Just Soapy!

Thanks to Girls Entertainment Network for pointing out this sudsy Etsy site – for the gamer in your life.

 

Two Tech Questions

Two burning technical questions that I have been looking for a solid answer for. First of all – I am wondering if there is a way to play XBox 360 games from an external hard drive. I know that you can store saved games on an external, but want to know if they can be executable directly. (I keep thinking that Microsoft should have this as an extension hardware…). Secondly, I know that the PS3’s are not backwards compatible with PS2 (or 1) games (except the first batch, which I did not get one at the time out of sheer laziness) – but I was wondering if there was a way to make it backwards compatible myself (w/a chip I seem to recall hearing …). Anyways – if anyone has any direct information, that would be great.

Rainy Holiday

Am on my annual pilgrimage to eastern Canada for summer fun (and work of course). However, the forecast shows rain, rain and more rain. It is one of the few times I hope the weatherman is blatantly wrong – or else, why have the beach so close when you are stuck indoors! And the weather gives me little excuse to procrastinate my long to-dop list – bah!

Crunch Time

November has barely started and I am already exhausted. You would think that this would teach me to stretch everything out over the course of the semester; to strategically plan work so that is flows with my (social/family) life instead of violently clashing with it.

I have so many things that I wanted to blog about over the course of my semester – perhaps I can still get a few belated posts out before I start the all encompassing process of writing a final paper in a subject that I know little about beyond the course material. Don’t get me wrong – it’s great to be forced to jump into the deep end of the pool – always a gem or two at the bottom.

In the meantime – all I can say is WOW – I can’t believe it’s November and it is 18 degrees celcius in Montreal!

Book Launch

CISSC BOOK LAUNCH
GROWING UP ONLINE:  YOUNG PEOPLE AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

When: October 7th, 16h00 – 17h00
Where: LB-612 (McConnell Library Building)
Concordia University, Montreal, QC Canada 

 SANDRA WEBER AND SHANLY DIXON  

In this cutting-edge anthology, contributors examine the diverse ways in which girls and young women across a variety of ethnic, socio-economic, and national backgrounds are incorporating and making sense of digital technology in their everyday lives. Contributors explore issues of gender, identity, access to technologies, social and parental regulation, and cultural issues allowing cell phones, blogging, the production and consumption of websites, social networking and gaming to take on new significance in current theories, public discourse, and policy issues. The voice of youth culture resonates throughout the book as they adapt, adopt, and blend new technologies, providing valuable insight into their experience and challenging some currently held notions

.Author Bio (at time of writing):
Sandra Weber is Professor of Education,Concordia University.
Shanly Dixon is a PhD in Humanities candidate, Concordia University.

 

 

 

gameCODE, Fall 2008

The first meeting of the fall semester for gameCODE takes place this coming Friday (Sept, 12th), 12:00pm, 11th floor Hall Building, Concordia University, Rm H-1122 (i am pretty sure!). This meeting aims to be an informational meeting to meet and greet new faces, discuss the goals and itinerary for the fall and any other relevant ramblings, followed (of course) by drinks at McKibbins. If you are interested, and in Montreal, feel free to drop by.

Another Semester

Cannot believe that it is September already. It’s ok – as it has always been my favorite month. Always the start of new classes, new faces, new projects… or perhaps the fact that my birthday, my mother’s and my youngest daughter’s birthday are this month (actually, they share theirs, and mine’s the day before!).

I am enrolled in my last formal class of my university education this semester, so it is a momentous occasion. I must admit, one that makes me a little nervous. It seems that I have been in a classroom, listening to lectures and preparing papers, presentations etc forever. Although I still have my comprehensive exams in January, and a thesis to write, the next time I have to sit through a class, it may very well be my own (wishful thinking perhaps? lol). I am taking a class on “The Figure” at Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim’s School of Cinema. Below is the course description. I am a bit nervous to delve into the course material, as at the moment, I only have a layman’s idea of what “the figure in film” means. I am looking forward to though, so it should be good.

FMST 803/2 Seminar in Film and Moving Image Theory
Special Topic: The figure in film.
In aesthetic theory related to the visual art disciplines, figuration denotes the act of representing through figures, that is, shapes or forms of bodies or objects. In rhetoric and literary theory, figuration refers to the use of words to connote meanings that deviate from regular use and is closer to visual than verbal types of expression. Film scholars and practitioners have recurrently been drawn to the term ³figure,² whether as an aesthetic and formal element of films, a rhetorical strategy of cinematic representation or address, a metaphorical representation of the human body, or an allegorical dimension of film discourse and of the audiovisual culture in general.  Yet the term keeps eluding a strict definition.

This seminar examines the figure in the cinema as an element that brings together the conceptual and sensorial components and activities involved in filmmaking as an artistic praxis and blurs the distinction between linguistic and visual discourse. The course investigates the ways in which figuration-directly or indirectly-has been used as an analytic approach to film and as a specific strategy of representation in a number of filmic and audio-visual practices.

The seminar is structured into three parts. The first part illustrates the relations that the figure establishes between cinematic techniques and linguistic codes, different artistic practices and theories, various phases of the filmmaking process. The second part of the course examines the process of figuration in relation to a crucial issue in contemporary aesthetic theory and philosophy: the status and the function of the artwork in a postmodern culture that rejects totalizing or transcendental notions of representation and within an audio-visual environment that is ingrained in the virtual system of new media and information technology. In the third part of the seminar students will apply the notion of figure to a case study of their own choice, which may be a film or a filmic corpus, an audio-visual form or style, a theoretical approach to film.  The project will be presented in class and further developed in an essay paper.

Summer Holidays

It’s that time again for my annual pilgrimage eastward. We leave first thing in the morning for the blissful ten hour drive in our fuel economic (read: uncomfortable) Toyota Echo (and not the last models … the first one heh). Will be gone but not disconnected for the next eight weeks. Since posting has been relatively sporadic over the last few months, not much should change except that I won’t be able to accept any 5 à 7 invites this summer.

CFP’s

Two new CFP’s detailed in the Call for Papers link:

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research
Special Issue: Culture of Virtual Worlds
Deadline: September 30, 2008
Publication Date: November 20, 2008

and

Journal of Media Practice 
Special Issue: A Decade of Media Practice: Changes, Challenges and Choices
The deadline to receive all completed material (full articles, reviews etc.) is October 17, 2008

Just a Note

I am struggling with the apparent lack of wysiwyg formatting of WordPress in terms of my cv. I apologize for its crowdedness till I get it all resolved. Someday I should REALLY think about hosting my own site …