Testing WP iPhone App

How did it go? Similar:R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Full Play (via Zoom)All 3 acts and the epilogue to R.U.R. (R…BooksTechno-greebles. Geometrically these are identical plain cubes, with custom shaders that s…DesignMy second greenscreen test.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d-LPwKQ…CybercultureDigital Humanities: A DefinitionDoes the world need another working defi…AcademiaPresenting at #NEMLA session 8.1 Friday. “Hacking English: Examining a multimedia sandbox …AcademiaSam…

Kids investigate ancient media technology (floppy disk, vinyl record, etc.)

I first watched it on an iPod, so I didn’t see the translations, but I actually kind of liked it better when I couldn’t understand what the kids were saying in French. That left me feeling as isolated from them as they feel from the gadgets they are investigating, which in turn made the uncanny…

Gender-neutral Language

I recently updated a handout I first created in 1998. A phrase like “a good policeman knows his duty” unnecessarily excludes women. While it would be excessive to read history as if every general use of “man” is sexist, today’s culture calls for alternatives. Using “police officer” instead of “policeman” is easy, but replacing every…

Portal, as Drawn by my Eight-year-old Daughter

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Ngram for "postpartum depression," "rest cure" and "yellow wallpaper"

Filing this for the next time a student proposes a paper that uses “The Yellow Wallpaper” to “prove” something about postpartum depression. Here’s Google’s Ngram for “postpartum depression, “rest cure” and “Yellow Wallpaper” from 1870-2000. Similar:Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic booksA good article analyzes the strong cultu…BooksElection ‘distracted’ Trump team from pandemic…

Time to Sunset Movable Type at Seton Hill University. (Long Live WordPress!)

In 2003, when I chose MovableType for a institutional weblog, WordPress was a plucky but under-powered alternative. Until very recently, WordPress was only able to manage a single blog per installation, which meant that each blog user would also be a blog administrator. Since I was trying to form a blogging community, not training blog…

The Elements of Clunk

The grammar/punctuation flames from not-all-that-well-informed posters at the end of this article are quite interesting for he or she who likes such things. Four years ago, I wrote an essay for The Chronicle Review cataloging “The Seven Deadly Sins of Student Writers“–the errors and infelicities that cropped up most frequently in my students’ work. Since…

Get Lamp? Just got one, thanks.

Great little story from robohara.com. This morning for Christmas, I got a box from Dad. Inside the box was a treasure chest. The treasure chest was wrapped twice with a chain, and the chain was fastened with a combination lock that uses letters instead of numbers. Also inside the box was this: A map. Similar:Virtual…

Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation

I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning today, teaching myself something called “normal baking” in the computer modeling program Blender. I did it because I had nothing else pressing to do, I was too wound up to sleep, and too tired to do anything really productive. I wouldn’t say it was boring,…

Mobile Economics Will Trend Toward Web Economics

Restricting access to content doesn’t work. Someone else’s content will get filtered and curated instead of yours. Scarcity is not a viable business model on the Internet. —Fred Wilson, AVC Similar:How it feels to watch a user test your product for the first time Jonathon Shariat.AmusingTwo computer screens aren't better than oneI turned off the…

Gallery: Kodachrome Is Dead, Long Live Kodachrome

The very last roll of Kodachrome film will be delivered today in Parsons, Kansas. Kodak has slowly phased out the materials needed to make and develop the film. Only a single operation in the world — Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons — had continued to develop Kodachrome. First introduced in 1935, the death of the film…

Wanted: Young readers to build book buzz

“We love to hear what kids think of our books, and this is a great way to see what they’re reacting to,” said Suzanne Murphy, vice president and publisher at Disney Book Group, one of two dozen publishing houses that send advance copies to the young Bethesda readers. The Bethesda group is one of 16…

Book publishers see their role as gatekeepers shrink

For more than a century, writers have made the fabled pilgrimage to New York, offering their stories to publishing houses and dreaming of bound editions on bookstore shelves. Publishers had the power of the purse and the press. They doled out advances to writers they deemed worthy and paid the cost of printing, binding and…

"interactive fiction" Trumps "text adventures" in Google Books Corpus

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The Most Awesome 450 Page Presentation Ever

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Chimp "Girls" Play With "Dolls" Too–First Wild Evidence

As my 12-year-old son gets ready to surpass my six-foot height any day (his lip needs a third shave, but he’s apparently in no rush to graduate away from calling me “Daddy”) and as my 8-year-old navigates a peer community that includes mean girls and true friends, gallant young gentlemen (thank you, little boy who…

The Hidden Feminist Messages in ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’

Hidden? Sure, but certainly not accidental. I didn’t notice it when I was a kid, but it sure jumped out at me when I watched the Schoolhouse Rock videos with my kids. And even small details are pro-girl. The nameless character who shows up in a mini-skirt and platforms in “Interjections!” is unbelievably excited not…

Looking for a good read for my American Lit survey next term.

What’s a well-written, gripping, yet breezy novel (something that will engage students who would otherwise be distracted by late April weather)? A colleague has chosen The Virgin Suicides. What about The Secret Life of Bees? The Hunger Games? Little Brother? (Yes, I know Cory Doctorow is Canadian) I’ll likely need to trim some of these…

Journalists: Let the Quotes Do the Work Whenever Possible

Beginning journalism students often need some practice giving the best lines to their sources. Here are the first two paragraphs in a story about missing tailgates. It’s just a routine story, but the writing makes it inviting and personal. Luke Himler said employees at Hollywood Cars near Greensburg were moving vehicles on the lot Saturday…

End Of Days For Bookstores? Not If They Can Help It : NPR

I have been reading a lot more in the past few years, in part due to the text-to-speech capabilities of my Kindle, in part due to the convenience of having a collection of Emily Dickinson poetry or a Sherlock Holmes anthology on my iPod Touch when I find myself in a line somewhere, and in…