“Hypertext.” When I was a college student, I was obsessed with the idea that, some day, we would all be creating and consuming information— not just information, but literature—via portable devices like cell phones, when the hyperlink might become as central to reading and writing as the sentence. Since then, that day has come and gone. There…
Yesterday, I sketched a chair I found at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s “The Art of Seating” exhibit. I had a spare hour, and threw together this Blender 3D model, and let the simulation render overnight. I only sketched it from one angle, so it’s fair to say this rendering is inspired by the…
And it’s easier to avoid what is, to many, a very painful truth: Going offline is no longer a realistic option. Sure, we can unplug for an hour, a day, or even a week, but it’s not like you can permanently shut off the challenges of our online existence. The offline world is now utterly…
After my daughter’s theater workshop, I took her up the street for a leisurely tour of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art‘s current exhibit, “The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design.” Most chairs encountered throughout the day define themselves fairly simply – a place at the family table, a comfortable spot with a…
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” “At a time like this that’s all you can think to say?” “Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.” —McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: List: Lines from The Princess Bride that Double as Comments on Freshman Composition Papers..
The street artist Shepard Fairey, whose “Hope” campaign poster of Barack Obama became an enduring symbol of his last presidential campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to a charge stemming from his misconduct in trying to bolster claims in a lawsuit over which photograph had been used as a basis for the poster. Shepard Fairey Pleads Guilty Over…
An interesting thing to read when I find myself awake in the middle of the night. In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks. His book At Day’s Close: Night…
via Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized – YouTube.
A longer-than-usual introduction to a reading assignment in my “Media and Culture” class turned into a useful opportunity to reflect. We are all busy people; yet somehow, many people who say they are too busy to take on another task spend hours reading, interpreting, and debating Harry Potter; some post stop-motion Lego spoofs; some do…
Dolores Hart kissed Elvis Presley in her first film, starred in nine more movies within six years, and then gave it all up to become a nun. On Sunday, she returns to Hollywood to attend the Academy Awards, where a new film about her is up for best documentary short. via Dolores Hart, who kissed Elvis…
When the Kindle contract for one of the country’s largest book distributors, the Independent Publishers Group, came up for renewal, Amazon saw a chance to gain some ground at I.P.G.’s expense. “They decided they wanted me to change my terms,” said Mark Suchomel, president of the Chicago-based I.P.G. “It wasn’t reasonable. There’s only so far…
Useless code and comments in code—these are the zombie figures of software. They serve no purpose in a program’s execution, but they exude what Mark Marino calls extra-functional significance. They have meaning beyond the program. They speak not to the machine or the compiler, but to a different audience, another reader. In software development, that…
There are of course emotional consequences for becoming married. Lines 1167-1172: if( age >= 0.85 ) { dieSpouse(); } if( age >= 0.95 ) { diePlayer(); } This is the most famous, emotionally manipulative part of Passage. Those six lines are basically the reason we study this game at all. —Poking around in Passage |…
The most detail I’ve ever seen about Will Crowther’s other creative projects; here, in a conversation dated 1996, he discusses “different ‘adventures’”, and reveals that he wrestled with many of the same challenges that interactive fiction programmers faced through the 1980s and on to the present. I have at various times made different “adventures.” Two…
What a story! The collection includes an Action Comics No. 1, from 1938, which features the first appearance of Superman and is expected to sell for about $325,000. A Detective Comics No. 27, from 1939, features the first appearance of Batman and is expected to get about $475,000. A Captain America No. 2, from 1941,…
If political powerbrokers want to buy newspapers, what are the obligations of the journalists involved? What if the journalists, as a group, tend to agree with the politics of the purchasers? “Nobody wants to stifle news,” said Mr. Rendell, a two-term mayor of Philadelphia in the 1990s. Journalists at both papers are so concerned that…
A good example of correlation. (Simply changing your Facebook content won’t automatically make you a better worker or student, but certain Facebook details do correspond to achievement in the offline world.) Researchers spent about 10 minutes looking at photos, wall posts, comments, education, and hobbies on Facebook profiles, while answering personality-related questions including whether the…
At midnight tonight, participants in the FIRST Robotics Competition must stop working on their robots and seal them up in a plastic bag. Here’s the working bot my son’s team built. Pretty good for a rookie team.
Archivists estimate the life of any digital platform to be less than ten years, sometimes less than five. All hard drives fail sooner or later, and they need to be run periodically to lubricate themselves. Tape degradation can be quite quick; one expert found that 40 % of tapes from digital intermediate houses had missing…
Fantastic composition, deeply embedded into the brains of any kid who grew up watching Looney Tunes. Raymond Scott recorded “Powerhouse” on this day 75 years ago.