—Old School Moveable Type (MGK) Real moveable type. Ever since I investigated the meaning of the name of the character “Shurdlu” in Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine, I’ve had a longing to learn how to use an old-fashioned printing press — one that actually presses the paper. As much as I love the power of “push-button…
Throughout the conference I went to several sessions on blogging. I’m not convinced, however, the presenters who claimed to be blogging are actually blogging. They’re using blogging software, their students use blogging software, but I’m not convinced that using the software is the same as blogging. For example, does posting writing prompts for students constitute…
The BBC news item, Puzzle over three-headed frog (originally titled “‘Warning’ over three-headed frog”) spawned this story that swept the news media and the weblog circuit over the week following March 5th 2004. Briefly: staff and pre-school children at the Green Umbrella day nursery, Weston-super-Mare, UK, found the above. After they’d taken photos and a…
Today, those never-ending online “massively multiplayer” games like “EverQuest” have matured into mainstream, vibrant attractions, drawing hundreds of thousands of paying customers – male and female. But their growth appears almost stagnant compared to the popularity spike for multiplayer online shoot’em-ups and other mostly war-themed fare geared toward users of console systems, led by Sony…
He was the greatest director of his generation. Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny!” Lolita’s heart-shaped sunglasses. The Dr Strangelove cowboy riding the nuclear bomb like it’s a bucking bronco. And on and on. So many images have implanted themselves into the public consciousness, surely because of the director’s ever-burgeoning attention to detail. “Why don’t you just…
Since it was initially packaged with every Mac shipped, it’s likely the majority of buyers used it as a quicky Rolodex, if anything. But HyperCard’s biggest win was a very low entry threshold for those who wanted to build their own ‘stacks’ – combinations of user interface, code, and persistent data. There were plenty of…
We the “early adopters”have been playing with blogs in our classes for awhile now. We’re loved them just for the sake of loving them. We’ve evangelized them to our peers and our students, with mixed success. But now, blogs must pull their pedgagogical weight. It’s no longer enough to just put a student blog collective…
I‘m looking at a dead pigeon laying on the sidewalk, headless, and I wonder: ?What am I doing here?? —David ThomasDo You Know the Way to San Jose (Buzzcut) So begins David’s coverage of the Game Developer’s Conference, where the most interesting-sounding panel seems to be on “serious games“. I can’t seem to figure out how…
Mike Vitia Blogs the 4Cs (Vitia) Mike Vitia has a good series of blog entries covering several sessions at the 4Cs, including the great panel by Terra, Charlie, and Clancy, of which Mike had this provocative, if vague, observation: “Most of us know that the theories of Landow and Negroponte lie broken and useless: how, then,…
Departures and Arrivials in the Blogosphere The Invisible Adjunct says goodbye. Noam Chomsky says hello. Two links that rocked my world on a Sunday evening, courtesy of CultureCat. Similar:Reporters say White House sometimes demands changes to press-pool reports The decades-old White House press pool…CultureJudge orders Montana congressman who assaulted a reporter to be formally booked…
Individuals and groups need to remain vigilant in finding and naming bad science and bad therapy. Our guide isn’t Foucault, but Aristotle, who saw virtue in the mean behavior. No one wants to live in a world in which there is a deficiency of social control. Bad guys need jails. Drug addicts and the mentally…
Of course, the notion that these Web sites have to “count” toward tenure and promotion is one that most directly pertains to a relatively small audience: tenure-track faculty members, particularly those seeking tenure, promotion, or other institutional recognition. These Web sites have value (and thus “count”) for an audience that is much larger than this,…
Andre Torrez has found a way to use some new technology to get in touch with an old friend. He’s been spending a lot of his down time — in airports and waiting for friends — playing old-school Infocom interactive text games like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. —Daniel Terdiman —Bots Open Door to Gaming…
Remediate The Alamo!Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I had the pleasure this afternoon of playing hooky from the 4Cs, and accompanying two Canadians on a visit to The Alamo. My wife and I had visited San Antonio (among other Texas cites) during our low-budget honeymoon (10 years ago this July), and I really wished I could have…
My “Computer Connection” section (in a distant corner of the main exhibition hall) was more interactive than I had expected, so I didn’t get to cover all my material — notably this list of “good practices” for using blogs in the classroom. Since a “real” weblog is a license to write whatever and whenever you…
[Grr… the Word file that has my abstract in it won’t open on this public terminal on the convention floor. I’m retyping this from my lecture notes.] When a curricular weblog program was made available to all students, faculty and staff at a small liberal arts university, the students, expected to blog as part of…
Sarah Jane Sloane, “Blog is My Co-Pilot: Blogs in a Graduate Classroom.” Cynthia Cox, “Blogging and the First-Year Composition Classroom” Bonne Smith, “All Along the Blogwatch Tower” Lisa Langstraat, respondent: “In Blog We Trust”Teaching the Blog (CCCC 2004) I wasn’t able to meet Sarah Jane Sloan, whose dissertation on interactive fiction, Interactive Fiction, Virtual Realities, and…
A mattress and box springs stacked near a curb catch the professor’s eye. There is some scrap metal on top of the mattress, along with a few sticks of discarded lumber. He reaches into his pocket and retrieves the small, round magnet attached to his key chain. “This,” he says, “is a scrounger’s most important…
As you’ve probably noticed, the look of this page has been updated. What do you think of the new look? (Please leave your opinion in the comments for this entry. For reference, here’s the old look.) Put a +2, +1, 0, -1, or -2 at top of your comment indicating how you feel. FYI This…
One problem with our effort to sanitize the language of all that might offend is that it leads to lunatic results. Just ask the music reviewer at the Los Angeles Times. Last month he reviewed an opera by Richard Strauss, which he described as “a glorious and goofy pro-life paean.” A diligent copy editor replaced…