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.

Music of the Spheres
Tuesday, 19 Oct 2004 :-:

Work is proceeding on the geodesic hypertext. I now have decided the contents of each triangle, with the help of Tinderbox and a host of round tacky stickers. Now, I just have to get the final scans of the visual material that goes in each triangle.

Planning a geodesic hypertext in Tinderbox

Tinderbox has made the process much easier. In fact, Tinderbox gave me the idea in the first place. In an upcoming issue of Tekka, I describe how I use Tinderbox to perform historical research and writing. I've been using it for my honors thesis on 19th century Philadelphia ethnic life. As I prepared my materials, I thought about putting together a hypertext from all the reasearch I have done (getting in all the things I must cut from the linear, paper version).

When the opportunity came to do an art-related history project, I jumped at the chance. Now, Tinderbox didn't just help me figure out how to organize the topics on the sphere....

Planning a geodesic hypertext in Tinderbox

... but it is also allowing me to connect the visual content with the audio segments, all pointing back to the original sources I use for the project. Hypertext is too much fun.

** * **

Late last night (ok, early in the morning), I entered part of the hypertext into gZigZag, by Ted Nelson and Tuomas Lukka (and others). At first, I found it cumbersome. But then, I played with some different views. The vTreeWithLines clearly showed what was going on with my data, but the most impressive was the MindSundew view.

This view is usually useless, since it usually shows something that is far too complex. But in this case, it figured out the geometry of my hypertext and began to display my information as a geodesic sphere!

Geodesic Hypertext in gZigZag
** * **

And for kicks, there's always the brilliant Millenium Bookball, by George W. Hart.