Designed exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers who own a Kindle (sorry, iPad users – the Kindle App alone will not suffice), the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library allows consumers to borrow one book per month without any due dates. Amazon can only offer this option because the books are digital; the company isn’t loaning consumers much…
Testing out the new WordPress iOS app on my iPod Touch. Improved authoring tools, very much appreciated. Similar:Trump, Obama seem equally disinterested in portrait unveiling — but journalism takes hits…On social media recently I saw people mo…AestheticsOperation War DiaryOne hundred years ago today, Britain dec…Culture‘I saw the possibility of what could be done – so…
One of the most popular pages on my site — a single page that earns about 20% of my hits — started out as a class assignment for a technical writing student whose project for a real-world client ran into a snag. In Fall 2002, I showed my student Kathy Kennedy a model of a…
Similar:Former NFL receiver Antwaan Randle El regrets ever playing football“There’s no correcting it. There’s no he…BusinessMore Evidence that Choosing a Typeface Is ImportantAestheticsSTAR TREK's Still as Relevant on the 50th AnniversaryIn situations of change, it is natural f…CultureCarnegie Science Center's Guitar ExhibitThis summer, I’m a “CSC Insider” — mean…AestheticsWe are cruel. We always have been.…
I believe I feel like a pribbling idle-headed mumble-news. (Thanks for the link, Jessica!) Tastefully Offensive | Premium Funny: Shakespeare Insult Kit – StumbleUpon. Similar:Joe Turner's Come and Gone (August Wilson's Century Cycle, 2 of 10)August Wilson’s Century Cycle > Spoi…BooksPositive Feedback on a Blogging AssignmentA former student who is now excelling in…AcademiaMy Parents (aged…
My 13yo son plays through chapter 2 of my 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition entry, Fine Tuned. Similar:I haven't seen this show since freshman year at Bishop Denis J O'Connell High Sc…PersonalToday’s #blender3d modeling, inspired by a satellite photo courtesy of Google Maps. (I’m n…Today’s #blender3d modeling, inspired by…DesignGIFs, memes and liveblogs: The controversial new language…
The local paper’s headline spins the news a bit more negatively than it probably deserves. I rather enjoy the opportunity to look at some familiar words in a fresh light. Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer: (Current Text) Priest: Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us. (New text)…
[poll id=”2″] Similar:The Interactive Fiction CompetitionDownload and Play The Games of the 2014 …Current_EventsPOV: You are coding the automatic doors on your fantasy neovictorian cruiser personal proj… POV: You are coding th…AestheticsSet design for Acts II and III of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) #blender3dDesignComfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. –Mr Dooley on the function…
While teaching Richard II in a Shakespeare class, I had to get up to speed on the rules and customs of succession, as Shakespeare knew them, so that my students and I could understand and explore the political issues that Elizabethan audiences would find in the play. News from England today bears word of some…
Students collaborate on a breaking news journalism assignment. I wrote a mock police report, an official statement from a university official, and some personal info from various simulated sources, and gave students 45 minutes to churn out a news story. Here, students collaborate on a Google doc while consulting their textbook on a iPad. My…
In the mid-1950s mathematician John McCarthy issued a call for research on “Automata Studies,” but the phrase was so bland that few people understood what he meant. So he came up with a more provocative description of the idea he was promoting. He called it artificial intelligence. via John McCarthy, the father of artificial intelligence,…
A fantastic series of photos exploring the world as it was. The photo of Louie Armstrong playing his trumpet in front of the Egyptian pyramids is pretty cool, but I’m going to call out this one. NASA’s Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related…
The problem is that Google is killing off the current crop of social functions from Reader – and in doing so, they’re fundamentally altering the way most of us use Reader, and in the process they’re sending a huge archive of curated posts and shares and comments down into the void. And this is a…
Similar:Schisms (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 5)Rewatching ST:TNG Riker is having troub…DesignCommonly Misused Words: ITS and IT'S AmusingThe Anatomy of an Amazon 6-pagerIn the halls of power at Amazon, busy ex…BusinessJust wrote the first ending to my in-progress journalism game (created in Twine)3,486 words, 120 links, 57 lexias, and c…DesignAvoiding Spoilers Gives You a…
Of Archimedes, he who allegedly popularized the word “Eureka!”: “His cleverness is beautiful. Understanding Archimedes is like understanding the most elegant joke in the world.” The researchers paid their respects to the 10th-century scribe who copied down works by Archimedes of lasting importance. The palimpsest contains the only version of “On Floating Islands” in Greek…
The value of this essay is not specifically in the nostalgia for ye goode ole days of bloggynge, but rather the combination of work-ethic angst and the recognition of the value of investing effort in long-term projects, as opposed to seeking immediate rewards for clear-cut, predetermined actions. The philosophical reflections of the shovel-wielding ditch-digger are…
The greatest abstract for a journal article ever – 22 Words. Similar:All About Soap — Why Washing Your Hands Fights the CoronavirusPeople typically think of soap as gentle…CultureMy Parents (aged 72 and 78) Demonstrate a Ballroom Dance PoseThis is how my parents finish their Arge…AestheticsPluto FlybyWhen I was about 10, I wrote to NASA and…Current_EventsReady…
[J]ournals ceased being a means of communication a long time ago – more than 20 years ago for sure. New research would be unveiled in seminars, circulated as NBER Working Papers, long before anything showed up in a journal. Whole literatures could flourish, mature, and grow decadent before the first article got properly published…. The…
“It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.” He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. “The only really necessary people in…
Caves and sandboxes are some kinds of game spaces I’ve explored in conversations (and an unpublished manuscript) with David Thomas, so I was very interested in these musings from Not Your Mama’s Gamer. In a landscape polluted by smog and litter, box stores, fast food chains, more subdivisions and ever more streets–it becomes harder and…