Infocom, king of the text adventure and the first behemoth of American computer game development, began not with a bang, but with an internet meme. —Lara Crigger —The Short, Happy Life of Infocom (The Escapist) There are some details about Infocom culture that are nicely placed. I like what Jeremy Douglass wrote about the genre of…
Capitalizing on youthful passion for video games, school leaders hope to keep more kids in school by offering the chance to conceive, design, build — and sell — their own video game. “That’s what they love,” said David White, the school’s chief academic officer. “That’s the hook.” —Scott Elliott —Reading, writing and video games (Dayton Daily…
—Blender Basics, 2nd Ed (pdf) (Central Dauphin High School) Where was this book during the last 3 weeks when I was struggling with random half-finished tutorials? Thank you, James Chronister! Similar:Facebook Hired Journalists to Train Its Trending Topics AlgorithmRecently I noticed an unusually incendia…BusinessReplacing Disputed Flags with Related ArticlesInstead of flagging links to questionabl…BusinessHe couldn’t get…
In hiring, I look for individuals who demonstrate insatiable intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and analytical skills as well as firm control of the English language. Today, it is important for journalists also to have a sound grounding in science and business/finance. Sadly, I find that it is common to find journalism grads that lack all…
RideMax is a computer software program guaranteed to help you save time waiting in line at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. RideMax allows you to specify the attractions you wish to ride during your visit, then uses a sophisticated scheduling algorithm to order your attractions so that the amount of time you spend in line…
The report, written by Senior Research Specialist Amanda Lenhart and Associate Director Susannah Fox, says that bloggers are avid consumers and creators of online content. They are also heavy users of the internet in general. Forty-four percent of bloggers have taken material they find online — like songs, text, or images — and remixed it…
There are serious logical problems posed by any attempt to prove conclusively that a person does not (or did not) exist. No matter how many searches fail to prove the existence of someone, that failure does not negate the person’s possible existence. However, when a specific person’s specific occupation or background are made relevant as…
Summer Blogging Slowdown (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’m going on a little family vacation, and won’t be back until Tuesday. We’re visiting my brother-in-law in New Jersey, and plan to visit Philadelphia, too. I hope this trip goes better than last year’s. Similar:Set design for a virtual production of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Post-apocalypti… AestheticsThe Girl at…
—Knights of the Round Table — Star Trek TOS (YouTube) Amusing. Not side-splittingly funny, like that Bush/Blair mashup that was circulating last year. But still amusing. Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary. Similar:A Matter of Perspective (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 13) Multiple-POV Courtroom …Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….EthicsSnap's share price sinks, trades just above IPO…
—Blender for the Faint Hearted — 06: Material Basics, Part 2 (SciFi Meshes) I’ve been working with the open source 3D design tool “Blender.” It’s powerful. Very powerful. It’s got an overwhelming number of buttons, and the existing documentation is incomplete. I have asked Seton Hill to purchase a handful of copies of a professional 3D…
Angry mother to preteen girl: “Don’t ever tell me to shut up again. That’s totally disrespectful. Now go and fill your damn water.” Similar:I ditched Google for Bing with ChatGPT for a month — here's what happened | Tom's Guide Occasionally, when I don’t know exactl…CybercultureYork Plays 2025: Five cameras, adding up to ~100 hours…
Although professors may hope to remove obstacles to success, innate personality and other environmental factors may influence learning more than what we are able to offer with the short number of hours we are in contact with students. Yet, there are some tactics that seem to encourage real engagement in undergraduate core classes: —Shari Wilson…
The 28-year-old, identified only as D.M., took a photo of his speedometer showing 170 km (100 mph) on a back road in northern Croatia and then put it on the Web site of his local municipality. Police found him three days later. —Hey! Who turned me in? (Reuters) Similar:Details matter in journalism. Get the brand of…
Qui ne se souvient pas du SPACE INVADERS, lun des premiers jeux vidéo — Aux commandes d’un vaisseau, il s’agissait de défendre la Terre contre des escadrilles d’envahisseurs venus de l’espace… Et bien, la plus grande partie de SPACE INVADERS de la planète a eu lieu le 24 juin 2006 au festival Belluard. —Space Invaders (notsonoisy.com)…
—Maize: the final frontier (ABCnet.au) A Star Trek cornfield maze. I’ll spare you the fanboy analysis, which would hinge on the fact that it looks like that’s the original series Enterprise, firing what looks like a phaser from the secondary hull (should be coming from the base of the saucer) at a Borg cube, but the…
The Facebook is truly a killer app for incoming freshmen – as they prepare to start a new life in a new place, surrounded by a new social network, the Facebook presents a highly interactive way to explore this new space. For those of us who sent snail-mail letters to our freshman year roommates, Facebook…
And yes, Liz’s face registers the shift between thinking Jon is sweet and deeply weird, but the sudden retraction of her hand from Garfield’s back seals the deal: she wants so little to do with Jon that even touching his cat feels wrong. —”Uh…” (Garfield: Permanent Monday) The world needs more daily critical analyses of Garfield…
They sliced a piece of tough beef in two, bagged half of it in plastic, and dropped it into the bottom of a 50-gallon paperboard drum of water. Then they suspended conventional explosives in the water and retired to a nearby bunker. From there, they watched in safety as a television displayed the ensuing detonation.…
—Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Beginning Tips (Wikibooks: Blender 3D) This is just what I was looking for. I’m still trying to decide whether I should go for broke and introduce my “New Media Projects” students to 3D design for Half-Life 2, where the results will be stunning but the process more fragmented, or be less of…
Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy. The currency is reputation, expression, karma, “wuffie,” or simply whim. This can all sound a little like, well, ’60s-style utopianism. After all, Marx himself believed that the industrial proletariat would revolt against the bourgeoisie, creating a state where the workers own the means of industrial production.…