I’m not at PAX East tonight. (I wanted to be there. I really, really wanted to be there. By my wife said she needed me elsewhere. Enough said.) According to the chatter on Twitter and the blogosphere the interactive fiction panel was standing-room-only, and there’s already a line for seats in tonight’s Get Lamp premiere. Similar:The…
The Times of London will charge readers for Internet access starting in June, News Corporation announced on Friday, putting Rupert Murdoch at the forefront of a movement to erect toll gates on news sites.–NYTimes Similar:After decades lost, Star Trek’s original Enterprise model may have been foundLong before sci-fi shows created their v…DesignMale Supporting Characters in…
What drives players to spend forty, eighty, or more hours with a computer RPG? If we look only at the quest journal, where the operations of quest flag logics are exposed to the player, the appearance is of a massive indulgence in the pleasures of the to-do list. And certainly there is some of that.…
Today’s schadenfreude comes from WSVN. Several people had the chance to catch this error. It’s not any one employee’s fault, but the school’s reputation won’t exactly be helped. Further, the school missed the opportunity to make the experience into a teachable moment, and instead apparently chose to make no comment. (It’s never too late, FCC…
Leonardo Da Vinci’s last supper painting Da Vinci’s Last Supper was painted in the 15th Century The food portions depicted in paintings of the Last Supper have grown larger – in line with our own super-sizing of meals, say obesity experts. —BBC Similar:'We're back': Bushy Run's 2023 battle reenactment will be heldI’m glad to know…
I suppose that my face-blindness has made me the person I am. I don’t much like movies or People magazine, not because I’m above caring about movie stars, but because I don’t recognize most of them. I became an addictive reader, an author and an English professor because, in the world of words on paper,…
There’s nothing really new in this story, but it’s still good to see my favorite game genre get some good press. Along with simulated space battles and table-tennis matches, interactive fiction (IF) is one of the oldest of computer-game forms. Though far gone from its commercial heyday in the graphics-impaired ’80s, when it was still…
For once we had the possibility of a global platform from which we had the power to make those in power listen to us. What we have ended up with is nothing more that a digital Madison Avenue and a whole lot of digital garbage that won’t shut up. I would like to hold out some…
One of the many interactive fiction events at this now-even-more-awesome event that I cannot attend. The current plan: the main GET LAMP episode at 9:30, followed by a panel on stage of people interviewed for the film, and then some showings of a few more features of the DVD, including the Infocom and Bedquilt episodes.…
The viral clip has been viewed almost 54 million times and gave rise to the catchphrase, “Is this real life?” It was the second most-watched video of 2009, according to YouTube, trailing only Susan Boyle‘s appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent.” It’s also been an unexpected bonanza for the boy’s Orlando, Florida-area family, who, despite some criticism that they exploited their…
By the early sixth century, Western Europe had become largely illiterate, its teachers dead, its students on the run, its libraries turned into kindling. Ireland, however, had just settled down, thanks to a tough old bird named Patrick, a Roman citizen raised in the province of Britain who had been grabbed by Irish slavers when…
This wordle was composed from word frequencies in definitions of “Digital Humanities,” submitted by participants in Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities 2010. About all we can conclude is that the participants know how to repeat the phrase “Digital Humanities” in their definitions. Similar:Last event of a busy day downtown. #AgathieChristie #murderontheorientexpressAestheticsLooking up…
Penguin recently posted this video to YouTube, explaining that it was an internal training video that was a big hit with the sales force. On YouTube, I posted a comment saying that if it worked on their sales force — that is, if their sales staff didn’t get the gimmick before the midpoint, that actually…
Games tend to evolve enormously over the standard two-year process, with whole missions often culled at a late stage, as playtesting reveals unforeseen fault lines and design issues. Having to recall actors and record chunks of new dialogue to reflect story changes is perceived as an expensive, time-consuming chore – the last thing a hassled…
As an administrator, I worked with other professors and administrators. As an instructor of graduate creative writers and upper-division English majors, I was teaching students who also loved words and writing, students who aspired to be what I was, a published author employed in a bookish field. Believe me, I am no longer preaching to…
“Oh yeah! Scientists I’ve talked to say you cannot overestimate how important HeLa cells have been.” Yet no one in the Lacks family had been informed by Johns Hopkins of the existence of their mother’s cells, until a researcher called in the early 1970s wanting to test the family. “Henrietta’s husband basically got a phone…
Epic Game Design Tour / Final Exam Review from Adam Marshall Smith on Vimeo. Similar:The Zombie Argument that Refuses to DieThe idea that generations of Shakespeare…AcademiaWriting a news story calls on different skills than writing a traditional essay.Updated an older instructional handout w…EssaysStandardized testing: I opted my kids out. The schools freaked out. Now I…
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Very cool design! Thanks for the suggestion, Jefe! An episode of Star Trek TNG featured a character who carried around a roll-out piano keyboard, but the prop they used looked more like just a piece of cloth. This looks very believable. Similar:Stanford to offer new undergraduate majors integrating humanities, computer scienceTraining humanists who can code…
E-books may be getting all of the attention in publishing these days, but the hype overshadows the cold reality of business: E-books are still just a small fraction of the market. James McQuivey, an analyst with the technology research company Forrester, says that’s why publishing is in such a tough place: A revolution may be…