My robot came configured to make 384 donuts per hour automatically. —Donut Robot of Love 2000 (adw3345) How can you not read something that includes a lead like that? Via MeFi. Similar:The Child –Antoine Bardou-Jacquet –The Child…Aesthetics20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't GetI expect my English majors not to balk w…AcademiaJerz and Daughter Teach Scratch (Digital Storytelling Tutorial)In…
A project implemented by the European Union is currently seeing seven cities and regions clear-cutting their forest of traffic signs. Ejby, in Denmark, is participating in the experiment, as are Ipswich in England and the Belgian town of Ostende. The utopia has already become a reality in Makkinga, in the Dutch province of Western Frisia.…
You have a billion potential teachers. You have an opportunity to learn in ways that you or I could not even have dreamed of when we were in school. And you have an opportunity to shepherd your students into a much more complex, much messier, and much more profound world of learning in ways that…
Miss Weaser, from Tufnell Park, began testing gadgets for the blogging website Shiny Media, which posted the one-minute video clips on YouTube. The films included her demonstrating mobile phones, laptops, a GPS and even a Cyberman head. In September, they were spotted by producers from TV company Princess Productions, which had been commissioned to make…
—Dumb Azz Burglars, A MUST SEE WMV (YouTube) Do not — I repeat, NOT — drink milk while watching this, for it will shoot out your nose. This one is also kind of cute, though it’s too long. Similar:More than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the… Imagine…
You know, I’ve loved Firefox for a long, long time. I can’t live without my tabbed browsing, I’m literally lost without it, but with Firefox 2.0 someone at Mozilla has totally dropped the ball when it comes to the most compelling feature I use Firefox for, and that’s the tabs feature. —Duncan Riley —2 things…
Writers are always beaten over the head with the admontion “Show, don’t tell.” It’s not bad advice by any means. Often it’s pretty good advice. But, I know there are times when you should tell instead. For instance, in my Nanowrimo, I appreciate the word inflation, but I’m well aware that no one actually wants…
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:How Copyright Law Gave Us STAR WARSIn an alternate universe George Lucas ne…BusinessAdaobi Tricia Nwaubani: My Great-Grandfather, the Nigerian Slave-TraderThis fascinating essay, by the grandchil…CultureMcCain's 2008 Concession Speech: Republicans interrupt their candidate's concession speech…That moment during McCain’s concession s…CultureNational Mall site approved for memorial to…
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…