EL405 Students Tackle Blender’s ”Gus” Tutorial (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) My New Media Projects students got into small groups and walked through my Flash version of Blender’s “Gus” animation tutorial. It looks like Blender3D saves some temporary files in such a way that the lab computer’s security restrictions cause some issues, because two of the student groups…
LARRY KING: On your blog you write, “Bush is going to declare war on China next, I swear.” ROSEANNE BARR: I was so scared because I woke up and there was the Drudge, you know. I always read the Drudge Report and it said on there that the Chinese were like, you know, spying on…
Video games are a viable storytelling medium, but the trouble is that video games always have the same protagonist, which is the player. And he always has the same set of motivations, which is to kill and don’t die. That’s not conducive to great novels. We have a character with this negative motivation and that…
Video news releases are pre-packaged broadcast segments designed to look like television news stories, that are funded by and scripted for corporate or government clients. (See “Fake TV News: Introduction.”) On April 6, 2006, the Center for Media and Democracy released a comprehensive report detailing TV newsrooms’ use of VNRs. The report, “Fake TV News:…
Plunge should appear in the hed; the piece should be only a couple of sentences long; and it should “include the number feared dead, the identity of any group on board”?a soccer team, church choir, or students?”as well as the distance of the plunge from the capital city.” The words ravine or gorge should appear.…
Having started with a single video of a trip to the zoo in April of last year, YouTube now airs 100 million videos–and its users add 70,000 more–every day. What happened? YouTube’s creators had stumbled onto the intersection of three revolutions. First, the revolution in video production made possible by cheap camcorders and easy-to-use video…
Whack-A-Moliere (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I made this with cleverpig.com’s Whack-A-Pig tutorial. Similar:Harvard Science Historian Publishes Results of Unprecedented 30-Year Census of Copernican …”Catholic church authorities were disple…HistoryHere's to the grim-based photojournalist who saved my bacon ~35 years ago Here’s to you, grim-faced photojournal…AcademiaSeton Hill University advertises for “Social & Digital Content Manager”The Social & Digital Content…
FAR! FAR away, the Google lives, in a land which only children can go to. It is a wonderful land of funny flowers, and birds, and hills of pure white heather. […] The sun is setting ? Can’t you hear A something in the distance Howl!!? I wonder if it’s ? Yes!! it is That…
One day when we’re literally halfway through SQ4, Mark and I were called into Ken’s office. We were asked what we thought about using the (dumbass) point-and-click interface that they were using, in I guess it was King’s Quest 5 then, and what we thought about putting it in SQ4. We said we wanted to…
[C]hocolate chip cookies (CCCs) have eight times the energy as the same weight of TNT. How can that be true? Why can’t we blow up a building with CCCs instead of TNT? —Physics for Future Presidents Via Metafilter. My eight-year-old son is a physics junkie. I can’t wait to show him the videotaped lectures and…
For example, let’s imagine that the protagonist’s problem is that he is being bullied at school and he doesn’t know how to deal with this. In order to simulate his problem, he could use a Pac-Man template and modify the original game. He would replace the Pac-Man with a cartoon version of himself and replace…
“I’ve been making up bedtime stories for my children and suddenly I’ve had a brainwave. These stories are good! These stories are brilliant! I would be failing in my moral duty to my adoring public if I did not put them down on paper.” If my theory holds true, it is scary, because it suggests…
7. Become a Public Intellectual. Write a column for The Chronicle or an opinion essay for a major paper saying what you really think about something controversial, even if you have to risk burning some bridges in the process. One well-read column can have more impact than years of obscure scholarship. Or work in some…
“All kinds of disciplines are going to have to converge. People with all kinds of skills are going to have to work together to build a new web which is going to be even better,” he said. He also said employers were now beginning to complain that there were not enough people who fully understood…
Given a sufficient amount of server space and the commitment to maintain it, a resource already exists that may not only sound the death knell of archaeology, but also the opportunity to enable a greater depth and sophistication of anthropology than has ever existed before. So radical an innovation would this new anthropological methodology represent…
Seton Hill University encourages self-expression and open communication as part of the student experience, in balance with the mission of Seton Hill University and the ideals of sensitivity, dignity and respect for self and for others. —Seton Hill University Information Technology’s Special Comments about Internet Usage and Web Postings (Seton Hill University) More and more students…
—Best. Costume. Ever. If your geek quotient isn’t high enough to recognize it, this is a mock-up of the power loader from Aliens. Similar:Teaching Composition with Interactive FictionI’m on a committee that is exploring a m…AcademiaThe Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of Harold Innis)As a grad student at the University of T…CultureSon Doong Cave in Viet…
—Percentage of Chart Which Resembles Pac-Man (themot.org) Similar:Gawker Media Files for Chapter 11 BankruptcyThis is fallout from losing an invasion …BusinessEmily Short's advice on writing great game protagonistsAt GDC 2015, noted interactive fiction g…CybercultureYour first #blender3d retractable #steampunk landing wheels will be your worst. But you ha…Your first #blender3d retractable #steam…AestheticsA former student working in SEO…
Approving or Ignoring Comments on Old Student Blog Entries (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) It’s that time of year — students elsewhere in the world are going to Google, and finding old blog entries that my former students posted as homework. Sometimes the visitor will leave a comment that says “Great site! You really helped me save my…
—Stephen Colbert on Blogs (Youtube) My student Gabby Blanchard posted this on her blog. Hilarious. Similar:Texas lawyer trapped by cat filter on Zoom call, informs judge he is not a catA Texas lawyer accidentally left a kitte…AmusingGoogle Stops Scanning Student Gmail Accounts for Ads Google said Wednesday that it stoppe…AcademiaTo Learn More, This High-Schooler Left The…