Dr. B.'s Blog - This Is What a Feminist Looks Like

Account Creation

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 11:27:03 -0500

Because of spam, folks who want to leave comments will have to create accounts. When you sign up for a account please send me an email to let me know so that I can get your account set up.

Happy Blogiversary to Me! (blogging metatheory)

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 11:38:10 -0400

As cheesy as it is it's true. Today is my blogiversary and Dr. B.'s Blog and I are celebrating our 4th!

4 years ago I started my first official blog. 2 years before that on October 10, 1999 I started blogging before blogging was cool. I was a fesh faced grad student keeping a writing journal online (with a webcam) to track progress of my dissertation writing.

Lately, there's been discussion on one of the professional listserv of whether or not teachers who use blogs should blog...my answer is hell yeah. I may be biased, but I think that we can't effective teach with a technology unless we know how it works mechanically, theoretically, and pedagogically.

We teach by example, they learn by practice. The two of those things together make the answer to the question "Do we have to blog with our students?" a resounding "hell yeah!"

No offense to anyone, but more and more it feels like folks wanna do things in the classroom in order to be cool without thinking it through, fully theorizing, or even necessarily knowing what they are doing. It is for that reason that I continue to mentor incoming GTAs year after year. I want them to know why they do what they do so that they can do it well.

Hell I've wasted plenty of time playing with new technologies that I thought had pedagogical value before I chucked them out. You gotta play with it yourself before you spring it on students. You gotta know that it will work for you . Just because it worked for everyone else damn sho' don't mean it'll work for you. We have to realize that all teachers are not the same.

:slowly puts the soapbox back under the desk

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Baby Meme

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:42:16 -0400

From Clancy even though she didn't tag me :-)

1. Cloth or disposable? Both, prefer cloth.
2. Breast or bottle? Bottle
3. Eczema or reflux? Reflux, and it's pretty bad.
4. Jumparoo or play mat? Playmat, she's too young for jumparoo.
5. Mommy or Daddy? Mommy, of course.
6. Sling, front carrier, or stroller? Front carrier
7. Pacifier or thumb? BINKY!
8. Bumbo seat or bouncy seat? BOUNCY, STILL TOO YOUNG FOR BUMBO
9. White noise or silence while sleeping? White noise, LOUD -- and ceiling fan
10. Crib, Pack'n'Play, or parents' bed? Pack'n'Play

The Internet Is (Not) for Porn!

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:57:14 -0400

As I have spent the last 2 and half months in my own newborn baby induced bliss (and sleep deprivation) with the addition of Princess Peanut to the household (no pictures posted as she is foster/adopt and still a ward of the state) I have done a piss poor job of blogging (more about the peanut later and/or via private email). What has drawn me out of my blogging hiatus (late though it may be) is the story of beautiful Rowan Santos who has been diagnosed with retinoblastoma. What makes this diagnosis so special is not only that she is the infant daughter of one of our graduate students , but that her condition was caught not by doctors but by one of her mom Megan's cyber friends who saw the tell-tale "white eye" in pictures that the two proud mamas shared.

As a new mama myself I cried when I first heard about Rowan's condition, but while she will lose her eye her prognosis is good. All of the big media outlets have picked up the story and it made the Today show today . The Santos clan is traveling from Tampa to Miami for chemo and surgery and anyone who has ever had to travel for healthcare (our brood included) knows how expensive that can be, especially when gas is 4 bucks a gallon. MWZ has spread the word that those so inclined can come together and help defray the costs for the Santos clan (and maybe buy a new buddy for Rowan)

Please consider sending a donation of ANY amount to help defray these considerable expenses. Checks can be made payable to Rowan or Marc Santos and mailed to:

SunTrust Bank, Tampa Bay
Attention Customer Service
2208 East Fowler Ave
Tampa, Fl 33612

In the memo line of the check, *please include the account number: 1000074628628* (four zeros after that first 1).

It's Back!

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:43:36 -0400

As ya'll may recall I have had issues with insomnia since I was a kid. Well it has been back for the last 3 weeks or so. I have been knitting, gaming, and watching LOTS of bad t.v. Well tonight (actually this morning) I watched my 4th bad game movie in a week's time. Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Doom, and Dungeons & Dragons

I mentioned this to Lisa and she said it clearly means that I have not been playing enough games, so since it is only 4:45 and I am destined to be up for another couple of hours I guess I will go up and play some games. We can thank Lisa for that one.

Microblogging Killed the Blogger

Thu, 29 May 2008 23:54:06 -0400

Twitter has seriously cut down on the amount of time that I spend blogging. Not only is it easier and faster, but it gives me instant gratification. Rather than having to wait and see if people read the post and comment I get immediate response via Twitter. I even find myself responding to people's blog posts more in Twitter than on the blogs themselves (at least when people tweet that they have posted to their blogs).

When you add Twitpic to the mix and give me the opportunity to post pictures (or at least links to them) to twitter from anywhere I get drawn further into the darkside. Now if I could only get Brightkite to work from my phone I would be in like Flynn! In the meantime you might notice that right below the microblogging block on the left there is now a block for Twitpic!

WiiFit Thinks I'm Old, Short, and Fat

Tue, 27 May 2008 16:58:23 -0400

Not that any of that might not be true, but I don't appreciate being told that by my game console! Yeah, I got a Wii Fit at launch because I had to have it. I was wondering how delicate it would be and it wasn't very delicate at all. When I entered my height and weight it shrank my mii and made my belly hang out of my workout clothes (this mind you NEVER happens).

In a society that is far too concerned with impossible beauty standards and children "dieting" in elementary and middle school for no good reason I worry about the additional damage of being called obese and having oneself represented as a dumpy avatar. Now I have to go and lie to my Wii and see if the process and outcome is any different if I make myself a pre-teen girl.

Links I've Been Following Today

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:59:49 -0400

Funny Indexed post

A Stuff White People Like that (as usual) can be applied to the entirety of mainstream America

Clay Shirky's talk on Web 2.0

New Wiiware download, Lost Winds. Really digging the new downloads of games and demos for the DS bought a 2 GB SD card to accommodate my coming addiction.

Learning environments research on virtual environments

What Lisa bought me for my birthday

What I gave her

What I bought myself this weekend

This will catch you up on how I have been spending (most) of my net time today. Now don't you feel enlightened?

On NOLA and a Sense of Loss

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:09:59 -0400

I fully recognize the need for tourists to go back to NOLA, but as a 20 year "regular" (pre-Katrina) I was sickened by what I saw and heard from the locals while I was at CCCC last week. I was afraid to go back and more and more I am wishing that I had not. The Quarter and the Convention Center area have been restored for the most part but the Ward and the East side are now (for the most part) non-existent. Natives trying to return to the area are finding that they have to leave again because they are no longer able to get the jobs that they have held for so long. I miss the NOLA that I knew, the corner bars and Po' Boy/Gumbo spots and the love of a people like no other.

This shit really pisses me off. Three years later we still see FEMA trailers and tent cities are popping up under overpasses. You still see houses marked with the mark of the dead. People are homeless, desperate, and hungry. While poverty is not something new to these folks they now find themselves alone with no community or family left to lean on. What pisses me off even more is the accusatory looks that I got from folks because African American natives chose me to speak to, converse with, commiserate with, share with...quit fucking whining about "discrimination" and understand (or at least don't share with me) because when I am faced with the REALITY of Katrina 3 fucking years later I can really give less than a shit if you are mad because a young African American woman hands me a flier for a poetry slam and ignores you or comes to me first at a counter or speaks to me on the street (did you speak to them first or clutch your pocketbook a little tighter when they rounded the corner?). Really???...is that your biggest concern about what you have seen (or chosen not to) while in New Orleans?

If you are offended by what I have written maybe you need to be. In the end, one can only pray that the real New Orleans can one day be resurrected.

Hacking the Body

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:57:39 -0400

Asinine hackers posted JavaScript based post on an epilepsy forum in order to trigger seizures and migraines in epilepsy patients with flashing animation.

This is the first time that I have heard of hackers doing something so physically malicious. The hack has finally breached the matrix.

via Wired: Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer

"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures," says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts.

Finished!

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:15:38 -0400

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. It has been a busy week. There were dissertation prospectus defenses and sockday parties and web 2.0 community meetups. I have been a busy beaver!

I did manage to stay up until 4:00 on Wednesday and finish Professor Layton. I was really excited to get to the extra puzzles that were based on how completely you have finished the game, but I was sorely disappointed. Not so much in the game as in myself. The puzzles were the same puzzles that you find in the game (and one might argue a bit more difficult), but I found myself almost totally disinterested in them when they were not connected to or advancing an ongoing narrative!

Wow, now that says a lot. I found the puzzles too easy in most cases, but I continued to play the game because I wanted to see what happened next in the simple (yet engaging) story. There is definitely a lot to be said for a good narrative.

Oh well, it's almost 5:30 so I guess I really should head off to bed. DST really sucks for me right now!

Critical Thinking is the Key to Success! (aka Professor Layton and the Curious Village)

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:01:20 -0500

Don't you hate when you write a long post and it gets lost in the ether. Here's my attempt to recreate it before I go to bed.

So I've been playing a lot of Professor Layton and the Curious Village on my DS before I go to bed at night and I find it amusing that "Critical thinking is the key to success!" is one of the professor's key phrases. As a teacher, it would be great if all of my students thought that way, right?

Professor Layton is a lot like Brain Age with a narrative. You solve a series of puzzles to get clues from the villagers. The game offers an interesting cast of characters including the sloppy detective, the beautiful lady in distress, the flamboyant servant with purple lip(stick) to match his purple suit who interjects "Woo Hoo" in a Tourettes-esque manner during his speeches, matronly little old ladies, and an assortment of village idiots.

Oddly enough all of the villagers have puzzles that they want you to solve (and they can't solve them for themselves). You need the clues that they give you to solve a series of mysteries. There are disappearing artifacts, a murder, kidnappings, and more to come I am sure. I have finished 4 or 5 chapters of the game and the puzzles are starting to get a little challenging (either that or it's the cold medicine that I've been taking at bedtime). What is (so far) obviously absent from the game is word puzzles. Professor Layton 2 has already been released in Japan and a third is the works so hopefully the the developers at Level-5 will pull in some wordsmithy types to develop some word puzzles!

Additional game features?

In addition to the clues that you get from the villagers for solving the puzzles you can also earn money (picarats) that can be used to buy bonuses at the end of the game.

You can download new puzzles every week via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Wednesday Gaming @ GDC

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:53:26 -0500

While I spent far too much time touring the Expo at GDC I played a lot of games as well. Want to know what I played? Here's a quick list and my 5 word maximum first reactions!

Hellgate London- Really Liked It

Crysis- Liked It

Spore Creatures (DS-Pre-release)- It could grow on me

Wii Fit- Strangely addictive (and the Nintendo guy got me to hula hoop in public!)

Dishwasher: Dead Samurai (XNA community game for XBLA)- Definite Download

Little Gamers (XNA community game for XBLA)- Definite Download

Penumbra:Overture- Not for me

Warriors Orochi (Pre-release for the PSP)- A hack & slash feast. Gots to get me some of that!

Bionic Commando (watched a demo)- A Black, male, Lara Croft with dreads...not really my type of game this one.

Fez- A GDC Indie favorite...a cross between Echochrome and old school platformer

Tuesday GDC Notes

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:51:44 -0500

On Tuesday I went to sessions from both IGDA and the Serious Games Summits. You'll find those notes below the fold. :-)

GDC Day 1: Afternoon

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:34:06 -0500

So day one is over and here are my notes. You can find them below the fold. Now to find some food.