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…
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…
A reading from a chapter of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Similar:Another section of a #steampunk control panel. Useful for a cutaway shot after a character…AestheticsSelling Point (Audio Drama) I had fun recording this in the stud…AmusingYesterday my stack of unmarked assignments was about 120, so this is not bad.Nothing in this stack…
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.…
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…
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…
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,…
Good overview of the concepts Johnson explores in his book Everything Bad is Good for You. Similar:Rejoined #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 6) Dax confronts a Trill taboo about th…Rewatching ST:DS9 At the bar, Dax perfo…EmpathyAdding a little Middle-Earth drama to a photo shoot.The girl was concerned she wasn’t nerdy …AestheticsWordPress 3.8 “Parker”No…
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…
The CNN story about The Simpsons limping on after jumping the shark is pretty much what I expected, but I’m blogging it for the infographic. Not quite as epic or information-dense as Minard’s famous map of Napoleon’s march to and from Russia, but still breathtaking. Similar:Effects of Internet use on the adolescent brain: despite popular…
Some interesting synergy in my feed reader this morning. The hidden story of the 3D engine – by the people who write them Videogames are beautiful now. It’s not the figurative beauty of yore – the iconic charm of Pac-Man, the elegiac simplicity of the vector-mapped space craft in Elite. Modern games are edging toward…
Research is probably where most new writers fail, because it takes a lot of time. You have to research not only the background of your stories — but the whole literary landscape. It takes a full immersion in the culture you hope to address as a writer to join the wider literary conversation of our…
My wife’s theory about the Norway spiral lights is that, during a practice run, Rudolph had a bit too much eggnog, sending Santa’s sleigh into a death spiral. Similar:An Excerpt from Mechanisms [2]: 'Professor RAMAC'Among the attractions at the 1958 World’…BooksMerry Christmas 2013Current_EventsDefunct Web Pages are Not Dead Ends to JournalistsIn my “News Writing” class,…
Santa, enraged, kills Ensign Jones and attacks the Enterprise in his sleigh. As Scotty works to keep the power flowing to the shields, Kirk and Bones infiltrate Santa’s headquarters. With the help of the comely and lonely Mrs. Claus, Kirk is led to the heart of the workshop, where he learns the truth: Santa is…
You can mute the sound during the annoying advertisement. The delivery of this segment is as good as the premise, but as you can tell from the picture, Palin gets her chance in front of the bongos, too. Similar:My buddy JTK helps me make a key point in my slideshow. #4c18 #b29Putting speaker notes on…
I just got an e-mail from the university saying that Bob Mendler, a regular guest speaker of our National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education, has died. At age 13, he was forced into Nazi slavery, and survived the death of dozens of his immediate family members. In 2008, a blogger posted a detailed account of…
In honor of my spilling spiced wine on myself at a faculty social, while excitedly responding to a question about Charles Babbage, Matt Hoy sent me a link to this awesome Ada Lovelace webcomic. Similar:Facebook’s push of “related articles” to users without checking credibility draws fireThe links under your friend’s post got y…Cyberculture11 Problems to…
Rhetorician and ethicist Stephen E. Toulmin has died. While I haven’t been able to fit his full system into my freshman writing courses, I did create a brief handout on the Toulmin method. Arguing against the absolute truth advocated in Plato’s idealized formal logic, Toulmin said that truth can be relative. Historical and cultural contexts,…
I would have trimmed about 20 seconds, or given the two lackeys more to do. Still, “The Tetris God” is worth a chuckle. Similar:Lego TimelineThe Lego brick system was patented 50 ye…AestheticsThoughtful Gestures Sometimes Speak Louder than WordsShe ended up waiting out the light cycle…AmusingFacebook Has Seized the Media, and That’s Bad News for Everyone…
In literature classes, students sometimes privilege author intent to an extent that hampers their ability to interpret literary works. Yes, it is possible to over-analyze anything. And just because there are many possible interpretations of a literary work, that doesn’t mean that every possible interpretation is well-supported by the text. (Occam’s Razor still applies, for…