Monthly Archives: January 2009

   

Source code for an interactive fiction.

“‘We’ blog” by Brennan Young

The Small Meeting Room is a room. “In a room scarcely glimpsed by most visitors to the school, a group of people are gathered to discuss the school blog. They’re all a bit tired, having been working with other matters most of the day. Behind a folding partition, the ghosts of upper management lunches haunt each other silently.”

A staff member is a kind of person.
A teacher is a kind of staff member .
A department head is a kind of staff member .

A blog administrator is a kind of teacher.

A communications officer is a kind of staff member.
An enterprise consultant is a kind of staff member.

A student is a kind of person.
An ex-student is a kind of person.

A person is either enthusiastic or apathetic.
A staff member is usually enthusiastic.

A projector is a kind of thing.
A projector cable is a kind of thing.
A projector cable can be too short or long enough.

In The Small Meeting Room is a male blog administrator called Herman.

In The Small Meeting Room is a male teacher called Steen.

In The Small Meeting Room is a male teacher called Brennan.

In The Small Meeting Room is a female teacher called Barbara.

In The Small Meeting Room is a female department head called Ulla.
In The Small Meeting Room is a male department head called Michael.

In The Small Meeting Room is a female communications officer called Gitte.
In The Small Meeting Room is a male enterprise consultant called Henning.

In The Small Meeting Room is a male ex-student called Heine.

In The Small Meeting Room is a projector.
In The Small Meeting Room is a projector cable.
The projector cable is too short.
Instead of examining the projector cable, say “You might be able to plug it in, but then the projector will point at the wastebasket.”

Persuasion rule for asking an enthusiastic student to try doing something:
persuasion succeeds.

Persuasion rule for asking a staff member to try doing something:
persuasion succeeds. [yeah, right]

Understand “bore [someone]” as boring.
Boring is an action applying to one thing.

Check boring:
if the noun is apathetic, say “[The noun]’s mind is obviously elsehwere!” instead.

Carry out boring:
now the noun is apathetic.

Report boring:
say “[The noun] stifles a yawn and glances at the clock.”

Understand “galvanize [someone]” as galvanizing.
Galvanizing is an action applying to one thing.

Check galvanizing:
if the noun is enthusiastic, say “[The noun] is already keen!” instead.

Carry out galvanizing:
now the noun is enthusiastic.

Report galvanizing:
say “[The noun] is now inspired enough to do whatever you suggest, creatively and with various exciting twists, that inspire you too!”;
now the player is enthusiastic.

After asking the Brennan about “blog”, say “Sometimes the source code is more interesting than the resulting software. You can paste this into the Inform7 editor and enjoy my little interactive fiction, which of course is based on fact. Partly. But what’s missing? Surely not just the URL… But of course you already found that with google or something. How else would we be discussing this?”.

Power of the mind

Remote control devices for TVs and so on are now so part of our daily lives we no longer think about them, but what if we could control devices with our minds? A hospital in Italy has apparently been successful in inventing a system that allows you to do just that. The system’s purpose is to help handicapped people open doors, switch on lights and so on by being equipped with a strip of electrodes attached to their heads that picks up brainwaves and then sends them to a computer that, as it states in the article ‘interprets them as desired actions’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/22/home-technology-robots-invention

On one hand this sounds wonderful and a tool that could help many people. On the other hand….imagine sitting in Jupiter listening to a lecture on Customer Relationship Management and wishing that the Powerpoint slides would turn into the episode of ‘CSI: Miami’ you missed last night……

Useless information of the day: the Polish word for a remote control is ‘pilot’.

B og Fremtiden

B var stadig relativt ny studerende, da jeg startede som kommunikationskonsulent her på MMD for 1½ år siden. Han var en markant studerende, der i kraft af sin størrelse, sin selvtillid (som nogle måske ville benævne selvfedme) og sit engagement i studieråd, barudvalg osv. ikke var til at overse. Tydeligvis en studerende, der ville bemærkes, næsten ligegyldigt for hvad, positivt eller negativt, også selvom det betød, at han evt. kom på kollisionskurs med skolens undervisere.

Jeg mødte B i forgårs – kort før hans afsluttende eksamen. Det var en anden B. Ydmyg, usikker på om han overhovedet var i stand til at kravle over målstregen.

B bestod, lige akkurat. Men – til overraskelse for flere af os, der arbejder her – bevarede han ydmygheden og lod os forstå, at hertil var han ikke nået, hvis det ikke havde været for os!

Det er dejligt at høre – selvfølgelig fordi det bekræfter os i, at vores arbejde har betydning og at vi langt hen ad vejen lykkes med det. Men også fordi den proces, som det ser ud til at B har gennemgået her hos os, har resulteret i en person, som er i fuld gang med at finde sin personlige vej til sit mål.

Underviserne er til dimissionsfesten i morgen blevet bedt om at formulere farvelbudskaber og et af dem siger vel egentlig det hele: “The more you know, the more you know that you don´t know!”

Exam time

We are now in the middle of exam time: students are pacing up and down outside classes and staff are running around with piles of papers and jugs of coffee. It is great when they are all over, and for those of you finishing 4th semester, it also means the end of your education here and the start of a new phase in your life.

Like most of the international students I would imagine, the oral exam tradition was something new to me when I came to Denmark. As a student, I was used to sitting for 3 hours, writing furiously, timing how long I had for each question and making sure that the questions were answered with good quotes and examples. As a teacher in Scotland, I was used to spending many hours, with endless cups of tea, reading exam scripts (the most I ever had to do in one exam period was 250…). Now I am used to the oral exam, as I am sure many of you are too.

Regardless of what type of exam, it is a stressful time. Just remember to take a deep breath, answer as best as you can and if you don’t understand a question ask for it to be repeated (it gives you time to think too!). Good luck to everyone and remember this is an opportunity to show off how much you know!

Kend din Facebook-type

What are you doing right now? Svaret på det spørgsmål blæser ikke længere i vinden – det kan læses på Facebook. Det er omdrejningspunktet i de profiler, som pt. 1.7 million danskere nu har og som tilbyder os en mulighed for at levere en statusopdatering på vores gøren og laden, indfald og udfald, opråb, nødråb og skyden med spredehagl om vores liv.

Retoriker Nadja Pass ser det som ”en ny, spirende ”folke-genre” … -” der stortrives i spændingsfeltet mellem det mundtlige og det skriftlige og appellerer så meget til “homo multimedicus” at selv helt utrænede skribenter publicerer, ordspiller og boltrer sig i konkrete detaljer”. Og når man er retoriker er det nærliggende at få øje på et begyndende mønster i den måde, vi fremstiller os selv på i det lille statusfelt. Det har udmøntet sig i et bud på 10 forskellige typer med hver deres formål, fordele og faldgruber. Vil du vide om din måde at opdatere dit statusfelt på placerer dig i kategorien Selvfed, Selvironisk eller måske bare Kryptisk, så læs mere på Nadjas blog

http://nadjasreflexioner.net/2008/10/08/facebook-opdateringen-en-ny-folkegenre/