Planting a Tree

I found this link to the short history of Twitter (so far) today while browsing through a bunch of saved links I'd been meaning to get to. It is a visually beautiful piece and it gets brownie points for making a reference to Britney Spears' lady-parts. Err... that's twitter for you.

Google Maps + Monopoly

For those of you looking to play the world's biggest game of Monopoly, wait no longer. Google Maps and Monopoly have teamed up to offer you the geekiest version of one of the longest childhood games ever. I've never been a huge Monopolizer before, because the game takes way too long and involves too much strategy, but just in case your employer is forcing you to take an unpaid day off, here is one more way to fill the empty void.

Internships and the Law

A couple of weeks ago, a professor kept urging me to go find myself an unpaid internship so that I could get more real-world experience. Despite the fact that my work schedule and my finances allow me to do very few things that include extra work and no pay, I got to thinking about the possibility. Today I was pointed to this article, which talks about the very common, but apparently illegal practice of offering unpaid internships. Who knew?

"In order to qualify as an unpaid internship, the requirement is simple: no
work can be performed that is of any benefit at all to the company. That
is, you can not deliver mail, sort files, file papers, organize a person’s
calendar, conduct market research, write reports, watch television shows and
report on them, read scripts, schedule interviews, or any other job that assists
the employer in any way in running their business."

True, the article is from 2007, but I don't know that much has changed in this regard since then. I also wonder what the rules are regarding "volunteers" - and who decides the differences between the two types of work?

And they said the internets weren't addictive...

Today I stumbled upon Google's wonder wheel feature. I like it. Because the internet isn't already cracked out enough for me, now I can see the links between my searches and the rest of the universe.

This is a screenshot from a search I initially did for a desktop scanner. To get to the wonder wheel page, I looked under the options tag beside my original google search. Not only can you watch your search moving along towards some unforeseen end, there are cool dynamic graphics that catch your eye as the screen changes. Figures that google would find another shiny thing to get my attention.

Proceed With Caution

From boingboing, a link to Michael Niggel's visual map of the possible outcomes of the choose-your-own-adventure book Journey Under the Sea.

For more details and a larger image, the original posting is http://flowingdata.com/2009/08/11/choose-your-own-adventure-most-likely-youll-die/

Oh yeah. Most likely you'll die.

On the Human post

ELO President Joseph Tabbi writes about his experiences reading electronic literature in his most recent post to the On the Human forum. This post raises several good points that I've been articulating, poorly, to myself over the past year or so.

Point 1: Rereading is critical to understanding electronic literature. I add to this thought that sporadic or selective"rereading," in the sense that we engage in with print literature, is often nearly impossible with many new media works that offer no way to "mark" a page, to return to a specific section of the piece, or even to find the same lexia within a piece that one may have luckily stumbled upon in a prior reading.

Point 2: Tabbi writes, "What is hard is finding the works worth preserving, defining their literary qualities, and establishing incentives for readers to go back, for more." I couldn't agree more. Electronic literature, many would say, is not exactly a huge field in the grand scheme of things. But consider that within that field there is little referring; any work that can be posted to a website is fair game. The field becomes overwhelming quickly. Add to that the distinction between openly accessible work and for-profit ones, and the dynamics of sifting through these pieces, with little aid from those who might establish a "new media cannon," and it is no surprise that the casual reader might become quickly discouraged.

Point 3: Tabbi also comments, "Only rarely have I applied the keywords, “Postmodern,” “Experimental,” “Fiction,” “Poem,” and even “Narrative” to electronic literature post-Web 1.0." At the close of his post, Tabbi raises the point that I run into again and again in my dissertation research: how to categorize these different works. Keywords are helpful, yes. But the categories that exist are often more exclusionary than these multi-modal pieces can usefully allow. To even find "narrative" pieces one must consistently define and redefine what narrative means, or how it can be usefully applied.

I think that Tabbi's piece is a useful (and relatively short) read. You should head over if you get some free time in the midst of your summer shenanigans.

Grad Student Symposium

If you don't have any buddies to eat lunch with on Tuesday, that's sad. But, on the other hand, it means that you are free to come visit me at the VCU Graduate Student Symposium. I will be there, of course, set up with a couple of laptops to allow exploration of some of my digital work (don't tell these people that the internet allows you to look at them for free in the privacy of your own home), and handing out pamphlets about my research. But more than that, students from every division of VCU's graduate school will be there to present posters on their own research and scholarship, some of which looks pretty cool and exciting to me already. And, to top it all off, I believe that there will be light refreshments served.

I hope I get a table next to someone with some gross, maggot-related genetics project who decides to bring live examples.

Details:
12th annual Graduate Student Research Symposium and Exhibit
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
University Student Commons Commonwealth Ballroom