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.

Bailing Out
Monday, 3 May 2004 :-:

Chesapeake Tunnel at night. Lights painting lines in a rearview mirror.I have sometimes been known to *ahem* decorate my car. Honestly, doesn't a little customization make sense? I mean, after all, it's my car. Sure, respectability and all, but don't you sometimes feel like a little electron racing around the circuitboard tracks of a massive social computer?

So I painted the hood with music notes. That doesn't make me weird, does it? I mean, some people paint their fingernails, and that's not weird.

You know, you don't have to remind me about the picture frame I installed underneath the stereo. I see it every time I drive. Honestly, can't a guy have a little fun with his car once in a while? It's not like it's my bike or my trumpet. It's just a car (hmm, I wonder which is worth more. I bet both bike and trumpet individually trump the car).

J. Nathan Matias posing with his 'Vintage' '89 Plymouth HorizonIn a few years, I will be able to put a vintage license plate on it. After all, it's a vintage 1989 Plymouth Horizon.

Sigh. Well, you're right about one thing. I would never install one of those horrendous asphyxio-scent pinetree dangly things in my car. I can't stand foreign smells inside.....

What's that strawberry-kiwi-ish fragrance coming from inside, you ask?

Oh. Heh. Yeah. (shuffles nervously)...ummm -- yeah. About that, um, fragrance.


Last week, I found out that the rear driver's side floor doesn't leak. I thought it was good news. Don't you?

Evidently, half-gallon Gatorade bottle lids aren't completely secure.

I spent twenty minutes bailing it out with a plastic cup.

Evidently, Gatorade wasn't designed with the now-sticky interiors of cars on blazing-hot days in mind.