On the Nature of Dialogues, Ideas, and Video Games

Here is another one of my test posts from FWD:Everyone - Dialogue On Art & Video Games. As you can probably tell if you read this post and the last one I am not using this platform in the way it was intended. The idea of FWD - as it was presented to me - was that people are having amazing conversations through email that are lost to the world because email is private (relatively speaking). The man I was talking to then compared this to historic letters that have gotten published.

I understand the logic here ... but I rarely see email used in this way. In my social and work circles email is a very utilitarian method of communication. It is to share information or files that are pertinent to a particular class/job/etc. Alternatively, when I have something of interest I want to discuss I may use email to arrange a coffee or beer over which I can discuss issues of importance. I do, however, often have fascinating conversations of varies real-time communication platforms - as you can see from the 2 posts I made over at FWD. This behavioral pattern suggests a couple of observations about personal communication and idea generation.

Beta Testing and Preparing for your Thesis/Dissertation Defense

The connection between the title topics is tenuous.

I have been talked into trying out a new blog-like platform that turns emails into blog posts. I don't really email all that much, but I like blogs, so I agreed. So far I think this has huge potential for teachers, but I have not yet had the opportunity to try it with a class. I just created my account today and made one post. Since I kind of like the post, I thought I would share it here.

The post is a brief conversation I had with a master student about preparing for their thesis defense, and you can find it at FWD:Everyone, under the title FB Convo on Defense. The tl;dr version: you are not alone, anxiety is normal, you'll be fine, and everyone feels like this. This is then followed by a general idea of what to expect the day of and what to do the day before.

Although I will be testing out FWD, it will not be replacing this blog. When certain topics overlap, however (like the linked conversation above) I may link posts from there to here.

Now its time to get back over to NerdCultures and get those posts graded.

Thank-You Facebook - Taiwan's Tragedy and A Traveler's Piece of Mind

Before dawn on February 6th of this year a 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit southern Taiwan. Reports of deaths started coming almost immediately, albeit slowly at first. Then I heard that an apartment building had collapsed. Later, the death toll would come to 117. I was in shock. Here in Wisconsin it was late afternoon. Less than 2 hours after the earthquake hit my phone started blowing up. My friends, thankfully, were checking in.

Catching Up, Rites of Passage Rituals, Identity, and Cosplay

Scrolling back through this blog it looks like I haven't written a post since September. I'm not sorry. I have entertained you with videos of my escapades with TPN and I managed to double the length of my dissertation in one semester - directly leading to my graduation. That's right, I am now officially Dr. Krista-Lee Malone. 

Apparently this surprised a few people. Examples of responses upon my announcement:

"Wow, I wasn't sure you were going to finish."

"It's about time!"

"Really?"

But it's ok, because I can now say this:

And then the next question: "How does it feel?"

"Technophiles Podcast: Live" Announcement

As promised in the last post. Here's the promo for the TPN UWM Live Shows. Come join us in the Digital Humanities Lab at 6pm this Wednesday, Sept. 23rd!

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*Apologies to Thomas Malaby and Stuart Moulthrop for the misspelled names.

#262 "ResearchGate" | Technophiles Podcast

Yes, I'm skipping putting these up in order. Next week the Technophiles Podcast will be filming live from the UW-Milwaukee Digital Humanities Lab in the first of a 6 show series at the lab. Because this episode deals with academia, I wanted it to go up before the live show.

For more information on the live show, or if you will be in the Milwaukee area next week, click the link above to see the DH lab schedule or come back in a couple of days when I will be posting the promo we made for it.

Also, I now have a ResearchGate account where you can find me.

#257 "RIP HitchBOT" and social headphones

We get all social on this episode talking about headphones that share your tunes and the untimely demise of Hitchbot.

Geek Awkwardness - It's All in the Context

Here are some definitions I found of the word geek from the magically wise Intertubes:

"part of what makes someone a geek/nerd is having poor social skills..."*

"It's kind of the defining characteristic - being into a particular thing to the exclusion of social intercourse."*

"a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual."**

"The people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult"***

The cliche of the socially awkward gamer is well known and old by now. In my own experiences with geeks (which is quite a bit) some of the stereotypes are truer than others for some people and not so for others. In my experiences with "normal" people or non-geeks, however, it is the same. Some people are just socially awkward and others are not. Is there a higher proportion of this phenomenon with geeks? Maybe, but maybe not. The issue is really about context.

hai ... i want 2 c other ppl: Dumping via Tech

A friend of mine recently contacted me to tell me one of those "omg" stories (you know the ones, the stories that begin, "OMG you won't believe what just happened!). It just so turns out that he randomly ran into another friend of ours and had the unfortunate experience of watching our mutal friend get dumped via text.

Now this story will probably sound familar to a few of my friends reading this, so let me assure you now; I am talking about you and I am not. This same story has happened multiple times, in various locations and implemented by both genders. Yet, almost everyone I know and all of the forums I checked in research for this post agree that dumping via text, or any other electronic means, is unequivically unexceptable - with a few very specific exceptions that generally relate to ideas of safety or if the relationship in less than a month long. Still this happens.