Behind the curve…as usual

Posted on April 4, 2009

Last year, mainstream media was all abuzz about Second Life (kinda like how they’re all on the Twitter bandwagon now). I looked at it a bit, but wasn’t overly impressed and didn’t join. The hype made it sound like the Metaverse in Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash,” however, Second Life’s graphics didn’t match the Metaverse as it appeared in my imagination. Still, the social, economic, and cultural aspect of Second life is similar.

Technology is as prone to fads as anything else, maybe even more so. There are the early adopters, usually a motley crew of people who put up with higher prices and/or poor service because they are part of something special. Then inevitably, word gets out. The number of users climbs, the media catches on, and rapid growth ensues. Good for businesses, though it may put off the early adopters (remembering the legions of AOL users unleashed on the web.) Then comes the plateau. Anyone who thought it was worthwhile, already staked their claim, and there are few if any new users to be had. Bad for businesses that expected astronomical growth, but things more or less stabilize. Sooner or later the cycle declines. The test of a fad is how quickly and deeply something declines after the plateau. A good business can keep the plateau going for a long time, or can stem the decline so it doesn’t fall too far. Many people have studied this phenomenon. Some companies, like Apple, exploit it by offering new products when old ones near the end of the cycle.

Taking classes for the MA, I’ve been more-and-more interested in using technology as a teaching tool. Using computers, projectors, and PowerPoint is interesting, but it’s just an evolution of the classroom. It may have changed how teachers prepare for lectures, but lectures are still lectures. However, the net changed things.

The past few weeks, I’ve been reading journal articles on teaching writing online. That is, using the net as a classroom to teach people how to write. Someone else in class came up with articles that looked at virtual classrooms in Second Life, so I decided to take another look at it.

Since I haven’t been on Second Life before, there’s a learning curve. I’ve figured out what a slurl is, even if I don’t know how to set one up (don’t need to use it at the moment). The default avatars are low-resolution, but this probably saves bandwidth and processing time. Wandering around in SL initially, I was amazed by some of the architecture. Sure, they’re clunky looking, too, but people obviously spent a lot of time on some of the buildings. However, the most amazing thing is Second Life was virtually deserted. I think some places are probably more popular than others, but I went to some places that were vacant. I went to one place that had a miniature-train that avatars could drive or ride, so I drove it around a nicely laid out course and only saw one other avatar, and that one appeared to be reading a book. I went into stores that were empty, except for goods (freebies are nice, BTW). My main impression of SL is that it’s a digital ghost town. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for having an amusement park to yourself ;-)

At the moment, I still have a lot to learn about Second Life, so I don’t know if it’s worthwhile or not. The plan is to learn a bit more about it and some of the places therein. Before long, I’ll try to do some 3D work and upload something, mainly because the default avatar makes me out to be a n00b. I want to give my avatar a Hawaiian shirt, some khakis, and a receding hairline. At some point, I may check out other classrooms or schools and see what they do and how they do it.

I put up a new category for Second Life, because I anticipate blogging about SL and related issues (3D, education, OpenSim, OSgrid) as I learn more about them.

Pain in the… leg.

Posted on March 27, 2009

Most of this week I’ve had pain in the right calf. Walking around and stretching would make the pain subside, but when I stand up, I usually walk with a slight limp for a few minutes. It didn’t feel like anything too serious… until this morning.

Coming into work was normal, I walked to Methodist Hospital and took the train to IUPUI. As I began walking down a long set of stairs, my right leg collapsed. I caught myself on the railing, so I didn’t fall completely, but the leg giving out like that was disconcerting. It was very sudden, almost as if I had been hit. Just standing is fine, but moving the knee-calf-ankle too much means wince-inducing pain. Whatever happened, I think the stairs exacerbated an injury I was ignoring, and now it’s hard to walk even on flat ground.

I looked at websites and self-diagnosed (for whatever that’s worth) a calf strain, though I don’t see any bruising. I may leave work pretty early today to rest the leg and put some ice on it. I was hoping to clean my apartment this weekend, so I’ll just have to see how it goes. I’ll also try some OTC anti-inflammatories and see if they help.

Définissons d’amitié

Posted on January 19, 2009

I’ve been meaning to post stuff in French, but I’ve lacked easy topics. In previous classes, all or most homework was done in workbooks, but in this class (mais en cet classe) we will be doing more work in notebooks and on word processors.

The textbook for the class (first semester of second year French) is Controverses by Larbi Oukada, Didier Bertrand, and Janet Solberg. It’s probably not a coincidence that Oukada and Bertrand are faculty at the university. Anyway, the stuff below is an exercise from the textbook.

The chapter starts out with friends and friendship, including cultural differences in American and French views. They give a list of qualities that a person might look for in a friend, and we are supposed to select five or come up with our own. My list below is a mix of sorts.

Définissons

• Un ami est quelqu’un qui me comprends.
• Un ami est quelqu’un en qui je peux confier.
• Un ami est quelqu’un sur qui je peux compter.
• Un ami est quelqu’un en qui j’ai confiance.
• Un ami est quelqu’un avec qui je veux boire.

Since my French is still pretty shaky, what I meant to write is…

• A friend is someone who understands me.
• A friend is someone in whom I can confide.
• A friend is someone on whom I can count.
• A friend is someone in whom I have confidence.
• A friend is someone with whom I want to drink.

We’ll be going over this in class rather than turning it in. However, now I have to work on the stuff I do have to turn in.

Classes begin again

Posted on January 13, 2009

Classes begin again this week, and I had the first class of French FREN F203 today. It’s sort of a pain because it’s during the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I have plenty of vacation time to cover a few hours a week for the whole semester, and I worked it out ahead of time at work. On Wednesday evenings will be English ENG W509, which is supposed to be about teaching English composition. That should be interesting because I’ll have to write a couple of essays in French class, so maybe there will be some ways to tie the classes together.

Last Semester, I earned an A in the Literary Criticism class and a C in French. The C was most likely due to my serious procrastination – I let it get the better of me to the detriment of my French grade. This semester, with classes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I’ll have little time for procrastination, especially since the French classes are in the mornings.

The book for French class cost $150 + taxes, but it’s supposed to be used in this class and the next one. Still, it seems expensive given how thin it is. It came with an audio CD and a workbook, which were included in the price. The teacher wants us to type out our answers from the workbook, which seems a bit strange, but it should leave the workbook nice and neat, so that’s a plus. At the end of the semester, it sounds like we turn in all of our homework again, as a portfolio of sorts, so she can see our progress.

For the English class, one of the two required books is still on back order, so I guess I’ll have to wait for that one.

Review Haiku – Solaris

Posted on November 16, 2008

Between school and work, I haven’t written much here lately. However, there’s a huge backlog of Review Haiku to post, so it’s time to start it up again.

Is Solaris life?
Russian answer to Kubrick
Life is existence

Solaris at Rotten Tomatoes
Solaris at IMDB
Solaris at Amazon

Rating:  

Closing in

Posted on August 3, 2008

I can tell school is soon approaching. I’ve already seen my bill online for the coming semester, so that’s a big sign right there. I’ve been lucky enough to miss the back-to-school ads (the benefit of not watching TV or listening to the radio), but the new books are starting to show up in the bookstore.

This semester is FREN-F 119 Beginning French III and ENG-L 506 Intro Methods of Criticism/Research, which is supposed to be a class on literary criticism. So, lots of reading and writing for the semester. The past few semesters, my classes each met once a week. This semester, one of them is meeting twice a week. IIRC, one is a Monday-Wednesday class while the other is a Thursday class, but I can’t remember which is which. This semester is worth 8 credit hours.

I’ve been slacking off with the French. While I’ve watched a few French films over the past few months, I’m still pretty reliant on subtitles. However, with the new iPod, I can listen to podcasts and watch video podcasts.

I’ve still been thinking about possible subjects for a thesis. I like the idea of using corpus linguistics to help out, since it seems to be a very valuable tool/skill/method. It’s unfortunate this campus doesn’t seem to offer a class on the subject. The idea of formulaic language skill intrigues me, but I’ve also been thinking of shibboleths, and since this is an election year, the use of language by political candidates during the primary and general election season. I should talk with some professors about this.

For an irreverent look at grad student life, check out PhD comics.

Dequirked

Posted on June 10, 2008

The site had some quirks to go with the redesign and the software upgrades, but I think they are all taken care of now. The comments are back on, so feel free to try it out.

One of the main reasons for getting MediaWiki going is that it should be a good way for me to make notes while I’m doing research for a master’s degree. I keep running across linguistic terms that I’ve seen before, but don’t recall exactly what they mean (like lemma), so it would be a good idea for me to come up with a glossary of terms and definitions. If my understanding of a term evolves, then I can easily change the definition in the wiki. Writing something down usually helps me understand things better, plus I can put them in easy-to-understand (for me) terms, rather than academic prose.

I also formally applied for the M.A. program yesterday, so that’s out of the way.

Finished the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and put the movie next in my Netflix queue. Good book, but short. It was translated from French, but the English was very witty. I assume Bauby’s original text was just as witty.

Value

Posted on June 2, 2008

My cell phone just proved its worth. Coming back home after work, I took the elevator, as usual, to my fifth floor apartment, but this time the elevator got stuck. The only light was the emergency light, which wasn’t much. Luckily, I stopped off for Chinese take-out on the way home, so I was set for food just in case.

My impression has been that the elevator seems to act up in the heat, and while it is hot out at the moment, I’ve never been in the elevator when it’s gotten stuck before. I pressed all the buttons and nothing happened, when it dawned on me to use my cell phone to call the management company. They sent someone over and had me out in about 10 minutes. I’m glad I caught them before they took off for the day. The maintenance guy said it was a heck of a time for a power outage, which I thought was odd since the lights in the hall were on. My DSL modem still seems to be on, but the air conditioning isn’t working. I wonder if we’re having a brown-out or something. Maybe it’s a sign for me to trudge up five flights to get in shape :-/

*** edit ***

That was weird. Something was up with the electricity. The outlet next to the computer desk was fine, but the HVAC unit on the other side of the same wall wasn’t working. The lights in the kitchen would go on (didn’t test anything else in there), but the lights in the hallway, the bathroom, and the great room wouldn’t. (BTW, “great room” is probably a better term than “living/dining/bedroom.”) The power came back on a little bit ago.

I didn’t trust doing any computing for fear of taxing the building’s power grid, so I took the time to do some cleaning up. That’s still an ongoing project, but it is probably 60% – 75% finished :-) Then it will be a matter of keeping it clean afterward. *sigh*

Tested

Posted on May 9, 2008

I took the GRE today and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I can’t say too much about it because they make you write out a confidentiality statement and sign it. Basically they don’t want people telling other people the questions. What I do have to say is stuff you can get from the GRE website anyway.

There were two writing sections, which get sent off to be graded. I’m thankful they were on the computer rather than paper, otherwise I would have gotten writer’s cramp. After that was a break followed by a verbal section and a quantitative (math) section. I forget my exact scores, but it looked like I did better on the quantitative section than I did the verbal section. However, I went to the website when I got back home and found out they are different scales. I did score above the average on each section, so I suppose that’s some consolation.

In the first writing section, they present two short statements and you choose one of them to write about. For the second writing section you are presented with a lengthier statement that you have to analyze and write about. If I remember correctly, the latter is allotted 30 minutes and the former is allotted 45 minutes. The GRE website says they aren’t interested in grammar so much as the persuasiveness of the argument, so I think I did okay. There wasn’t enough time to come up with incredibly thorough arguments, but the cases presented seemed to point to some logical conclusions, so I’m guessing that as long as they arguments seem well reasoned, the test taker (me) should do okay.

The whole thing is scheduled for four hours, so it was scheduled to start at 7:00 and go to 11:00. However, since it is computer based you can work at your own pace more or less (each section has it’s own time limit). I thought it went pretty quick. I was actually done a little before 10:00. Now that it’s over it seems a bit anti-climatic, though I should wait for my official scores which should come in the mail in 10 – 15 days.

Summer in the city

Posted on May 5, 2008

Now that classes are over and I don’t begin again until August, I’ve been thinking of some things to do over the summer. As mentioned previously I’m scheduled to take the GRE this week. Once the grades for that arrive, then it’s a matter of making a formal application for grad school. Still, those things won’t occupy much of my time, so it’s a matter of figuring out what else to do.

My office and apartment both need Spring cleaning, so I think that is what I will work on this week, at home and at work. Actually, cleaning the apartment might go into next week. Calling it dirty would be giving it too much credit. I’ll try to work in sections and see how that goes.

I’ve also given myself a reading list for summer. Some have to do with the idea that I’m going to be a grad student (knock on wood) and should bone up while I have the chance:

• Surviving your Thesis by Susan Burton
• Developing Multicultural Educators by Jana Noel
• The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker
• Reflections on Language by Noam Chomsky
• Language and Responsibility by Noam Chomsky
• Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, Processing and Use by Norbert Schmitt
• Formulaic Language and the Lexicon by Alison Wray

I’ve read the last two already while researching a paper last Fall. Since I keep thinking about that subject, it may be the basis of my thesis. I’ve never read Chomsky before, even though he is supposed to be very influential in Linguistics. What often happens is people will describe what they think Chomsky said or wrote, and they are only mentioning what is needed to support their point. To get my own idea about what his ideas are, I figured I should actually read his books. The other books caught my eye for some reason.

I also plan on reading House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, and maybe Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. When I read novels, they usually only take a day or so to read, so that idea should hold for these books, but not the ones up above. Hopefully, this will take care of all, or most of the summer.

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