I’ve been sitting on a particular interactive fiction work-in-progress for ten years. Ten years! Every so often I dust it off and add a little more, but I still haven’t finished the chore of converting it from Inform 6 to Inform 7. And while hiding from this project, I went and released a different project…
I bought my Olympia Monica S in Croydon, south London, from an office supply shop when I was 20. It was a decisive moment. I wanted to write and a typewriter was the essential tool of the trade, an instrument every bit as vital as a paintbrush is to a painter or a guitar to…
A few years ago, I bought a wireless mouse, used it for a few days, then put it away in favor of my old mouse. Every so often, like when I’m not feeling the course-prep love and I’m desperately looking for an excuse to procrastinate, I remember that wireless mouse, but can’t remember why I…
People on the road can turn an LOL into a great big O-M-G. — Katie Couric, advocating a “designated texter.” Similar:Gathering background objects to create cluttered shelves. This Baby Gund “Rainbow Hector” …AmusingText Adventure Geeks Rejoice: Major Inform7 UpdateI have final grades, an annual report, a…Current_EventsNorth Sea cod: Is it true there are only 100…
A teenager who posted a death threat on Facebook, yesterday became the first person in Britain to be jailed for bullying on a social networking site. Keeley Houghton, 18, said she would kill Emily Moore, whom she had bullied for four years since they were at school together. —Daily Mail Similar:A professor examines why her…
A reprint of a good article that has since disappeared behind the Technology Review subscription firewall. Probably too dated to assign to my news writing students this year, so I guess I’ll just refer to it in lecture. The informational edge was perilous, it was unpredictable, and it required the news audience to be willing…
Any college professor knows the depressing feeling that comes when you stay up late marking a stack of papers, and a high percentage of students don’t even bother to pick them up. One instructor made an art installation out of abandoned student essays. As an instructor of art for the past 7 years, I have…
Zombie math. Yay! (PDF. Boo!) Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and…
Many specific things come to mind when I ponder writing a 200 word paragraph on my identity as a writer. First of all, when I think of producing that many words about my writing identity, I think of my ability to start immediately writing, using the first thing that pops into my head, since the…
Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., recently introduced a grade called FD to deal with cheaters. The letters stand for failure with academic dishonesty. —Calgary Herald FD for cheaters? Why not FU? (Thanks for the suggestion, Josh.) Similar:Facebook’s Censorship Problem Is What Happens When a Tech Company Controls the NewsFacebook makes editorial decisions that …BusinessA…
Interesting pair of essays in The Chronicle Review. I may use this in my journalism class for a unit on statistics, advocacy, and the importance of open-minded skepticism in the reporting of the news. Christina Hoff Sommers, in her essay “Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship” (The Chronicle Review, online edition, June 29), criticized Nancy K.D.…
TV news emphasizes the immediate and the emotional. This screen shot shows how the NBC news affiliate in Miami allows readers to rate stories by emotions. Notice that this mechanism does not reward stories for being fair, informative, accurate, or even newsworthy. I stumbled across this feature while reading a story about the 11-year-old reporter…
Teale Fristoe reviews The Great Flu. In the game, the player acts as the head of the World Pandemic Control during the outbreak of an unknown flu. As the game progresses, the player must take actions, such as dispatching research teams, dispensing medication and face masks, and closing schools and airports, in an attempt to…
If you want to perform a proper string quartet, they noted, you can’t cut out the cellist nor can you squeeze in more performances by playing the music faster. But that was then — before MP3s and iPods proved just how freely music could flow. Before Google scanned and digitized 7 million books and Wikipedia…
I just noticed that Jason Scott has redesigned the home page for his film website. Good things are worth the wait. I’m content to wait. Similar:A Tribute to a Journalism FavoriteAs my news writing students work on seve…AestheticsMS-Word's helpful "View -> Focus" mode delays stress-related breakdowns.You won’t usually catch me saying anythi…CybercultureThe Darkness and the…
One reason why I continue to resist putting much effort into Facebook and Twitter is that, when I do so, my work disappears into someone else’s database. If someone else decides to start charging me to view my own archives, or the links other people create to my content, then the visibility of my work…
I was on the road (and away from a computer) for the past few days, on a little family outing. My wife brought along a copy of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure #4 that she picked up cheap at a library sale. The cover of this book, originally published in 1979, features a big-jawed space hero in a suit…
[The] story is told of a music critic who was sent to a concert hall in Chicago to review a performance. When he found the hall burning down, he went home and went to bed. In the morning he explained, “There was no story. The concert hall burned down.” I trust these stories are apocryphal,…
Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables — nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours — and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is…
Here’s how Ebert ended a review he wrote yesterday: It’s said that Richard Harding Davis was dispatched by William Randolph Hearst to cover the Johnstown flood. Here was his lead: “God stood on a mountaintop here and looked at what his waters had wrought.” Hearst cabled back: “Forget flood. Interview God.” A wonderful story. Checking out the quote online,…