http://www.tinkerx.com Creative flux for our heap of broken images. Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:28:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I only heard about about Ubisoft's new DRM scheme after it got cracked. But it just blows my mind. For those of you who don't game (or don't play in worlds where copyright is a hot topic), DRM = Digital Rights Management. It's a catch-all for any technology used to (try ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2010/03/06/always-on-web-required-to-play-single-player-game-wtf/ Spoiler alert: if you haven't read the book "Flowers for Algernon" or seen the movie "Control" and want to be surprised at all by either, stop reading now. One of the things I love about Netflix is how I now watch all kinds of movies I never would have before; both ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2010/02/27/flowers-for-alcatraz/ I keep coming back to "Avatar" in my head. Partly because new people in my life keep seeing it and then asking me what I think. They do this for a couple reasons: 1) I'm the avowed hard-core sci-fi buff of my crowd, and; 2) I write. I was initially going ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2010/01/10/in-which-i-change-the-plot-of-avatar-by-less-than-15-and-improve-it-at-least-250/ [Before we get into the blog post, I gotta say that the Newsweek web site is almost unreadable. Totally bad design, UI, findability, etc. I was going to link to the story I'll be mentioning below, but after 2 minutes wandering around the site... meh.] Last week's Newsweek's cover story was ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2009/12/21/celebrities-allergies-and-edgar-allen-poe/ In 2006, I wrote a post called The UnGrinch 25; a list of ideas on how to keep the fun, spirit and joy in your holiday season. In 2007 I doubled down on the happy happy with 50 ideas. I can't keep up with a geometric progression like that, or ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2009/11/22/the-2009-ungrinchy-75/ Wonderful TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity and education. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY[/youtube] This works into my "hunter/gatherer" mania. Schools are industrial (gathering). Creativity requires more wide-ranging, less structured skills (hunting). http://www.tinkerx.com/2009/11/14/do-schools-kill-creativity/ An essay at Edge.org called, "The Age of the Informavore." We'll get to my thoughts on the essay in a minute. My first thought was, "Wow. This guy doesn't make up new words very often." He is German, and English is his second language... so mad props to him for ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2009/11/08/i-would-have-preferred-infovore-to-informavore-but-still/ Rarely a day goes by when I don't hear someone talking about how many unread email messages they have (or text messages or IMs or tweets or whatever). To a certain extent, I think it's "pain bragging." The old, "When I was a boy, we walked 10 miles to school, ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2009/10/14/email-triage/ I got my degree in writing from Cornell back in 1988. While I was there, I had the chance to work with some fantastic teachers and some great student writers. The official curriculum emphasized rigorous review and critique by both teachers and fellow students. The most important goal was not ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2009/08/15/introducing-mopodojo-a-work-out-site-for-poets/ One night a week, I teach "History of Advertising" at CCAD, the Columbus College of Art and Design. It's a lot of fun, I enjoy it immensely, and I've been teaching the class pretty much the same way for about five years, now. I don't think there's anything wrong with ... http://www.tinkerx.com/2009/08/02/history-of-advertising-class-seeking-suggestions/