Design is about elegant simplicity. Good design appeals to the user’s intuition: it makes sense. The reason that everyone likes the book is that it has become naturalized, a well designed package for our knowledge. However, the book is no longer an apt symbol for information in an age of networked computers. Information design must [...]
Archive | September, 2004
Why Blog?
Well, Scribblingwoman has a fairly good answer for her tenure committee, with references that I’ll probably need in a couple of years — maybe even this year as I begin to get my tenure portfolio together for my third-year review. Indeed, as she points out, blogging is not considered one of the traditional activities of [...]
Technical Writing: In Search of…
I haven’t taught technical writing in a number of years, so I figured a cool way to begin the class would be to try to figure out just what we mean by “technical writing.” Most definitions I have found, like this one at docsymmerty, suggests that technical writing makes varying degrees of technical information accessible [...]
Charity Rides
A and I rode in the 2nd Annual Houston County Sheriff’s Department & Georgia Sheriff Youth Homes Poker Run with about 200 other bikes, mostly Harleys. We rode with about a group of five other bikes, picking up the occasional one or two on the 130-mile ride around middle Georgia. For a list of upcoming [...]
SF Writers Answer
Following a hint from Slashdot and Scribblingwoman, I found Locus Online‘s article by John Shirley that asks several sf writers several questions. Here are some excerpts: In response to the question “In the past you’ve written science-fictionally about the social future. What’s changed in your estimate of the social future since then? Do you have [...]
Budget Cuts
I just learned that the State of Georgia has cut $68 million from the university system’s budget. Our president, Dr. David Bell, informed the faculty today via email that Macon State College will have to shoulder $680,000 of this burden slung upon us right in the middle of the fall semester. According to the Macon [...]
Sf Over?
An interesting thread on Slashdot addresses a Globe and Mail article that speculates that sf might be coming to an unceremonious end like other historically situated literary genres. I would agree that golden age sf is perhaps on the decline, slowly being replaced by the likes of fantasy disguised as sf (Star Trek, Star Wars, [...]
