Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
Since the upgrade to WordPress 3.0 things have been running fairly smoothly, but I been seeing sporadic problems with some themes no longer displaying theme options for web site administrators. The three themes in question are Mandigo, Tarski and Viala and in all cases, the superadmins for the WordPress network are able to access these … Read more
Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet: Victorious is a worthwhile, if somewhat disappointing end to the series. Having demolished most of the Syndic fleet, Black Jack Geary returns to his enemy’s home system for one final battle. Unfortunately, there’s not much to the fight — having gutted the Syndics in his earlier encounters, there’s only a … Read more
Century Rain is a space opera/noir/alternative history mash-up that echos Reynolds earlier work in its combination of post-Singularity speculation and end of the world/galaxy/university machinations. The book opens a few hundred years in the future. Earth has been rendered lifeless by a nanotechnology plague. Humanity survives in two factions: the Threshers, who are regular humans … Read more
The guy behind the web comic XKCD did a survey of how people view color on their monitor, asking them to label a wide assortment of color swatches. Read the results of the survey. I don’t know that there’s anything ground shaking here, but it’s interesting to learn more about how people perceive — and … Read more
The ITS Coffee Break is back with the first (and hopefully not last) episode of the Spring Semester. Courtney Bentley and I talk Project nextWeb, Lafayette’s WordPress migration, Twitter, Facebook’s big privacy changes and much more.
When it comes to web design I find a lot of people like to start with the sexy part — the graphic design — and then either ignore the site’s underlying structure, create it as they go along or (more rarely) back into it after they realize the design’s turned into a mess because they … Read more
Book 2 of the Twilight vampire/romance series, in which the vampire Edward his leave of our protagonist Bella, leaving her distraught in Oregon. And yes, this is a huge change from reading The Cole Protocol. I’m reading the novel as part of a book exchange with my wife – I’m reading New Moon, she’s reading … Read more
Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Pac-Man and other 80s icons make appearances in PIXELS, a short film featuring an 8-bit invasion of New York City. It’s a well-done little movie — I loved how the city is rapidly transformed by the pixelated attackers, and I thought having Donkey Kong throwing barrels from atop the Empire … Read more
Rush, one of my all-time favorite rock bands, is playing at the Allentown Fair on August 31. I didn’t start listening to them until my 20s, when they were already past their 70s/80s heyday, but once I did I didn’t waste time. I bought every album I could get my hands on and spent hours … Read more