Antcity
Feb 2, 2002 @ 19:46 » no comments » General
Neat and tiny
Amsterdam's got a big housing problem... this could help... a lot of students for instance.
Feb 2, 2002 @ 21:50 » no comments » General
WorldForge
Picked the WorldForge.org link from an interesting discussion on Slashdot.
Feb 3, 2002 @ 23:28 » no comments » Research
Unintended use
Chalk up another one for the unintended use of an existing technology. Researchers found that the compression algorithms, such as you find in popular "zip" programs such as WinZip, StuffIt and gzip, can be used to very precisely predict the language used in a document working with as few as 20 characters, even in 93% of the cases succesfully identify the particular author of a text. Unisci has an article here and Wired reports on it here.
Feb 7, 2002 @ 15:04 » no comments » General
In the game
Yesterday, when stepping onto the escalator in the subway station, I had the eeriest feeling of being inside a videogame. I was looking down at the moving escalator in order to place my foot securely on one of the moving steps and I suddenly felt very disconnected from my own body, as if I was trying to line up my character on the screen for a difficult jump or a sneaky shot around the corner. The moment my foot hit the step I returned to my usual embodied self, but for a moment there my selfconscious brain struggled with that integration of body and mind.
On a totally unrelated note... it's been a bit quiet here. I've been teaching, reading and writing a lot. I've also been fiddling around with a redesign of this blog and I must say, I'm pretty happy how the new frameless design is taking shape.
Feb 14, 2002 @ 14:19 » no comments » General
Rebuilding
Rebuilding the site, not everything might look as it should...
Feb 24, 2002 @ 16:50 » 1 comment » General
Rebuilding update!
Well, got most of the dirty work done and of course it took longer than I thought, but I'm pretty happy with the new frontpage. I'm going to have to put some more work in making the archive, search and entry pages look just as spiffy, but at least they're usable.
I learned a lot (good and bad) about CSS in the past week or so and I tried to make this page without using tables, but it ended up looking like hell in IE5 (you can see a mock up CSS-boxes-no-tables example here). I had decided I wanted this page to look as good as possible in as many browsers as possible, so I've tested it with IE5.01, Mozilla 0.9.8, Netscape 6.2.1 (and yes *grumble* there are rendering differences between Mozilla and Netscape) and Opera 6.0. I still have to put the CSS upgrade notice for Netscape 4 (and other non-CSS capable browsers) in, but it's late...
Feb 24, 2002 @ 23:25 » 1 comment » General
The master of tricks
Stephen Tyler writes:
The coincidentia oppositorum of putrefaction/congellation symbolizes the antonomasia of feelings as sensation and sense sensibility. Derrida seeks to escape the subjectivity and incommunicability of feelings by endowing them with the properties of the transcendental signifier which has no need of referents but has yet an inner structure of chance that is neither the product of a subject nor of the objects that make the subject's experience. (Tyler, 1987: 56)
This may look like gobbledygook, but in the end I made sense of it in the context of the book and argument it is in. For sure, it took me a long time to make sense of it (I had to read loads of books and had to reread Tyler's book many times) but all the while I had a gut feeling that it made sense and for a long while I knew I would understand it, but that understanding remained just beyond my grasp.
Sense it made in the end, however, just a page before the quote above, Tyler writes:
The master of tricks is the one who plays tricks best, whose technique and style produce illusions so brilliant and captivating that they are valued above the reality they both obscure and reveal, not because they are understood but because they seem to be just beyond the limit of understanding at the same time as they are within it. (Tyler, 1987: 55)
Sweet irony, isn't it? Thick is the plot of the evocative text.
(Tyler, Stephen A. (1987) The Unspeakable. Discourse, Dialogue, and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.)
Feb 26, 2002 @ 12:04 » no comments » Research
Too much coffee
My colleagues looked very disturbed when they heard my howls of laughter. Link courtesy of Lisbeth's Cataclysms.
Feb 26, 2002 @ 15:56 » no comments » General
PhD of the Ring
This little allegory of the Ring reached me by mail today. It was forwarded so many times that it was impossible to trace the original author. (update 28-02-2002: source of this little story is Dave Pritchard, also see this message) So without further ado:
Lord of the Rings as an allegory for a Ph.D?!
The story starts with Frodo: a young hobbit, quite bright, a bit dissatisfied with what he's learnt so far and with his mates back home who just seem to want to get jobs and settle down and drink beer. He's also very much in awe of his tutor and mentor, the very senior professor Gandalf, so when Gandalf suggests he take on a short project for him (carrying the Ring to Rivendell), he agrees. Frodo very quickly encounters the shadowy forces of fear and despair which will haunt the rest of his journey and leave permanent scars on his psyche, but he also makes some useful friends. In particular, he spends an evening down at the pub with Aragorn, who has been wandering the world for many years as Gandalf's postdoc and becomes his adviser when Gandalf isn't around.
After Frodo has completed his first project, Gandalf (along with head of department Elrond) proposes that the work should be extended. He assembles a large research group, including visiting students Gimli and Legolas, the foreign postdoc Boromir,and several of Frodo's own friends from his undergraduate days. Frodo agrees to tackle this larger project, though he has mixed feelings about it. ("'I will take the Ring', he said, 'although I do not know why.'")
Very rapidly, things go wrong. First, Gandalf disappears and has no more interaction with Frodo until everything is over. (Frodo assumes his supervisor is dead: in fact, he's simply found a more interesting topic and is working on that instead.) At his first international conference in Lorien, Frodo is cross-examined terrifyingly by Galadriel, and betrayed by Boromir, who is anxious to get the credit for the work himself. Frodo cuts himself off from the rest of his team: from now on, he will only discuss his work with Sam, an old friend who doesn't really understand what it's all about, but in any case is prepared to give Frodo credit for being rather cleverer than he is. Then he sets out towards Mordor.
The last and darkest period of Frodo's journey clearly represents the writing-up stage, as he struggles towards Mount Doom (submission), finding his burden growing heavier and heavier yet more and more a part of himself; more and more terrified of failure; plagued by the figure of Gollum, the student who carried the Ring before him but never wrote up and still hangs around as a burnt-out, jealous shadow; talking less and less even to Sam. When he submits the Ring to the fire, it is in desperate confusion rather than with confidence, and for a while the world seems empty.
Eventually it is over: the Ring is gone, everyone congratulates him, and for a few days he can convince himself that his troubles are over. But there is one more obstacle to overcome: months later, back in the Shire, he must confront the external examiner Saruman, an old enemy of Gandalf, who seeks to humiliate and destroy his rival's protege. With the help of his friends and colleagues, Frodo passes through this ordeal, but discovers at the end that victory has no value left for him.
While his friends return to settling down and finding jobs and starting families, Frodo remains in limbo; finally, along with Gandalf, Elrond and many others, he joins the brain drain across the Western ocean to the new land beyond.
Feb 26, 2002 @ 16:58 » no comments » Research
Dreaming of computerized democracy
I picked up a copy of Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon's book Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet [link: Amazon] the other day. It's interesting to see how so early on, even before official projects for building a network had been initiated by ARPA, one of ARPA's first directors, Licklider, muses about the possibilities of computers for a widespread rational and informed 'people's' democracy. This is an idea that keeps popping up at every turn, with every new technology (VCR's, HAM radio, newsprint all come to mind) and its promises are invariably not fulfilled because 'the common man' just isn't so politically interested, even with all the information at his/her fingertips. Hafner and Lyon place the following quotes from Licklider sometime in the second half of the 1950s (Hafner and Lyon aren't totally clear on that) and write:
The idea on which [Licklider's] worldview pivoted was that technological progress would save humanity. The political process was a favorite example of his. In a McLuhanesque view of the power of electronic media, [Licklider] saw a future in which, thanks in large part to the reach of computers, most citizens would be "informed about, and interested in, and involved in, the process of government." He imagined what he called "home computer consoles" and television sets linked together in a massive network. "The political process," he wrote, "would essentially be a giant teleconference, and a campaign would be a months-long series of communications among candidates, propagandists, commentators, political action groups, and voters. The key is the self-motivating exhilaration that accompanies truly effective interaction with information through a good console and a good network to a good computer." (Hafner & Lyon, 1996: 34)
(Hafner, Katie & Matthew Lyon (1996) Where Wizards Stay Up Late. The Origins of the Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1998)
Feb 28, 2002 @ 09:31 » 1 comment » Research
Prescripted history
The problem of integrating a storyline with the actual actitivity of playing a game is a very thorny one indeed. There basically are two types of games. Games focused on action that employ a story as a background setting and theming for the action, and games where a player in one way or another goes through a storyline to reach a (hopefully) satisfying resolution of the storyline. These two types are of course not organised in a mutually exclusive dichotomy, but they are the extremes on a continuum.
If we get closer to the end of the continuum where the player follows an overarching storyline in the game, the problem of how to unobtrusively make the story progress become bigger. This type of game draws from the ancient art of storytelling and recent incarnations such as books and movies don't allow for the user to interfere with the progression of the storyline like games do. One of the solutions has been to use "cut-scenes" in games, where the player watches a video clip that progresses the story to the next level, but that prevents the player from interfering with that progression. It always reminds me a little of the silent movies, where they'd have these explanatory texts intercut with the actual scenes, as if games are still in their infancy. The problem of storyline also becomes much more complex when moving to (massively) multi-player games. How do you get thousands of (sometimes infrequently) participating players to take part in an ongoing storyline?
It seems to me that storyline or narrative in games suffers from an inherent weakness: a storyline in a game is prescripted history antedating the events of the game and consequently the player's actions are meaningless because he or she can never change the course of history. The only two options for the player are to prematurely fail to complete the tasks the game has set up or to run through a history/storyline like a dress-rehearsal. Storyline in games is classic (religious) predestination. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Much fun can be had in overcoming the complex obstructions that games tosses at the player and especially the knowledge that there must be a way to solve the riddles and the knowledge that there is a meaningful end to the quest might be prime motivators for the player to continue on playing, but as games grow into massive multi-player environments that grant the player ever more freedom of action, the essential problem of predestination by storyline becomes more pressing.
Just an observation... no answers yet :-)
Feb 28, 2002 @ 11:27 » no comments » Research
Source sorcerer sourcerest!
Ah! Not even a day after I posted the little allegory of the Ring and the PhD on my site or Jill Walker managed to track down the source, Dave Pritchard! Like Dave notes, a pretty small world :-)
Feb 28, 2002 @ 15:05 » no comments » Research
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