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  • 10 Year Anniversary at City Tech

    New Entrance to the Namm Building at City Tech on Jay Street, Brooklyn.

    It’s hard for me to believe that it’s only been 10 years since I started teaching at City Tech in Brooklyn. My gray hair seems like a testament to it being far longer.

    I’ve been able to accomplish a lot of things since landing in Brooklyn as evidenced by my CV and Teaching Portfolio. I’ve had the joy of teaching great students, and I’ve enjoyed the collegiality and comradery of excellent coworkers.

    Some of the greatest hits of things that I’ve done–some alongside the best colleagues and others by myself–include:

    There’s a lot left to do. What can I accomplish in the next 10 years?

  • Busy Preparing My Fall 2024 Science Fiction Class

    An anthropomorphic tuxedo cat wearing a leather jacket is working at a computer terminal. Image created with Stable Diffusion.

    Fall 2024 classes begin on Wednesday, August 28. Originally, I was hoping to teach City Tech’s ENG2420, Science Fiction course in person this semester, but the in-person section had too few students to run. Thankfully, after the administration switched the class to being online, asynchronous and sending a message blast to prospective students, the new online class quickly filled up. Since City Tech recently switched to a new learning management system (LMS) called Brightspace, I’m going to experiment teaching the class on it instead of using our open learning system, OpenLab. However, I will still create my video lectures as YouTube videos, so they will be public facing for anyone interested in following along or using them in their own classes. Also, this will be my first time teaching the class using my open educational resource (OER) Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook. Here’s to a positive and productive semester!

  • Enjoyed Alien: Romulus Despite Too Damn Loud IMAX and Other Customers Who Were Annoying

    xenomorph alien made out of paper in origami style. Image created with Stable Diffusion.

    Yesterday, Y and I took the subway to Manhattan to watch the film Alien: Romulus on the IMAX screen at the AMC 14 on 34th Street.

    I thought that Alien: Romulus was an interesting story that threaded the needle of connecting the origin film Alien (1979) via the first Xenomorph we saw and the android Ash (Ian Holm) to Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) via the black liquid (hints of the black oil from The X-Files) and the Engineers. The retrocomputers, ASCII text, and a computer with a 3.5″ floppy disk drive made it feel like the same world as Alien. I felt that some of the lines were corny, over-the-top, and unnecessary fan service, but overall, it was an interesting and sometimes exciting addition to the series.

    Unrelated to the film per se, I have some thoughts instead about the technologies of presentation and communal engagement with the film.

    First, movies shown in theaters, especially IMAX films, are shown with the volume far too loud. Y and I last went to an IMAX film over 10 years ago, but the memory of how that experience hurt both of our ears, we planned ahead and brought foam ear plugs. Even with our ear plugs, which work wonders at eliminating noise in other settings, were just barely up to the task of keeping the volume of the film presentation at tolerable levels. Let me put that another way: While wearing ear plugs, I was able to hear the film’s dialog and sound effects and music just fine and sometimes a little not fine when it got so loud as to overpower the ear plugs. That’s too damn loud. It was only after we were leaving that Y thought we should have checked the decibel levels. Hindsight is 20-20.

    Second, I know to some I might sound like an old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn, but for those who have known me a long time, they know that I’ve been deadly serious about this since going to see films when I was a kid. That is we owe other theater goers our respect so that everyone can enjoy the film. Carrying on, talking, or using a phone during a movie can disturb others, so we shouldn’t do those things. Unfortunately, some of the other customers, who would have paid the same $30 per ticket we paid, don’t care for social norms and simple decency. It would be one thing if these were kids who didn’t know any better, but these were adults who acted like kids. Hell is other people, I suppose.

    Considering these things, I prefer to stay at home to enjoy a film without ear plugs or annoying guests. Of course, I am assuming the neighbors don’t act the fool, which I’ve tried my best to address following these tips.

  • Wage the Uglydoll Keeping Watch in Green-Wood Cemetery

    Orange stuffed animal resting in the crook of a tree in a cemetery.

    Earlier this year, Y and I found this Wage Uglydoll lying on the ground and covered in mud where three paths converge by a tree in Green-Wood Cemetery. It was the day after a windy thunderstorm. We we weren’t sure if he had been blown off a headstone or dropped by a cemetery visitor, so we propped him up in this tree so he’s be easy to see by anyone passing by in case they had lost him. Or, if he had been left on a grave, at least he would be within eye-shot.

    It has been months since we last saw Wage in the cemetery, because the weather has been too oppressive to go for a walk there. Thankfully, it was in the 70s yesterday, so we ventured out to the cemetery for a long walk. Wage was right where we left him keeping watch over the comings and goings in his corner of the graveyard.

    Considering his namesake, he has escaped the trappings of wage-earning by leaving capitalism behind. His life is now living up a tree in the sun amongst a little bit of nature in the heart of the big city.

    Orange stuffed animal resting in the crook of a tree in a cemetery.

  • Reflected Buildings in Manhattan

    Glass windows on a highrise building reflects the stone facade of the building on the opposite side of the street.

    Standing on E 41st St between 5th Ave. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan, I liked how buildings on one side of the street created these slightly distorted reflections of the buildings on the side of the street where I was standing. The reflected images seem like the wobbly straight lines in images generated by Stable Diffusion–kind of like seeing the thing reflected in a mirror with slight imperfections–not quite a fun house mirror but going in that direction.