Archives for category: personal

Update (6/16)
I just found out that the Exchange link was broken. The current exchange site is: http://www.newcloud.com/exchange

I just found out that Anthro grad students at Chicago have started their own online publication called Exchange. I gave it a quick look over and it seems pretty interesting — I guess I should note that interesting all depends on whether or not you are interested in anthropology to begin with.

As far as my claim of understanding Peircian Semiotics, perhaps that was a little premature. I finally seem to "get" the notion/relation of object, sign (and the corresponding ground relationship betwixt the two), interpretant, and the vectors of determination and representation. I also now have a better handle on why it fits so well with linguistics (as well as how it works differently than Saussurian Semiotics). The only problem is all of that is currently in my head and I still a ways away from being able to explain it coherently. One step closer at least.

Today, at approximately 3.20pm est, I finally understood Peircian semiotics — something that has been vexing me for the better part of a year and a half. Then Dre found out that her job was renewed for another year.

We celebrated these milestones with pho and a Hitchcock movie. Life is good.

Grading is done. And so far I’ve only had a handful of students complain. So that’s a good thing. The weather, however, is atrocious — hot and sticky — and my office has no air conditioning. So research is progressing slowly. Today was spent tying up some loose ends and compiling my "academic" summer to-do list (which I share with you now — in no particular order):

  • Finishing revising thesis for publication
  • Finish Google Print & Scholar article for Conduit
  • New Media curriculum review
  • Faust research
  • Translation proposal
  • Learn Xienet
  • CSS/XML conversion work
  • Website redesign

I wish I could say more about a bunch of things, but I can’t… at least until I can.

Week 10 is all but past. Then Finals and grading (all of my grade need to be finished and in by the end of next week). After that, the future is a bit unknown. But there will be more research and blogging.

In the meantime, I’m getting more interested in the production of Blog Spam bots. Or rather their logic. Or what they are trying to accomplish beyond traffic. Whats interesting is how they select old posts to "bomb" with messages. For some reason they keep spamming the Lessig Photo Post. I can’t figure out if there is something in that post that makes it attractive.

So far my favorite peice of spam is this one:

Polish… polish food, lot polish airline, car polish, green nail polish, nail polish…

It’s a great peice of lingustic play, though semantically speaking, I don’t think it was intentional. But there you have the switch from Polish aka Poland to polish as in waxy buildup.

The last ten weeks have flown. Lots to report and no time to post. Perhaps later today. Perhaps.