We use the metaphor of a ladder to show this, with the rungs at the higher end of the ladder indicating a higher level of participation. —Forrester Similar:A crushing backlash to Apple’s new iPad adHave you seen Apple’s “Crush” ad? It fea…AestheticsWhy teens need live theater in the age of YouTubeA good article from the…
Director Peter Berg is expected to soon begin shooting the live-action tentpole based on Hasbro’s naval combat board game. —Variety Boggle. Trouble. Sorry. Similar:Fake News Is Not the Real Media Threat We’re FacingConservative talk radio predates the Int…CultureAnd so it begins.BooksMan enough to sew my own computer bag. Insecure enough to seek validation on social…
Just a small item. The iPad is about to have its academic chops put to the test this fall in a number of programs around the country. Colleges and universities are looking to adopt the iPad as a collaborative tool, a standardized mobile device to integrate into curriculums, and, in some cases, even a cost-saving…
Good students all, the class was a seminar on “Designing for Effective Change” for the Honors Program, but lacking experience in this sort of approach to instruction, the students wrote to their conception of what I wanted to hear from them. I can’t imagine a more constipated mindset for producing interesting prose. For this class…
The Blender Foundation has announced its release of version 2.53 beta. Blender is a free, open-source 3D animation and game design package. I’ve taught it in the past in my New Media Projects course, but no student has ever chosen a Blender creation for a term project, and some of my textually-minded English majors have…
No, the awesome mascot-based space platformer you cheerily sketched on graph paper when you were supposed to be focused on math homework is not going straight to production. No, in fact, there are not a million page views at the ready for your exhaustive essay on the themes of Silent Hill 2. You will probably…
There is a documentary film on text adventures here. Paths lead off in all directions.>get GET LAMP Similar:Reuben Klamer, designer of Trek's "phaser rifle" and Milton-Bradley's "The Game Of Life" d…Although more modern-looking rifles appe…AestheticsColossal Cave: The Board Game by Arthur O'DwyerThe kids and I enjoy nerdy board games. …CultureThat one ungraded assignment is an…
How very apt… the answer comes in the form of a flowchart. (10000words.net) Similar:Police respond to Twitter bot sending death threat to another Twitter botJeffry built himself a harmless little T…CybercultureBlender 3D Flyover of Fantasy Steampunk Spacecraft When my kids were small, at bedtime …AestheticsInequity and BYODIf we are really wanting to help these k…CultureThe…
Still reading? You’re probably in a dwindling minority. But no matter: a literary revolution is at hand. First we had slow food, then slow travel. Now, those campaigns are joined by a slow-reading movement – a disparate bunch of academics and intellectuals who want us to take our time while reading, and re-reading. They ask…
Like all of O’Connor’s work, the meaning of a sentence like that expands over time like a sponge. Mystery and Manners is packed with them. It contains talks about the act of writing, about teaching, about the art of raising peacocks, about the South, and Catholicism. But what I value most when I read these…
Editors of the long-awaited autobiography of Mark Twain said Tuesday they were surprised to discover the unedited manuscript of the forthcoming book contains lashing, in-depth criticism of the website YouTube, the recent BP oil spill, and the ongoing military action in Afghanistan. —The Onion Similar:CBS News Suspends Twitter Posting ‘In Light of the Uncertainty’ About…
In a desperate attempt to preserve the financial integrity of journalism size of his revenue stream, media mogul Rupert Murdoch recently put content at the UK TImes and Sunday Times behind a pay firewall. The information-wants-to-be-free crowd can’t wait to see this experiment fail. A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I’ve been corresponding…
I’m trying out iMT, a slimmed-down blogging interface designed for the iPhone. It works with the iPad, though the design does not take advantage of the iPad’s screen size. This interface only permits plain-text editing (so you have to code the HTML by hand if you want bold or photos and such). There is no…
Creating interactive fiction (a genre also know as “text adventures”) means writing computer code that represents objects and behaviors, while also creating interesting characters, a compelling plot, and maybe a few narrative surprises, all of which can be assembled for a reader to experience in multiple different ways. The resources that follow are intended to…
The call-and-response form of IF — “TAKE LAMP”, “I don’t know how to take the lamp” — has been a familiar gag for thirty years now. And somewhere, in the basement of the computer game world, a few people are still writing text adventures. A few people… a few games… Actually, lots of games. Over…
After Safari (which comes with the iPad), the app I spend the most time with is definitely SketchBook Pro. While it’s possible to use a stylus, I don’t have one — I just use my finger. Here’s the first picture I drew — a space shuttle that was, at the time, featuring prominently in the…
The case, California’s first on the issue, concerns a University of California student who ranted on her MySpace account about how much she hated her hometown of Coalinga in the Central Valley. The Coalinga Record, the local newspaper, published Cynthia Moreno’s “Ode.” She sued the paper for invasion of privacy after members of the local…
The Interview was not a happy invention. It is perhaps the poorest of all ways of getting at what is in a man. In the first place, the interviewer is the reverse of an inspiration, because you are afraid of him. —Mark Twain (in an essay recently published for the first time) Similar:Commonly Misused Words:…
Sadly, when I use MT5 from my iPad, the Rich Text formatting window is still inactive, and I am puzzled and annoyed by an advertisement for something called Zemanta. I hope that window stays closed when I close it. And I still can’t scroll to see the full list of categories. I remember reading somewhere…
Tin House Implements New Policy for Fall Reading Period. Unsolicited Submissions must be Accompanied by a Receipt for a Hardcover or Paperback from a Real-Life Bookstore PORTLAND, OREGON (JUNE 30, 2010) In the spirit of discovering new talent as well as supporting established authors and the bookstores who support them, Tin House Books will accept…