—Ahoy Desklubbers! [Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates] (Defective Yeti) An R be there on the scurvy dog of a keyboard, but where be the A? And where be the X that marks me buried treasure? Arrrr! Similar:Facebook Announces $300 Million Project, Allegedly to Support Local JournalismOnce upon a time, local newspapers could…BusinessThe Most Epic Demo in Computer…
“[S]ending still pictures from cameraphones to Weblogs is almost ‘no big deal’ among teenagers in Tokyo, Helsinki, London, Rio de Janeiro. However, instantaneous street video of world-class breaking news beamed directly to the Web has yet to occur.|A pivotal moment like this, balanced on the inflection point between the deskbound regime of the PC era…
“The bottom line is that someone has been running a con on me for 20 some years and I fell for it like a little old lady in a pigeon drop scheme. I’ve spent the last two hours going through the database of Capitol Hill Blue stories and removing any that were based on information…
“What do we know about today’s ‘new students’? Perhaps most obviously, we know that these students have been heavily influenced by information technology.” Diana Oblinger —Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Milennials (via KairosNews)Educause Review) The article referenced was pulished as a .pdf document, so I won’t bother to transcribe a longer excerpt and post it here. The…
“The 5k recognizes the roles that constraints play in creativity and discipline in craftsmanship. Please make beautiful things!” —The 5k Awards (the5k.org) 5k websites, sorted according to rating. Plenty of minimalist games. Thanks, Rosemary. Similar:How Humans Respond to RobotsThe play that coined the word “robot,” K…AestheticsThirty Years Ago, the Challenger Crew Plunged Alive and Aware to…
“A political science instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College is being investigated by the Secret Service for telling his students to compose an e- mail to an elected official that included the words ‘kill the president, kill the president,’ a school administrator said Wednesday.” —‘Kill the President’ E-Mail Sparks Probe (SF Gate) Google tells me that…
“I had always rejected the suburban ideal of the carefully clipped and methodically poisoned greensward, with its connotations of Babbittry, mundane middle-class aesthetics, and casual ecological depredation. But somehow, in the verdured acreage behind my home–where lately I have taken to carving crop circles and leaving elaborate paisleys of wildflowers intact–I find myself. | I…
Rosemary Frezza writes: “Google now lists your Seton Hill page first for searches of Dennis Jerz” —Ego-Googling Update: Google Ranks My Seton Hill Site #1 Thanks for notifying me, Rosemary. That was pretty fast, Google. My old UWEC site is now third. Similar:We’re in Denial About the True Cost of a Twitter ImplosionThe public disintegration…
“Crooked Timber is a cabal of philosophers, politicians manque, would-be journalists, sociologues, financial gurus, dilletantes and flaneurs who have assembled to bring you the benefit of their practical and theoretical wisdom on matters historical, literary, political, philosophical, economic, sociological, cultural, sporting, artistic, cinematic, musical, operatic, comedic, tragic, poetic, televisual &c &c, all from perspectives somewhere…
—Don’t Click this Link: Extremely Annoying AdsWired) There are some extremely annoying ads on this Wired article about “machinima” — a genre of digital storytelling created by people who use the monster-and-dungeon-creation tools supplied by game designers (or hacked by fans, probably). I didn’t get very far in the article because of the hovering ads…
“I joined organizations, attended conferences religiously, subscribed to journals, and made every attempt to connect to and garner the attention of those in the ‘inner circle’ — the members of steering committees, working groups, and editorial boards, as well as the chairs of leading University departments. But, while I still maintain those ties, I now…
“Looking at this, perhaps having all that fresh new blood from AOL — all without their little weblogging heros and talk about weblogging and this conference and that and all with little or no interest in the politics of weblogging — will be a good thing. A very good thing. | Here’s hoping for complete…
“It is vitally important that we all realize this and move on. People (eg Bloggers) go on and on about how wonderful it is. About how much information is out there in cyberspace. About the way that everything is within reach in just a few clicks of their mice.” —The Internet Is Shit Eh. This…
“I do understand both of their frustration with empty trackback pages and currently do not have an answer as to why those appear higher in rankings (or at all for that matter). At the same time, I am unsure what either one of them means by ?mindless links? — that does not help bloggers (like…
“For many of us, creative life goes beyond machines — creativity is built in at a very low level of our personalities, and the joy of building things from imagination, then sharing those experiences with others and watching their reactions — that’s what drives us.” Richard “Lord British” Garriott, inventor of Ultima Online, in an…
“About a month after publication, I received a postcard from an Ohio professor. In my textbook on college writing, I had narrated an anecdote Abraham Lincoln told, in which he referred to a tightrope walker named Blondin. I had spelled it ‘Bloudin.’ The professor corrected me and added, ‘Such egregious errors mar an otherwise fine…
College gamers are not necessarily male — or antisocial hermits. And while about one-third of those surveyed admitted playing computer games during class, the games generally don’t conflict with their studies, says the researcher who conducted the survey for the Pew Internet & American Life Project. —Study: Gamers Not Reculsive Nerds (Wired) The full report is…
” Having lost its sense of being a rather oversized living room, the student center has assumed something of the impersonal quality of a visitors’ center at a national park, or a bus terminal — buildings whose task it is to orient strangers. And, in truth, the student center is designed in large measure for…
“PBS has provided enough funding to keep Reading Rainbow alive for one more season. I have seen firsthand how the ability to read can transform a life, and that’s why I have worked for literacy for the past 20 years.” LeVar Burton —Near the End of ‘Rainbow,’ but Does Anyone Care? (Houston Chronicle) Burton notes that…
“Koppel’s group found that the single biggest difference is that women are far more likely than men to use personal pronouns-‘I’, ‘you’, ‘she’, ‘myself’, or ‘yourself’ and the like. Men, in contrast, are more likely to use determiners-‘a,’ ‘the,’ ‘that,’ and ‘these’-as well as cardinal numbers and quantifiers like ‘more’ or ‘some.’ As one of…