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.

The Johnson Effect
Saturday, 27 Mar 2004 :-:

It is happening again. No, not visions of grandeur, not thoughts of great accomplishment, but that miasma of inner creativity that Johnson experienced often, fought through, and observed in Boswell.

Put quite simply, I am bored. Is it that I have rushed madly to accomplish things, and I am now done? Is it the change in weather? Maybe. I rested well last night, ate nutritionally the last few days, and even exercised a few times. My mind even feels sharp.

But I am bored. I feel the strain of the large amount of reading, the lack of focus that has been forced upon me by so many classes. Is it possible or sane to honestly read so many works of literature in so little time? Is it even honest to come so low that I must read Frankenstein in 2.5 hours? I could spend a year just studying what I have learned in the last month. And I would be much better for it.

Yet we steel ourselves for the second half of the semester, and more insanity.

As active as it seems, capable as it appears, my mind is unable to focus on anything right now. I am bored with being a human computer, with processing large quantities of data. Is this what it is to learn?

I am quite bored by the shallowness of my studies. And yet there is no time to go deep. No time. No time for anything. No time, no time.

True genius is to still accomplish, still attain, even during these troubling times. Right?

Whether by brute force or by stimulus or by letting go I do not know, but I suspect that raw discipline and brute force are what is needed.

Besides, I always despise myself after I (inevitably, as I always do) just let go, or watch movies, or play games for a week.

I always slack off, no matter how hard I try to be diligent, and I am always discouraged.

And yet, I haven't taken a true vacation in nearly three years. The closest thing to vacation was my visit to Virginia, my visit to seminary classes all morning, as professors spoke in foreign languages and drilled students.

sigh.

This time it will be different. This time, I'm pushing through....if I can.