Disqus - Latest Comments for pomeranian99

Re: Social media is keeping us stuck in the moment

Clive — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 15:25:16 -0000

Glad you liked it! The "time is moving faster" phenomenon I feel myself, too, though I'm never sure how much of it is it real, or an artifact of getting ooooolder, heh.

Re: collision detection: Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens

Clive — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 09:38:54 -0000

They're not bad for some purposes! I still generally prefer paper, because the design is so much better. But in terms of portability -- and the attendant ability to have something on hand the instant you crave to read it -- ebooks are pretty wonderful. I have an iphone app containing all of Shakespeare's works, laid out quite nicely (because it's an app and not a kindle book, they have much more control over the aesthetics of the experience, and they've worked hard to make it look good).

I've been working my way through the plays I've read before and several that I haven't, an inevitably I wind up reading it on a whim -- in a moment of downtime -- and then get sucked in. So in a way, what the iphone has catalyzed is a form of reading that a) begins as unplanned by but then b) becomes immersive.

Or to put it another way, I never have "read some Shakespeare" in my to-do list, yet I wind up reading a lot of him anyway.

Re: collision detection: I've started a new blog -- this one is officially retired!

Clive — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 15:23:19 -0000

Thanks so much! I'm hoping the new site will be easier to update more frequently -- this one was Movable Type, which is now *such* a creaky affair that it was a serious disincentive to writing ...

The only problem is I can't seem to get Disqus working on my Wordpress installation at clivethompson.net. I'm using the built-in commenting system for now over there, but I'd prefer to use Disqus ...

Re: collision detection: A game created "as if games were the only medium on Earth"

Clive — Tue, 29 Dec 2015 12:56:43 -0000

I know, reading the book kind of stresses me out too ... I realize I will never, ever play most of those games. Not just because I don't have enough time; I don't possess the aged systems! This is another odd nature of games' status as cultural objects that are purely software. Software itself is relatively easy to preserve -- but what's hard is getting a functioning OS that executes said software.

A few years ago I wrote a profile of the digital artist Doug Aiken, and one of his recent major installations was a video project that was displayed in 360-degree wraparound video on the outside of the canister-shaped Hirshhorn Museum. The video was controlled by computers that ran, as I recall, on Windows 7. (Maybe XP? I'm spacing out on this.) Anyway, the Hirshhorn permanently acquired the video installation, and intends to probably remount it at some point in the future. But the question is, at that point in the future, will Windows 7 (or XP, whatever) still function?

Re: collision detection: Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens

Clive — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 16:13:18 -0000

Sure, I've read about this trend in a bunch of places!

Nicholas Carr talks about it in The Shallows here: https://books.google.com/bo...

There's a nice section in Brian Richardson's history of Italian printing that talks about how the octavo format opened things up for readers who were poorer and more mobile: https://books.google.com/bo...

This book on how Shakespeare was marketed points out the catalytic effect that octavo had on who could read hte plays, and where: https://books.google.com/bo...

Those are the books I'd had in my notes that talk about octavo, but this is only scratching the surface ... there's a ton of great scholarly work on how publishing formats affected the reception and sales of different forms of literature!

Re: collision detection: Study: Using big words needlessly makes you seem stupider

Clive — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 14:39:40 -0000

Absolutely. Within a specific domain, jargon is a way to speak with much greater precision than if you had to go about defining your terms all the time.

Re: collision detection: A game created "as if games were the only medium on Earth"

Clive — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:51:36 -0000

I am going to look for that scene. I'd love to see more like that ...

Re: collision detection: A game created "as if games were the only medium on Earth"

Clive — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:51:14 -0000

Aha, this is amazing, thank you for pointing it out! I'd love to collect together a whole list of examples of the video-game third-person perspective being used in movies and TV ... before the advent of games.

Re: collision detection: "How to make a fake": My art-forgery story in today's New York magazine

Clive — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 14:45:33 -0000

Aha, I was wondering. Thanks for checking!

Re: collision detection: "How to make a fake": My art-forgery story in today's New York magazine

Clive — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:58:25 -0000

Very good question. My understanding is they had the original -- though maybe they didn't! This story is from 2004, so possibly the National Gallery acquired it *after* this scam was uncovered?

Re: Recently Read, Head-to-Head: The Word Exchange and Smarter Than You Think

Clive — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:43:02 -0000

It won't bite! Probably.

Re: Recently Read, Head-to-Head: The Word Exchange and Smarter Than You Think

Clive — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:42:35 -0000

Well, even though I am ridiculously biased here since *I wrote one of the books being discussed*, heh -- I am a huge fan of speculative fiction. It's an amazing way to conduct deeply philosophical investigations of human nature. Years ago I wrote a column for Wired arguing precisely this point: http://archive.wired.com/te... ... At any rate, this whole thread has really made me want to read "The Word Exchange"!

Re: Recently Read, Head-to-Head: The Word Exchange and Smarter Than You Think

Clive — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:40:20 -0000

Let me know what you think, if you do read it!

Re: Recently Read, Head-to-Head: The Word Exchange and Smarter Than You Think

Clive — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:40:05 -0000

I probably would too, heh. That's the recency effect psychologists talk about -- the most recent thing we've encountered really primes our thinking.

Re: Recently Read, Head-to-Head: The Word Exchange and Smarter Than You Think

Clive — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:39:12 -0000

If you read it, let me know what you think! For my part, I hadn't read "The Word Exchange" yet, so I'm going to go over to my local bookstore to get a copy -- print, bien sur, heh.

Re: collision detection: A video game for an audience of one

Clive — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 12:36:13 -0000

I'm sort of surprised more games don't offer DIY design-your-own features. Once you have the engine and assets etc. all working, it can't be *that* hard to add in features for modding and tweaking levels, yes?

Re: collision detection: A video game for an audience of one

Clive — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 23:55:15 -0000

Aha, super cool! Is this Game Maker by Yo Yo -- i.e. https://www.yoyogames.com/s... ?

I've been recently playing around with teaching myself Stencyl, because I've designed a bunch of games on Scratch, but would love to make things I can port to phones.

I hadn't though of trying Warioware DIY either. I have an old DS in my closet that it'd be perfect to try it on ... and I bet my kids would love that too.

Re: collision detection: Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens

Clive — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 21:34:28 -0000

Looks close, yeah: http://upload.wikimedia.org...

Re: collision detection: Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens

Clive — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 11:19:36 -0000

Glad you're enjoying my book! (I just told Emily your kinds words also.)

I certainly hope this can help some students. I've known a few journalists who are dyslexic, and they told me of some pretty intense struggles at school. Part of the problem was that back then -- they were in school in the 70s and 80s -- dyslexia wasn't as much on the radar, so they weren't diagnosed in time to do any early intervention. They just sort of hashed through it on their own.

Re: collision detection: Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens

Clive — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 11:00:16 -0000

Triggered by your note here, I just did a quick bit of research and found some fascinating provisional work on precisely this subject!

I found this story in the Boston Globe -- http://www.bostonglobe.com/...

... which mentioned this intriguing paper: "Shorter Lines Facilitate Reading in Those Who Struggle" (http://www.plosone.org/arti... The abstract:

"People with dyslexia, who ordinarily struggle to read, sometimes remark that reading is easier when e-readers are used. Here, we used eye tracking to observe high school students with dyslexia as they read using these devices. Among the factors investigated, we found that reading using a small device resulted in substantial benefits, improving reading speeds by 27%, reducing the number of fixations by 11%, and importantly, reducing the number of regressive saccades by more than a factor of 2, with no cost to comprehension."

So yes, there appears to be some provisional work supporting precisely the anecdotes you've heard.

Re: collision detection: Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens

Clive — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 10:56:29 -0000

Superb! Thank you for figuring that out ... I'm going to fix the blog entry and put in a correction. Also thanks for letting me know how to figure out the format on Google Books. Very useful for future research.

Re: collision detection: Selfies and Borges

Clive — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 10:04:37 -0000

I will! While I don't exactly condone this sort of rippery, someone appears to have scanned and put that story online here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/f...

I also thought about namechecking the movie *Candyman* but man alive it was sooooo bad.

Re: collision detection: Selfies and Borges

Clive — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 10:03:04 -0000

Yeah, good point. He's not exactly one to leave footnotes and a bibliography ...

Re: collision detection: Selfies and Borges

Clive — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 10:02:18 -0000

As with Borges, too.

Re: collision detection: Selfies and Borges

Clive — Sun, 19 Jan 2014 18:16:11 -0000

Aha, this is excellent info. I should have suspected that someone like Miéville would have been into this concept.

That Wolfe novel sounds cool also -- I like the idea of "mirrors are used as propulsive sails" ....