Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
The ITS Coffee Break’s resurgence continues with Episode #61, just released today. In this episode, we discuss Chris Phillips essay “I Hear America Reading: Using Digital Audio to Teach American Poetry”, which appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Teaching American Literature and announce Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V, which will be held at Lafayette College. We … Read more
This is a rather ho-hum article about technology on college campuses, and students arriving on campus with iPods, Kindles, etc. What I did find interesting (and by “interesting” I mean “utterly crazy”) is this photo of a student on a treadmill working on an iMac. Now I get multitasking — heck, I watch vidcasts and … Read more
After a six month hiatus, the ITS Coffee Break is back! In Episode #60 Courtney Bentley and I discuss Lafayette’s WordPress MU project, take a look at Bates College’s new WordPress-powered home page, discuss the Google Wave web application, debate the merits of Amazon’s Kindle vs. Barnes & Nobles’ new Nook ebook reader, and talk about an upcoming copyright … Read more
Courageous is the third book in Jack Campbell’s military SF/space opera series called The Lost Fleet. As with the previous books, it tells the story of John “Black Jack” Geary, a legendary starship captain thought killed in combat a hundred years earlier, only to be found in suspended animation in an escape capsule. Once revived, … Read more
Bates College is using WordPress to power their new home page. College Web Editor has a nice write-up on the relaunch, including an interview with the project leader. They talk about what plugins Bates is using (NextGen Gallery, Super-Cache, WP Table Reloaded) as well as how the site integrates with the college’s social media sites … Read more
I’ve been on a huge space opera kick for the last year or so and have been reading every example of the New Space Opera I can get my hands on. Space opera, for those who don’t know, is the sort of larger-than-life science fiction typified by Star Wars and Star Trek. Unlike Hard Science … Read more
I’ve recently been running some tests on WordPress to determine where potential download bottle necks may lie. I’ve found two add-ons for Firebug, the excellent troubleshooting/development plugin for Firefox: YSlow: A tool for Yahoo that analyzes a page’s download time, breaking it down by file type (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Images) and points out potential … Read more
The Easton Garlic Festival returns Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be food to buy, cooking demonstrations, live music, crafts and (of course) lots and lots of garlic. They close down Easton’s central square for this, and while the festival isn’t huge, it is a nice, family-friendly event. Definitely … Read more
According to CNN, the U.S. government is setting up a web app store designed to allow government employees easy access to tools such as GMail, YouTube, and WordPress. The article discusses a new government data cloud to be hosted by Google. Assuming that their are safeguards in place to protect privacy where needed, I think … Read more