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August 24, 2010

The Magic Carpet

Notes on Glamour

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, the Academy Awards were still being held at the Shrine Auditorium, which is located just north of Jefferson, directly across the street from campus. It's quite a structure, built in the Moorish Revival style and opened in 1926. At ...

July 29, 2010

Against Aca-Fandom

On Jason Mittell on Mad Men

Television scholar Jason Mittell doesn't like the television show Mad Men, and he's written an article about why. It wasn't news to me; indeed, I'm one of the interlocutors he mentions having argued with about the show on Twitter and elsewhere. I knew Jason was writing this piece and I've ...

Atari Hacks, Remakes, and Demakes

Special Topics in Game Design and Analysis, Spring 2010

In this intensive seminar, we will explore every aspect of the Atari VCS (2600), the most important early home videogame console. Based on a critical-technical practice Nick Montfort and I call platform studies, we will investigate the way the Atari VCS influenced games and game design through a thorough analysis ...

November 20, 2009

Oh Woe Is Oprah

A Billionaire's Blight

Am I missing something here? Oprah, who has a net worth of roughly $2.5 billion and can do whatever she wants, is crying and soul searching because she is ending her talk show so that she can restart it on her own cable network? ...

October 25, 2009

Rise, Crossover

Learning from the jazz pop instrumental

I seem to wind up in the car for at least part of the early afternoon every Saturday. As a result, I've developed a habit of listening to the reruns of America's Top 40 with Casey Kasem that play on satellite radio channel 70s on 7. This week's chart was ...

September 13, 2009

Don Draper and Elle Macpherson

So good for beautiful people

On last week's episode of Mad Men (season 3, episode 4), the fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency shot a TV spot for the then-new diet cola Patio. 1962-3 was the year of diet soda, with the introduction of RC Cola's Diet Rite, Pepsi's Patio and Coca Cola's TaB. As often ...

August 8, 2009

Meh and the Mundane Sublime

On Netflix, the Simpsons, and Jean-Luc Nancy

We just rejoined Netflix after several years away from it. While recreating preferences and ratings on a fresh account, we noticed something surprising: Netflix doesn't allow a user to judge things as "just ok." Take a look at the tool-tip explanations for their five-star ratings: Netflix's recommendation system is generally ...

April 22, 2009

Texture, Bleed, Afterimage

CRT Emulation for the Atari VCS

This spring, I had the pleasure of advising a Georgia Tech Computer Science capstone group. The capstone is a requirement for the degree that is meant to draw on all aspects of the students' experience in the program. Each project requires an advisor and a customer. In my case, I ...

February 27, 2009

Venture Brothers Does Atari

Two Digital Video Discs

Speaking of the Atari VCS, Georgia Tech colleague David Terraso pointed out to me that the cover art for the third season DVD release of The Venture Bros. is styled after an original Atari game box. (Venture Bros. is one of the animated shows in Adult Swim on Cartoon Network.) ...