The Adventures of a Digital Sensei
This weekend I took the kids and the wifey to their first NYC Comiccon. I figured that it was time to help them cultivate their inner nerds. It was a big deal for me since I remember my own father taking me to Comic and Sci-Fi conventions like this when I was a little kid. Back then it was pretty much a bunch of kids dragging their parents around to see all of these cool sci-fi and comic items. Fast forward nearly 30 years later and Continue reading “The NYC Comic Con 2009: Attack of the Nerds”
As I was doing some backup and maintenance on some of my old computers I came across these old music tracks that I made years ago. You see, back in the days after I graduated from college I had this crazy idea that I wanted to become the next hip hop star. It was more than an idea. I actually spent a great deal of time and money pursuing this goal. I came kind close a couple of times in making it a reality. In fact I might even try Continue reading “I spits hot fiyah!!”
I finally got off my butt and digitized some old footage of me playing basketball back in the day. The tape is from my senior year at Oberlin College. I had the tape laying around my mom’s house for ages and figured that it would probably be a good idea to convert it to digital before the tape got too old and worn out.
In searching through some old disks I came across this old Quicktime multimedia project that I did when I was back in graduate school. The piece was designed as a letter to my daughter. The purpose of the project was to document all of the feelings resulting from the event of her birth. I thought that it might be cool to record some of my emotions in order to give her some insight on her family history for when she was older. It was on of the first digital stories that I had created and, in many ways, was a precursor to my interest in ePortfolios.
JVC announces their brand new High Definition camcorder, the Everio GZ-HD6. The GZ-HD6 is a 3CCD hard drive based camera priced at just over a $1,000. If you been reading some of my previous posts then you already know that I recently purchased a high def camcorder, the Canon HV20. At the time the HV20 was the best deal on the market. Much to my irritation, that my have just changed. Continue reading “I just knew it…… soon as I go high def….”
Yesterday I presented at the 4th Annual CUNY Gen-Ed Conference as part of a group of faculty focusing on ways in which cross campus communication can be improved between community colleges and senior institutions. As part of the year long seminar with colleagues from LaGuardia and Baruch, we decided to share our research and discussions by presenting at the Gen-Ed Conference. I have previous discussed this faculty seminar in one of my earlier posts. The conference presentation was memorable for me in that it was the first time in which my wife and I were able to present together.
I guess I am gonna have to finally breakdown and finally get a Playstation 3 (PS3) because Grand Theft Auto IV has just been released. I have put it off buying a next gen system because I really wanted a PS3. Plus when the system came out last year the games pretty much sucked and the console was 700 bucks. Since then there have been a number of solid games released for the PS3 and Sony dropped the price of the console down to 400 bucks. With the release of GTA IV, my bank account may have to take another hit. Continue reading “The Grand Theft Auto IV Launch party”
Finally some more good news after a week of anxiety. It is official, Nick Porcaro, one of the founders of the NYC Blender User Group, is confirmed to present at our 3rd Annual New Media conference. I had been working on getting Nick to present for awhile. This week he emailed me and graciously agreed to give an overview of the Blender application at our conference. Nick’s talk will be an introduction to computer graphics using Blender. He will address topics such as, mesh modeling, texturing, rendering, animation, and real time interaction.
Continue reading “3rd Annual New Media Conference: Blender Guru confirmed”
I just found out that LaGuardia is going to be reorganizing the Computer Information Systems (CIS) department by merging the existing CIS programs with other departments throughout the college. The purpose of the reorganization is to improve overall departmental efficiency. The plan hasn’t been fully explained yet, but it was made clear that the students should not be impacted by shift since the majors will not be phased out, merely repositioned to other departments. We were also notified that the existing faculty will continue working for the college, we will just be teaching our courses in different departments.
All I can do for now is to keep teaching and keep a positive attitude. Change is always difficult. I know that better than some. But just like I tell my students, as long as you keep your skills up and work hard, you should never have to worry.