During my sabbatical year I was fortunate enough to secure an opportunity to serve as a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Interactive Telecomunications Program. It was somewhat of a homecoming for me since this was the program that I graduated from nearly two decades earlier.
Continue reading “Visiting Scholar at NYU”Mini Obie Reunion
The sabbatical year continues to bring me back into contact with many of my friends from years gone by. You see, my boy Fat invited me to come and watch his son Henry play for the Oberlin College Yeomen, and to co-sponsor a pre game reception for the team. For a variety of reasons I rarely have the desire to watch basketball anymore, but it was Fat’s kid, so I schlepped downtown support my boy. Plus I can’t remember Oberlin ever playing in NYC so I was more than a little curious to see how the team looked today. What I didn’t realize was that Fat also invited a grip of our fellow Obies to the game for a somewhat impromptu Oberlin College mini reunion.
Continue reading “Mini Obie Reunion”You will be missed
I was saddened to hear that Red Burns, founder of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, passed away earlier this week. Red was my academic adviser and one of the first people that I met when I arrived to study at ITP in the late 90s. Oddly enough, despite her small stature, she was also one of the most intimidating people I have ever met. And I say that as a person that is not easily intimidated. My first impression of Red was that she was not someone to trifle with, piss off, or just generally wind up on her bad side. Over time I was fortunate to see that there was a kinder and gentler side to her. Red cared deeply for her students, but she demanded the best from them. She was a formidable personality and utterly fearless in her approach to life.
Over the past few days my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been inundated by posts from friends and fellow ITP students who were influenced heavily by Red. She was truly a pioneer in the fields of tech education and digital expression. The overwhelming theme that comes through in all of the posts is that Red, and the program that she created, changed their lives for the better. Continue reading “You will be missed”
My first Flashcoders meeting
I went to my first meeting of the New York City Flashcoders user group last night. I have been a member of the mailing list for a few months now and figured that it was time to meet the actual people behind the site. The Flashcoders user group appears to be one of the more active flash communities in the NYC area. In fact, this group of multimedia professionals meet about once a week to discuss and display cool new Flash based projects and tools. The meeting last night was about using Arduino in conjunction with Flash actionscript. Continue reading “My first Flashcoders meeting”
Drupal Camp at PolyTech
After the late, late party at Miko’s last night, I wasn’t hyped to get up early on a Sunday morning a head off to a technical conference on administering and programming for Drupal. However since I needed to learn more about this open source content management system for a side project that I am working on called Ensideus.com (more on that soon), I dragged my sorry butt out of bed and headed to Brooklyn. Continue reading “Drupal Camp at PolyTech”