Poet Ponders the Digital

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...

Zork I cover art (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley July 6, 2015 Deadline August 2015 Issue “This is an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. A rubber mat saying ‘Welcome to Zork !’ lies by the door.” These familiar words, which I once read on the blue screen of a Commodore 64, now appeared on my iPhone. Considered one of the first dozen computer games ever developed, Zork has a special place in computing history. Zork launched what is known as interactive fiction or text adventures. In 1977, four programmers working in the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science created the interactive fiction story “Zork.” Some of these friends would go on to create one of the earliest video game publishers, Infocom. From 1979 through 1986, Infocom was one of the leading game publishers, marketing games for every major home computer. Purchased by Activision in 1986, the Infocom brand and its classic games live on, a...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 6, 2012 Deadline September 2012 Issue The Responsive Web: Every Screen is Different Websites should be viewable and usable on as many devices and computer screen sizes as possible. That sounds obvious and simple, but designers know that it is increasingly difficult to anticipate how people might visit a website. If you have a website for your business or organization, you should test it on a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop and a variety of computers with a mix of screen sizes. Testing a website on one computer with three or four browsers is insufficient, though that remains an important aspect of testing a website. No longer do we sit at 800-by-600 or 1024-by-768 screens to explore the Web. As a designer, this is frustrating. As a smartphone owner, I’m thrilled I don’t need a computer to read news headlines or read book reviews. I’ve always tried to design websites that work well for most users. Before 2006, I designed websites for myse...