For instance, on the day that I am writing this (Christmas Day, 2006), the big news story is that James Brown, one of the greats of rock ‘n roll music, has died. As an individual running a news web site — or as a student running a news web site — I probably would not…
Hammer, 3D Design, and the Virtues of Minimalism (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) For the past month, as preparation for teaching a brief Hammer unit in my “New Media Projects” course, I got pretty good at Hammer basics — in part because I recorded a series of Flash tutorials, and doing so really solidified some basic design skills.…
If the case goes to trial, its outcome will be important both to bloggers and to people who chronicle their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he may teach the Washingtonienne case this spring during his class at Georgetown Law School. “Anybody…
Your mission is one of the most important mission that has taken place every year for hundreds of years. This mission requires you to do the impossible: DELIVER PRESENTS TO ALL THE BOYS AND GIRLS ALL OVER THE WORLD. You must position your distribution system before Christmas Eve. It’s Christmas, and everybody wins. But maybe…
The CRPG is the spine of the electronic gaming industry–and it’s not hard to see why. You just can’t have more fun with a computer or a console than when you’re engrossed in a well-crafted CRPG. But where did the CRPG come from? From what deep, dank dungeon did they crawl? How has the genre…
The more dirt he moved, the more meteorite he exposed. They lowered the backhoe scoop and strapped the rock to it. Grinding and whining, the machine pulled free the biggest meteorite Arnold had ever seen. Its shell was mottled, stippled like ground beef. That’s a pattern typical of pallasites, the rarest type of meteorite on…
Does it matter that most films offer such an unrealistic depiction of usability? Mainly, no. A movie’s purpose is entertainment, not task performance. So, go ahead and employ user interfaces and interaction techniques that are entertaining and would never work in the real world. Films are littered with so many other unrealistic plot details: you’d…
Guiding a single point of light seems most suitable in a highly abstract game, and the pixel has shined in several of these. The driving real-time puzzle game Qix, a coin-op game from the 1980s, is a notable one. (Admittedly, the player’s pixel is highlighted with a surrounding diamond, but it’s still reasonably considered a…
But wait, you might ask, don’t people accidentally repeat each other’s sentences all the time? It seems to me that this should not be unusual. Yet try plugging that last sentence word by word into Google Book Search, and watch what happens. It: Rejected–too many hits to count It seems: 11,160,000 matches It seems to:…
After learning a bit about IF and playing a few games, you might think to yourself: hey, I could do this! And the best part is: you’re right. The modern IF scene is so vibrant largely because it’s quite possible for a single author to build a game from start to finish. It’s easy for…
—Choose Your Own Adventure with bees, lasers, zombies, robots, hot scientists… No time to check this one out… blogging it for later. Similar:Flannery O'Connor: "I am in a state of shock"There’s often a moment in a lit class wh…BooksDigital Storytelling: an Efficient and Engaging Learning ActivityA digital story is essentially any combi…CybercultureThe Best Way to…
Consider their treatment of Mr. Spock. Almost every episode, Dr. McCoy heckles him over his logic and even uses “green-blooded” as part of his threats. Captain Kirk, ostensibly Spock’s greatest friend, takes any opportunity he can to point out problems logic causes, and on more than one occasion makes Spock the butt of race-based jokes…
Electronic text in general is a volatile medium, where conventions often emerge and change before they can be translated successfully into print. Further, IF in particular has attracted only sporadic academic attention. Therefore, this bibliography includes useful information that can be gleaned from non-academic sources, including popular periodicals, fan tributes, and authors’ manifestos. Excellent theory,…
Information is more conveniently disseminated, and there’s more of it, because anybody can chip in. There’s more “choice”–and in a sense, more democracy. Folks on the WWW, conservatives especially, boast about how the alternative media corrodes the “MSM,” for mainstream media, a term redolent with unfairness and elitism. The blogs are not as significant as…
And “Charlotte’s Web” is a sneakily sophisticated fable. White certainly appreciated the joys of life on the farm (while evading some of its bloodier aspects), but the book is really about the benevolent, even miraculous power of celebrity. It is, most simply, the story of a spider, Charlotte A. Cavitica, who saves the life of…
“Is There A Santa Claus?” was published 21 September 1897, more than three months before the Christmas holiday. It was placed in the third of three columns of editorials that day, subordinate to seven other commentaries on such matters as “British Ships in American Waters,” ambiguity in Connecticut’s election law, and features of the chainless…
“Here are my keys, Dr. Jerz. I think I will miss these most of all. Thank you for everything that doesn’t fit in an envelope. Thank you for being my teacher, and friend.” —Amanda CochranHere are my keys, Dr. Jerz (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) This was a difficult good-bye. I’ve gotten to know many fantastic students here…
We need a return to the core values of social responsibility. We must unite our voices and demand that society’s wrongs be righted, before our priorities as a people are forgotten forever. I speak of nothing less than the need for justice, and I demand justice-themed TV action-adventure dramas–not two seasons from now, not three…
There are remarkable parallels between “The Canterbury Tales” and modern rap, Brinkman said at Wellesley College during a recent stop on his tour of high schools and colleges across the eastern United States and Puerto Rico. “Chaucer and rap are both performance-based and they’re both battles of words where your proficiency gets you by,” said…
The recent conference on the Holocaust held in Tehran should be viewed by the world as exactly what it was: nothing more than a propaganda effort by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to bolster his own political agenda and image as someone willing — even if ignorantly — to confront the United States and Israel. While…