Hot wheels
OK, it's definitely a guy thing, but still it's pretty cool.
You're looking at a plain Chevy Cobalt that was tricked out by students in Tri-C's Automotive Technology program that features a paint scheme developed by one of our Visual Communication students, Remington Phillips.
The project, called the Cobalt Challenge, was created to give students (and faculty) something to work on together that they could get enthused about.
Seeing the car in the flesh—so to speak—for the first time today, I'm impressed.
It has all sorts of cool modifications to make it go faster and ride better, which I don't know much about. But seeing its white pearl, purple and yellow paint sparkle in the sun makes you take notice. Of course if they cranked the new sound system up even half way you couldn't miss that either!
The next task is working with Remington to build a website for the project that captures the excitement and energy generated today when they took the car to a drag strip. I wasn't there, but hearing two faculty members and an assistant dean who were there talk about it communicated that excitement. The website has to capture that "wow!" experience, not always easy to do.
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You gotta be kidding me
As if Major League Eating wasn't bad enough, tonight I discovered that there's a World Championship in...ready for this?...
Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Yes, that Rock, Paper, Scissors.
The game we used as kids to decide who had to wash dishes after dinner.
This year's Championship will be held in Toronto, Ontario on October 13th. It's organized by the World RPS Society, whose logo is shown here. But before you answer their online poll that asks "Are you planning to attend the RPS World Championship" with "Not in a million years," ask yourself this:
How many World Championships have tickets that only cost $12?
How many are held in a brewery?
How many are described by Rolling Stone thusly: " like a high-stakes Star Trek convention, but with binge drinking and better-looking women."
I can think of worse ways to spend a day.
But the real attraction for me are the RPS posters, clever knock-offs of wartime propaganda posters, repurposed to support world domination by the RPS Society and sold via their online store.
They are designed by a guy named Graham Walker who has a knack for capturing the feel of the originals, but with a sense of humor. He's got a whole set of these done in the styles of various countries that you'll no doubt recognize.
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Web Meetup: Tagging
The Web Standards MeetUp group was at Tri-C today and the topic was "tagging," a very Web 2.0 phenomenon. In short, it means that information is being categorized by groups of people who use it, rather than by professional and/or academic experts. Jason Morrison, a graduate of Kent State's Information Architecture and Knowledge Management program, gave a good introduction to the topic. The clarity and usefulness of his presentation made me think good things about the program.
One significant point I noted for anyone putting information on the web: tagging allows you to look at data in ways you may not have anticipated. Users tell you new things via how they tag. Sometime you don't have all the answers.
Click to see my handwritten notes.
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