My son has finally found a math textbook he enjoys. A few years ago, he was happy to play Timez Attack, which was really the first 3D game he had played. Now my daughter is ready to learn her times tables, but we’ve been playing Fate and Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Star Wars and Dungeons…
The command line will live on as long as authors and readers keep enjoying fiction made with it. But many have pointed out there is a huge market of readers (print and digital) and casual gamers who ought to love all this free IF, but sadly, they aren’t exactly flocking to it. One reason must…
I’ve been blogging about the climate change issue for some time now. Here’s the latest, which responds to the exposure of private e-mails in which a climatologist is accused of acknowledging deliberately tweaking the data in order to make a stronger environmental case. [N]ot only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center…
Graham of Daventry posted to my blog, with news that the fan-produced Kings Quest, non-commercial sequel has risen from the dead. http://tinyurl.com/2em59… The first release date is scheduled for mid-July. Similar:The 22 rules of storytelling, according to PixarMy favorite: “Once upon a time there was…ArtWikipedia:VisualEditor – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWikipedia is testing a visual editor,…
“[T]here’s leaning left, and then there’s behaving like an idiot.” —Jeffrey Goldberg (The Atlantic) quotes an unnamed Washington Post source on the resignation of Dave Weigel, who until today covered the political right on a blog for the Washington Post. Weigel came under fire for blowing off steam in an online forum, where he invited…
This document is a code of best practices that helps U.S. communication scholars to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances–especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies…
Tomorrow afternoon, about 110 full-time students in SHU’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA program will be given their university-provided iPads. In addition, the Seton Hill University Griffin Technology Advantage program includes MacBooks for all incoming undergraduates, as well. I’ll be observing WPF student teaching demonstrations Thursday through Saturday, so I’ll get an early look at how…
Since Seton Hill is giving iPads to all full-time students, I have been looking at the comparative features of several eBook readers. Right now, the Kindle app for the iPad looks good, because it offers notes and highlighting, but it lacks an iintegrated pop-up dictionary, which severely hurts is usefulness to student readers. I like…
Insanely detailed analysis of the computer interface designed for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Bracercom.com The LCARS Frame Here are the common fame structures, notice I did not segment it but kept it continuous for the number of segments in a frame is up to the number of options you want your application to display…
What if the cell phone had been invented in 1977? The product, and advertising, would look something like this, according to Behance. Similar:I can’t fix this broken world but I guess I did okay using #blender3d to model this wedge-… AestheticsSurprise sidewalk encounter with my man Hopkins outside the Admin shuttle stop this mornin… Spring…
Long notorious for crippling their phones and strangling app developers who wanted access to their devices, the carriers have loosened their policies, since AT&T made its fateful deal with Apple, which ripped control of the device out of AT&T’s hands. The result showed to the world how the wireless industry had purposely crippled cell phones…
Lots of speculation and rumination in this article, which I’m blogging because of this paragraph: Earlier this year, for the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women, who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs. The working class, which has long defined our notions of masculinity, is slowly…
Ordinarily, this would call for an all-nighter. I’m feeling rather worn down after 4 days of marking AP English exams, and there are 3 days to go, so I’m only going to have time to glance at the new version of Inform 7. Similar:Requiem for the NewsroomWhen I worked at a radio news station in…CultureThe…
I always felt like computers were meant to be used with at least a hand poised on the home row, because without that arsenal of verbs things just take too long. As a power user, watching someone who isn’t familiar with all the shortcuts can put your patience under observation. To some folks, everything about…
I’ve checked into the hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, in order to read the AP English Literature exams. People on the shuttle and in the dining hall are very friendly. I’ve nothing to do for the rest of the day, and am just chilling in the hotel room. My laptop logged into the hotel’s WiFi network…
The Library of Congress has nearly 150 million items in its collection, including at least 21 million books, 5 million maps, 12.5 million photos and 100,000 posters. The largest library in the world, it pioneers both preservation of the oldest artifacts and digitization of the most recent–so that all of it remains available to future…
Seton Hill University was recognized by IvyWise, a New York-based counseling company, in its “Top Five” list created to assist college applicants in choosing schools that leverage the power of mobile devices to store and deliver recorded lectures, syllabi, homework, tests and a host of other information that can be accessed anytime, anywhere on campus.…
In 2001, I posted a brief item on “The Last Page of the Internet,” a meme that was already well-established at the time. I did a quick Google search, posted what I found, and added a few comments. knowyourmeme.com used my page as a starting point for a recent item that traces the meme much…
Very cool little story that also involves a Frederic Church painting and newspaper archives. Following a trail that began with a 19th century painting and led to hundreds of newspaper reports, the researchers discovered that the “strange huge meteor-procession” mentioned in Whitman’s noted collection “Leaves of Grass” indeed refers to a rare procession of earth-grazing…
In the past, I have used the first day of my literature survey classes to define the big-picture, to have the class bond with each other, to watch a movie version of the first assigned text, and to jump right into literary analysis. Since I usually teach this course in a 2.5hr block, I can do many…