In recent weeks, my back has been acting up a bit. By a bit, I mean a lot — most likely due to all the driving earlier in the month. Dre, being the sweetie she is, decided that my birthday gift should be a new laptop back that carried better on the back. After looking at a lot of options we decided on the Timbuk2 Hacker bag.

The bag arrived yesterday in this awesome, rocket pop themed shipping bag. While it might look small, it snugly fits my 15 inch G4 Powerbook without a problem. And there’s still plenty of room for both papers and ancillary electronic devices (digital cameras, digital voice recorder, wireless mouse, etc).

What makes the Hacker pack extra cool is that it also has a “backpack mode.” Like a Transformer, you can pull out hidden shoulder straps and convert it to a full on backpack. I haven’t had a chance to test that mode yet. As a messenger bag, the weight seems distributed better than with my old pack (which put it all on my shoulder/one half of my back).

If all goes well I post some more on the bag next week.

Things are crazy. Dre and I are trying to sneak away for a few days. So I don’t expect to have any updates until next week. Then all hell will be breaking loose as things are starting both at RIT and Cornell. Plus things with the Loop are going on as well. Fun, fun, fun.

Where did the summer go?

Today was RIT’s convocation. Tomorrow is commencement for our college. It’s weird wearing the hood and being on the “other side” of the ceremony. As many might have heard (or saw above), Bill Clinton was out speaker. I have a lot to write about it, but no time right now. So I present his speech, digital recorded. Sorry about the up front moving the recorder noise.

• President Clinton, RIT’s 2007 Convocation Speaker (mp3)

While the site address hasn’t changed, the .RSS file has. You can now find out the latest in my life at:

http://www.waking-dream.com/?feed=rss2

Thanks for the switch.

- Matt

Or at least being driven by a blogger engine. I got Wordpress running tonight. It’ll be a bit before I switch the blog over. I still have to redesign the template. But you can check out my humble beginnings at:

http://www.waking-dream.com/index.php

Today, while attending a New Media Perspectives lecture, I discovered that the view from the last row of Webb Auditorium at RIT provides a sobering lesson for the budding teacher. From my vantage point I watched as student after student opted out of the lecture with the help of portable electronics. The student immediately in front of me spent most of his time watching anime episodes on his video iPod (just as an aside, I was totally blown away by it and want one). Ahead of him was another student hiding a Playstation Portable (PSP) behind his notebook (the oldest trick in the book). Around the classroom multiple students were checking e-mail and traversing the web on their laptops. In the interests of full disclosure, I have to cop to doing this once or twice while at the U of C. But I never spent an entire class alternating between playing Quake III and Madness Interactive, with an occasional break to watch Sealab:2021 episodes. A number of others resorted to using their cell phones to txt and play games.

I’m not sure how to react to this or take it into account in planning classes. The knee jerk extremes would be to either ban laptops (which is just plain dumb) or simply pretend that it shouldn’t happen (or even worse, won’t happen to me). I’m just not quite sure what the middle ground would be. Any thoughts about it?

One of the fondest memories from my time as an undergraduate at RIT was being singled out and favorably compared to Ben Franklin during a School of Printing Event. I don’t think I was deserving of the honor, but it meant a lot. Franklin and I will be getting to know each other better in the months to come. In the meantime, happy 300th birthday, oh Patron Saint of Printing. Were you alive today, you’d be blogging, and far more eloquently than most out there. Certainly more so than I.

Last night, I attended my first lab class. It marked my return to a pressroom floor, though admittedly a very different type of one than those I knew in the past. The class was held in the Digital Print Lab at RIT’s Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies (CIMS).

As previously suggested, a lot has changed at RIT in ten years. Take for example the RITskeller. The RIT student cafe/bar is now an ESPN zone. Seriously. Walk in and it looks pretty much the same. But once you finish paying for your food and turn into the dining area, one finds oneself looking into a small TV production studio with a SportsCenter backing.

The wall that separated the Ritz back of the RIT game room has been knocked out and replaced with what you see above. I had heard that this had happened but didn’t expect the results to be quite so dramatic.

Thank you to everyone for your encouragement. Long overdue e-mails will be going out soon. Oh and Zooks, it’s only an MA. Though I truely wish it was a PhD.

Well, I�ve already slipped my �I�ll post every Monday thru Thursday� promise. Given my track record this should come as no surprise.

The last three days have been spent learning how much the School of Print Media (SPM) and RIT have changed since I graduated. This will most likely go on for a while. I attended my first faculty meeting and met most of the SPM staff. One of the things to file in the �it�s a small world� category is that my former upstairs neighbor, Dr. Franziska Frey, is now on the school�s staff. Interestingly, it was another upstairs neighbor from 195 Merriman St who unknowingly set this entire process in motion. I with hence forth refer to this pattern of serendipity as the �195 Effect.�

Today�s theme will be reading and research. Yesterday I raided the RIT Library and returned with a stack of books on the 15th century European evolution of print. I�m interested in learning a bit more about Messrs. J. Gutenberg and A. Manutius (both the Greater and the Younger).