Happy Birthday to my amazing daughter. I have watched you grow over the past 16 years into a beautiful and intelligent young woman. Always stand tall, always stay proud. I will love you forever!
p.s., Don’t take ‘ish from anyone!
New Office Again??
Finally got access to my new office at LaGuardia. I am not going to unpack because I have been told that both the New Media program and I will be moving to the Business and Technology department in the Fall. If the move goes through it will be my third department and fifth office in 8 years at the institution. Luckily I am master at musical chairs.
Still, I am hoping that I can convince the administration that moving the program yet again, and to another single department, would be a bad idea. All of the research that I did last year on the design and successful building of digital media programs points to the need for a truly cross disciplinary approach in this time of technological convergence. Placing programs in departmental silos runs counter to the natural intersection of traditional forms of communication, finance, and entertainment occurring as a result of the new high tech methods of delivery that have emerged in recent years. I guess only time will tell.
On the positive side, it is a really nice office.
Facebook look back: Cool or not cool
In recognition of their 10th anniversary, the team over at Facebook added this new feature that enables users to automatically generate a video montage of the most memorable posts, pictures and events that they have shared since joining the popular social network. Considering that the video was probably compiled and edited via a set of programming based algorithms, I have to admit that I was impressed at the end result of my video. However, many of my friends had different takes on the new feature.
One of my friends likened the automated video creation to coming home and finding a stranger going through your photo albums and pulling random pictures out. Another friend called the videos Continue reading “Facebook look back: Cool or not cool”
Am I eternal? Or an eternalist?
As I stop and reflect on the current state of Hip-Hop I cannot help but stop and think about how different the music and culture that I love would be if some of the great artists were still with us. But even though Biggie and the others are gone their presence is still felt among true hip-hop heads. Because while B-Boys may die, Hip Hop lives forever! May the legends rest in peace.
Happy Birthday Sensei!
Down to the wire
It ain’t finished yet
For many years Hip-hop has been held up as the boogie man, by both whites and blacks, as a major contributor to the ills in the African American community. When this has happened I often found myself wondering to what artists and music these detractors were listening.
Hip Hop is one of the few modern day art forms which can reach across cultural and racial lines to inform and inspire. When done correctly it can speak to our youth in a way that few individuals or other mediums can. It can brutally address societal issues and injustices all while forcing us to take a hard look at our own strengths and weaknesses. With that said, I Continue reading “It ain’t finished yet”
New Year Technology project: 2007 MacBook Pro Upgrade
I am upgrading the standard hard drive in my 2007 17in MacBook Pro to a solid state drive (SSD). “Winona” has been showing her age in recently years and I wanted to spruce her up a little bit. And yes, I name my computer equipment (shout out to all of those Farscape fans out there).
The ram in “Winona” was already maxed out so the best bang for the buck upgrade in terms of price and performance was a solid state drive upgrade. Now that I have more leeway in my research and profession endeavors after receiving tenure, I am planning on doing more work with Apple related programs such as iBook Author, Adobe DPS, and xCode to develop interactive teaching applications for the students in the programs that I oversee. It will help to have a decent backup machine for basic tasks, and baring Apple Continue reading “New Year Technology project: 2007 MacBook Pro Upgrade”
I shall call him…… Mini Me.
The new Mac Mini I bought last Christmas is finally hooked up and added to the network. I waited because I wanted to use it in a shared dual monitor configuration with my custom built Windows system. I will be leveraging the quad core i7 Mac Mini with 16gb of ram more in the coming weeks. Because while I am more than capable of building and maintaining a Windows/Linux DIY desktop, I don’t want to spend time dealing with conflicting dll files, viruses, and system corruptions when I should be building something creative. So now I have been using the Mac Mini over the past few days and the only thought going through my mind is why in the hell did I wait so long to hook it up.
The Mac Mini can’t play games for crap because of the under powered graphics card, but everything else is great. The system is Continue reading “I shall call him…… Mini Me.”
Don’t worry, baby girl. I got this!
I saw my girl off to the airport today as she heads to Norway for a few weeks to catch up with family and friends. We are gonna miss her. The upside, the kids and I are planning a series of wild parties. She said that she would be checking in to see if I can handle two weeks alone with the kids. Oh I can handle it. The DJ booth and the full bar should be installed by tomorrow afternoon, just in time for the weekend! Let the debauchery begin! I just have to make sure that the kids don’t starve–or worse: have a steady diet of pizza and McD’s burgers & fries! But that might be so bad. I heard that the tomatoes in Pizza counts as vegetables. The same goes for the lettuce on top of a Big Mac.
I am wondering if I can get something like this completely done to the house before she returns.
http://thechive.com/…/girl-drops-30k-converting-house…/