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 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…
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:'Peter…
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,…
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:Why Tetris is the 'perfect' video gameRather than wanting to make a film about…AestheticsThe Terrible Things I Have Said and Done My Entire Life, and…
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…
“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…
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…
0 Similar:Explore – Laconic history of the world in a typographic map…Explore – Laconic history of the world i…AestheticsWhat Do People Do on Mobile Devices? (Infographic)A handful of vignettes communicating the…BusinessMy #AugustWilson #Steampunk NightmareToday is my last official day teaching a…AcademiaMinneapolis Police Injure, Arrest Journalists Covering ProtestsThroughout the protests over the death o…CultureIn Which I…
Similar:Lotteries: America's $70 Billion ShameCan this be true? People spend more mone…BooksGames Based Learning through Text Adventures As I make progress in designing the cl…AcademiaThe joy of text – the fall and rise of interactive fictionAlthough the IF community first formed a…CybercultureAstronaut Luca Parmitano describes near-drowning experience in spaceWith water already obscuring his vision,…Current_EventsProfessoring. With…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Similar:A Las Vegas public official is held on open murder charge in connection with the killing o… An elected county official in Las Vega…Current_EventsWhen Asking the Question is Part of the News Story (New Example: Clinton Supporters)I ask my journalism students to avoid us…Current_EventsNew Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An UpgradeWonderful, inspiring…
Fascinating discussion of the evolution (and violation) of the emerging blogosphere convention for citing links, in the late 90s. A few years ago, I was exploring what happened to the canonical first blogs, a short list of frequently updated web pages that Jesse James Garret identified as weblogs, and I mentioned in passing that I…
Similar:More #Blender3D practice. Making many objects to liven up a #steampunk environment.PersonalRossum's Universal Robots (Act 1) Artistic ProsperityThe first act of Artistic Prosperity’s v…CultureMy Memories of "Joseph…" [an original cast member reflects on Rice/Webber/Waring's amazi…My high school Drama coach and freshman …DramaShe was a musical ingenue Sunday, filmed a slasher movie past midnight Monday,…
Informative story of an entrepreneurial self-published author. We all dream that the publishers will do this work for us, but they won’t. So, budding novelists recovering from NaNoWriMo, take a break from sharpening up those HTML and blogging skills, and learn from John Sundman: So this is how it goes. I travel to the conference,…
That should be “Twenty-Five More” Similar:Have 40 years of mobile phones given literature bad lines?The X Files did a good job of embracing …CybercultureWhat Does Children’s “Obsession” With Technology Tell Us About What They Really Need?Wise thoughts. When we look at children…CybercultureTrump communications director Murtaugh rallies supporters by tweeting fake Washington Time…Here’s more evidence of…