My barely-used, barely-2-year old SCD103 is giving me the black screen in Camera mode but appears operational in Playback mode. I have called Samsung twice and was fed much the same story as I’ve read on this post. Please add us to the lawsuit too! —Another SCD103 victim (Camcorderinfo.com) My camcorder recently went out while I…
Step Afrika, the first professional company in the world dedicated to the tradition of stepping, performed at Seton Hill on Thursday, February 8. Step Afrika is critically acclaimed for its efforts to promote an appreciation for stepping, an art form born in African American fraternities and based in African traditions. Step Afrika serves as a…
Magazines – like television and other Old-Guard media – are seeing readers and advertising dollars follow consumers online. —Paul Tharp —Mags’ Circ Sags: Top Titles Down (NY Post) While “Mags’ Circ Sags” is a very efficient headline that lets the typesetter print it out in huge, eye-catching letters, a more informative title doesn’t take up any…
—Introducing the book (YouTube) New media anxieties are nothing new. Similar:There's No Substitute for FictionWhat do Peskin and Astington recommend f…BooksPeter Thiel Just Got His Wish: Gawker Is Shutting DownAFTER A 14-YEAR run, Gawker.com is shutt…BusinessDownloading Great ExpectationsA few weeks ago, I bought an audio recor…BooksThe Miller of the Dee; by James Baldwin; read by Dennis…
The space-age technology of mobile phones has allowed us to return to the more natural and humane communication patterns of pre-industrial society, when we lived in small, stable communities, and enjoyed frequent ‘grooming talk’ with a tightly integrated social network. In the fast-paced modern world, we had become severely restricted in both the quantity and…
With the ides of February comes lots of snow and Teaching Carnival #20. —Teaching Carnival #20 (Revisionspiral) I just noticed that Revisionspiral included my to do list in Teaching Carnival #20. I’m still not finished with that list, but I’ve made good progress. Similar:The Case for Banning Laptops in the ClassroomMaybe the students in this photo…
“MySpace knows its Web site is a playground for sexual predators. Because of that, MySpace should be doing some very basic safety precautions.” In a statement, MySpace officials applauded the judge’s decision that the company isn’t responsible for “wrongdoing committed by individuals who visit our site.” The lawsuit was brought by the Austin girl, who…
—Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson —2014 EPIC, by Google”Museum of Media History”) Via cac.aphony.org. A great companion piece to Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us. Similar:Over the years I have leveled up my Blender3D skills.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNLArSlF…AestheticsMaking movie magic with my dueling gut-shot daughterAestheticsA pleasant find: somebody left a painted rock by the side of the…
Even if the animation of Star Trek was limited, it becomes clear that the creativity of the animators working under such conditions was not. In fact, there are more than a few instances where the animators managed to turn their weaknesses into strengths in some unexpected ways. In this article, we’ll take a look at…
I mourn the great quotes I’ve lost to indecipherable notes and the quotes abandoned when speakers simply outran my note-taking ability. And it’s not just me being left in the dust by fast talkers. When I peer over a reporter’s shoulder at some freshly recorded notes, the mess I see never inspires confidence. Yes, a…
We think of precociousness as an early form of adult achievement, and, according to Gladwell, that concept is much of the problem. “What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.” To be a…
Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out. […] Having artificially induced a round of failure, Dweck’s researchers then gave all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that were engineered…
Sometimes lawyers contact me about a case featuring URL hacking (or, as one such lawyer called it, “URL typing”). I haven’t yet been interested enough in a case to offer to do any writing or testifying for free. But I’ll summarize my position here. If a company built a private warehouse, not intended to be…
The BBC televised a 38-minute adaptation in 1938 – probably the first ever example of science fiction television. —My Science Fiction Life: The Story of Science Fiction in Britain (BBC) The excerpt is from the entry on one of my favorite plays, Rossum’s Universal Robots. Similar:I just finished "Beyond Eyes" and I think there's something in…
Pundits have been predicting the arrival of “interactive fiction” for decades — dating back at least to the clunky, campy Choose-Your-Own-Adventures of the 1980s. Video games ploughed some of this terrain: Some of the first, like Zork, were text-based adventures, which themselves were born out of the storytelling vibe of Dungeons and Dragons. But Hotel…
As I stared at the screen glassy-eyed, reveling in this whole new subculture I did not even know about, I stumbled across a Web site for Inform 7, http://www.inform-fiction.org, a design system for interactive fiction. Much simpler than a programming language, Inform 7 is a free, easy way for nerds like me to create their…
I forgot–on the way out Z, at w-l=Z-1, Rick Olsen, at great cost to his body, entered the tight canyon heading south with the great water sounds. It turned out to be a 1′ high 9″ wide waterfall. The canyon continues as a very bad lead ‘2’h X 1’w with a 1″ stream in the…
In a bizarre attack, a well-known author and Holocaust scholar was dragged out of a San Francisco hotel elevator by an apparent Holocaust denier who reportedly had been trailing him for weeks. —Adam Martin —Elie Wiesel attacked in S.F. hotel (Examiner.com) He wasn’t hurt, but this is scary. Similar:Internet hyperlinks do not infringe on copyright, EU…
It’s just 12 hours. (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) When I told a colleague that I was planning to stay at work until midnight in order to work on an abstract, her eyes bugged out. “I didn’t come into work until noon today,” I said, “so I’ll only spend 12 hours in the office.” Her look of pity…
“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either,” he says. —NY Times publisher: Our goal is to manage the transition from print to internet (Haaretz.com) Similar:Pac-Man”The kids who grew up steering Pac-Man a…DesignAwesome 1935 Soviet Movie Deploys Saxophone-Controlled Robots to Crush Tophat- and…