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.

It Begins with Food
Wednesday, 24 Mar 2004 :-:

I refused to eat the night before, well, except for a last cup of hot chocolate. See, I had been trying to skip a meal all week, but starting with Sunday's spaghetti, I was going down fast. What can I say? Spicy meatballs and fine-grained parmesan dusted lightly on the rich sauce were beckoning.

I couldn't help myself.

Then there was Abbas. He invited me to the cafeteria. A curse be upon every all-you-can-eat establishment. So I got a salad. And eggs. And an english muffin topped with a scoop of galactic spawn sauce. Oh yeah, and hash browns.

After that night, I ate nothing but fruit, toast, and a few crackers....ok I admit...and that chicken parmesan at the honors dinner-- but at least I had a salad with it.

To play the trumpet well, I need to have a nearly-empty stomach. Not empty enough to make it complain, but empty enough for it to keep a low profile beneath my liver and lungs. I don't need it to puff out my chest, bragging about the attention I give it. Because I need to puff out my chest for other reasons; I need to be a windbag.

To play the trumpet well requires really good lung capacity. To play the trumpet clearly, smoothly, lucidly requires relaxation and ease. The easier (physically) it is to play, to breathe, to move, the better the music sounds. Minute strain in a finger, toe, or eyebrow will somehow filter into the airstream and devastate the sound.

I have only rarely been fully relaxed, hearing the clear sound of strain-less (not effortless, for to play well takes extreme concentration and focus) music stream out of the end of my trumpet bell.

I am naturally predisposed to indigestion. This is annoying. A full stomach is the greatest personal obstacle I know to playing well.

So every concert, I play a weighing game, not with my feet on the scale, but with my mind in my stomach, evaluating how quickly the food will digest, how its chemical makeup will affect the stomach acids, and what I should eat next. Citrus drinks, for example, are great in the days before concerts; they help break down the food. Cheese is sometimes good, when I've reached equilibrium early, and I want to shut down the digestive system so my stomach doesn't grumble while I perform.

Am I obsessed? Yes. Does it work? You betcha. This week, I timed it perfectly; although I didn't play a perfect concert (which many have been kindly overlooking), I at least played the key solos well (Notes: A. Expression: B. Tone Quality: B+).

Next time, however, I'll drop the hot chocolate.