betajames

Twitter has been a great tool for receiving suggestions, getting ideas and posting links. I also like the fact that it encourages me to read and comment more about topics that I find interesting and would not have known otherwise. Twitter has helped me put down in writing what I need to say, not what I would like to say. 140 Characters catches up to you quickly when you have a lot to say.

So I have jumped right into Twitter. I have posted everyday for class and then some. But I do not think all of my classmates have the same enthusiasm as I have. There are only a handful that I see regularly. And others that use it must have missed the conversation about the hashtags. I do like the fact that Doc Shirmer is on Twitter. I know that if I see him online, I can get in touch with him almost immediately. And with Twitter's updated version, it has made it easier to follow RT's and @mentions. 

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I 100% believe we should continue to use it and maybe even focus a bit more on what you can accomplish with Twitter.

Twitter would be more relevant to me if the class used it to interact with each other.  Instead when I go to see what my class is saying on Twitter, I feel like I'm reading Facebook status updates-just little, and usually dull, tidbits about their day.  When I can't think of what to Tweet I will look at what the class is saying about English 112, and see if I can find something I can respond too.  Unfortunately this usually does not happen...There are a few things I like about Twitter still.  It is a very easy way to ask the professor or our blogging group members questions.  I prefer it to e-mail actually, because one can get quick, to the point answers.  I also like how I can see questions that other people are asking, and the answers to their questions are sometimes helpful as well.  With this in mind I do not think that the Twitter assignment has to end, the class just needs to refocus.  

Perhaps I'm being too nitpicky but from what I was believed is that Twitter is a means for us to use to as a class keep in touch to help each other in our writing process, give us ideas, or maybe clarify the things not understood. So far I've seen few of that on Twitter. What I have seen for the most part is people pulling anything up to simply make their daily tweet with nothing anyone can really take away from it. If it has to stay then at least the tweet count should be lowered.

     It was not until I was forced to sign up for this class that I truly understood Twitter's potential for me personally.  Although I haven't kept up with tweeting everyday as I should have due to my inability to incorporate it into my daily routine, logging in and seeing so many other people's thoughts and wanting to respond caused me to realize that almost every tweet is a possible conversation starter, leading into discussions of topics as wide-ranging as my interests are.  I am especially enamored of the idea that anytime I find an article online that I find thought-provoking, I can just call up Twitter and pass it along to others for further comment.  I'm always finding cool stuff online that I wish I could tell someone about, and this gives me the capability to do it(without shouting across the house to my mom, like usual), even though most of what I would post would likely be off-topic for the scope of the class.

That is how i feel about the class doing twitter, its a chance for us all to tell eachother whats going on with the world, in the classroom and with eachother. That is if we choose to put that up there. With me not having my own laptop, or wireless internet, it does pose a challenge for me to meet every single deadline for twitter and for posterous, BUT when i get on twitter at the computer lab for 5 mins I can easily scroll through my page and either find something to retweet or reply on. I would definetly say that we should keep using twitter! I think that every english class should have the opportunity to use twitter. Its a great and fun experience!

Well, some may say that it is a waste of time and we should focus more on our writing styles and the content of our papers. This is fine, but I feel that Twitter is allowing me to find a way to get closer to my point than normal writing has. Since we are only allowed 140 characters per "tweet" we are made to get to what we are trying to say in fewer words. When you think about having to do this regularly when tweeting. don't you think it will eventually have an effect on your normal writing style? I feel it has has some effect on mine because I am paying more attention to not just the quality of my writing, but how long it is taking me to get my point across! Does anyone else feel this way?!?

I think we should not continue using twitter. I do not see any way this is helping me in an english or class sense. We have blogs and email for this purpose. I find this is only HURTING me because i am not into tweeting and i am always forgetting to make a post, and by the time i do it is to late. It doesnt have much meaning to me, Hence why i am always forgetting about it.

pecha-kucha (Japanese for "chatter"), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.

Named after the onomatopoeic Japanese phrase for the sound of talking, Pecha Kucha Nights are spreading like wildfire through the creative professions, based on a highly entertaining premise: invite a group of leading designers to talk about their current work, using only 20 slides, with each slide on screen for just 20 seconds. Top names, the quickfire pace and, it must be said, plenty of alcohol make Pecha Kucha events a must for anyone interested in their local style scene.

You will have exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds.  Think SHORT, INFORMAL, and CREATIVE. You’re not trying to present the details of your thesis; you’re telling a story about why it’s interesting. You don’t have to have conceived of a full outline yet . . . but you should be able to talk about the kinds of things you expect to do, and what you might expect to find. Don’t be afraid to play around: The idea here is that the form’s restriction promotes creativity.

Some of the ways pecha kucha could be used for learning:

• For learning assessment--At the conclusion of a training session, have each learner present a pecha kucha-style summary of what they learned. This could be done either in a live setting or even in an online course. Learners could  record their pecha kuchas as screencasts or deliver them live via webinar. Most online conferencing systems allow you to change presenters, so you could just switch between the different participants. Could be a lot more fun and interesting than a test or other assessment format.
  

• To support reflective practice--As part of creating the culture of reflective practice, consider setting up regular pecha kucha events (lunch time, a Friday morning meeting) where staff are encouraged to share something they've learned related to a particular theme or to share a problem they're experiencing. This could also be used to de-construct a completed project or to reflect on an experience the team has shared.

My name is Felix Jung, and I gave my first talk at Pecha Kucha Chicago, Volume 9. I thoroughly enjoyed the event and had a fantastic time preparing for my talk. On looking back, I wanted to write up a summary of my process, and to share any tips or hints to others who are planning (or considering) participating in their first Pecha Kucha event.

A few caveats: I'm no professional speaker, nor do I profess to have any kind of secret insider knowledge. I'm a guy who gave a talk, and maybe my notes will be of help. The suggestions I make here are just that - suggestions. Take them or leave them, as what worked for me might not necessarily work for you.

If nothing else, I think Pecha Kucha is good training and good practice. Everyone should try Pecha Kucha; it's a good exercise for getting your story down even if you do not use the method exactly for your live talk in your work. It does not matter whether or not you can implement the Pecha Kucha "20x20 6:40" method exactly in your own company or school, but the spirit behind it and the concept of "restrictions as liberators" can be applied to most any presentation situation.

The method makes going deep difficult. But if there is a good discussion after a Pecha Kucha type of presentation then it may work well even inside an organization. I can imagine having college students give this kind of presentation about their research followed by deeper questioning and probing by the instructor and class. Which would be more difficult for a student and a better indication of their knowledge: a 45 minute recycled and typical PowerPoint presentation, or a tight 6:40 presentation followed by 30 minutes of probing questions and discussion?

Also: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

The first challenge: coming up with a great story. For inspiration, the creative team leaves the Pixar campus and heads to the Poet’s Loft, a cabin 50 miles north of San Francisco. They thought they already had a great start on the plot for Toy Story 3, but after 20 minutes, the whole thing is scrapped. By day two, a new idea emerges—how would the toys feel if Andy, their owner, left for college?

/ Day / 3
Working from a series of plot points, screenwriter Michael Arndt begins drafting the script. At the same time, director Lee Unkrich and the story artists start sketching storyboards for each scene. There is no animation yet, just drawn poses like in a comic book. But the storyboards allow the filmmakers to begin imagining the look and feel of each scene.

It ain’t easy being cheesy. Mr. Cheetah first made this sage observation back in the ’80s, and it certainly still applies to the manufacture of his favorite bright-orange snack. Turning a hunk of cornmeal into a knobby Cheeto may take only a few minutes, but it requires a fine-tuned industrial dance that leaves no room for error. Frito-Lay’s quality-control folks will not tolerate anything less than maximum crunchiness.

MINUTES ELAPSED

0:00 to 1:00
Gritty cornmeal stored in a silo is pumped about 100 yards through a pneumatic tube into a Cheetos manufacturing plant. (Frito-Lay has 14 fried-Cheeto plants in 11 states.) The cornmeal then enters a giant hopper , where it awaits its rapid transformation into one of America’s most beloved snacks.

1/ Oxygen purge
From tanks on the ground, crews fill the shuttle’s payload bay and aft compartment with gaseous nitrogen to lower oxygen levels — on Apollo 1, oxygen on board caught fire during a test and killed the crew. A proper oxygen purge necessitates a stable flow rate of 180 pounds per minute. Should the concentration of nitrogen leaving the orbiter’s vent doors change at any time during the countdown, then the hazardous gas detection engineer must alert the team responsible for monitoring the payload bay.

2/ Launch status check
Team leaders, including the flight director in Houston, give verbal confirmation that all systems are go. Here’s a breakdown of everyone who must sign off and for what systems:

The Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, is exactly what it sounds like: a guest lodge built out of frozen water. The whole thing—bar, chapel, and accommodations for 100 guests—must be rebuilt annually, for obvious reasons.

March
The Icehotel constructed last year is still open for business—the spring thaw comes late 125 miles north of the arctic circle—but this is the time to gather raw material for next year’s structure. Workers use hydraulic saws to slice the surface of the nearby Torne river into 3-foot-thick blocks, which are extracted with earthmoving equipment.

In the movies, criminals are transported in 10-car convoys with decoys, helicopter escorts, and an army of well-coiffed agents in black suits. (Somehow the prisoner still manages to escape and uncover the real culprit and clear his name!) Given the size of the US prison population—at almost 2 million, the largest in the world—the reality is a less exciting affair. Last year, the US Marshals Service shuttled 350,000 prisoners around the country, often to stand trial or serve as witnesses. Here’s how they do it.

Air Travel
The US Marshals Service [] operates the biggest prison transport network [] in the world, called JPATS (Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System), headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. JPATS has its own fleet of 10 planes, ranging from a six-person Beechcraft 99 to an MD-80 that can carry about 140 inmates [] . (Yes, it’s nicknamed Con Air.)

Comedy! Trying to make strangers laugh is crazy and more than a little narcissistic. Yet even after I discovered that repeating memorized Steve Martin routines failed to make me popular at the one junior-high party I was invited to, I kept trying. In 1999 I took stand-up out of my everyday conversations and started performing it in professional venues. I’m still fascinated by the evolutionary arc of an act. You know instantly whether something works. You can tweak it on the fly or die trying. (Jokes that make me laugh out loud when I write them almost always bomb. I have no idea why.) But the coolest part is that if you ask any 10 comics how to put together an act, you’ll get 10 different answers. The joke development process is as unique and personal as each laugh it intends to evoke.

Get an Idea
This is the worst part of the process. Comedy protons have to collide in my brain by chance. Jerry Seinfeld can sit down and write for a full workday, like it’s a desk job. Zach Galifianakis thinks of stuff while mowing his farm (for reals). “It’s good to force your brain sometimes,” Steven Wright says. “It’s a muscle. You gotta work it out.” Once something happens for me—usually while I’m driving or in the shower—I scribble it down on the nearest surface.

From barnacles that hijack crabs to a protozoan that makes rodents cozy up to cats, parasites do a lot more than make you puke. But for sheer gross-out glory, it’s hard to beat Leucochloridium paradoxum. These flatworms live in birds’ rectums, and they give garden snails a glimpse of hell.

1/ A grazing snail eats a bird dropping. Gross, right? Well, what’s even grosser is that the dropping is filled with parasite eggs. Garden snails can’t digest the eggs. They survive their trip through the snail’s tummy intact and spread to nearby organs.

2/ The invading Leucochloridium runs through a couple of life-cycle stages before landing in the snail’s hepatopancreas, the organ that passes for its liver-pancreas-thing.

3/ The parasite pumps embryo after embryo into fat, throbbing brood sacs it builds in the snail’s eyestalks.

Thanks to the ever-shortening product upgrade cycle, the US generates about 2 million tons of electronic waste each year. Many discarded cell phones are shipped abroad, where valuable parts are stripped out and toxic metals are burned or dumped. But most domestic recyclers are more responsible. Here’s how one New York outfit, WeRecycle, does it.

1/ Collect A consumer drops a phone into a receptacle, and it’s trucked to one of WeRecycle’s facilities in New York or Connecticut.

2/ Sort Staffers pick through the phones, removing working units and wiping data from them. These are sold to domestic resellers, who offer them as refurbished models.

Close-quarters battle is a delicate, deadly ballet: Operators must move in precise patterns but still be ready to improvise. Brian Bishop, an ex-Marine who co-runs Combative Concepts in San Diego, has trained SEAL teams, Secret Service agents, and others in close-quarters battle since 1990. He and a former SEAL turned contract-trainer who prefers to remain anonymous walked us through the basics. Here’s how a crack team of commandos might free a group of two hostages held by armed men in a fortified desert compound. Don’t try this at home.

Equipment
Today’s operators carry gas-operated, air-cooled, selective-fire M4 carbine rifles. They’re compact enough for indoor work, yet accurate up to 900 feet should the fight spill into the street. Several “breachers” also carry Remington 870 shotguns. Add to this M84 stun grenades, which kick out a pain-inducing 170 decibels of sound and a blinding 1 million candelas of light.

So your kid wants to know how babies are made? Don’t hem and haw or spin some yarn about birds and bees—break down the biochemistry. It’s true what they say: The sexiest organ is the brain.

1/ Attraction
When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, the neurons of the ventral tegmentum start producing the neurotransmitter dopamine and pumping it to the caudate nucleus, the hypothalamus, and other brain regions. High levels of dopamine can induce the release of testosterone, which is associated with a drive to make babies.

Lots of musicians have studios; Trent Reznor [] has an alchemist’s laboratory. On hiatus from touring, the Nine Inch Nails frontman has stuffed a converted garage with blinking electronic doodads, from modded synthesizers and sequencers to archaic drum machines. Reznor is using all this gear for his new band, How to Destroy Angels. Here’s how one song off the group’s forthcoming EP evolved from a seeming cacophony of beats and weird noise into a dense, polyrhythmic track.

Inspiration
Using a technique they perfected on NIN’s 2007 album, Year Zero, Reznor and producer Atticus Ross [] began by recording disparate families of musical noise. “We would create—with no preconceived notion of what it was going to sound like—several different rhythm sections or drumbeats and then chop between them to create something else,” Reznor says.