Notebook of Sand

• Recent Publications
• Recent Projects
• Conferences & Speaking
"Comparing Spatial Hypertext Collections"
  ACM Hypertext '09
"Archiving and Sharing Your Tinderbox"
  Tinderbox Weekend London '09
"The Electronic Nature of Future Literatures"
  Literary Studies Now, Apr '09
"The World University Project"
  St. John's Col. Cambridge, Feb '09
"Ethical Explanations,"
  The New Knowledge Forge, Jun '08
Lecture, Cambridge University
  Tragedy in E-Lit, Nov '07
Hypertext '07: Tragedy in E-Lit
Host for Tinderbox Cambridge '07
Keynote: Dickinson State Uni Conf
Upper Midwest NCHC'07: Speaker
eNarrative 6: Creative Nonfiction
HT'05: "Philadelphia Fullerine"
  Nelson award winning paper
NCHC '05:
 Nurturing Independent Scholarship
Riddick Practicum:
  Building Meeting Good Will
NCHC '04:
  Philadelphia Fullerine
  Lecture on American Studies
WWW@10: Nonfiction on the Web
NCHC '03: Parliamentary Procedure
ELL '03 -- Gawain Superstar
• (a)Musing (ad)Dictions:

Ideas. Tools. Art. Build --not buy. What works, what doesn't. Enjoy new media and software aesthetics at Tekka.

Theodore Gray (The Magic Black Box)

Faith, Life, Art, Academics. Sermons from my family away from home: Eden Chapel!

My other home: The Cambridge Union Society (in 2007, I designed our [Fresher's Guide])

The Economist daily news analysis

Global Higher Ed blog

• Hypertext/Writing

Writing the Living Web

Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, hypertext expert Mark Bernstein. (Electronic) Literature, cooking, art, etc.

Fabulous game reviews at playthisthing.

• Stats

Chapter I: Born. Lived. Died.

There is a Chapter II.

Locale: Lancaster County Pa, USA

Lineage: Guatemala

Religion: My faith is the primary focus of my life, influencing each part of me. I have been forgiven, cleansed, and empowered by Jesus Christ. Without him, I am a very thoughtful, competent idiot. With him, I am all I need to be, all I could ever hope for. I oppose institutional religious stagnation, but getting together with others is a good idea. God is real. Jesus Christ is his Son, and the Bible is true. Faith is not human effort. It's human choice. I try to be the most listening, understanding, and generous person I can.

Interests: Anything I can learn. Training and experience in new media, computer science, anglophone literature, education, parliamentary debate, democratic procedure, sculpture, and trumpet performance. Next: applied & computational linguistics, probably.

Education: Private school K-3. Home educated 4-12. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Elizabethtown College in Jan 2006. As the 2006 Davies-Jackson Scholar, I studied English at St. John's College, Cambridge University from 2006 - 2008.

Memberships: Eden Baptist, Cambridge Union Society, ACM, AIP, GPA.

Alum of the Elizabethtown College Honors Program, sponsored by the Hershey Company.

Dheerash Worldwide
Monday, 16 Aug 2004 :-:

I spent some time in the 30th street station waiting for the regional line to the place I'm staying.

Did I tell you I look like a sucker?

Fortunately, I'm not a sucker.

** * **

She was perfect. Her technique was down, her style was smooth. She started talking to me, trying to fish for info. I responded, curious. She spoke of her "goods business."

** * **

Legitimate businesses which earn people enough money to retire at 30 -- these businesses don't have to approach random people in the train station, looking for business partners.

** * **

After talking a short while, I took a card and left. Why the card? I wanted to do some research... The first tipoff? She didn't have her own business card. She had another card, with one email scratched off and another written in. This particular pyramid scam is pretty obvious. They don't even deceive well -- it's an incompetent scam as well. Go to the web address, and you'll be redirected to the unhelpful website of BWW.

Tipoff number two? The website refuses to give you information about the business unless you register. This is an old ploy.

I use a very distantly-related variant of it in the new Elizabethtown College website. I got the idea from Eliza Meets the Postmodern, the first article I ever read about hypertext (read it ages ago and forgot it, but some of the ideas stuck).

On the Etown site, we use the illusion of user power to guide people through our marketing information. Our goal is to offset the skimming habits of web viewers -- by guiding them through a page or two, we make sure they get more information than they would normally.

BWW uses different techniques to present as little information as possible. But BWW doesn't even bother with skillful marketing. They do it this way:

You can't get info if you don't sign up.

I don't know what kind of sucker you think I am, but cults are not businesses. Nice try. Better luck next time.