Monthly Archives

November 2010

Just too late

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Kate just found for me this amazing Tumblr, Everything Punk, Goth and New Wave – a collection of real photos from the heyday of the subculture(s).

Sometimes I think I was born just a little too late.  While my 1984 start in the world put me in the thick of new wave and goth culture, I was a little too onesie-clad to partake in the more interesting fashion choices.  And it may be a little cliché to look like a panel from the Sandman, I’d still thrill at participating in this aesthetic while it was new.

As Kate astutely points out though, “I’d miss the internet.”  So maybe the 80s were best left to my early years?

Rome in a Day

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The Romans may not have done it, but researchers and a home PC (with four monstrous graphics cards, that is) have built a 3D model of some of the empire’s most famous landmarks in just a day.  How?  By pulling from all Flickr photos tagged as ‘rome’ and then assembling them using and image analysis program.  The results are stunning given the speed and unproven nature of the technology involved.  It certainly makes Flickr a more valuable resource – and destroys any remaining thoughts of the need for building in Second Life, at least for me.  What other complex modeling could be sidestepped with these photographic reconstructions?

(BBC)

What I wouldn’t have given for these

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If I were able to give technology like this to my six year old self, my parents hours would have been fully of projected sky cities for my hovering sedans and sports cars to visit and exotic forest planets for my adventurers and scientists to explore.  We’d also have had cameras everywhere, but them’s the breaks, I’m afraid.

I can imagine a school outfitted with this technology that could project different functions onto a student’s accoutrements depending on what room or building was being used.  Would certainly be a worthwhile experiment of kinesthetic learning…

(Engadget)

I Think I Might Go…

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DML Conference 2011: Designing Learning Futures (Katie Salen, Conference Chair) from DML Research Hub on Vimeo.

As a parting gift, Aaron Smith emailed the MC team with information about the Digital Media and Learning 2011 conference entitled “Designing Learning Futures” being held in California this March.  This is a video interview with the conference chair, Katie Salen, who teaches at Parsons the New School for Design (Runway, ahoy).  The conference looked interesting before learning more about Professor Salen but now that I’ve read her bio and seen this video (as well as others on Vimeo) I’m really intrigued and – approval permitting – think this might be the conference for me.  What do you think?  Wanna come, too?

Tale of the First Computer

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Jane Smiley (who came to campus at my last employer during a student recruitment weekend) has just profiled the actual inventor of the first computer, one that formed the basis for ENIAC, the more commonly recognized machine.  In this month’s issue of Wired, you can check out the entirety of her investigation – or read it online right now.  A little geeky detective work is always highly entertaining…especially when it’s being done by someone who is not really known for being into technology!

Perpetual New Kid

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Traveling around to the Commonwealth campuses – especially now that I’m (temporarily) covering all of them – has brought me squarely in to contact with a phenomenon one doesn’t expect to encounter often: being the new “kid” in school. Unless you move a lot, you have this happen just a few times in life: preschool, elementary, middle school, high school, college, maybe grad school. But, if you work in higher ed, it can happen again every time you change jobs.

And, as a traveling media consultant for Penn State’s system of schools, it is now something I am experiencing on a weekly basis! The utter confusion when finding a classroom, the puzzled looks on students’ faces in the commons when they try to figure out if I’m “that guy from Econ,” the random faculty member admonishing me for parking in the reserved lot. I know eventually my youth will fade and I’ll look like hapless lost staff and eventually I’ll even know where the cafes and offices are when I arrive, but right now it’s wholly unique – and a little exciting.

Just gotta keep an eye out for the campus map for the next few weeks!

For just pennies a day

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The Oxford English Dictionary has launched a campaign of word adoption in an effort to keep these mature, forgotten language components from falling out of common use.  The clever website offers up a word finder with hilariously unusual sentences explaining how each needy word can be used.  You can choose which one you would like to call your own and receive an emailed certificate to commemorate your pledge of support.

I’m waiting on my emailed certificate right now so I can start making use of my new “child,” however, I have to stress how (sillily) dire this situation is:  impudent is on the list, and that’s a one I even use!