I keep getting stuck in frames when I try to read "Waves of Girls". Once I hit 4 layers of frames on frames, that was it, I couldn't do it anymore. I don't know if it's my browser or I have really bad luck when it comes to clicking on links, but it gets to the point where it's so garbled and smushed together that nothing at all makes sense ( Read more... )

I find it really interesting that Ryan ascribes a moral value to cheating in games, or searching for system failures. On 179, she talks about cheats in the Sims and how gamers look for ways to make the system crack, then goes on to insist that in interactive drama, derailing the narrative isn't enjoyable. There's a real value judgment here, a ( Read more... )

Off-topic a bit, but now that Purim's over for me, I just want to say Happy Easter to everybody who's celebrating. Enjoy the bunnies and the candy.

And just because there's a macro for every occasion...

( Cut because I'm so aware of style=mine conflicts these days! )

I tried to read as much of Twelve Blue as I could manage. I wandered around, fell down plot holes, and I came to the conclusion that mostly, I didn't get it, and the colour of the text hurt my eyes. Just when I thought I understood someone's relationship to someone else, I'd get dragged over to another thread by clicking a link, or I'd get ( Read more... )

When I got out of college, I spent some time gigging as a professional musician. Mostly classical, some jazz work which I always enjoyed, and then I worked in a large, independent music store in the DC metro area, ordering band, orchestra, choir and organ music. This is all a roundabout way of saying I've spent a good portion of my life staring ( Read more... )

My username, zocheret/ צוחקות means "to remember" in Hebrew. I find it entirely apt considering this section in Ryan dealing with the idea of narrative and history, and how humans structure their memories, their experiences, as narrative. So it is any small wonder that I seized on this passage in Ryan, "taking the Holocaust test"? Yet again, the ( Read more... )

I was watching CNN last night to get primary returns, and information about the Writers Strike being over cropped up. What caught my attention was the mention by one of the WGA members said that the strike proved that the new media was here to stay and that writers had a stake in it. The fact that the whole strike was about new media really hadn' ( Read more... )

I just did the book cutting exercise--it's snowing, let's cut up a textbook!--and I'm really struck by the difference between the French on the left and the English on the right. I realise that in order to keep proper sonnet form, the English can't be an exact translation, but some of the differences are really interesting. The French seems less ( Read more... )

I'm struggling with Enzenberger's article not because I don't understand his breakdown of media, but because I'm baffled by the idea that a socialist use of media is required. Why socialism? Why did I sit here and read a little less than twenty pages outlining how socialism can make use of the new media to transform society ( Read more... )

I'm habitually interested in the ways new technology resembles old forms, how we habitually re-invent the wheel, just to assure ourselves that this new thing is just as good and reliable as something older. So upon browsing through Bush's "As We May Think" again, I was struck by the illustration on page 40 of the universal-focus lens camera. To ( Read more... )