Author Archives: Steve

Comments and Collaboration

It’s interesting that given the subject of weblog comments that Susan adds to the issue in a post on collaboration and lets the blogger/typepad magic work on its own. She links back to Wayne at Nutty Streamers to illustrate weblog community.

In a like-minded community with a job to do the issue isn’t writing but getting the job done, and comment space can be an excellent method for collaborating, if people can make themselves understood with their symbols and rhetorical schemes; likewise, if the goal is to create a community of readers, then the weblog works as well. This, of course, comes with a whole host of issues, some of which are technical and political. Good reading and good writing is implicit in all this.

P.S.: I’ve taken her hint and added semantic links.

Synthesis

This

Okay, so I can use stereotypes and turn ‘girl’ in a flash and change my mind. It just seems that Paths is not only much further along in the hypertext processing plan, but it’s still rather dear to my heart and I want to make this project work because it’s based on a sound theme of story. I’m still getting questions that would like answers from the characters. It’s about them, and about that part of them that is in all the rest of us.

is wonderfully put.

Comments and Additive Expression

I’m not a big fan of comments on weblogs and I try to avoid them as much as possible. No, this doesn’t mean that Mary Ellen should stop writing comments into this space. It means that if she finds something interesting to comment on or add to, hence the above title, she should respond in depth on her own weblog or in long, well argued comments and let trackbacks or whatever provide the network exchange.

I read several weblogs in which the comment spaces are loaded with the good and the bad. Susan Gibb and I started weblogging about the same time, I think, feeding off Contemporary Fiction content, and we both still use comment space as a way of covering something specific or as a means of reminding. Dr. Fierro’s is a well controlled method of comment apparatus, but so are massive social spaces like Kos’, where people make relationships.

But additive writing should locate its energy in the big space of the post area rather than in the small apartments of comments. The future is going to see a lot of pushing for the weblog for students as a means of bringing back the notion of commonplacing in learning, rather han the use of paper journals because the writing is public and easily searchable. The weblog is an excellent learning environment, as Susan Gibb has proven. And I think Carolyn is back in silver now.

I would answer Mary Ellen this way. Comments aren’t the place to judge good writing. This and this and this is the place for that.

The Size of Numbers

I learned something today. That if you try to count from 1 to one trillion it would take approximately 200,000 years.

Tht would be a feat. I learned this partly because I hadn’t thought about it. You could count seconds and that would provide he arithmetic formula, and it makes sense.

Deb Hall reminds me that there is a lot to do:

1. Consider how ability-based approached can leverage “service learning” opportunities and write some proposals
2. New media revisions
3. Transfer articulations
4. Committee work
5. Semester closure
6. Exam writing
7. Podcast testing
8. Hypertext reading
9. Weblogs
10. Title III work
11. The eighteenth century
12. Kindle
13. RSS
14. The summer mashup
15. General education
16. Second Life code
17. Flash
18. eLumen and the wiki and some visual work
19. Database transfers for the Spring
20. The Ability Assessment Team
21. Son and daughter
22. Wife
23. Dog
24. Saturday night bean soup
25. Snow boots

That’s a list of things to do and think about. This is another prohibition to the act of counting to one trillion, the attempt of which reminds me of a guy who wakes up in the morning feeling as if he swallowed a powdered mouse.

He needs a drink. Of water. He scrapes his ankle against an iron doorstop and hears the phone ring.

He answers the phone and a voice says something about a lost wallet.

No wonder.

Digital Reading

Chris Meade at if:book provides a nice reminder of the need to be vigilant about literacy assessments. Who’s reading and how well is always a question, but it’s one brick on the pile. While I maintain just a few glances in the direction of large reports on literacy, such as those published by the NEA, a more interesting question remains: what is the context of reading?

To define reading outside of specific or valid situations is like trying to define technology. You may guess at the size of an auditorium with a mask on, sure go for it. As we’ve just moved on from Milton, I’m reminded of the importance of intense scrutiny of all objects, and that all objects and ideas are opportunities for that scrutiny.

Are more people writing these days?

Structure, Hypertext, The Sandman

The problem Susan writes about here is interesting: what’s the difference between the right and the best structure. I myself have no idea how to exact the shape, at least in theory.

The problem isn’t limited to hypertext but to any experience or object that demands structural sense, such as a house, a cabinet, a poem or a novel. The problem is that in hypertext it’s demanding to find examples that demonstrate a particular type of structural element and to show it easily. It isn’t like showing someone a poem and identifying a potent use of metaphor.

It’s a different problem for the writer, given that as the idea goes: every poem, while it can learn from its fathers and mothers, is a new poem, and the writer writes from scratch when it’s time to get back to work. I’m going to provide a few examples here of particular hypertextual forms, beginning with Paths, possibly beginning tomorrow.

But there’s also something else to do too. I’ve been reading through lots of work, thinking about a Sequential Art course and in doing so have gotten into trouble with the Sandman series. At this point, the greater arc of the story through eleven volumes is beginning to bug me. The story of The Sandman revolves around the notion of change, the relationships of the Endless, and particularly Morpheus to his mortal and mythical enemies. Each Sandman book is a reference point to some other arc in another text, such as Fables and Reflections’ Desire promising to sick the Furies on Dream because he’s winning a bet. The Furies, of course, will foul up the dreamland later on and lead to the death of one aspect of Dream/Morpheus. So, even though there are references, for the life of me I can’t swallow why the Furies could, did, and were prompted to attack.

Sandman readers to the rescue please!

Math and Philosophy Series

Skiff DescriptionJesse Abbot kicks off the first of a three part series of talks in the history and philosophy of math and science with Peter Skiff of Bard College. Meet us just off from the Cyber Cafe at 1PM tomorrow at the college.

This should be a wonderful kick-off to an interesting series of events that will extend into the Spring, including “Calculus in India Before Newton and Leibniz” by Kimberly Plofker of Union College and “The Anthropic Principle: Its Ethical and Philosophical Implications” by our own Vladimir Gromov.

Hypertext and CSS

It’s been a little quiet here. But I’m getting deeper into Paths and CSS, one the one hand enjoying Susan Gibbs’ Paths and then relearning modern CSS after a couple of years of non-study. The later comes from a need to control academic weblog content to a greater degree without being confined to other designers’ WordPress themes. So, I’ve decided to take the sandbox theme and build a theme of my own. The academic weblogs, much like academic websites, are loaded with necessary information for students. Thus, the opportunity for design may crumble under potential busyness

I’ve been using Sadish Balasubramanian’s WordPress themes on the course and new media weblogs because they’re solid backbones and when I’ve gone astray, I’ve always reloaded Sadish’s material.

But now it’s time to dig in and apply my own thinking to this for next semester’s courses so I can control presentation. I’m not a great designer and have no real eye for designing beyond white space and a few base colors. But, progress has already been made.