TimothyTraini

Blogging in General

Blogs. Random posting of random thoughts or personal information.

What is the attraction? I myself even put down blogs until I got one about a year ago last month. But the cultures that span across a single site reach more than just you and your friends. i found it funny how on an exercise I turned in about commenting in other people's blogs, Jerz noted that I should have gone out into other communities instead of Livejournal, where my blog is located.

But, there are thousands of communities and almost 5 million accounts. Granted, some of those are gimmick accounts and secondary/teriary/etc accounts from multiple users, but still. Sites like Livejournal and Xanga have so many users and cliques that there's too many communities to ever traverse it all. So most peopel find select communities and groups of friends and stick with that. Crawling a site that large is just about the same as finding a new one.

Overall, blogs and thier respective communities aren't small potatoes. I wouldn't call them a phenomenon, but I wouldn't rule them out as nothing. It's another outlet besides talking to friends abnd family and keeping a diary, and this time it's more managed.

Story-Driven Video Games

"In my restless dreams, I see that town.

Silent Hill.

You promised you'd take me back one day, but you never did.

Now I'm waiting for you, in our special place."

The opening words of Silent Hill 2 began a journey full of symbolism and psychological horror. You are taken into the world surrounding James, a man who got a letter from his dead wife who died three years ago due to illness. You are led into a world where everyone is lost, a town is empty, and a sadistic pyramid-headed monster (rendition I drew) appears every now and then to do horrible things to James. I wont reveal major plot spoilers, but the plot analysis (scroll down a bit) has left gamers discussing this game's symbols and meanings in great length, spanning hundreds of posts on forums in debate.

The fact that a video game can generate as much discussion as a literary peice is what makes gaming more powerful than just, to steal a line from Scott Kurtz, "Waka-Waka-Waka-Fruit." Sure, it's mostly linear, but with over 5 variations on the ending it forces the question of which ending is real. Nowadays the good ending isn't the right ending anymore. The only way to answer this is with sequels, as in Silent Hill 4, the superintendant of the apartment building the game takes place in was James' father, and he drops a hint or two about James' whereabouts.

SH2 had little difficulty apart from one or two puzzles. As a game, it was very weak. As a story or even a movie, it had atmosphere out the wazoo. Wandering the streets of Silent Hill in thick fog or in too-clear of a black night sky among distant voices of paranoia and fear set gamers in a mood very few games could match. I've had people who didn't care for video games sit down and watch a playthrough of SH2, and left fully entertained.

So there's something to be said about games. Even Vin Diesel, who has his own game company owned by Vivendi Universal, has stated that games can do so much more than any movie can.

Chatbots and MUDs

The only real experience I've had with MUDs is Relams of Despair, which wasn't all that interesting but remains popular nonetheless. In a way, a MUD is just a text-only Massive Multiplayer Roleplaying Game. You get the serious players, the power gamers, and the clueless idiots like me who can't type TIE SHOE correctly. After wandering around for 15 minutes or so I closed it for good, not understanding what my friends saw in it. But it wasn't until Star Wars Galaxies that I appreciated the MMORPG genre anyways, so MUDs or any online roleplaying game wasn't my type. I was always more of a pen-and-paper kind of roleplayer. Give me dice or give me death!

On the subject of chatbots, sometimes they can go awry. A prime example is of a learning chatbot, Nicole, got sabatoged by the forum members of Something Awful and now Nicole's responses, besides forum in-jokes and singing Queen and Andrew W.K., involve insults and ethnic slurs. It's fun to see how quickly you can teach a program if you have hundreds of people hammering it nonstop.

Dealing with the chatbots that people assumed were real people, the world of psychology is pretty simple. One could make a bot for every type of thinking and responses. Looking back at the text adventures, didn't they do the same thing at times frustrating people and generating an emotional response out of simple base words?

Interactive Fiction

Yeah, so this protfolio is going to look half-assed and broken since I'm obviously doing it last minute. But hey, half-assed and and broken is better than none at all.

It was back in the days when computers didn't have Megahurtz and real system specs labeled on them, when a 386 and a 486 were the top of the line. My 386 got introduced to the wonders of Return to Zork one day. And upon my first sight of the white house and the old man saying, "Want some rye? 'Course ya do!" I clicked to my heart's content and ended up dying from diseased mice I should have put in a box.

It wasn't until Zork Nemesis, a much harder game, came out that I popped in the disc that came with it, the Zork Collection.

My mind was blown. I had know about the famous text adventures, but I had never played them. I knew the terminology, the secret words, the history of Frobozz, but hadn't played the game. Unfortunately, only Zork Zero and Beyond Zork were games I could accomplish anything in. I never did get to scare the cyclops away in the original Zork.

But text adventures were more than just another game. They are still played today not out of nostalgia, but out of difficulty. Ignoring conversation and command line problems, and the act of description through word over pictures, the puzzles just were that much more harder. Come on, who could figure out that a clay brick and a peice of string were a peice of C4 plastic explosives and a fuse? A picture game would just make it obviously apparent. And in the same game (I think this was in Zork II) a room where you got spun into a random chamber just with a description of the room being disorienting. I can imagine how that would be done in a 3D platformer, but it wouldn't work out quite the same. Game developers today would try to make an algorithm for the player to crack to get to the right room.

So what is the point of this entry? The subculture of gaming that is more ignored is something I was glad to see in class.

On books and things.

Now I know this doesn't look good on my part as I've missed like 4 classes, but it's been a bad month.

Most of what we've gone over in class, at least the reading, has been a wasted and silly effort. Two of the books we've read all contained the same garbage: First, a magical write-up on what a wonderful wide amazing thing that the internet is, followed by a simplistic analogy of how a network works. Following that, a lot of the information about writing for the internet just says what anyone who's used the web for more then 5 minutes already knows. Lots of text bad.

From there, the rest of the class has branched into subcultures and random sites, and moving to video games and text adventures is really grasping for subjects. Now, this isn't Jerz's fault, he's a nice guy and a good teacher. It's just that the subject of writing for the internet only takes a few class periods to complete. There's not a whole lot to go on, and when it comes to the internet, there isn't much at all besides history and a few key sites. Even when the internet came out it wasn't as hot as it was led on to be, and now that it's more accessible and easier for anyone to use, it becomes even more watered down from overexposure. Not like the droves of 0mG-AOLers and commercials on TV supporting the lack of spelling things correctly helps... I understand common sign-posting etiquitte says that mispelling something on purpose makes it more memorable to an onlooker, but making a slogan that's illegible by any standards should be illegal.

It would be nice if someone could write an internet book without starting from scratch. If someone wants to learn about the whimsy of creation and serious core basics the Internet of Dummies is good for you. They teach you at orientation how to log in, and in class anything else has been told in step-by-step instruction.

I know, not everyone is internet and computer-savvy. I don't expect the world to be, hell, I don't know crap about building planes or driving a stick shift or anything really useful in society. But the internet takes 10 seconds to explain and after using it for another 10 you quickly realize what looks good and what doesn't. Some people don't realize what looks good, I'm looking at every Geocities kid with bright flourescent backgrounds with flourescent text and animated gifs like the plague.

I thought I had a point in typing this, but I guess I don't. My apologies.

Anyone want a stomach flu? (Too Much Info And Party Pics Inside)

Just how I expect to spend the day. The morning was going all smooth too until I vomited. Felt fine up until then. Now with extra dizziness!

I hope this doesn't become a Friday habit, first last week with the car and now this... screw Murphy and his stupid laws. The car works, my intestines, stomach, and immune system don't. Why do I believe in God again?

Oh, and have the pic I promised:

No, I don't know who it is.