Finished Reading Angela’s AshesJerz’s Literacy Weblog) I finally finished reading Angela’s Ashes. I can’t really say that I enjoyed it, although I appreciated the skill in the storytelling. I’ve noted before, I find myself resisting the melodramatic tugs at my heartstrings, and since the book is presented as a memoir, of course I feel terrible…
The fact that Google now “sucks” is in a large part not Google’s fault: Google simply reflects what it can see, and most of the Web is simply invisible to Google, as it now lies behind closed doors. Google’s aggressive, but essentially dumb robots can only get so far. We’re painfully aware that Google’s lack…
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a sports fan. And here’s one reason why. “When I was (in school), we had a day when everyone who was receiving scholarships — academic or athletic — was called up at an assembly and honored. One guy who barely met NCAA requirements got a full athletic…
Gaming Culture and Theory — Or; Will Somebody Please Pinch Me?Literacy Weblog) About a half hour ago, I returned from a meeting with the dean of academic affairs, at which I was planning to pitch a new course that I’m calling “Gaming Culture and Theory.” I brought a short stack of scholarly books along with…
No matter how tricky or convoluted the map becomes, you will always have a clear picture of how to get from one part to another. Accurate mapping cannot be overstressed if one is to become an above-average adventure game player. Top players map at least 50 percent of their game-playing time. —Roe R. Adams III…
Reading a decision novel is much like walking along a path: when you come to a fork in the path, you must decide on the left path or the right path. You cannot leave the path. Decision books look a lot more like novels than interactive fiction. They are cleverly woven stories that overlap at…
Moveable Types of Information Literacy: Emerging Electronic Genres and the Deconstruction of Peer ReviewLiteracy Weblog) Vannevar Bush, writing in 1945, lamented that the volume of scientific knowledge being published each year forced researchers to spend unprecedented time and energy searching for relevant information (and choosing what to ignore). His solution, the Memex, was a photocopier…
Considering how little return American students get on their books during “Book Buyback” at the end of the semester, I wondered if Iraqi students could use these donations instead? —Mike Arnzen —Gun and Pencil: Book Buyback for Baghdad? (Pedablogue) A reflection on the CS Monitor’s report on the state of higher education in Iraq. Now there…
If there’s a problem with PowerPoint, it’s not that it makes you dumb, it’s that Microsoft has never taken the time to show us how it can make you smart. —Mike Gunderloy —PowerPoint Doesn’t Make You Dumb (ADT Mag) Enough people responded ethusiastically to the NY Times article dissing PowerPoint that I thought it worthwhile to…
The machine’s inventors are somewhat vague about what the food simulator will actually be used for, but they suggest that it will be helpful in designing new foods… —Lawrence Osborne —Food Simulator, The (NY Times (will expire)) Here’s the PowerPoint business plan these guys must have followed. Step 1. Invent a device that can simulate the…
A Florida man claiming to be selling tickets to a Christmas show took $10 each from hundreds of school children then splurged on wine, sunglasses and movies…. David Lee Ellisor collected money from students at schools all around Miami for a “once in a lifetime” Christmas show that never took place. —How the Grinch Stole… (Yahoo/Reuters)…
Count your ideas. Be careful not to have too many. | And if a student dares to have four ideas, instead of three? . . . Toss one out. Only three ideas allowed. I’ve seen students fail assignments because they had the wrong numbers. | And they can’t stop writing that way. Many have told…
“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.” (The Australian)“Ladies and gentlemen — we got him.” (Time) “Ladies and gentlemen: we got him.” (Washington Times) “Ladies and gentlemen… we got him.” (ic Wales) —Ladies and gentlemen [?] we got him. (Google News) Interesting how the various news agencies are punctuating this catchphrase, which will probably soon be as…
Mike says that the five-paragraph format is a shortcut, and “short-cuts — whether a five-paragraph theme or a preemptive military strike — seldom offer lasting solutions.” Amanda says that “[w]hat it generates is more a list than an essay.” I agree with what Amanda says when she argues (implicitly) that it’s not so much the…
Update, July 2015 — the link to the original is dead. The IFDB entry from the Hamlet text game points to a link that also seems to be dead. Who really killed Hamlet’s dad? What does King Richard III want with a horse anyway? And where did the gravedigger get that gorgeous pink dress? Avenge…
In order to compose this piece, I had to depend on a circular way of thinking. Initially, my plot was linear, but that did not work well. Rather than use a traditional pyramid plot structure, I outlined plot points, and wrote something for each. Then, I added more pages under some plot points and linked…
Écrite en 1920 et jouée pour la première fois à Prague l’année suivante, cette pièce de théâtre, intitulée Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.), introduit le terme robot, qui remplacera dorénavant celui d’automate. La pièce de Capek fut acclamée dans le monde entier. — Dennis G. Jerz (via an anonymous translator) —Le règne des robots (L’Encyclopédie de L’Agora)…
Among the attractions at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium, visitors would have beheld “Professor RAMAC,” a four-ton IBM machine capable of offering up responses to users’ queries on a two thousand year historical span… [T]he Professor offered the general public its first encounter with the magnetic disk storage technology today called the hard…
Weblog TweakingJerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’ve made a few very minor tweaks to the blog, as I re-familiarize myself with JSP. Will is planning on making some changes to the site soon, and I want to be up to speed so I can more fully understand what he’s accomplished for me. The underlying code that he…
Early, link-heavy blogs were, for the most part, a method of sharing links. They usually contained entries that consisted of one or two hyperlinks, the blogger’s commentary on the link’s content, and a place for other bloggers to make comments about the entry. These early blogs often focused on what <a href=”htttp://www.rebeccaspocket.net/essays/weblog_history.html”>Blood calls “the dissemination…