Doyle Redland Says Goodbye

I’m still mourning the loss of Herman T. Zwiebel.  And now this? Similar:PAC-MAN: The Untold Story of How We Really Played the GameA fascinating study of the thinginess of…AestheticsCOVID-19 Becoming Less DeadlyBits and pieces from a news article that…Current_EventsInnovative journalism: A game about the rising sea, a podcast about fire, a 20-year Colum…How do you…

"By Their Sidewalks You Will Know Them"

There are no sidewalks where I live, but if there were, my sidewalk, and my conscience, would be clear. Here’s the first stanza of a five-stanza poem by TImons Esaias. Originally there were eleven CommandmentsMoses, perhaps confused by the unfamiliarsnow, ice, and sidewalk,botched one, and left it out. Similar:An apology to Donald Trump, from the…

The ABCs of Adventuring

Thanks for this find, Mark Sample (via Twitter). The ABCs of Adventuringby Admiral Jota, Dylan O’Donnell, G. Kevin Wilson, and Dan Shiovitz.A is for Adventure, the first of them all;B is for Brass lantern, so you don’t take a fall.C is for Compass, an unseen one you keepD is for Drinking, eating and sleep.E is…

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Gripping story of an effort to use data to predict teaching excellence. As Teach for America began to identify exceptional teachers using this data, Farr began to watch them. He observed their classes, read their lesson plans, and talked to them about their teaching methods and beliefs. He and his colleagues surveyed Teach for America…

Why Google Has Become Microsoft's Evil Twin

Google Buzz combined the openness of Twitter with the “whoo-hoo look at me!” aspects of Facebook. The result? A total face plant. —PC World Similar:The Maquis, Part 2 (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 21) Sisko must stop the diss… Rewatching ST:DS9 Hudson and Sisk…EthicsRay Harryhousen, visual effects pioneer, dies  The Harryhausen family regret to…AestheticsPerchance…

Critical Code Studies Working Group — Colossal Cave Adventure Annotation

This week, I’ll be facilitating a week-long collaborative annotation project, as part of the Critical Code Studies Working Group online conference, on the source code to Crowther’s original Colossal Cave Adventure (a classic text-only computer game from the 1970s). According to Donald Knuth, designer of the “literate programming paradigm,” Colossal Cave Adventure is the “ur-game…

Happy V-Day: Valentines for Journalists

Valentines for Journalists. Similar:Looking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 3) …Rewatching ST:DS9 Outside the O’Brien…AmusingElection ‘distracted’ Trump team from pandemic response, Birx tells CongressMore than 130,000 American lives could h…Current_EventsFerengi Love Songs #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 20) Rom ♡ Leeta; Zek ♡ Ishka;…Rewatching ST:DS9 Much…

Frisbee inventor dies at 90

Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:Twitter, Fix Your Cropping AlgorithmWhen given the chance to crop four diffe…CybercultureMy Ouya arrived.My Ouya arrived — a Kickstarter-funded …CybercultureCan you melt eggs? Quora’s AI says “yes,” and Google is sharing the resultGoogle Search is already well-known…CybercultureGoogle 1407Philipp…

Peter West, Trying the Dark: Mammoth Cave and the Racial Imagination, 1839-1869

Interesting examination of role-playing, illusion, identity, and power in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, one small branch of which was the inspiration for the 1976/7 computer game Colossal Cave Adventure. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave was a popular tourist destination for travelers from around the United States and beyond. The cave…

Typography and Textuality

Zach Whalen is turning his dissertation into a blog-web-thing, in the hopes of developing a book-thing. In whatever form it takes, it’s an interesting approach to a textual study of video games. This study asks how the design and configuration of text in videogames contributes to their textuality. I argue that videogames are texts in…