Author Archive
What Google Thinks of Me
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on February 2nd, 2012
A friend and colleague kindly passed along this link to a blog containing a link to the “Ads Preferences Manager” that Google associates with a given user.
In other words, following the link on your computer shows you what/who Google thinks you are.
I followed this link on my work computer, and it turns out that Google thinks I’m a Male (whew!) between the ages of 25 and 34. I apparently don’t surf my age at work, which is nice to hear.
I also have interests in Arts & Entertainment, Games, Law & Government, and Shopping. All true to a degree, I suppose, but I would have thought sports (Go Broncos!) would have been in there, or something picking up my academic research interests (though those could be construed under Arts & Entertainment).
On a lark I typed “Male 25-34″ into Google Images and received the following as the first hit:
A Male, aged 25-34
Nice to have hair in Google’s eyes!
Unfortunately, this image happens to come from a Microsoft website (feel the irony) that describes my supposed age group thus:
At a time of near-constant change, Males 25 – 34 flirt, play, relax and stay on top of the social scene, normally all through the internet and digital media.
… which frankly makes the Google-me sound a bit like a hipster loser.
So then I tried seeing what Google thinks of me on my home computer. Interestingly, it there declared me a male (whew x2) between the ages of 35 and 44 — got me! — with additional interests in Autos & Vehicles (that’s 4xGuard, I suspect), American Football (Broncos!), and three cities: Charleston, Denver, and Orlando.
All in all, it’s pretty fascinating.
What’s Google think of you?
Publicity and the Lecturer: Beowulf, The Hobbit, and … Brunanburh?
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on February 1st, 2012
I’m giving a lot of public lectures this spring, so news about them will be popping up here from time to time. Yesterday, for instance, Kelly DeVries and I did a videotaped interview about our upcoming (in three weeks, egads!) Robin Hood lecture, and I’ll probably want to link to whatever results from that if/when it’s available.
Today, though, I wanted to pass along the first bit of publicity I’ve received for a later lecture on Tolkien. Here’s what the organizers have sent out as a press release/advert:
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 – 6:30 pm – Bond Hall 165
Michael Livingston is an Assistant Professor of English at The Citadel and holds a master’s degree from the Medieval Institute and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Rochester. Dr. Livingston’s medieval research interests include Chaucer and the military history of the Middle Ages. He is also an award-winning writer of speculative fiction, with an additional scholarly expertise on Tolkien. In 2011 he published two books, including The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook. Dr. Livingston’s talk, “Tolkien’s Creation by Edition: The Medieval Origins of The Hobbit,” will focus on the ways in which Tolkien’s career-long interest in Beowulf interacted with his fiction writing. Book signing. Free admission. Refreshments will be served.
Nice, right?
Only … what’s this about a book signing? It’s the first I’ve heard of it. I mean, a book signing is fine — great even — but what book am I signing? Will folks interested in Tolkien be lining up for my edition of The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament
I’m guessing, therefore, that what they’re thinking about is having some copies of The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook
And if that is the case, I’m wondering if maybe I should somehow try to work Brunanburh into a Tolkien-Beowulf lecture. Would be an interesting leap, for certain!
The Average Ordinary Day Today
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife, Teaching on January 30th, 2012
Recently, someone suggested that I write posts here more often. This was without doubt an incredibly kind thing to say — a writer first and foremost, after all, wants to hear that his or her work has been read — but it was also an unpleasant reminder of how busy my life has become.
That said, it did spur me to write a post here today … on how busy my life has become. I’m not looking for pity or anything of the sort, and I have no doubt that most of us have lives that are twice as busy as they ought to be. I don’t think I’m special, in other words.
That said, here’s my day in an nutshell, not counting a lot of “little” interruptions. The times are rounded off but pretty accurate, since I was keeping notes:
Video Killed the Radio Star
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on January 14th, 2012
I’m not quite sure how it happened, but the wee lad, who is roughly 5.5 years old, announced today that his favorite song is “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by the Buggles.
That song, which as it happens is also a favorite of mine, was the first video (and thus a subsequent all-time 80s classic) shown on MTV when I was, well, roughly 5.5 years old.
Amazing.
It testament, I present here the original video from the 80s, followed by a live, just-for-fun cover from Robbie Williams, a current favorite of mine:
Awesome trivia bit: Take note of the bass player in Robbie’s video, an older gentleman who is getting a decent amount of camera time. That’s actually Trevor Horn — the man who wrote, sang, and produced the original song with The Buggles. Yep, the same dude wearing the oversized glasses in the first video. He became one of the great music producers post-Buggles. One of his recent jobs was producing Robbie Williams’ excellent album, Reality Killed the Video Star
Once More Unto the Breach
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on January 9th, 2012
The campus begins to fill with students once again, and the pleasant days of the Break are drawing to a close. As you can tell from the silence hereabouts, I’ve been busy with things: making it through the teaching wave of the Fall semester served only to bring me clear for a moment before I was struck by the writing wave of the Holidays. For almost a month now I’ve been nose-to-grindstone on several academic projects and two fiction projects. One of those fiction projects in particular is both quite significant and on a bit of a deadline, so that’s pretty much had me occupied around the clock in one way or another.
I did get the chance to get away, though: A quick couple of flights from Charleston meant that the Holidays were spent back home in Colorado. It was pretty sweet to see snow again, though the 28-inch dumping we got shortly after arrival was perhaps a bit more than was necessary.
Still, it was fun. And all the research and writing is fun, too. I’m damn lucky to enjoy what I do.
For that matter, I’m excited for classes to start in a couple of days. If I could just find my textbook for English 102, all would be right with the world…
GTeaching: A Medievalist Goes Google
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Teaching on December 15th, 2011
[The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine features the article "GGrading: Digital Grading Made Free and Easy with Google Apps," an overview of the ways in which I am using Google Apps to grade student papers. That essay is a relatively limited look at the digitization of my teaching life, however, and I thought I would present here a more complete look at my "GTeaching."]
GTeaching: A Medievalist Goes Google
Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. — Francis of Assisi
Digital what-not is all the rage these days. Digital natives. Digital literacy. Digital classrooms. Digital futures. Digital humanities. The world, it is safe to say, is changing faster than we can imagine.
I am a medievalist, which perhaps explains why I get the feeling these days that we are all a bit like the kindly owner of the parchment store a couple doors down from the newfangled printing press of Johannes Guttenberg. We have a sense that something important is happening, just around the corner. We don’t know what it is, exactly, and we have no idea what it really means in the bigger scheme of things. We are quite sure it is going to affect us, though, for good or ill, and we are equally certain that we can’t do much to stop it. The fact that Mr. Guttenberg was probably just as ignorant of what it was that he was creating, the revolution that he was unleashing, does not give me much comfort.
Consider:
Calculator In Memoriam: A Letter to Sharp
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on December 1st, 2011
Dear Sharp,
Many years ago when I was gearing up for high school (so more years ago than I like to think about), my parents bought me a graphing calculator. Birthday or Christmas, I think. I can’t really remember.
Almost everybody back then had a TI-85, as I recall. A few uber-geeks had an HP-something-or-other — which was confusing as heck to use but did have a nifty infrared emitter that could mimic a remote control (this came in handy for turning on and off TVs in classrooms during class as a prank) — but the masses were TIs and more TIs.
Except me. My parents had looked around the store, sifted through the labels, and bought me a Sharp EL-9300C, which looked basically like this:
Sharp EL-9300 (the 9300C looked the same).
I remain grateful for their choice to this day.
You see, there was something, well, inherently logical about how my calculator functioned. While fellow students would be click-clacking away trying to figure out how they should enter a formula — “Do you hit the parentheses key after the integral key or before it?” — I would be already on the next problem: unlike the silly TI, my Sharp allowed me to type equations onto the screen exactly like they looked in the book. It was, for the time, extraordinary.
Graphing was easier, cleaner, and often more exact. My buttons were more clearly marked. Heck, even getting help was easier since my manual was built into the calculator with a series of on-screen “windows.”
I loved that calculator.
It is for this reason that I write you now in sorrow, for my beloved calculator has at last gone to the embrace of the Great Robotic Arm in the sky. It rests now upon the silicon shores of digital Elysium.
It will be missed. It will be remembered.
So I want to thank you, Sharp. Thanks for making my math classes a little easier. Thanks for making my life’s calculations a little more enjoyable.
Thanks for making the EL-9300C, the best calculator I have ever owned.
Sincerely,
Mike
PS: Looking at your site today I see what appears to be an updated version of my beloved calculator, the EL-9900C. Though nothing could ever replace my trusty old friend, I wouldn’t mind if you sent me one. I think my 9300C would want to see me move on that way.
Angels Among Other Things: Story Collection Released on Kindle
Posted by Michael Livingston in Fiction on November 20th, 2011
Angels Among Other Things
Some months ago, I published my first short fiction collection, Angels Among Other Things, as an Amazon Kindle e-book. I made no announcement of it at the time, primarily because I wanted to work the kinks out of the e-book. I have quite a bit of experience in digital publishing, after all, but formatting for the new e-readers is something I had not done.
Life got busy, and it was only recently that I was able to update the file and feel comfortable announcing it to the world.
So here we are, and just in time for the Holidays!
Angels Among Other Things collects nine of my short stories:
- A Very Young Boy with Largely Clipped Wings
- The Keeper Alone
- Dr. Williamson and the Master Speed
- The Angel of Marye’s Heights
- At the End of Babel
- The Hand That Binds
- After the Song is Sung
- The Catch of the Day
- Gnome Season
Two of these stories have never been published. One of them won Writers of the Future. The others are among my favorites for one reason or another. Because I like such things from other writers, I’ve written short blurbs about the origin and composition of each piece.
So if you’re wanting to load something up on your Kindle (or someone else’s) this Hannukwanzmastide season … Pick up Angels Among Other Things
In the meantime, I’ll be working to get the collection available for the Nook and other e-readers. 
Facebook
RSS
Recent Comments