First Person: Do I know you?

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,…

All-text video games make comeback

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…

PAX East 2010

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.…

Family cashing in on ‘David After Dentist’

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…

Day of Digital Humanities

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:A young father sold his beloved sports car for “diaper…

Back to the Classroom

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…

The Immortal Henrietta Lacks

“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

Epic Game Design Tour / Final Exam Review from Adam Marshall Smith on Vimeo. Similar:Meet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureWhy Hoboken is Throwing Away All of its Student LaptopsUntrained teachers. Damage-prone machine…CybercultureShip in a Bottle (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 12) Barclay's holodeck…

Doritos Tablet (iPad Spoof)

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Change The Code, Keep the Text

Today, programmers, web-developers and designers possess countless different ways to display digital words online, much like an artist with a blank canvas. As words float across our computer screens, code may be considered the underlying thought and form of expression that supports online words, preventing the words from physically or metaphorically “disappearing into [cyber]space” (Richards,…

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer

Link pointing to blog entry about a different self-referential clip, and also a different (more vulgar) self-referential clip.   Similar:There are many Star Wars references in Dani Girl, so I made this tribute to Tom Jung's 197…Culture‘Hunger Games’ to digitally recreate Hoffman filmmakers behind the “Hunger Games” mo…CybercultureThe Problem with Quotes on the InternetAmusingWhy It’s…