Poet Ponders the Digital

Blogger was amazing when I first began blogging in  2004 . That’s right, there are posts on my blogs dating to the year Google relaunched the platform. Today, Blogger isn’t so great. It feels old and out-dated. But it works and I have hundreds of posts on five Blogger-hosted blogs (1334 as of tonight). The idea of exporting and importing 13 years of posts into WordPress or Medium scares me. Should I migrate? I do not know. I’m preparing to start podcasting in 2018 and it would much easier to create podcast feeds and links within WordPress. Blogger themes? They stink, and customizing or creating your own is a pain. I don’t like the choices, yet I don’t have the time to tweak the themes as much as I want. Even the tweaks I have made are lost too often - and that annoys me. Blogger’s editor? It stinks. So does the formatting of posts with line breaks in place of paragraphs. Google could surely make Blogger an HTML5-compliant platform or at least use something mo...

MarsEdit and Blogger are not cooperating, and I’m uncertain if I will use MarsEdit past the trail period. Currently, what the application offers me is a way to compose drafts outside of Apple Mail, but it isn’t offering me much more than that because I use Google’s blogging platform. Annoyances that require using a menu choice, instead of the Option pane: Date should be included with “Post Status” for scheduling purposes. Enclosure settings should be within the editor window, along with Title. Bullet lists should be a default formatting choice, as they are common. More serious annoyances: Paragraphs require two blank lines, even in Rich Text mode, or you must clean the code within Blogger. Images do not function properly, no matter how many experiments I have tried.  I’m not saving much time if I still need to carefully format a post in Blogger and insert images from within Google’s interface. MarsEdit prefers WordPress, without a doubt. For Blogger, MarsEdit ...

MarsEdit (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Mailing posts to blogs, a practice I adopted in 2005, allows a blogger like me to store copies of draft posts within email. If Blogger , WordPress, or the blogging platform of the moment crashes or for some other reason eats my posts, at least I have the original drafts of most entries. I find having such a nicely organized archive convenient — much easier than remembering to archive posts from Blogger or WordPress to my computer. With this post, I am testing MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software based on recent reviews, including an overview on 9to5Mac . Composing posts an email offers a fast way to prepare draft blogs, but the email does not always work well if you want to include basic formatting, images, and links to online resources. Submitting to Blogger via Apple Mail often produced complex HTML with unnecessary font and paragraph formatting styles. Problems with rich text led me to convert blog entries to plaintext in Apple Mail ...

The following timeline of typography milestones is part of the digital companion materials to Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms published by Parlor Press.

Lower case ‘a’ from Adobe Caslon Pro, superposed onto some guides. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Asked to summarize my research projects... Curiously, beyond the theses and dissertation, all my work is in economics of media and narrative. I ask what works and why when offering stories to audiences. What connects with an audience and can we model what audiences want from narratives? (Yes, you can model data on narratives and what "sells" and what wins awards and what nobody wants.) Yet, my degree research projects all relate to design of writing spaces, as knowing what works is also key to knowing what could be "sold" to users. MA: How poor LMS UI/UX design creates online spaces that hinder the writing process and teacher mentoring of students. Also: The cost of LMS design and compliance with legal mandates for usability. Ph.D: The experiences of special needs students in online settings, from commercial spaces to games to learning spaces and which space...

Original 1984 Macintosh desktop (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) You look at the screen. You wonder what is wrong. The program or app does what it should do, but for some reason you don't like to use the software. Something feels wrong  with the application.  I have been trying WriterDuet ( https://writerduet.com ) and for the longest time I couldn't pin down why I didn't like the application compared to Final Draft or Screenwriter. Technically, the program does what it should and has some excellent collaboration features. But I don't enjoy using it.  I used to love Screenwriter ( http://www.screenplay.com ) and eagerly await version 6.5 for the Macintosh. Version 6.x has felt like a partial port (it is) to OS X and macOS for some time. I know the problem is that the "widgets" used for the user interface are not Apple's widgets for the current operating systems. It's slightly annoying, but I still like Screenwriter. In my ideal world, 6.5 is ...

Specimen of the typeface Comic Sans. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Personally, I support everyone being able to type and read in whatever typefaces individuals prefer. If you like Comic Sans , then change the font while you type or read online content. If you like Helvetica , use that. The digital world is not print. You can change typefaces . You can change their sizes. You can change colors. There is no reason to argue over what you use to type or to read as long as I can use typefaces that I like. Now, as a design researcher? I'll tell you that type matters a lot to both the biological act of reading and the psychological act of constructing meaning. Statistically, there are "better" and "worse" type for conveying messages. There are also typefaces that are more legible and more readable. Sometimes, legibility does not help readability, either, as a type with overly distinct letters (legibility) can hinder word shapes and decoding (readability). ...

I love typography. For my contribution to an upcoming collection on the rhetoric of type, I consulted the following texts: Bennett, Paul A., & Bruce Rogers. (1963). Books and printing : a treasury for typophiles (1st Forum Ed. ed.). Cleveland: World Pub. Co. Berry, John D. (2006). dot-font : talking about fonts (1st ed.). New York: Mark Batty Publisher. Bringhurst, Robert. (2004). The elements of typographic style (3rd ed.). Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, Publishers. Carter, Sebastian. (1995). Twentieth century type designers (New ed ed.). London: Lund Humphries Publishers. Clair, Kate. (1999). A typographic workbook : a primer to history, techniques, and artistry . New York: Wiley. Coles, Stephen. (2012). The anatomy of type : a graphic guide to 100 typefaces . New York: Harper Design. Davis, Graham. (2007). The designer’s toolkit : 500 grids and style sheets . San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Dodd, Robin. (2006). From Gutenberg to opentype : a...

The lumbar radiculopathy, which sounds too much like "ridiculously" for me, hasn't faded completely. My left leg still cramps, tingles, and hurts with sharp pains. My mind remains cloudy, too, even as I stop taking painkillers for the back pain and a recent surgery. Efforts to reboot and get back on track intellectually, physically, and emotionally are off to a slow, grinding start. It reminds me of an old 80286 PC, the infamously confused Intel CPU that wasn't sure what it was meant to be. And this was before the "SX" fiascos, which wedded 32-bit CPU cores with 16-bit connections. The 80286 was supposed to be able to multitask, but design flaws resulted in a first-generation that was useless to operating system vendors. My back, my knees, my ankles are each making noises like those old computers. If I haven't already lost you as a reader, the basic problem is that my mind cannot focus on one task for long without exhaustion and multitasking see...

Screenplay sample, showing dialogue and action descriptions. "O.S."=off screen. Written in Final Draft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) A lot of students and aspiring writers ask me if you "must" use Final Draft or Screenwriter to write a screenplay. No. Absolutely not, unless you are working on a production. In which case, they own or your earn enough for Final Draft or Screenwriter and whatever budget/scheduling apps the production team uses. I have to say, after trying WriterDuet I would use it in a heartbeat for a small production company and definitely for any non-profit, educational projects. No question. The only reason not to use it is that you must have the exclusive rights to a script... and I don't have those in my work. WriterDuet is probably best free or low-cost option I have tested. It is very interesting. Blows away Celtx . The Pro version with off-line editing is cheaper than Final Draft or Screenwriter. The Pro edition is a standalone, o...

Teaching colleagues, especially those in "New Media" and the "Digital Humanities," might find the pattern below interesting. The image is the report for activity on an academic mailing list from 1999 to present. Similar patterns are visible when I check other mailing lists. It's like the USENET statistics. Where are people going to discuss academic topics?  I left the WPA-L and other lists, because they were too often off-topic and/or not about scholarship and pedagogy. I didn't enjoy the mailing lists anymore. The fun was gone, though a core set of users remained active on other issues. Maybe that's the problem for all online spaces: they become insular.  The loss of RSS from some sites also reduced my connection to academic discussion. I really miss having easy access to RSS, and don't like Twitter or Facebook as my news feeds. From 2002 through 2010 was an active, exciting time for online communities. That's eight or nine y...

English: The logo for Apple Computer, now Apple Inc.. The design of the logo started in 1977 designed by Rob Janoff with the rainbow color theme used until 1999 when Apple stopped using the rainbow color theme and used a few different color themes for the same design. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Apple needs a revamp. It has turned into a big phone maker, with little side hobbies in computing, software, and television. Sure, by any metric, the computing and software side is huge, but these feel like afterthoughts at the current Apple Inc. Apple Computer is no more, I realize, and the computer world today is nothing like the 1980s or even 2000, when a desktop computer was necessary for basic work. But, someone has to code and create content. To create content requires a big, powerful, computer. I have some suggestions for Apple, which are unlikely to be read. Spin off the software so it becomes the primary focus of a stand-alone company or two companies. In fact, two is better...

Fourteen units into my MFA in Film and Digital Technology, I passed the Apple certification exam for Final Cut Pro X 10.2 (Post-Production). As a believer in digital composition and new media, having the skills to edit audio and video — and the ability to teach those skills — was important to me. But, as a colleague noted, credentialism is fading quickly in the technology industry. Finally, people have realized passing an exam is not indicative of having essential job skills.  When I was in college, Novell NetWare certification was the golden ticket to many jobs. Networking was a mix of hardware and software, with little standardization. Testing assured a minimal level of knowledge. Today we have the return of the Builder/Maker culture that started the PC revolution. People learn to build Raspberry Pi contraptions, with Arduino controllers and Java or C code. Networks are easy, relatively speaking, compared to building a home robot. The reason to take any exam today is to ...

By May, I'll be half-way through an MFA in Film and Digital Technology. People ask why a Ph.D in rhetoric would need an MFA. My explanation follows. Rhetoric (and composition, since they are often lumped together in academic settings) has struggled between the tension to teach traditional rhetoric and a need to update our courses and field to reflect new technologies and trends in communication. Other departments expect us to teach how to format academic papers (MLA, APA) and write traditional genres: the five-paragraph (yuck) "essay" (which isn't an essay at all), the term paper, the journal article, the "book review" (again, which isn't a review at all), the thesis, and so on. We know these forms and many of us want to resist them. Yet, our classroom work is often relegated to the "service" of other academic fields. Shifting away from composition seems necessary for me to explore rhetoric where it is now most effective at reaching broa...

Should we teach our digital composition students the "tricks of the trade" for bloggers and other new media publishers? The ancient texts on rhetoric discuss proper attire, gestures, and tone of voice to appeal to audiences. Aren't these almost as shallow as writing the best headline to drive traffic to an online post? Clearly our Greek and Roman ancestors understood that the superficial (nice robes, deep voice) was part of the persuasive art. We tell our students to focus on the quality of their arguments, while blogging, reporting, and scholarly writing fades fast on the Web of today. The great World Wide Web that was going to bring information to everyone is one giant magazine rack, thanks to Facebook and Twitter. Short headlines, ideally implying something sexual in nature, drive traffic. Shocking. Horrible. You won't believe your eyes. From the Huffington Post to old-stalwarts like The Atlantic, clickbait headlines dominate the flow of information (as op...

When I read academic job listing for "Digital Humanities" the skills range from HTML coding to video editing. Some list audio editing. The jobs are so varied that you cannot pinpoint what the phrase means. Is my doctorate in rhetoric, scientific and technical communication sufficient? Often it is not. Some posts suggest an MFA or Ph.D. in media production. Starting January 2016, I am going to be working towards completion of my MFA in Film and Digital Technology. This feels like a last-ditch effort to revive my academic career, while also giving me more credentials to support my creative writing. With or without an academic revival, I'll benefit greatly from the courses and the exercise of creating and editing digital works. One of the frustrations I've had on the job market is that nobody seems to know what the "Digital Humanities" are or how to prove you have the skills to teach the courses. My age and my experiences are a serious obstacle on this...

A drawing made in Tux Paint using various brushes and the Paint tool. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2, 2015 Deadline December 2015 Issue Randomly clicking on letters, the young boy I was watching play an educational game “won” each level. He paid no attention to the letters themselves. His focus was on the dancing aliens at the end of each alphabet invasion. Situations like this occur in classrooms and homes every day. Technology appeals to parents, politicians and some educators as a path towards more effective teaching. We often bring technology into our schools and homes, imagining the latest gadgets and software will magically transfer skills and information to our children. This school year, I left teaching business communications to return to my doctoral specialty in education, technology and language development. As a board member of an autism-related charity, I speak to groups on how technology both helps and hinders special edu...

RFID chip pulled from new credit card (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley October 5, 2015 Deadline November 2015 Issue This summer, I had a credit card “cloned” while driving along the Interstate 76 Tollway. Because I check my credit card statements online after any trip, I noticed the fraudulent charges and cancelled the card. Credit cards remain one of the easiest targets for criminals and no easy solution seems likely. Two years ago, I had another credit card number stolen by a waiter. Local police informed me that such thefts remained the most common form of credit card fraud. In both instances, I did everything “right” and was still a victim of thieves. The waiter stealing card numbers asked to see my driver’s license before walking away from the table. He was writing down numbers, expiration dates and card verification values while standing behind a low wall. With these data, another criminal ran charges at a convenience store, listing charges as...