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June 30, 2005
A passing of the torch...
As of today my positions at The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology and KMDI are both at an end. I'm still a research associate with Steve's ePi lab, but otherwise it is all Ry all the time.
Posted by jason at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)
Harrow blog
I've set up a blog for Harrowing Events and Happenings at the harrow.com. RSS it.
Posted by jason at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2005
Learning Inquiry
Jeremy Hunsinger and I have been contracted to be editors-in-chief of the new journal Learning Inquiry. It is being published by Springer Science Business Media starting in 2006.
Here's what it is about: Learning Inquiry is a refereed scholarly journal which is devoted to establishing the area of "learning" as a focus for transdisciplinary study. The journal's goal is to be a forum centered on learning that remains open to varied objects of enquiry, including machine, human, plant and animal learning as well as the processes of learning in business, government, and the professions, both in informal and formal environments. The audience for this journal will be anyone interested in learning, understanding its contexts, and anticipating its future. Learning Inquiry will strive to strike a balance between presenting innovative research and documenting current knowledge to foster a scholarly dialogue on learning independent of domain and methodological restrictions. Manuscripts should be written for an audience that is general in scope, and submissions can include essays, research articles, forums, review articles, and book reviews that document the state of knowledge and developments in the field. The journal will also present special issues that identify the central areas of learning enquiry to provide focus for future research.
And there was much rejoicing.
Posted by jason at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2005
Can I Run the Space School?
Space tourism market faces realities - Space.com - MSNBC.com
"I predict that we will see orbital tourism three to five years after the first suborbital tourist flight and actual hotels, laboratories %u2026 in orbit one to two years after that. A commercial moon base would not be far behind. In other words, I see the human race taking the first steps in becoming a true spacefaring race by the end of this decade," Tyson said.
Posted by jason at 08:54 AM | Comments (2)
Learning Frowned Upon at Kurtztown Area High School
Slashdot | Felony Charges For H.S. Hacking
Last year the Kurtztown Area High School approved a program which gave every student an iBook. Now 13 students face felony charges for violating the district's usage policy." From the article: "Shrawder said the secret password '50Trexler,' was widely-known among the student body and distributed early in the school year. It allowed between 80 and 100 students to reconfigure their laptops, he said. The more computer-savvy students began to disable the administrations' ability to spy on the students' computer use. For others, it became a game, trying to outsmart the administration and compete with fellow students who held the secret, Shrawder said.
Personally, and I do not speak as a professor hoping for tenure, but as an individual on his own time, I'd give'm bonus marks, and I'd want to drag the admin up on the carpet for a talking to.
Posted by jason at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)
Neko-sen!
Boing Boing: Japanese bullet train with retractable cat-ears
This new Japanese bullet-train design is intended to go 360kph, and use reetractable cat-ear-shaped air-brakes to slow itself. The nosecone and color scheme are intensely manga-esque, the kind of thing you expect to see in a collectable toy.
Thanks to Muneco-chan for this image!
Posted by jason at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)
Solid State Laptops?
AppleInsider | Flash drives in future Apple laptops?
...the company recently announced a prototype 16GB flash drive and said it has plans to expand to 100GB "in a couple of years," assuming double-digit percentage price drops in the flash-memory market continue.
This is what I'm waiting for... for Zero Cost Computing
Posted by jason at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)
Take the Marlow test...
Posted by jason at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)
Only something Catsy would experience
From Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane:
Boy: No way. That's something a Slytherin would do.
Posted by jason at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2005
Yes, comments are broken.
And I will fix them at some point.
Posted by jason at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)
No One Told ME!
I just found out that I have an email account at the Faculty of Information Studies. It is Nolan@fis.utoronto.ca. This is ironic. They wouldn't even give me an interview for a position there. I've never worked for them, and I don't think I've ever had a personal discussion with anyone there who wasn't cross-appointed at KMDI. Ah well. I have a | /dev/null filter (forward to nowhere) on any mail from that account.
Posted by jason at 08:16 AM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2005
CFP: Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict
The L.M. Montgomery Institute is calling for one-page proposals for papers to be given at the Seventh International L.M. Montgomery conference (June 21-25, 2006) entitled "Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict".
I just got my proposal in for a paper that Yuka and I are proposing entitled: Projecting Dissonance: The Real and Virtual Landscapes in _Anne of Green Gables_ and _Dracula_. Should be fun. Thanks to Jeremy for the title.
Posted by jason at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)
Toronto Unlimited for $4mil
Toronto has been rebranded as Toronto Unlimited: the "City of Imagination". Not much imagination going on here. Sounds like groupthink all over again.
Posted by jason at 08:46 AM | Comments (0)
Strange things at Ryerson U
The Globe and Mail: MacMillan turns a new page after Paris 1919
For 27 years she teaches history at Toronto's Ryerson University. Her name is not a household word. The glitterati of Toronto society do not line up to pay $45 each to hear her speak. The media do not beg for her thoughts on world affairs and whither Canadian foreign policy. Michael Levine, agent to the stars, is not her agent. Canadian publishers reject her book-manuscript -- the product of five years work -- on the peace negotiations that followed the First World War. That is Prof. MacMillan in 2000, at age 57. In 2001, her book is published in Britain to spectacular acclaim. It wins prize after prize after prize, including the [GBP] 30,000 Samuel Johnson award for non-fiction....
She credits the Ryerson students she taught between 1975 and 2002 -- engineering students, nursing students, students of just about everything except history -- for compelling her to make her lectures interesting, and telling stories richly coloured with gossip. She once said if she hadn't dedicated her book to her family, she would have dedicated it to her Ryerson students.
Posted by jason at 07:32 AM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2005
View from the window
View from the window.
Originally uploaded by complicitytheory.
Yuka and I just bought a new condo. Finalized the deal just this evening. We'll be moving to College and Bathurst (Toronto, Canada) this August.
Posted by jason at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)
When do academics just scare you?
Transliteracies Conference 2005: Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading(Conference / UCSB Roundtables 2005) is happening this June. Go look at their web site. All the big names are there.
Now, tell me what is wrong with the site design that impairs reading online. Note that there is no participation of people who design hardware, do research on perception and reading from a cog-sci level, there are no HCI people. Well, perhaps they're hidden in among the names I know.
Now, I could be wrong, but this seems like more of the same old thang: "We'll worry about what goes on at the surface level with scant thought about any of the deeper issues." This is why Humanities profs call me to help fix their email problem, mac users who cannot ever learn that PC specific virus did not delete their files, who refuse to 'play' with the technology to learn about its capacities, limitations and affordances; who never get around to asking the right questions of technology and thus have an unsatisfactory superficial response. Sigh.
It reminds me of the Ted Hughes poem "How Water Began to Play".
Water wanted to live
It went to the sun it came weeping back
Water wanted to live
It went to the tress they burned it came weeping back
They rotted it came weeping back
Water wanted to live
It went to the flowers they crumpled it came weeping
back
It wanted to live
It went to the womb it met blood
It came weeping back
It went to the womb it met knife
It came weeping back
It went to the womb it met maggot and rottenness
It came weeping back it wanted to dieIt went to time it went through the stone door
It came weeping back
It went searching through all space for nothingness
It came weeping back it wanted to dieTill it had no weeping left
It lay at the bottom of all things
Utterly worn out utterly clear
from Crow 1970
Posted by jason at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2005
Microchip inventor dies...
Jack St. Clair Kilby who co-invented the microchip died at 81.
Obit: The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Microchip inventor Jack St. Clair Kilby dies
Posted by jason at 06:48 AM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2005
MacDell?
Dell 'happy' to ship Mac OS X-based PCs | The Register
Michael Dell would like to license Mac OS X and ship it with future PC products, the Dell founder and chairman has revealed.It's not likely to happen any time soon, of course - Apple CEO Steve Jobs has already said it's not something he wants to do for now - but according to name-dropping Fortune online columnist David Kirkpatrick, Dell would jump at the chance if offered.
Posted by jason at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
Meet the new neighbors
Well, we bought a small two bedroom condo at 456 college st. No pictures yet, but it is an interesting building as it is built over College St United Church
"College Street United Church was adesignated historical building protected from demolition by the local architectural conservancy committee. The building was preserved in part by the incorporation of the bell tower within a new condominium structure. The redevelopment of the site was plannedto include a church facility that would take up a large part of two lower floors. Revenues from the condos were to help fund the church." [quoted from Sleeping Giants]
And next door to is it a small store called Playdead Cult.
Posted by jason at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
A blast from the past
I was ordering transcripts of my undergrad work (for my new job), and found a button that said, view courses and marks. Thinking it wouldn't work, I clicked, and found all of my grad and undergrad marks. It is fun to look at things from such a distance. And so, I blogged them:
Grad
SU89 GS EN 6000B 0.00 M.A. Research Paper A-
SU89 GS SPTH 6340 6.00 Aesthetics & Contemporary Crit Theory A
FA88 GS EN 6000A 0.00 M.A. Thesis Research
SU88 GS EN 6000B 0.00 M.A. Research Paper
FA87 GS EN 6140 6.00 Middle English Romance A
FA87 GS EN 6350 6.00 Romanticism B+
FA87 GS EN 6860 6.00 18th Century Intellectual Texts AU
Under Grad
FW90 AK GEOG 3590 6.00 Conservation In Canada A
FW90 AK NATS 1790 6.00 B People And Environment B
FW90 AK STS 4720 6.00 Seminar In The Social Studies Of Sci. A
FA87 AK LA 1400 6.00 Introductory Latin A
FW85 AS EN 4180 6.00 A Studies In Renaissance Lit. B
FW84 AS EN 3110 6.00 A Old English B+
FW84 AS EN 4150A 3.00 Post-Modern Poets B
FW84 AS EN 4150M 3.00 Spec.Topic: Eliot/Amer.Fiction Of '20s A
FW84 AS EN 4160 6.00 B Independent Research B+
FW84 AS GER 1000 6.00 D Elementary German B
SU84 AK EN 3590 6.00 The Modern British Novel A
SU84 AK FILM 3440 6.00 The European Cinema B+
FW83 AK NATS 1720 6.00 A Exploration Of The Universe B+
FW83 AS EN 1000 6.00 H Eng. Lit. & Backgrnds (Hons. Seminar) B+
FW83 AS EN 2020 6.00 G Creative Writing C+
FW83 AS EN 3140 6.00 A Dryden/Pope/Swift A
FW83 FA MUSI 2140 6.00 Electronic Media Workshop I C+
FW82 AS EN 2480 6.00 Satire B
FW82 AS EN 2510 6.00 B Brit/Amer. Poetry/Fiction B
FW82 AS GER 2710 6.00 20th Cent. Ger. Lit. (In Translation) C+
FW82 AS MC 1280 6.00 Search For An Authentic Self B
FW82 AS SOSC 1800 6.00 A Social Issues Through Lit. A
Posted by jason at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Creative Gulp
Creative Gulp
Originally uploaded by complicitytheory.
Here's another from the creative gulp shoot. I think that they are going to use this one.
Posted by jason at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)
All your base are belong to us
Person on the phone: "Hello, Mr. Nolan, I'm from Decima Research and we're conducting a study on..."
Jason: "Your research methodologies are flawed