The text adventure lives on as a result of a network of websites and Usenet groups, and each year this small community gathers to hold the IF competition, in which amateur entries are subject to peer review. Dennis Jerz, associate professor in English and new media journalism at Seton Hill University, Pennsylvania, says interactive fiction…
People use these devices [i.e. remotes] while watching movies or TV shows at home. Given this, two key elements of the user’s situation are likely to be: Wearing glasses for distance viewing, rather than reading Low levels of lighting Of course, a young designer whose vision hasn’t yet started to deteriorate wouldn’t have the first…
“[T]he world’s first consumer application of an electronic paper display module in Sony’s new e-Book reader, Librié, [is] scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late April. This ‘first ever’ […] display utilizes E Ink’s revolutionary electronic ink technology which offers a truly paper-like reading experience with contrast that is the same as newsprint.”…
I look at my students: some barefoot, others wearing hats and dressed in clothes they could easily have slept in, and I think how the college classroom has become an adjunct of the dorm bedchamber. Sometimes, when I begin classes, I get the impression that the students resent my interrupting their conversations. Few of them…
Too often, writers workshop their egos, instead. It’s human nature, especially if your story is on the table and everyone’s talking about it. But to get the most out of a writer’s workshop, you need to think of the story on the table as your car, and everyone around the table is a mechanic looking…
—Dominique (Interactive Face) (Alterfin) A great link from The Goreletter. I wish the eyes would follow the mouse cursor. Similar:Any pasta can become a pasta salad when the office microwave stops working!CultureThe YouTubers who blew the whistle on an anti-vax plotWhile rational minds worry about the imp…Current_EventsTrump, Obama seem equally disinterested in portrait unveiling — but…
43.75 % My weblog owns 43.75 % of me. —Does your weblog own you? Hmmph. I thought it would be more than that. One question about dating really doesn’t apply to me. Similar:Drumming Kid Is Epic. That Is All.https://youtu.be/MRvHI8tgx8A AestheticsSpent a half hour taming this tangle of cables (left) with a little tiny six-inch-wide car…AestheticsThe…
—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:Election ‘distracted’ Trump team from pandemic response, Birx tells CongressMore than 130,000 American lives could h…Current_EventsContext matters. Trump called MS-13 gang members “animals,” but critics say he…
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…