Category Archives: Cool stuff

Mike Larkin’s “A Compendium of Selfie Reflections (For My Students)”

My colleague Mike Larkin is a triple threat:  engaging writer, intriguing thinker, and encouraging teacher.  He’s helping his students share their work publicly on his blog and anywhere else it might spread, and I’m hoping they end up with a bigger audience than they imagined.

You can help encourage them by reading their online writing–or even just by “liking” their posts when they appear, wherever they appear.

If you want to peek behind the curtain, see Mike’s blog post  A compendium of selfie reflections (for my students).

At the end, he notes several reasons that he wrote the post, concluding that

mostly I wrote this for my current students, who will be embarking on writing some digital, multimodal essays about online identity in the coming month.

I offer this brief essay as an example to them, and I’m hoping to encourage them to let me share some of their work publicly here. Given their facility with technology, I’m sure they can do much more interesting things with digital tools than I’ve managed to do in this blog post. (Oh, look at that textual selfie he just took–so humble!)

Firefly Game for Mac

I’m thinking hopeful thoughts about the possibility that I’ll be able to play a Firefly-inspired game on my Mac.  I get frustrated when stuff is only playable on a console.  Of course, I dunno how good the game will be . . . .

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2014/10/17/first-firefly-online-video-shows-off-creepy-derelict-ship-2354076?lt_source=external,share_fb,manual

Backstage at Convolution 2014

Here I am backstage many hours before the masquerade at Convolution 2014, as yet unaware of how I am heading ever deeper behind the curtain.

I contemplate the consequences of saying yes.

carolyn-convolution2014-backstage-crop

Science Fiction and Fact Charm Bracelet

I spent the past three days at Convolution 2014, tabling, networking, and supporting friends and strangers in their writing, publishing, and costuming endeavors.  I’m exhausted!

Here’s my reward:  a charm bracelet from Springtime Creations, featuring the Tardis, K-9, a Cyberman head, a Dalek, Buzz Aldrin, and Maria’s head from Metropolis.

The Buzz Aldrin figure is a particularly meaningful find, because my nephew’s middle name is Aldrin (yep, in honor of Buzz).

bracelet-sfcharms

Updating Blog and Site

I’m thinking about moving my carolynhill.com domain to WordPress. It would make life simpler, because if I don’t move the site to WordPress, I’ll have to learn responsive web design, and I’m not interested in learning that right now.

I’d have to pay WordPress, but I suppose that’s only fair, considering I’ve been using WordPress for free since forever.

We’ll see.

(Update:  I updated!)

Sun Plunge

We played Solarquest for game day.  In the photo, Cathryn’s blue marker plunges into the sun after Paul bankrupts her.

solarquest-sun

Auditioning Fabrics

I’ve hung several fabrics on the design wall, thinking about a Halloween quilt.  Gives me something to look at besides the computer screen.

fabric-audition-halloween

 

 

Progrep 36: Arrow Woman Photo

I found a folder of articles and images I clipped from magazines in 1990, 1991, and 1992.  One of the images speaks so strongly to me in 2014, as I write this first draft, that I’ve pinned it to the corkboard on my desk.

Closeup of woman drawing back a bow, focused on target

Oculus Rift

I want to try Oculus Rift. Decades ago I played one of the early VR games, in the ASUC store at Cal, and not long after that, friends and I went to a shop where we played as a team in a VR battle simulation. Even that rudimentary tech was immersive for me–an extraordinary feeling. Oculus Rift sounds intriguingly overwhelming. I don’t want to play the Alien game, though, or anything scary!

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/alien-isolation-oculus/

Mother Nature Knows Best

Yesterday afternoon I discovered two large, bright-green-and-black banded caterpillars munching on my fennel.  I pulled them off, and they spread a stinky smell that stuck to my fingers.  I put them both into an empty watering can, looked them up on the web, and discovered that they were black swallowtail larvae — nearly as striking in their adult butterfly form as they were in the caterpillar stage.  Too pretty to kill, but not pretty enough to sacrifice my fennel.

I placed them in the parsley and basil at the other end of the garden.  When I checked later, they were in pretty much the same spots I’d left them in, but I started to worry that maybe they weren’t eating, so I put one of the caterpillars back on the fennel and left the other on the Thai basil.

Today the caterpillar on the fennel is doing fine.  The one that I left on the basil is nowhere to be seen.

Image