Caught bonny

moar funny pictures

First Monday publishes first article on Transliteracy

The highly-respected journal First Monday has published an article by the PART team at De Montfort University. Transliteracy: crossing divides lays out our current thinking about the concept and invites response and comment. Notable as the first peer-reviewed article on the concept, it was written collectively by Sue Thomas, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger - a supreme effort of collaboration!

Abstract Transliteracy might provide a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century. It is not a new behavior but has only been identified as a working concept since the Internet generated new ways of thinking about human communication. This article defines transliteracy as "the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks" and opens the debate with examples from history, orality, philosophy, literature, and ethnography.

The little Honda that could

Must be that time of year again

Who's that man?

My illusions


shattered!

Saturday is the new Friday

It's life Jim , but not as we know it

Don't

News at 11!

A strange map of Britain seen from the north

Off to Montreal

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Separated at birth?

It's Friday...

The dee-arr bit still feels rather odd

Not quite Davros

It appears that, according to Facebook, I'm only 5 degrees of separation from the Red Dalek.

Thespian Brilliance

Always on

Well, that's another interpretation altogether

Looking east

 

It's just an allusion

Car of tomorrow

Canada eh

Mapping the way

View Larger Map

Heading this way

...

An equation for internet success

PostSecret+LolCat=Genius

Friday +1

Hitting the big screen

Prepare to Believe!

In the year 2035

Friday cat blog

Been updating the story of Oscar the death cat over on Blog of the Damned.

Meanwhile, try figuring out which lolcat you are. I ended up as ceiling cat. Would have much enjoyed being Jesus Christ it's a Lion Cat...

I can has soulz?

It's Friday so it's cats on blogs. Meet Oscar, the cat who knows when you will die.

Just in case my reader doesn't know

Folksonomy lecture - Thomas Vander Wal

Folksonomy: A look at hated word but loved resource

A lecture by Thomas Vander Wal at De Montfort University, 2-3:30PM, Sepember 18, 2007.

Folksonomy was recently voted one of the new terms most likely to make you "wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard." The inventor of the term – Thomas Vander Wal – will give a talk that will offer you a chance to make your own judgment. Thomas will present an overview of the concept in a lecture followed by a question-and-answer session....

Wicked wikipedia?

Danah Boyd, writing on Many to Many has made a couple of really good points about wikipedia and knowledge elites.

Don’t get me wrong - Wikipedia is not perfect. But why do purported experts spend so much time arguing against it rather than helping make it a better resource? It is free! It is accessible! Is it really worth that much prestige to write an encyclopedia article instead of writing a Wikipedia entry? While there are certainly errors there, imagine what would happen if all of those who view themselves as experts took the time to make certain that the greatest and most broad-reaching resource was as accurate as possible.

...

Why are we telling our students not to use Wikipedia rather than educating them about how Wikipedia works? Sitting in front of us is an ideal opportunity to talk about how knowledge is produced, how information is disseminated, how ideas are shared. Imagine if we taught the “history” feature so that students would have the ability to track how a Wikipedia entry is produced and assess for themselves what the authority of the author is. You can’t do this with an encyclopedia. Imagine if we taught students how to fact check claims in Wikipedia and, better yet, to add valuable sources to a Wikipedia entry so that their work becomes part of the public good.

Read more for the context...

Happiness is a warm pun

Because it's Friday

FELINE LAWS OF PHYSICS

Cats have their own rules of physics. Here are some of them.

Newton’s First Law of Cat Inertia
A cat at rest will tend to remain at rest, unless acted upon by some outside force - such as the opening of a can or the sight of a prey.

Newton’s First Law of Cat Motion
A cat will move in a straight line, unless there is a really good reason to change direction.

Newton’s Law of Feline Acceleration
A cat continues to accelerate at a constant speed until he needs to stop.

Newton’s First Law of Pill Rejection
Any pill given to a cat has the potential energy to reach escape velocity.

Newton’s Second Law of Pill Rejection
Any cat restrained for the purposes of administering a pill has the potential to reach escape velocity.

Newton’s Law of Concentration of Mass
A cat’s mass increases in direct proportion to the comfort of the lap she occupies.

Newton’s Law of Feline Gravity Manipulation
Cats have the ability manipulate gravity, forming localised areas of strong gravitational attraction. This gives the impression of a cat growing heavier as it occupies a lap or bed. This is a linear effect with gravity increasing at a steady rate over time.

First Law of Energy Conservation (Feline Thermodynamics Law 1)
Cats know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and will therefore use as little energy as possible.

Second Law of Energy Conservation (Feline Thermodynamics Law 2)
Cats know that energy can only be stored by a lot of napping.

Third Law of Energy Conservation (Feline Thermodynamics Law 3)
If the rate of energy uptake exceeds the maximum rate of energy storage, the difference will be emitted in the form of purring.

Boyle’s Law of Cat Thermodynamics
Heat flows from a warmer to a cooler body, except in the case of a cat, in which case all heat flows to the cat.

Kirk’s Law of Cat Magnetism
Dark coloured clothing attracts light coloured cat hair in direct proportion to the darkness of the fabric. The converse is also true.

Fanner’s First Law of Cat Stretching (Nap-Associated Stretching)
A cat will stretch to a distance proportional to the length of the nap just taken.

Fanner’s Second Law of Cat Stretching (Non-Nap-Associated Stretching)
The length of the stretch is directly proportional to temperature. Nose in tail (unstretched) is ‘cold’ while fully stretched is ‘hot’. There are infinite gradations on this stretch/temperature scale.

Young’s Law of Cat Sleeping
All cats must sleep with people whenever possible.

Kent’s Corollary Young’s Law of Cat Sleeping
The cat must select a position which causes maximum discomfort to people involved.

Holmes’ Law of Vertical Feline Elongation
A cat can make its body long enough to reach the top of any surface which has anything remotely interesting on it.

Burt’s Corollary to Holmes’ Law of Vertical Feline Elongation
The cat can exceed its normal elongation if the item of interest is edible.

Burt’s Law of Dinner Table Attendance
Cats will attend all family meals when anything good is served.

Burt’s Law of Selective Listening
A cat can hear a can of tuna being opened (or the word ‘vet’) a mile away, but can’t hear a simple command three feet away.

Euler’s Law of Rug Configuration
When a cat is present, no rug may remain in its naturally flat state for long.

Ohm’s Law of Obedience Resistance
A cat’s resistance varies in inverse proportion to a humans desire for her to do something.

Henry’s Law of Refrigerator Observation
If a cat watches a refrigerator long enough, someone will come along and take out something good to eat.

Revised Henry’s Law of Kitchen Appliance Observation
If a cat watches a refrigerator, a stove, a kitchen cupboard or a microwave oven long enough, someone will come along and take out something good to eat.

Partington’s Addition to Revised Henry’s Laws of Kitchen Appliance Observation
If a cat stands directly behind a human in the kitchen, its tail will be trodden on; the human will then offer the cat something good to eat by way of apology.

Einstein’s Law of Electric Blanket Attraction
Turn on an electric blanket and a cat will jump into bed at the speed of light.

Einstein’s Law of Space-Time Continuum as Applicable to Felines
Given enough time, a cat will land in just about any space.

Einstein’s Law of Cat Composition
A cat is composed of Matter + Anti-Matter + It Doesn’t Matter.

Cheung’s Law of Random Comfort Seeking
A cat will always seek, and usually take over, the most comfortable spot in any given room.

Colling’s Law of Cat Disinterest
A cat’s interest level will vary in inverse proportion to the amount of effort a human expends in trying to interest him.

Collings’ Law of Cat Embarrassment
A cat’s irritation rises in direct proportion to its embarrassment multiplied by the amount of human laughter. (Amount of human laughter = volume x duration2)

Collings’ Law of Feline Vomiting
The frequency that a cat vomits on a given surface is directly proportional to the difficulty of cleaning the given surface and also proportional the likelihood of the given surface to acquire permanent stains.

Cheung’s Modification to Collings’ Law of Feline Vomiting
The frequency that a cat vomits, pees or has diarrhoea on a given surface is directly proportional to the difficulty of cleaning the given surface and also proportional the likelihood of the given surface to acquire permanent stains and odours.

Cheung’s Law of Furniture Replacement
A cats desire to scratch furniture is directly proportional to the cost of the furniture.

Cheung’s Law of Cat Landing
A cat will always land in the softest place possible.

Cheung’s Second Law of Cat Landing
A cat will always land on its feet unless you are unpacking groceries, in which case it will land on your feet.

Schrodinger’s Law of Cat Invisibility
Cats think that if they can’t see you, then you can’t see them.

Schrodinger’s Accidentally Discovered Law of Object Occupancy
All bags and boxes in a given room must contain a cat within the earliest possible nanosecond.

Heisenberg’s Law of Cat Probability (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle as Applied to Cats)
It is not possible to predict where a cat actually is, only the probability of where it “might” be. As soon as you know where it is, it will move.

Pythagoras’ Theorem of Feline Equidistant Separation
All cats in a given room will be located at points equidistant from each other, and equidistant from the centre of the room. The time taken to achieve equidistant spacing is proportional to the number of cats present.

Pratchett’s Rule of Cat Chess
Where multiple cats are present in a large finite space, each cat must attempt to see at least two other cats but remain hidden from view itself.

Protagoras’ Rule of Cat Obedience
As a rule, cats aren’t obedient.

Aristotle’s Law of Fluid Displacement
A cat immersed in milk will displace her own volume, minus the amount of milk consumed.

Law of Milk Consumption (Feline Capacitance)
A cat will drink his weight in milk, squared, just to show you he can. After a suitable delay

I want one of those

Busy day on the blog

This article from Wired amused me but is also quite interesting from a research perspective.

Recently I logged into World of Warcraft and I wound up questing alongside a mage and two dwarf warriors. I was the lowest-level newbie in the group, and the mage was the de-facto leader. He coached me on the details of each new quest, took the point position in dangerous fights and suggested tactics. He seemed like your classic virtual-world group leader: Confident, bold and streetsmart.

But after a few hours he said he was getting tired of using text chat -- and asked me to switch over to Ventrilo, an app that lets gamers chat using microphones and voice. I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and ...

... realized he was an 11-year-old boy... read on

Cover art

Wise advice

Look at me, I'm beautiful

Look at me, I'm beautiful, originally uploaded by Bruce Mason.

This is me testing Flickr embedding and cluster tagging

Friday

Traditionally, on a Friday, on the Internet, you blog about cats. So, without further ado:

The grater of two weevils

The Blog of the damned

Admittedly nothing in there yet but it's only just started. In one of those odd little quirks, the email informing me about its creation got quarantined in a spam filter. Gets me wondering just how much Forteana2.0 gets caught in spam nets.

Not sure why but the name "The Blog of the damned" is enough to make me smile. For those wanting a headsup (because I know that nearly 3 people read this blog), I have a couple of posts about such things on the transliteracy blog.

Just because

Proof that I actually do some work from time to time

Thanks to Jess for posting this.

Giant Battle Monsters

deleriad is a Giant Squid that has Bulletproof Skin and a Computer for a Brain, Expands when Attacked, and can Generate Electricity. Strength: 6 Agility: 3 Intelligence: 12 To see if your Giant Battle Monster can defeat deleriad, enter your name and choose an attack: fights deleriad using Strength Agility Intelligence

Bat Man from the 1800s

This is from Shorpy - "the 100 year old photo blog". Shorpy is one of my favourite wastes of time. Over on one of my work blogs (Transliteracy.com) I've been ruminating about the possibilities of folklore2.0. The labelling of this image as Bat Man 1.0 on Shorpy is playful but interesting for that reason.

Brave New World

The map is from a really rather wonderful webcomic called xkcd.com.

Cat blogging

It's true. What kind of odd person would write a blog and pretend it was written by a cat? And as for cat haiku... Good job you wouldn't catch me engaging in such frivolity.

Narrative Multimodality conference

workshop_wiki, originally uploaded by Jess L..

Attended April 28-29 and helped set up the wiki.

More American madness

Day 1 - Ash

I am being very, very quiet. Nearly 1 hour now and I haven't said a word.

Ooooh sparkly things. Must pounce on Deshar. He likes that.

Day 1 - Deshar

Damn! They brought the grey one along as well. I warned them. "Don't do it!" I cried, "Leave him behind! Even mad Ivy would be better." I looked the female in the eye and tried telepathy but she just gurgled happily. The grey one fooled them. They thought he was "quiet". Fools.

Later: tried hiding beneath the bed but he followed me. Tried the cat bed, beneath the table, behind the sofa but he followed me. Must plan my escape. They've already given it a name - Ash. How completely inappropriate.

Hang on. What's that? Is it... is it? Yes! It is! A Light in the Sky. Nooo! I have to chase it!

The Curse of the Fatuous Binary

A great post by Jess on the transliteracy blog about a panel featuring Margaret Attwood called "Digitise or Die"

As I entered the empty auditorium (I was the first there) I paused and took in my surroundings: padded leatherette seats for the audience, modern, sleek white armchairs for the panel, a bottle of water next to each long-necked microphone, dimmed lights, shining stage, and a background image centered behind the panel announcing the speakers and the title of the talk. I then settled in, ready for "compelling arguments" which, I read, would "leave [me] with a renewed enthusiasm for books and vowing to spend less time online." (keep on going)

At The Yorkshire Sculpture Park