requin be…CultureFinished the female officers for my neovictorian steampunk personal project. #blender3d, #… Female officers, from the le…AestheticsBrand new…
Today, I managed to get in a couple of hours of web development and PR/social media work that is stretching my skills a bit. The new pack of iPad styluses I ordered from Amazon has shipped. I’m caught up in the online faculty development class I’m taking. My inbox is brimming with opportunities to collaborate and connect…
If brass lanterns or slathering-fanged grues mean anything to you, you might want to look into Inklewriter. I teach a text-adventure (“interactive fiction“) unit in my “New Media Projects” course. My mainstay for that unit is Inform 7, a robust tool with loads of examples and a user community that I know well (through my…
Although I do use both Twitter and Facebook, I often regret putting time and energy into a walled garden, sparking and contributing to conversations that happen elsewhere, and not on my blog. In many ways, hosting conversations on Twitter and Facebook are superior to letting people post comments on my blog (because I get literally…
Working on a project that involves using WordPress as the starting point for publication to Twitter and Facebook. From what I can see, the Holy Grail of WordPress, Facebook and Twitter integration is the plugin Social, offered by MailChimp. With an active blog, Twitter feed and Facebook page conversations with customers can become a bit fragmented. Like most bloggers,…
But what about tweets containing “church” AND “beer”? So in honor of the 4th of July, we selected all geotagged tweets[1] sent within the continental US between June 22 and June 28 (about 10 million in total) and extracted all tweets containing the word “church” (17,686 tweets of which half originated on Sunday) or “beer”…
A few years ago, in Niagara Falls for an Irish Dance competition, we stopped at a hydraulic power museum. My son spotted what was wrong with this sign. Similar:Paper Titles: Inform by Stating your Topic and Position; Grab the Reader’s Interest If You…An effective research paper title will …AcademiaNew Renaissance Theatre Company's The Merry Wives of…
My daughter (in pigtails) joins the Wacongo Dance Company in an audience participation segment… then joins her cast waiting to perform her own show. Similar:Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society induction ceremony. Congratulations new members. #s…PersonalLate night set construction for The Miracle Worker.ArtA quick primer on semicolonsIs your Sunday feeling incomplete becaus…Culturexkcd: Headlines It: nailed.…
Here’s a brief video, made up of clips I took at the Carnegie Science Center in July 2009, just a few weeks after the opening of the new, permanent exhibit, Roboworld. The clips have been sitting idle on my hard drive for years, but I’ve recently gotten some practice with Apple’s iMovie, and thought I’d…
For me, the July 4 weekend marks the halfway point for the summer — if it’s not the chronological center of the summer, it is the time when I look at the number of weeks before fall classes start, and look at the list of things I had hoped to accomplish for the summer, and…
Summer vacation means if I am telling my kids steampunk bedtime stories, and the story requires an ether-powered vehicle larger than a life pod, but smaller than the ship-of-the-line where most of the plot takes place, I can visit Wikipedia to look for a class name — I like “sloop” — and then dash out…
Do we really need Justin Bieber to make this story relevant? They’re steampunks, part of an international movement that’s a mashup of do-it-yourselfers, ahistorical recreationists and science fiction aficionados who are happily reliving a past that never was. The Victorian era was “a wonderful era when people were still being surprised by the world,” says…
Kierkegaard recognized, over 150 years ago, that we live life forward but we understand it backward. He was speaking about our being immersed in time itself: The simple truth that we live our present moments in a sort of confusion continuously being clarified by the retrospective understanding that comes later. Most novelists work to soften…
Despite the lopsided drawing and grey shading around the eyes, these are not the zombies, these are the protagonists of a government-issued graphic novel designed to teach general disaster awareness. Similar:Hard Time #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 19) O'Brien deals with the implanted m…Rewatching ST:DS9 A haggard O’Brien, wi…JusticeThe Pointlessness of UnpluggingWhat sex was…
Imagination is a powerful social tool. The novel provides us with a sustained window into another world, while still exercising the creative faculties that make us co-creators of the worlds we read about. Having said all that, I am aware that there may be some confirmation bias operating, as I here introduce an article that…