I just took the kids outside to watch the International Space Station fly overhead. It was visible for about five minutes, and at its brightest I thought I could see some details (the solar panels?), but it was mostly just a bright dot. It rose from the southwest, went by almost overhead, and disappeared to…
From an article I published in 1997, back when I thought I was pretty hot stuff to include postage-stamp-sized video clips on a website. The website also featured a Java simulation of the outdoor pageant that celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi (which is today). The outdoor theatrical event in the medieval city of York,…
The family took in a matinee showing of Prince Caspian. I’d heard mediocre reviews, so I had low expectations. I knew they’d have to add some subplot because the book is pretty thin, and the long narration of Caspian’s boyhood would have been out of place in an action/adventure movie (which is how they’re billing…
Who would think of working a casual reference to Aliens into a blog entry about a trip to Disneyland. Nobody but James Lileks, that is. Usually I hate turbulence, but I was too tired to care, and I slept through it like Hicks on the drop down to LV-426. Similar:Adding a little Middle-Earth drama to…
Seton Hill recently unveiled a new home page. The internal pages all seem to be unchanged, so the changes were not radical, but they were welcome. I have a little quibble with this semi-transparent fold-up menu. The menu itself is a good idea, which lets the designers re-use the artwork created for our print and billboard…
My first day back in the office since submitting final grades last Tuesday. Part of it I spent familiarizing myself with some new features in Blender3D, such as an easy way to give objects fur (or grass). I never noticed the wave modifier before — that’s how I got the purple cube to start jumping…
The open-source 3D design too, Blender, has just been updated. I was up until well past midnight last night checking the website every half hour or so, waiting for this release… now I notice it’s up just as I’m on my way out the door. Oh well, I can look forward to using it tonight…
Mike Musgrove, Post I.T. (Washington Post) One computer historian joked that the game’s release “set the entire computer industry back two weeks” when it appeared on Arpanet, the U.S. government-designed Internet precursor, about 30 years ago. That link, by the way, connects to the page of associate English professor Dennis G. Jerz, of Seton Hill…
#6 is devoted to Infocom text adventures: And the fact is, the classic Infocom games (I have left it to the reader to pick his or her favorite, as there were so many of such a high quality that it is folly to pick one for this list) were just tremendous entertainment, mainly for two…
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities: I’ve had a longstanding, friendly debate with a colleague about whether it is sufficient to provide page images of books, or whether text should be converted to a machine- and human-readable format such as XML. She argues that converting scanned books to text is expensive and that the primary goal…
I saw a teaser that’s got me wondering what’s going on at NASA… WASHINGTON — NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from…
Thank you, Rosemary, for sending me this interesting visual essay on the persistence of digital memory, from Instructables.com: Want to make a flash drive that nobody in a modern office would even think about taking? Hide it in a pink eraser and it’s secure in this digital age. Install windows 7 from USB Similar:Choose wisely……
Blender3D is an awesome, insanely powerful, and completely free 3D design tool. I’ve been playing with it for about two years now, and while it took me a while to get used to the interface, I’m getting very comfortable in it. I’ve already posted blog entries about designing cabinets and a walking hectopus, but I…
Boston Globe: Without a robust study of literature there can be no adequate reckoning of the human condition – no full understanding of art, culture, psychology, or even of biology. As Binghamton University biologist David Sloan Wilson says, “the natural history of our species” is written in love poems, adventure stories, fables, myths, tales, and…
A thoughtful post about the fate of film criticism. Much of this boils down what happens when film criticism leaves the world of print journalism and adapts to the TV — not only in the content of the review but the context of celebrity/insider/gossip in which movies are presented to the public. (Armond White, New…
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities: “You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.” Recognize these lines? They’re from the opening screen of Will Crowther’s ADVENTURE (1975), the first example of…
A few years old but, worth a few yuks, from McSweeney’s. In his nine years with the department, Dr. Jones has failed to complete even one uninterrupted semester of instruction. In fact, he hasn’t been in attendance for more than four consecutive weeks since he was hired. Departmental records indicate Dr. Jones has taken more…
A good example of new media journalism, in which narration and animation weave short video clips into a coherent analysis. Via the Washington Post. Our partners at Slate.com created a seven-minute satirical depiction of the Democratic primary season thus far. It covers Sen. Hillary Clinton’s “cackle,” Sen. Mike Gravel scowling at the camera, debates, former…
According to Metafilter, “Nothing signals the death of a trend like an article in the NY Times Style section.” Even his clothing — an unlikely fusion of current and neo-Edwardian pieces (polo shirt, gentleman’s waistcoat, paisley bow tie), not unlike those he plans to sell this summer at his own Manhattan haberdashery — is an…
Our Sons their Father’s failing mainframes see, And where lies reel-to-reel goes USB. Similar:Pinkalicious — "Buzz Off"My daughter plays the Bumblebee in “Buzz…AestheticsSomething to Ponder — Let Me Fix That Meme For YouArtWe Got A Look Inside The 45-Day Planning Process That Goes Into Creating A Single Corporat…The professionals don’t always spend 45 …BusinessNot a…