Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d do some more work on the Wikipedia entry for Colossal Cave Adventure. Similar:Yellow Journalism Did Not Cause the Spanish-American War (Role of Sensationalized Headlin… When a correspondent sent to Cuba to c…AestheticsSpace:1999 design aesthetic merged detailed miniatures with curvy Euro-futurist interior d…Clearly influenced by Kubrick’s 1969 fil…AestheticsWhy your brain’s so bad…
The Wilhelm Scream is a sound effect that appears in many action films, as an in-joke among sound designers. Similar:“Let It Go,” Idina Menzel’s Frozen ballad: It sends the wrong message.This author is probably overthinking thi…Culture35% of my site visitors right now are using mobile devicesThis year I have seen an uptick in the p…CybercultureWhat…
It’s funny, because it’s true…. David Galef satirizes the humiliation humanities professors have to go through when requesting research funds: To Professor Michael Wall, Chair, English Department: This has to do with the travel budget for the coming academic year. As we discussed last spring, I need something on the order of $700 for the…
Roy F. Baumeister One can imagine an ancient battle in which the enemy was driven off and the city saved, and the returning soldiers are showered with gold coins. An early feminist might protest that hey, all those men are getting gold coins, half of those coins should go to women. In principle, I agree.…
One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices. The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole,…
Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves. Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves. And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others. —BBC Wikipedia has a good collection of background resources on “corrupted blood,” the virtual…
1. What Berlin wall?35. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.43. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.53. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.55. MTV has never featured music videos.66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they…
Here’s a collection of teaching tips for the first day of classes brought to us by Honolulu Community College (check their reference lists for more good sources, too). The Pig Personality Profile [try here — DGJ] is frivolous fun, but probably a good icebreaker and something I might even use when I teach Memoir Writing…
A large majority of video games sold in the UK receive a rating under the voluntary Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) system, but some games, about 6-7% of the total, are referred to the BBFC. In determining what classification to give, the BBFC employs much the same approach as it does to films and DVDs. However,…
Today we drove to the Thunder Mountain Lenape powwow, which was full of color and music. There were two drums — that is, groups of singers who sat around the same drum, chanting in rhythm. Dancers mostly moved around the circle. The younger the dancer, the fancier the footwork and the more the likelihood of…
I wouldn’t actually call it a site redesign, since I just selected a canned template supplied by MT. There are many things I love about the interface, and there are many things that annoy me to no end. I’d like to give people the option of filling out a CAPTCHA and publishing a comment right…
I’ve been experimenting with MT4, and have in fact imported 5 years of blog entries from the indie software created by my former student, Will Gayther. I got used to the particular rhythms of Will’s software, which was very fast and configurable. But I got tired of having to fight the spammers on two different…
SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database. Manufacturers can make…
Because so little primary historical work has been done on the classic text computer game “Colossal Cave Adventure”, academic and popular references to it frequently perpetuate inaccuracies. “Adventure” was the first in a series of text-based games (“interactive fiction”) that emphasize exploring, puzzles, and story, typically in a fantasy setting; these games had a significant…
The internet news audience — roughly a quarter of all Americans — tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. —Internet News…
There is ultimately no way to “justify” SCMRPG in the minds of those who find it deplorable but I believe even the game’s detractors will find that the film fleshes out the controversy to better understand the future of games as a medium. The film is essentially a challenge to game developers to rethink the…
If we teach our children that school is a prison, then summer school is extra punishment for the worst offenders. The sting of humiliation and failure adds to the pain of having to go to school when your friends are free. That’s too bad, because summer school isn’t a punishment, it’s an opportunity. In terms…
Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley hypothesis states that, as artificial beings get closer to resembling real humans, the slightest errors or inaccuracies can shift our responses from empathy to disbelief and even disgust. It’s why, in Toy Story, we love Woody and Buzz Lightyear, but are totally unmoved by Andy, their human owner. This is something…
James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University have developed an algorithm to help people who want to remove bits of photographs. The parts being removed could be unsightly lorries in the snaps of the rural idyll where they took a holiday or even an old boyfriend or girlfriend they want to rub out…
Vicary and Fraley modeled their study on a 1979 Random House interactive fiction series, “Choose Your Own Adventure,” which allowed the reader to select from multiple options at critical points in the story. Each choice directed the reader to a new scenario. This approach appealed to the researchers because earlier studies of individual behavior in…