Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 2, 2014 Deadline July 2014 Issue Owning is So Yesterday: Streams and Clouds Conquer Discs Almost eight years ago, I sat on the living room floor of our apartment and imported music from our massive compact disc collection into iTunes. The year was 2006, and I had purchased an iPod for my wife. We still use this ancient white iPod in our car, and it works fine. During my graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, I discovered Cheapo Records. There were two massive Cheapo outlets, one in each of the Twin Cities. The Uptown Minneapolis location offered the best selection of CDs I have ever seen. It reminded me of the glory days of Tower Records and the Virgin Megastores. The St. Paul location, conveniently located near my campus office, was smaller, but still impressive. I bought a lot of music, and imported the discs into iTunes. Our music library includes 1785 artists and groups. As an example of my compulsive need to own complete sets...

Video games are written, before and during the coding process. They are, after all, stories — from the simple story of a hungry "Pac-Man" avoiding ghosts to the complex stories of modern massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Yet, some of the aspiring game developers I've met don't quite appreciate how important storytelling is to game success. Blood and guts in high-def will only carry a game so far. During my early years as a computer geek, I'd sit at my VIC-20 keyboard and create text-based adventure games in BASIC. I continued to do this well into college, because there is something about writing a text adventure that forces you to consider the storyline of a game carefully. While text adventures have declined in popularity, graphical first-person games are still constructed as stories beneath the fancy rendering. The tool I've used in the classroom to teach video game writing is Inform [ http://inform7.com ]. The Inform website...

Responding to the following: Select one vlog that you like and describe what you like about this vlog, possibly including a link to or screen shot of this vlog in your post.  Whom do you think is the audience for this vlog and what aspects of the vlog are designed to appeal to this audience?  What video/editing techniques are employed in this vlog and how effective are they? The video I selected, after watching too many others, was a 2004 profile of artist Lillian Colton. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPRYe9xs0x0 The secret to having a good time at the Minnesota State Fair is finding those lingering connections to its rural roots. That means clog dancing, baby farm animals, and of course crop art. Rumor has it, you can see Bjork and Al Franken rendered in seeds this year. But it's not quite the same without legendary crop artist Lillian Colton, who passed away earlier this year.  This video is one of a series produced by Mike Dust for Colton's 2004 exhibition at t...