Ms. Pac-Man: Feminist Hero

It’s a spoof, but it’s well-researched and contains plenty of insight. Similar:Times photo staffer's invention: the streaming backpack “From a photographer’s perspective it…AestheticsHappy Winnie the Pooh Public Domain Dayhttps://twitter.com/textfiles/status/147…CultureTrying out a new lens to capture creepy-toy-come-to-life choreography. AestheticsPR Pop Quiz: Intro to Crisis ManagementPop quiz for public relations 101. Sc…BusinessStarship Mine (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6,…

At 13,000 years, tree is world's oldest organism

The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when much of the world was still covered in glaciers. It has stood on its windswept hillside in southern California for at least 13,000 years, making it the oldest known living organism, according to a study published today. —Independent Reading this story reminded me of a story…

A sound you do not want to hear from your furnace

I canna give the furnace any more power! I hope the lithium crystals are still under warranty. Furnace.mp3 Similar:A vacation minibar story from 20 years ago.PersonalWe Tried to Do Vanlife Right. It Broke Us Down.Shortly before I got married, my sister …CultureHappy Easter 2024PersonalI had a blue checked shirt in my hand this morning, but…

Every Day the Same Dream

I just played this Every Day the Same Dream. Simple, stark, and in places charming. I smiled and thought a little. Similar:I’ve been teaching with this handout for over 25 years, updating it regularly. I just remo…I first started teaching with this hando…AcademiaWhy Audiences Hate Hard News—And Love Pretending OtherwiseA reminder that polls that ask…

Game Studies – Novices, Gamers, and Scholars: Exploring the Challenges of Teaching About Games

I’m gearing up to teach Video Game Culture and Theory for the third time. It’s a 200-level elective, with no prerequisites. Students will have taken a basic comp course, but some won’t have done any academic research yet. I’m conscious that some students may have difficulty switching from playing the games they want to play,…

The best walkthrough of Myst I've seen so far

The first part of a walkthrough of the classic (1993), a moody, contemplative point-and-click adventure that defies the stereotype of games as violent and chaotic. Popular with women and causual gamers, but also appreciated by expert gamers for its puzzles and graphics (photo-realistic CGI, with pre-rendered animations), it was the top-selling game for nearly a…

Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students

Do students who report enjoying a teaching style actually learn more from that style? This study suggests that there may be an optimal teaching method for a given task, and that whether students like it or not, that optimal method does a better job teaching them. (As usual, beware of any new article with “may”…

Clicks vs. Bricks

Is this for real? On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. —Amazon.com Hold on, though… who goes online to shop for more books on Dec 25, before the spines have been cracked on the new books that were under the tree? Amazon was heavily promoting its…

Colossal Cave Adventure, an Exhibit

Fascinating student project from Zach Whalen’s “A Videogame Canon” course. Adventure. Rules, Representation, and Meaning in Colossal Cave Adventure Analysis of Colossal Cave Adventure Social Impact Colossal Cave Adventure as an interactive narrative and similarites [sic] to fictional novels Other projects include coverage of PONG, Half-Life, and Super Mario Kart. Similar:The Harry Potter Decision, as…

Santa Walking (Blender 3D Animation Demo)

I’ve re-set and cleansed my psyche a bit over the last week or so, delving into a little visual and spatial creativity, rather than the reading and writing (and marking) that I’ve been doing for the previous few weeks. While his face is still cartoony, the craggy eyes, puffy cheeks, and red nose all required…

An Ethical Issue: The Baltimore Sun's one-cent subscription promotion

The Baltimore Sun is offering a year’s subscription to its weekend papers for one cent, in an effort to boost circulation numbers and attract more advertising revenue. Even if you only want the coupons from the advertising flyers, it sounds like a great deal. “But,” my brother-in-law, Robert Frezza, writes, “I would be killing trees.” …

Kindness of American Saint Nick remembered – CNN.com

For hundreds of years, Wiltz had celebrated the Christmas season with visits from St. Nicholas, who would bestow gifts, sweets and chocolates to boys and girls. But four years of German occupation had meant four years without a traditional Christmas parade, and four years without a visit from St. Nick. “So, Harry had this idea…

Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem

Long story on the epic fail that is (was) Duke Nukem Forever. The Duke Nukem Forever team was unusually small; by 2003, only 18 people were working on it full time. This might have been adequate back when the game was announced in the mid-’90s. But in the years that Broussard had spent tweaking Duke…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog

A reading from a chapter of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Similar:When Is Asking the Question Part of the News? (Rarely.) We mostly only encounter the phrase “whe…EducationA Matter of Time (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 9) Smarmy Time Traveler Observ…Rewatching ST:TNG An eccentric ti…AmusingPerspective | After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial…

The Buzz on Electronic Writing: Fiction Goes Digital

In the late-eighties and early nineties, electronic writers wrote hypertext fiction and poetry, the classic example being afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce. In hypertext literature the narrative unfolds through a long series of links that produce different outcomes — but now the shrapnel of the technological explosion includes hundreds of sub-categories, each completely unique.…

Big Guide to Drawing the Body by ^Cedarseed on deviantART

Very detailed. See the full version at deviantART (I can’t link to it directly). The site also has a great chart showing how to age characters, and a cool nodally-linked display showing subtle shifts between emotional states, all starting with a neutral face. For example, the face does different things on the blank-relaxed-lazy path, as…

MIT's Scratch — Fantastic Tool for Game Prototyping

I was showing my 7yo daughter some classic arcade games. She asked if I could teach her to make a game of her own, and proceeded to describe the premise. You are a water sprite, catching fish and avoiding sharks. Blowing bubbles at the fish makes you lure them in; blowing a bubble at a…

Emulators — Good and Otherwise

I’m gearing up to teach a Video Game Culture and Theory course this January. The first time I taught it, in 2006, it didn’t occur to me that students who were looking for information on, say, Space Invaders, would just play any old flash clone, without being discerning about whether it was a faithful port,…

Handheld Learning 2008 – Steven Johnson, Author

Good overview of the concepts Johnson explores in his book Everything Bad is Good for You. Similar:Second episode of “Electron Jones” paranormal detective audio series is up. waobaudiotheat…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTe47W3S…AmusingNot bad for a couple hours of work. #blender3d #blender3dart #steampunk #neovictorianNot bad for a couple hours of work. #ble…AestheticsWhat’s Lost as Handwriting FadesWhen I used a…

Official Google Blog: Personalized Search for everyone

I completely missed this, which I stumbled across via the Reeves Library blog. Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we’re doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well. This addition…