Doom Iphone code review.

Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:It not only went VROOM, it carried chunky plastic letters that could *spell* VROOM.Tonight, when I got home after all the e…AestheticsKindle App Vs. iBooks. (Spoiler: They’re Virtually Identical Now!)I noticed with interest that Kindle now …AestheticsMechanical innards for a Steampunk set piece. #Blender3D #greebleshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oChXOu8C…AestheticsTeenage Usability (Jakob…

ENG 111: Pop Up Scholarship

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…

The Videogame History Timeline (beta)

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:Syllabusing Like a BossAcademiaA slave who works in a junk shop naturally builds a protocol droid. Right.He could have built, you know, a junkyar…DesignThe Journey That Changed Geoffrey Chaucer’s LifeHis status…

Pee-wee Gets an iPad

Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:Emily Short's advice on writing great game protagonistsAt GDC 2015, noted interactive fiction g…CybercultureStar Trek TOS Main Theme but it never gets to the Main ThemeArrgh! This is sooo stressful! (Some gre…MediaSmall Business Social Media 101: How To Get StartedUseful skills for anyone hoping to turn …BusinessReplaying Childhood:…

Scholars Turn Their Attention to Attention

“One of the deepest questions in this field,” Nass says, “is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information. Are people in these settings multitasking because the other media are alluring–that is, they’re really dying to play Freecell or read Facebook or shop on eBay–or…

Misreading Apple and Amazon

I know, I know: Amazon relied on those $9.99 prices to give it a head start in the digital books market. And raising prices to the $12.99 to $14.99 being talked about could certainly slow sales if consumers don’t bite. But here’s the thing: it’s not as if Macmillan is only raising prices for Kindle.…

"Can We Tape?"

I usually carry a digital voice recorder with me. In most states it’s legal to record a conversation if all parties consent, although Pennsylvania law requires that all parties to a conversation be notified that a conversation is being recorded. “It is always legal to tape or film a face-to-face interview when your recorder or…

The Sacramentality of Teaching and Learning

For the one-credit journalism class that I teach every semester, I’m teaching a unit on editorial writing. Students will take a leisurely 10-chapter journey through Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. It’s the first time I’ve taught a whole unit focusing on sentence-level phrasing. The class meets once a week, for just one hour,…

Unfriended: UVA’s Corks & Curls yearbook out of business

I’ve sometimes pointed out to my students that in my generation, graduating from high school and leaving your peers behind to go to college mostly meant that you were saying goodbye. Since then, I have gotten back in touch with a couple dozen high school friends, and even some elementary school friends (including the smartest…

How to Report the News

Personal comment, with embedded links to recent postings indicating that I’ve actually had independent thoughts about this issue and I really do have something to contribute other than just reposting something that I found on BoingBoing. A brief quote from something noteworthy or controversial, offering an opinion and inviting readers to comment. Similar:It's “Alexander’s Ragtime…

iDunno

Studying the faked predictions was more fun than finding out the actual gadget. I’m very interested in seeing how this shakes up the competition, but I’m not going to be one of the early adopters. Plato’s Phaedrus tells the story of Theuth, inventor of the alphabet. The god Thamos said, “O most ingenious Theuth, the…

Nipper Hears “His Master’s Voice”

As a kid growing up in Fairfax County, just a commute away from Washington D.C., I remember often looking out the window of the family car and seeing a statute of a huge dog cocking its head at a phonograph machine. Washington Post Here we see the sculpture on top of a museum roof in…

Slave of the Ring

Interesting use of pseudo-Arabian exotica that Edison used in order to communicate to the public of 1905 just what his cylinder phonographs could do, likening them to rings to place on the finger of a musical genie. “Wouldst thou have melody? Place thy ring upon my finger and I will sing for thee a tender…

Live Apple "Come see our latest creation"

I have not been ravenously following the streamed coverage of the iPad release, but I did note that the NYT was the first site Jobs presented during the demo. I really hope someone from Improv Everywhere runs up the center aisle, whirling a hammer around her head. It’s very significant, of course, that Apple is…

NASA's Spirit won't be roving Mars anymore

With its six wheels stuck in powdery sand and two wheels no longer working, the resilient little explorer will become a fixed, immobile scientific observatory — if it can survive the harsh temperatures of the upcoming winter. —LA Times Similar:Today I didn't save the world, but I did help a student while power-walking at the…

The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word

While the Bible does present Jesus as being able to read, and there is a story of Jesus drawing something unspecified in the dirt, the first followers of Jesus lived in an oral culture. The Gospel of Luke begins thus, identifying to the difference between oral culture and print culture: Since many have undertaken to…

Learning the art of creating computer games can boot [sic] student skills

“Worldwide, there is increasing recognition of a digital divide, a troubling gap between groups that use information and communication technologies widely and those that do not,” the team explains. “The digital divide refers not only to unequal access to computing resources between groups of people but also to inequalities in their ability to use information…

Is the NYT meter really a navigation fee?

It seems to me that they’re simply asking everybody to use external aggregators as a replacement for the nytimes.com homepage as the best tool for reading the site. Even people using the NYT’s own RSS feeds to find the stories they want to read might well be able to consume an unlimited amount of online…

The Future of Thinking

Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes…

Howard's Butt, Why is Howard's butt blogging? (Start here)

Diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the rectum, author and cyberthinker Howard Rheingold responds with humor, and a new blog. http://howardsbutt.tumblr.com Similar:Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia School of Journalism ReportSloppy journalism can ruin lives. Check …AcademiaWhy No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext StoryIt’s not that hypertext went on to becom…CultureIs Superman the next…