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The Essential Elements of Geek Culture (March, 2008)

Office Space Movie Poster

I was talking to my web programming seminar about regular expressions and made an allusion to the xkcd comic on that topic. Unfortunately, none of them had seen it, probably because none of them were familiar with xkcd.

Students should become familiar with the concepts and practice of the discipline, but also with the culture and in-jokes that will help them fit in when they get into industry or graduate school. I also like to get people to laugh in ways that are relevant to the subject material (yes, I use a lot of cheesy geek jokes — ask me to tell you my LISP joke sometime).

I asked the Twitter community what other geek cultural elements I should introduce the students to, and here are the answers:

This list is thanks to (in order of appearance) @mediacrisis, @rubaiyat, @techpickles, @mattgillooly, @hempstyle, and @inkedmn.

2008 03 26 Hilary education Comments (4) Permalink

LSL: Notecard Selector

One of my friendly librarian colleagues in SL asked if I had a script to generate dialogs and allow users to select notecards handy. I didn’t, so I coded it up. It seems like it could be useful to others, so here you go:

This script is in LSL, for Second Life. Just copy and paste it into a script, throw a few notecards into the object, and you’ll be ready to go!

//  Notecard Selector
//  by Ann Enigma
//  This script presents users with a list of notecards in a dialog box, and allows them to select one
//  Note: The names of the notecards must be less than 24 characters long

// This script is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
// http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

// configurable options
string message = “Which notecard would you like to read?”; // the message on the dialog box
integer command_channel = 616; // the channel on which to listen for commands (you probably won’t need to change this)

// the script
list notecards;

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
                integer i = 0;
               
                // read the title of each notecard into a list
                for(i=0;i<llGetInventoryNumber(INVENTORY_NOTECARD);i++) {
                        notecards = (notecards=[]) + notecards + [llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_NOTECARD,i)];
                }
               
                llListen(command_channel, “”, “”, “”); // listen for a dialog button press
    }

    touch_start(integer total_number)
    {
        llDialog(llDetectedKey(0), message, notecards, command_channel); // present the dialog
    }

        listen(integer channel, string name, key id, string message) {
                if (llListFindList(notecards, (list)message) != -1) { // this is a valid notecard
                        llGiveInventory(id, message); // give the user the notecard
                }
        }
       
        changed(integer changed_bitfield) {
                // if the object’s inventory changes, reset the script
                if (changed_bitfield == CHANGED_INVENTORY) {
                        llResetScript();
                }
        }
}

2008 03 17 Hilary second life
social networking
virtual worlds Comments (4) Permalink

Following a group of Twitterers without exhausting SMS

I’m at SXSW, and I want an ability to see the latest Tweets from the group of Twitterers that I follow who are here in the area. I also have a limited number of text messages on my phone (1500, but still).

I coded up a quick app that allows you to great a group of twitterers and see their latest tweet on a mobile-friend page. Check it out.

Comments are welcome!

2008 03 08 Hilary social networking
utilities
web apps
web dev Comments (0) Permalink

How to Control Second Life with a Wii-mote (on a Macbook Pro)

wii + SL = cool

My research group had some fun controlling SL with a Wii-mote a few weeks ago. It’s easier than you think! Several people have asked how we did it, so I hope these quick instructions might come in handy.

  1. Download, install, and run DarwiinRemote.
  2. Turn Bluetooth on on the Macbook. You can do this by opening the Bluetooth Preferences Pane (Apple menu, System Preferences and choose “Bluetooth” under Hardware) and clicking the big “Turn Bluetooth On” button. If Bluetooth is already on, you can skip this step!
  3. Hold the Wii-mote in front of the Macbook and press buttons 1 and 2 simultaneously. The LEDs on the Wii-mote will flash.
  4. As you move the Wii-mote, you’ll see your movement plotted on the screen, as you see below.
  5. Drop down the option box and choose “Mouse Mode On (Motion)”.
  6. Load up Second Life.
  7. Fly! By default, you can control the direction with the direction keys at the end of the Wii-mote.
  8. Laugh with glee, because this is cool.

darwiinmote

2008 01 28 Hilary second life
virtual worlds Comments (3) Permalink

Create a group Twitter account

Twitter rocks. It’s useful for all kinds of things, but especially for chronicling a live event as it happens, including the pre-event discussion and post-conference wrapup.

We’re very excited to be hosting NewB Camp here in Providence, RI on February 23rd. In preparation for the event, Sara created a NewBCamp Twitter account and I coded up this quick script to pull in all tweets related to the conference.

It examines all of your followers tweets for a particular phrase or tag, and then reposts those tweets containing the tag to its own timeline with the author’s name prepended. I’m running this as a cron job on my hosting account. You can see it in action here.

This is a quick hack. It has a couple of issue that I’m aware of:

  • Someone has to log in and manually add followers.
  • The Twitter API only returns the previous 20 friends posts, and it’s possible we might miss some if we have so many friends that the post rate exceeds 20/50 secs (our permitted API request rate).

I do hope that you find this useful for creating your own Twitter event monitor!

<?php

include(“twitter.php”); // Twitter API class
// Available: http://twitter-development-talk.googlegroups.com/web/api_class.phps.txt

// configurable options
$twitter_user = “newbcamp”; // Twitter username
$twitter_pass = “passwordgoeshere”; // Twitter password
$tag = “newbcamp”; // tag for friends to use

$twitter = new Twitter($twitter_user, $twitter_pass);

$last_post = json_decode($twitter->getUserTimeline(“json”,$twitter_user,1), true);
$last_post = $last_post[0][‘created_at’]; // get the datetime stamp of the last post to the account

// get new posts from friends since last update
$friends_posts = json_decode($twitter->getFriendsTimeline(“json”,$twitter_user,$last_post), true);

foreach($friends_posts as $key => $post) {
        if (stripos($post[‘text’],$tag)) { // if the tag is present
                if ($post[‘user’][’screen_name’] != $twitter_user) { // no infinite loops, please
                        $new_post = $post[‘user’][’screen_name’] . “: “ . $post[‘text’];
                        // post the new post to the newbcamp account with the user’s name prepended
                        $twitter->updateStatus($new_post);
                }
        }
}

?>

2008 01 22 Hilary social networking
web apps
web dev Comments (4) Permalink

What’s wrong with this hat?

hat

The vendor containing this hat was recently deleted from Virtual Morocco by an employee of Linden Lab without any notification to me. Why? Because an anonymous person complained that it is “broadly offensive”.

Virtual Morocco was created to be both a tourism promotion platform and a space for cultural exchange. It was built entirely by undergraduate students as an educational service-learning project.

We give space in the Marrakesh Marketplace to several Moroccan artisans with virtual goods for sale. Our only requirements are that they keep everything appropriate to the sim’s theme and to the educational context of the space. The vendor selling the hat was owned by a college student (not from our institution) who specializes in items appropriate for the Morocco of the 1940s.

This hat does appear to be in the Nazi style. Even if it is, it is historically and thematically appropriate for Virtual Morocco.

Managing a space for cultural communication is not always an easy task. We have dealt with anti-Muslim intolerance, anti-American intolerance, and other forms of inappropriate behavior. When an incident occurs, I try to use it as a learning opportunity and prompt for discussion for my students and the members the our Virtual Moroccan community.

This incident has implications far beyond one college student and an ambiguously offensive hat. How can we create an academic space - a space for the free exchange of ideas - if our content can be deleted arbitrarily, by a third party?

I’m posting this now because my support request has gone unanswered for several weeks. I will post updates as the situation develops.

2008 01 22 Hilary education
second life
virtual worlds Comments (4) Permalink

Teen Second Life College Fair

teen SL college fair

I was immensely privileged to participate in the first ever Teen Second Life College Fair. The event was on the Eye4You Alliance TSL island. At least 18 institutions were represented (see some of the booths in the image to the left), and approximately 200 teens attended.

I gave a short presentation on my own educational experiences and the incredible possibilities for careers in technology, but my favorite part of the college fair was the casual conversations that took place outside of the sessions and in the booth area. We talked about everything from education in Europe vs the US to tagging to SL building and scripting to politics… you get the idea!

For educators and recruiters, this was a fantastic event for connecting with young people who are excited, passionate, and resourceful. The students were able to talk directly with representatives of various institutions, and were not shy about asking difficult questions and getting the answers that they were interested in. I’m looking forward to the next one!

The event has been written up:

2007 10 24 Hilary education
second life Comments (1) Permalink

An Experience with Using a Wiki for a Collaborative Classroom Documentation Project

webmonkey thumbnail

I’m teaching a basic web design course this term that covers design concepts, XHTML, and CSS. The students are from a variety of backgrounds - some have knowledge of HTML, some are non-majors or non-credit students looking to pick up a useful skill, and many are complete beginners who are required to take the course as part of their degree programs.

Only a few students knew what a wiki (distinct from Wikipedia) was before beginning this project. The students were given a month to make their contributions to the wiki. They were each assigned primary responsibility for one page at random, but were graded both on the success of their page and their contributions to other pages.

43 students across two sections of the class participated in the project. Of those, five (or 11.6%) didn’t participate by the due date, which is a higher than normal percentage for a homework project. Eleven (or 25.6%) contributed only to their own pages. Another thirteen (30.2%) maintained their own pages and made meaningful contributions to other pages, while fourteen students (32.6%) made numerous contributions well in excess of the requirements.

I will be continuing the project for the second phase of the class - CSS - and I’ll see if participation increases as the usefulness of the wiki as a resource increases. I also plan a project postmortem survey at the end of the course to see what the students thought about it.

2007 10 07 Hilary education Comments (4) Permalink

Plopp has potential, but flops

Monkey in Plopp

I found out about Plopp SecondLife from a tweet and had to give it a try.

The concept is brilliant. You sketch an object in a paint-like interface, hit a button, and it automagically extrudes to 3D. You can then hit another button and export a sculptie map and texture for Second Life.

There are still two major problems. While interface is cute - adorable, even - the buttons aren’t intuitive, and have no tooltips. The program crashed numerous times with a sweet little audio message saying, “I don’t know what to do!”

Monkey SL

The second problem is that the actual generation of sculptie textures doesn’t appear to work very well. My little monkey looked great in the Plopp preview, but came into Second Life demented and twisted. Poor little guy.

I think Plopp has a remarkable amount of potential. It just hasn’t popped.

2007 10 05 Hilary second life
utilities Comments (2) Permalink

Harvard Business School Braingain on Virtual Worlds

I was very pleased to be invited to speak at last Thursday’s BrainGain event on virtual worlds. This event was co-sponsored by Harvard Business School and the Harvard Interactive Media group.

The emerging theme of the event was the high-quality of virtual world experiences for education and business. The word “experience” was used frequently, and there appeared to be a consensus that virtual world interaction is as close to face to face interaction as we can come online.

The event was also live blogged by Denise Grey.

2007 10 03 Hilary events
virtual worlds Comments (0) Permalink