Epistemographer

Just came across a photo I took after my last big brainstorming session with my advisor Ron about my dissertation (click it for a larger version): Essentially, I’ve written a several-hundred page version of what’s on that blackboard. To be frank, it’s quite possible that I could have made the argument more straightforwardly and succinctly [...]

filed under “Things on which to follow up once I’ve finished my dissertation”: Dangermouse, the Jay-Z Construction Set and the Videogame Content Creation Model I would hope that, in the near future, artists and publishers will see the value of releasing not only polished works, but the bits and parts used to create a work, [...]

…Verve Remixed 2, the follow-up to one of my favorite CDs. The iTunes thing is crazy easy, a little disturbingly so, to be entirely honest – the act of consumption was pretty much frictionless, and I’m wrapping my mind around the fact that I didn’t actually purchase anything physical. It’s an interesting moment of reconstructing [...]

Sociologist Michael Bull wrote a great book called Sounding out the City on the ways that individuals use personal audio devices (mainly Walkmen) to transform their experience of urban space, and now it looks like he’s turning his attention to the iPod. Doesn’t seem like he’s reached many conclusions yet, but something to keep an [...]

Just downloaded a new RSS reader (FeedDemon) as well as a Movable Type publishing tool (Zempt). We’ll see if these tools are an actual improvement over my old everything-through-the-browser routine…

Tonight I think I finished my fourth chapter (which will actually be the sixth chapter of the final thing, thanks to the screwy way I wound up working on things)…the ending isn’t as tight as I’d like, but I’ll need to return to it after writinig the two chapters that precede it, since it relies [...]

Just spent the past hour setting up 17 student blogs for a writing course I’m teaching this semester. Movable Type really, really needs a batch blog create function. The course itself will be an adventure: teaching a course I’ve not taught before, using a technology (Movable Type) I’ve not used in a class setting before, [...]

How cold is it tonight in New York City, you ask? Well, according to weather.com it’s currently 1 degree Fahrenheit, though with the wind it feels like -19. But those are just numbers. How cold is it, really? Well, Jenny’s apartment is well heated, and the windows are tightly-fitted, double-paned glass. And there’s frost on [...]

After several days of wrestling with a chapter that just wouldn’t work, I realized a structural problem with my dissertation, and just spent the past hour and a half gutting and rejiggering. Once the smoke cleared, I was left with an outline that included one chapter more than I’d planned, but which also made a [...]

Back in New York City for the next week, with nothing on the agenda but dissertation writing and exercise (both of which I’ve sadly been neglecting while out of town). With that in mind, I’ve established a self-imposed moratorium on the reading of blogs of any sort until I get my next chapter finished…while this [...]