Excellent feature about Roger Ebert’s bout with cancer. (Ebert’s own words on his cancer are also worth a read.) When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be. He is a wonderful writer, and today he is producing…
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:Standardized-test robo-graders flunk“According to professor of theory of kno…AcademiaIt’s been a while since something got me into a movie theater. Obviously I wasn’t in a rus… It’s been a while since…
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…
“People thought what they had was an address book for an e-mail program, and Google decided to turn that into a friends list for a new social network,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington. “E-mail is one of the few things that people understand to…
This eagerly awaited restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent classic uses what it said to be nearly an hour of footage long thought to be lost.This is one of the the most important film archival discoveries in history, as surprising as if the missing ending of “The Magnificent Ambersons” were found. —Roger Ebert According to…
Valentines for Journalists. Similar:The Myth of North America, in One PaintingFascinating art history — a thoughtful …AestheticsI felt a great disturbance in the Fandom”…as if millions of voices suddenly cr…AestheticsHermann Zapf, the font designer behind Palatino and Zapf Dingbats, has died at 96Hermann Zapf, the designer of fonts such…AestheticsTime lapse movie shows exoplanets orbiting star HR8799, 133…
[O]n this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops. Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students…
Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:Looking forward in the back room of the officers' pub, in the #steampunk cruiser from…AestheticsHow CNN Found the Reddit User Behind the Trump Wrestling GIFCNN is protecting the identity of the Re…Current_EventsA Simple Investigation #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch…
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…
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…
There’s a dissertation in here. All I have the energy to do today is imply a connection. Using a police state to market technology in 1984: Using a police state to market technology in 2010: Similar:Washington Post, Breaking News, Is Also Breaking New GroundThe Washington Post, famous for breaking…BusinessBreaking up with your favorite racist childhood…
None of this is a surprise to me, but I’m glad to have statistics to back up my impressions. A very small handful of students whose first introduction to online social networking was the SHU blogosphere, before blogs went really mainstream around 2005, are still blogging here, after they have graduated. In 2003-2005 it was…
I didn’t watch the game, but I did catch the buzz about this ad. Yes, I did tear up. (Wired has details.) Similar:The crying Honduran girl on the cover of Time was not separated from her mother, father sa…The original was a stunning image, which…Current_EventsDiana Kimball on "What Scares Us About Programming?"A few months old,…
It is dangerous to use local weather events (such as a heavy or light winter) to make judgments about global climate. With that caveat, I’m blogging the following because I’ve noted a shift in the online discussion about “global warming,” or the more general “climate change”. This essay does a good job exploring the events…
Coming up… we’ll tell you whether you’ll be impaled by sharp, radioactive icicles hurled by mobs of rampaging robots in your neighborhood. But first, people panicking, filling up three shopping carts of toilet paper and canned food. Hear the techno-pop pulse of our theme music, and know that you’re being conditioned to think of us…
Here’s hoping I left gas in the snow-thrower. Similar:That gut-wrenching photo of immigrant children in a cage? First published in 2014.Don’t blame “the media” for using this p…CultureCNN employees resign after retracted articleCNN is pretty upfront; three journalists…BusinessThe Galactically Hot Women of Star Trek TOS – a photoset on FlickrI know what you’re thinking, but…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:First steps towards reconstructing a 30-year-old simulation. Marking the locations of the …First steps towards reconstructing a 30-…AestheticsDOJ Enters Into Landmark Web and Mobile App Consent DecreeUnder the consent decree cite to http://…Current_EventsInnovative journalism: A game about the rising sea, a podcast about fire, a 20-year Colum…How…
Our first few readings in my freshman writing course were personal essays, with a clear narrative. We read an academic paper today, and there’s another assigned for Friday. A few students are already reporting feeling a little lost in the detail. I gather this is because they are used to reading textbooks, where all the…
I wish I’d seen this a few weeks ago, before my Video Game Culture and Theory class ended, but it’s still a welcome find. Similar:That one ungraded assignment is an early submission due Jan 2. I’m all set for a relaxing …AcademiaCode of Honor (ST:TNG Rewatch — Season 1, Episode 3) Rehashed Amok Time plot…
Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:My meme about the distracted boyfriend memeAmusingMénage à Troi (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 24) Lwaxana, Ferengi, Chess, …Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….LiteratureTricking the eye to see 3D details in geometrically flat surfaces for my #steampunk #blend… AestheticsStill shot from a flyover video that's been taking about…