That’s just awesome.

Michael Lopp:

When someone raises their hand in that design meeting and suggests gamification, you have my permission to stand up, walk over, and poke them in the eye. But just one eye. While it’s likely they are merely parroting a buzzword they heard from someone else, it’s not pure buzz. Games like Portal have something to teach anyone interested in the motivation surrounding learning.

That’s how I want to learn. Don’t give me a book; I don’t want a lecture, and I don’t want a list of topics to memorize. Give me ample reason to memorize them and a sandbox where I can safely play. Test me when I least expect it, shock me with the unknown, but make sure you’ve give me enough understanding and practice with my tools that I have a high chance of handling the unexpected.

As someone in both the gaming industry and the education industry, amen.

If you haven’t been keeping tabs on Zelda Universe, they’ve been running a contest in the form of a really slick (and deviously challenging) point-and-click browser adventure. I oversaw the project, and I still can’t solve every puzzle.

If you missed the first week, you still have a chance to catch up, since previous weeks’ puzzles are available all month. There’s supposedly over $500 in prizes (not that I’d know or anything).

This is the video that made me cave and purchase an AeroPress.

I’m not a coffee drinker, being a member of the more gentlemanly faction of the beverage wars, but I’ll come out with it: The AeroPress has changed my perceptions of coffee, and since my purchase I’ve probably gotten a full-blown addiction.

I almost never thought I’d be saying this, but I’ve completely redone this place! After a few short weeks of deliberation, I designed a nice, simple blogging template that I can use to share my thoughts about, well, all sorts of stuff.

Why the repurposing? Way back in 2005, when I started this blog, I knew almost nothing about web or graphic design. In 2009, when I learned a thing or two, I turned this place into a portfolio in hopes that it would help me get a freelance job or two (it did!).

Today, seven years after The Jason Effect’s inception, and three years after starting freelance work, my own projects – specifically, GoodSemester - are keeping me afloat on their own. A portfolio that I never update just didn’t seem right! Thus, I embarked on an epic soul-searching groove-get-backing adventure to discover the true purpose behind this site.

So, I decided to start fresh. I’ve scrapped my portfolio and all the old posts that were here, and I’ll be writing from now on about all sorts of cool things on the web, in education, in tech, and in gaming (I’m headed to E3 once again this year!). I’ll be posting stuff that’s essentially too personal for the GoodSemester blog, but that I’d really love to share and have out there for folks to see.

So keep an eye out for more frequent updates and cool stuff from me in the future! Cheers.