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.

A Creator
Wednesday, 28 Apr 2004 :-:

Piano and Music Waving his arms, he strode down the aisle, stuttering, and punctuated the notes on the written page. He brooded over the performers like a sheepdog, looking down at his score, cocking his head, traversing to one side, then the other, keeping the ensemble within the bounds of his creation.

He was meticulous, detailed, and forgiving, a thorough gentleman.

How amazing must it be to sit in the audience and hear your own creation come to life in sound?

Rehearsing for Friday Night's "Voices of Sacrifice" (excerpt here) performance in Harrisburg gave me an insight into the mind of the composer, into the mystical experience a writer like me never feels (unless I start putting together plays), of experiencing another's performance.

It must be crushingly, devastatingly joyful.

No event in my musical life has changed how I listen to music more completely. It's not just notes on a page. I knew that. But it's not merely an independent thing with a life of its own, to be interpreted by The Performer. For I'm just a performer. And as a performer, it's not just my duty to play the music or play it with feeling and expression. I should be as careful and prepared as I will be for the narration on Friday night. We understand authorship in poetry. But music carries this idea farther. The very life of the composer floats in the air of my melodies, passed into the music through the gift of intensity, joy, time, and blood of a passionate composer.

Haines smiles and stresses, keeping things in order. But I have no such luck. Order is beyond my reach. Too many assignments. I must write three ten-12 page papers in the next couple days, prepare for three concerts, write up a couple scholarship submissions, prepare a conference abstract, and submit my honors in the discipline proposal.

If I post at all until Monday, it will be a miracle.

In the meantime, it's Foucault, Foucault, Foucault.

Well, that and practice for my narration on Friday night. This is so amazingly exciting, I could... And now the news that they're going to be making an edited DVD of the event!