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Visual Text Analysis with ImageMagick
In my classes, I’ve been talking about and showing off the kinds of visual analysis one can accomplish by extracting frames from video and comparing them in a montage format. This approach has been...
View ArticleOn the Poetics of “Haiku by a Robot”
Haiku is a Japanese poetic form emphasizing brevity, clarity, and the juxtaposition of images or ideas. Its translation or appropration into English has foregrounded the 5-7-5 syllable rule, and its...
View ArticleFour Responses to #!
When I first read Nick Montfort’s #!, I shared my initial response via Twitter in the form of a Perl one-liner. Since I’m teaching #! this semester, I’ve been taking a second look and growing in my...
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Zen for JPG
I’m a fan of the Moviebarcode Tumblr blog, which creates elegant “barcode” versions of movies and other visual media. Conceptually, it’s similar to what Lev Manovich does with image sets and that I and...
View ArticleHelp Spuddy the Snow Woman Take a Trip around the World
The recent snow was plentiful but too cold to do much building. On Saturday, though, some light snow turned into sleet and rain which melted the top layer enough to make it finally start sticking...
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How to make a Twitter Bot with Google Spreadsheets (version 0.4)
Do you like Twitter bots? I know I sure do. I like following them, and I like making them. I also like introducing my students to bots as one way to do creative things in a networked digital context....
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Under Construction
The picture at the top of this page is my kitchen floor, where the pine board half of my floor meets the oak board half of my floor in front of where the old dishwasher used to be. If you know me or...
View ArticleThe Media Anachronism Project: A Proposal
This past Spring, Jim Groom and I started up a project we’ve been calling the “Console Living Room” or just “#umwconsole.” Jim has already written frequently and passionately about this project, but...
View ArticleGIFfing the Media Wall
I’m a fan of animated GIFs, and one of my favorite features of UMW’s Convergence Center is it’s “Media Wall,” a large, multi-screen display in the main area of the second floor. It’s a cool place for...
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An Arthrogram, Part 1
I “wrote” and “published” a “graphic novel.” Like most people, I generally dislike scare quotes, but I want to underscore those in that declaration, because I want to be clear from the outset of this...
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Notes on Teaching with Slack
Slack is communication software popular for handling workplace information flow, project management, customer support, and all kinds of other things. It’s useful for professional teams, but it’s also...
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Visualizing Intertextuality with Kumu.io
Kumu (Kumu.io) is a web-based tool for exploring systems and relationships between actors in a network. It can be used to map related concepts, related people, or really anything that can be understood...
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Imj: A web-based tool for visual culture macroanalytics
So-called “movie barcodes” are both elegant to look at and useful ways to explore how color schemes and designs shift throughout a film. Image montages can also demonstrate how a visual corpus changes...
View ArticleZach Whalen
Zach Whalen Associate Professor at the University of Mary Washington About Me | Projects | Teaching | Research | Contact
View ArticleTeaching with Bots (A DPL Workshop)
I first came to bots for one of my classes back in 2013, and in that time since, I’ve developed a small stable of botspawn that I’m relatively proud of. I’ve also developed a tool that helps people...
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A Python Script that Writes 800-page Children’s Books
You may have heard of NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Mo — which is an even where aspiring authors attempt to start and finish a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. NaNoGenMo is a similar...
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The Domestic Spaces of Digital Media
On May 27, 2018, I joined my colleagues Brenta Blevins and Lee Skallerup Bessette in a session at the 2018 Computers and Writing Conference, held this year at George Mason University. It was my first...
View ArticleHow I set up a frictionless writing workflow
Writing is hard, and the many, many different platforms for doing writing and sharing that writing are, more often than not, just adding steps to the process of getting started that just make things...
View ArticleA Reflection on the Classes I Taught in Fall 2018
Many faculty I know who maintain a public digital identity reflect frequently and thoughtfully on their teaching with regular blogging. I don’t tend to do that, unless there’s some specific technology...
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