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.

Warmest Superconductor Kind of Stinks | Technophiles Newscast 109

Because I've already been asked - the shirt says "I <3 br="" taiwan="">

EM Drive Inventor Vindicated by NASA | Technophiles Newscast 108

#261 "Backpacking Bees" | Technophiles Podcast

Bees and potholes - can we trade one for the other?

The Drinkable Book Provides Clean Water | Technophiles Newscast 107

For more info: http://pagedrinkingpaper.com/

"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.

#260 "The Password is Dead" | Technophiles Podcast

But is there a better or even realistic alternative?
Also, space elevators. When do I get to ride in one?

#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.

#256 "Jeep Cherokee Hack" | Technophiles Podcast

Jeeps, hackers, time travel, and multiverses - what more could you possibly want?

In the first segment we discuss how easy it is becoming to hack cars while they are in use. After the break we dive into the theoretical science hole as we attempt to understand the results of an updated version of the double-slit experiment.

Can you change reality with your thoughts? Change the past? Let's find out!  

Just Like Legos!

OK, so not really Legos, but almost as cool, is this episode from Friday, July 24th about making roads from plastic. After the break we turn to the maybe creepy, maybe fun Google timeline feature, which I have already turned off.

Lucid Pipes Generate Portland Energy | Technophiles Newscast 093

Making the world a little greener - more important now than ever, the Lucid Pipe Power System.

TPN Shout-Out to UWM for Lasers

A cool mini-sode from Friday July 17th about some research being conducted right here at UW-Milwaukee. LASERS!

Star Trek Geekery - I Want a Replicator AND a Transporter!

This is my first TPN Newscast!  - So it's a shorty - a "snack sized" version of the topics talked about on the full length Technophiles Podcasts.

And for the record - Picard wins and The Next Generation was the best.

#251 "Night Terrors" | Technophiles Podcast

In this episode from Friday July 10th we are talking about the cool and creepy in a nightmare smartphone game and Google's "Inceptionism."

The Summer of Writing and Taking Over the Internet

Let me introduce you to my new project - the Technophiles Podcast and Newscast on TPN! A couple of months ago now I was a guest on the TPN podcast. I had a lot of fun and got along great with the cast - so much so that a few weeks later, when the cast had an opening on their show, I was asked (and accepted - of course) to join the crew as a regular cast member.

What does this have to do with writing? Well ...

Cyber “Stalking” (Not *That* Kind of Stalking)

I had an interesting conversation with a fellow grad student at the AAAs about “stalking” people online. This is the word we used, though I want to make clear that we were not in fact talking about scary, dangerous, creepy, actual stalking. Rather we were talking about using the Internet to gather information about people we were curious about. Still sounds kind of like stalking doesn’t it? Well, since we both agreed on that point and could not think of another commonly accepted word to discuss the topic, we talked about “stalking” people at the conference.

Public Learning Patch 1.1

This morning I finally did it. I made my Chinese practice blog (中文練習) public. Only time will tell if this was a mistake. Despite the recognition that this may turn out very badly I have decided to put an idea before caution. Why? This is the only way for change to happen and, on a larger scale, I think there is a serious problem with some cultural perceptions of education that I have seen recently. Do I think my little experiment is going to change the world of education? No, of course not; but sometimes all it take is “one small step…”

Public Learning

Just before my friend and Chinese tutor 高健 left Taiwan for the summer we had an interesting discussion about learning through blogging - not through reading blogs, but writing them. He writes a blog about studying to be a Chinese teacher called iLearn Mandarin. I don't honestly know how I feel about this yet, but it is something I've been trying out ever since my adviser first told me to write a field blog almost 3 years ago....and now I have a second one called 中文練習 (Chinese Language Practice) at http://stuffmychineseteachermakesmedo.blogspot.tw.

How did I go from never even considering blogging to having 2 blogs in 2 different languages?!

Amazing what a little change in point of view can do to a person.

Skritter: My Favorite App or New Favorite Game?

Skritter logo. (Photo from the web.)

I've been using Skritter for 3 weeks now. Its a program that teaches Chinese and Japanese character writing. I'll admit, I'm in love. Their website claims a user can learn a new character every 192 seconds and remember 95% of what they learn. It is in every way an amazing educational program; not least because it reminds me of city-builder games like Sim City and Civilization. Wait, what?