Underneath the veneer of “natural language,” Inform 7 actually has a pretty rigorous syntax, and it can be very picky about how you word certain kinds of phrases. But then there are other areas where the syntax is very loose, and it’s easy to be fooled into thinking that you can write your game in…
Our story about the the most popular Halloween costumes of the season, first published Oct. 14, misidentified the super-speedy The Flash and Boy Wonder superhero Robin as Marvel comics characters. In fact, they are DC Comics superheroes. We regret this error; it is against Bankrate’s policy, and just plain unwise, to cause offense to superhumans…
“Vote with Your Feet” Discusison I was reading a forum in the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which a poster asked for tips on teaching long night classes. I came across a reference to a “‘vote with your feet’ discussion.” I’d never heard the term before, but I gather it means you say “Everyone who…
The Office had nothing around it but the two gas stations and a very busy road. It wasn’t leaning against anything, wasn’t under an overpass or covered with stickers from a nearby venue. It was its own thing, a classy, self-contained room that a young fellow spent his youth wiling away the hours in, trying…
“New Media Projects” introduces students [all English majors in this section, though it’s not restricted as such] to Inform 7, The Games Factory 2, Flash, Blender 3D, and Hammer. All students completed short projects in each medium, and selected tools to use for a midterm and a final project. Students kept a development journal on…
Just as you can’t be too rich or too thin, I’d always thought, so you can’t have too many tools on your Swiss Army knife – but that was before I took delivery of the new Giant Swiss Army knife. Grotesque, if superbly engineered, the Giant weighs nearly a kilogram and features 85 devices in…
—Advent Calendar 2006 (Leslie Harpold) A cute Advent calendar. Similar:Two Steps Down the Interactive Fiction RoadWonderfully detailed analysis of two gro…AestheticsTop 8 events not to miss in DecemberMy daughter Carolyn appears as Young Est…CultureResults of the 18th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition The 18th Annual Interactive Fiction Com…Current_EventsTeachers finding games give a leg up on learningThanks for the…
Parents trickled to the school later Tuesday morning to pick up their children. Nearly three months ago, a 10th-grader at the same school, just outside Philadelphia, was arrested for allegedly bringing in a loaded gun. The boy showed the gun to another student, and word soon trickled to a teacher and then a security officer,…
That craft has never been more vibrant, or vital. But the ability to make a living at it will crumble soon. The pros who deal in breaking news have a problem. They can’t possibly compete in the media-sphere of the future. We?re entering a world of ubiquitous media creation and access. When the tools of…
I can never resist a challenge and this one, posed by a mischievous friend, was a humdinger: could I befriend one of my own children on one of those ‘social networking’ websites for teenagers without being caught out? Could I make a convincing youngster and engage my son in online conversations? While it was an…
There is no clacking of keyboards in most classrooms at the Mary Erskine and Stewart’s Melville Junior School, although there is a full range of facilities for computer lessons and technology isn’t being ignored. But the private school’s principal believes the old-fashioned pens have helped boost the academic performance and self-esteem of his 1,200 pupils.…
*clunk* The rotating tin cylinder within the phonograph vibrates slightly as a brass needle scrapes against it. The sound of a throat being cleared emerges from the machine’s hornshell speaker, followed by a thin, haunting voice. “March the 16th.” A deep, shaky breath. “I dread to say it, but I believe I am going mad.…
Someday, much sooner than you’d like, that shiny new toy you just bought will break. When it happens, you’ll swear, you’ll cry — then you’ll sigh and open your wallet.–Kris Wagner —Gadgets Built to Fail (Wired) “They time them so when you finally paid for them, they’re used up.” — Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman…
I have a Verizon unlimited data plan in the U.S. and recently crossed the border to Canada. Prior to crossing the border I called customer service to find out what rates I’d be paying for voice and data. The data rate I was quoted was “.002 cents per kilobyte.” I was surprised at the rate…
I no longer see cases of blatant plagiarism as personal insults. They are, instead, the pathetic bleats of students who think they know enough — maybe all there really is to know — about how to read and think and write. The paradox of plagiarism is that in order to be really good at it,…
“For more than 100 years journalism has been sustained by this virtuous circle in which the audience paid for their news, and the advertiser paid to reach that audience, and the publisher made a profit and paid his journalists and the society benefited into the bargain,” said Michael Oreskes, executive editor of the International Herald…
‘Theory’, we are told, has radically changed the nature of literary studies, but people who say this do not mean literary theory, the systematic account of the nature of literature and of the methods for analysing it. When people complain that there is too much theory in literary studies these days, they don’t mean too…
I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t seem to connect at all with the average audience. Seriously, folks, what is the problem here? I’ve been doing this a whole lot longer than any of the clowns out on the circuit these days, so I think I know a thing or two about…
—Maybe! (Wondermark) Click to see the punchline. Saving this for the next time I teach A Doll House or “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” This one with an elephant is good, too. Oh, and this one about the kidney made me laugh out loud. I feel like I need to add a new tag called “retro”. Similar:Multimodal Composition:…
Less intimidating and frustrating than the conference, more “human” than the margin note, audio commentary possesses the potential to become a space where real teaching and learning can emerge in the midst of feedback. —Sommers and Sipple —A Heterotopic Space Haven’t looked closely at this, but I’m blogging it for access later. Since I find…