Design: January 2004 Archive Page

The men of the Shihuh tribe carried the jerz, a small axe-head on a long stick. They used the implement for many purposes — it chopped the firewood, provided the grip for climbing and came in handy as a walking stick to step over the stones. To complement the jerz they also carried the special khasabi knife called the peshak. There is nothing on record to support the origins of the jerz. | How did the people of this region come to own this finely decorated hatchet? Was it brought to the shores of Musandam by sailors from other lands or was it picked up by the people of Musandam in the course of voyages down the Arabian Gulf and out into the Indian Ocean? Or was it developed by an artistic smith keen to showcase his skills as a good metal worker and an artist? The antecedents of the jerz are covered in mist. --Legend of the Jerz (Sultinate of Oman)

Cool!

Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die just a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born. Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite. I say that the Library is unending. The idealists argue that the hexagonal rooms are a necessary form of absolute space or, at least, of our intuition of space. They reason that a triangular or pentagonal room is inconceivable. (The mystics claim that their ecstasy reveals to them a circular chamber containing a great circular book, whose spine is continuous and which follows the complete circle of the walls; but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. This cyclical book is God.) Let it suffice now for me to repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible. -- Jorge Luis Borges --The Library of Babel

Julie Young's blog entry about libraries made me think of this short story, which I have occasionally used in my "Writing Electronic Text" course.

In this assignment you will be required to read/play and answer questions about a book from the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) series of ?gamebooks.? The series was published 1979-1998. Many people assume that electronic literature (interactive fiction, hypertext, what-have-you) is simply a souped up version of CYOA. The purpose of this assignment is to take a closer look at that assumption based on what you know about the history and theory of cybertext. --Matt Kirschenbaum

--Choose Your Own Adventure Assignment (MGK)

Wow. Not only do I love the assignment, I'm in awe of the web environment in which it is presented.

I recently posted a rant against bloated commercial courseware that locks curricular content in a proprietary database; and about seven hours ago I recently posted a comment prompted by a thread I found via Liz Lawley's website, but I didn't know that Lawley is a MoveableType courseware genius.

Open Source in EducationVarious, via KairosNews)

KairosNews has a few good links to articles about the open source movement. "Open Source and Education: A Sea Change?" is a roundup of links to recent "rumblings" on open-source content. Most exciting is the Chronicle of Higher Ed's report on a multi-million-dollar effort to create an open-source course-management tool.

Charlie's post links to a page that is in the Chronicle's "temp" directory, so I won't repeat it here... you can find it on the KairosNews entry. Charlie notes with amusement the reaction of the chairman of Blackboard (a commercial provider of course-management tools), who uses the standard FUD defense in order to scare potential users away from open-source (and thus protect his revenue stream).

I don't like using commercial course-management tools because I don't like the idea of putting so much work into a database that is only accessible as long as we have subscribed to the service. I understand that Seton Hill has recently churned through two or three of these course management tools, requiring faculty to re-learn a new system each time. We're currently using J-web, but I only use it to post a link to my online syllabus, to post final grades, and to take attendance. But even then I find it limiting... there's no way to differentiate between an excused absence and an unexcused absence. If I cancel class for a day, or want to take attendance at an extra-curricular event, there's no way for me to add or remove columns. If a student comes in late or leaves early, there is no way for me to record a partial absence.

Now, if there were a way that I could use XML to label the various components of my online syllabus, and then run a utility that would slurp up all that data into the standard course management interface that the students are familiar with from their other classes, that would be useful.

I'd get mic'd up and have a projection screen behind me the size of a drive-in theater, to use for overheads and analyzing film clips. It was like being a rock star or something -- the performative aspect of teaching took on a grandiose dimension. I'd make a silly joke and the room roared. I'd ask questions and have a field of faces to choose on at random. I could see thirty heads nodding in agreement when I made a point. It was a thrill. A daunting experience, but a thrill nonetheless. --Mike Arnzen --Working the Huge Room (Pedablogue)

My colleague discusses the dynamics of teaching a large class. We don't have huge classes at Seton HIll, but when I have on occasion addressed large audiences, the energy I could sense from the room really is palpable. It's important to focus on that energy, and to have a backup plan so that when it starts to fade, you can quickly shift gears and gain their interest again.

In the early days of game publishing, many companies invested great effort not only in the design of their games, but also in the way those games appeared on store shelves and what was included in the box. This article's intention is to describe this lost art of innovative game packaging from the early to mid-1980's, when there seemed to be an abundance of real thought and care behind the customer's experience beyond the software itself. --Bill Loguidice --Game Packaging - A Look to the Past When Treasures Beyond the Game Were Within the Box (Armchair Arcade)

I'm procrastinating a bit after a morning of productive work, so I haven't had time to look through the whole issue. I personally find artificially-paginated articles very hard to read online. Yes, it makes sense to break up a longer article, but I'd prefer the option to see a whole article in a single file (for printing or in-browser full-text searches). I love the site's use of an old, beat-up videogame box as its design theme.

(Update, 17 Jan: Bill told me how to get a printable version. I've changed the URL.)

By the way, a group of interactive fiction enthusiasts has created Feelies.org, where current authors of games typically shared in electronic-only form can produce and sell feelies. From the home page: "We already have posters, pamphlets, coins, maps and CDs from some of the best games of the post-Infocom era."

You find yourself in yon dungeon. Back yonder there is a FLASK. Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.

What wouldst thou deau?
>_ --Strong Bad: Video Games (Homestarrunner.com)

Bobby actually e-mailed me this suggestion a few days ago, and I saw it in a comment on MGK, and on the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup, but this was the first week of classes, and I only had the chance to view it just now. At the end, you can actually play the different spoof games.

If you aren't familiar with the Strong Bad character, here's another of my favorites: "A Well Thought-Out English Paper"

Would it make sense to create a group blog devoted to teaching English language and literature, one where ideas could be exchanged, resources shared, pointers to already existing sites posted, websites collaboratively created?

Consider these questions:

• What have you created that you'd like to share with others?
• What have you found on the web that has been most useful in your teaching?
• What have you not found that you wish were out there? What's on your wish list?

--George H. Williams --Sharing Teaching Resources (George H. Williams)

It was December 1968. An obscure scientist from Stanford Research Institute stood before a hushed San Francisco crowd and blew every mind in the room. His 90-minute demo rolled out virtually all that would come to define modern computing: videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing, and something called a "mouse." --The Click Heard Round The World (Wired)

Interesting tidbits:

• Engelbart credits Vannevar Bush with inventing the concept of links: "I'd read that article 17 years before I wrote about links using computers and honestly do not remember if I took the idea from Bush deliberately or only went back to his article later."
• "We also did a lot of experiments to see how many buttons the mouse should have. We tried as many as five. We settled on three. That's all we could fit. Now the three-button mouse has become standard, except for the Mac. Steve Jobs insisted on only one button. We haven't spoken much since then."
• What we call the cursor, Engelbart originally called the "bug". If that term had stuck, the etymology of the word would be even more... uh... buggy.

The game's artificial intelligence borders on idiotic. At one point, I conversed with the civic manager of Upper Seattle in his office. After our chat, he conveniently walked into the hallway and blankly looked on as I hacked into his safe and stole secret information.

I was especially disappointed with Invisible War because its ambitious technological underpinnings held much promise.

Graphics were filled with realistic nuances such as hanging lights which swayed to and fro when I bumped them. Boxes and other objects had real weight and could be picked up and thrown.

But all this technical wizardry was for naught and had no real bearing on gameplay. --Matt Slagle --PC version of Deus Ex: Invisible War disappoints (AP/USA Today)

I had been looking forward to this game -- the original Deus X was fantastic: a first-person shooter/role-playing/adventure hybrid with fully voiced dialogue and multiple solutions to every problem. Looks like the designers put too much energy into the technology, and not enough into the storyline. I'll read a few more reviews before I make up my mind, but I can tell right now I'm not buying this title for full price.

Johnstown Flood
Johnstown Flood ReflectionsJerz's Literacy Weblog)

This afternoon, I took my son to our local Borders for a talk on the Johnstown Flood documentary. The flood was caused by the 1889 collapse of a dam originally built for Pennsylvania's canal system, then abandoned when rails came along. The presenter, Richard Burkert, a museum director whose commentary is included on the DVD (which is narrated by Richard Dreyfuss), gave a good background on the geography, economics, and social layout of the region.

The site became a hunting club for the likes of Andrew Carnegie and other Pittsburgh-area steel magnates; when the dam collapsed, a 90-foot wall of water, pushing a thundering wall of rubble, huge trees, and even locomotives, tore down a narrow valley. A young engineer who had been brought to the site for some unrelated work noticed the problem with the dam, and shortly before the collapse (hastened by record rains) telegraphed the city (the local telephone operator started calling the three dozen or so telephone subscribers), then mounted a horse to warn the people, Paul-Revere-style. Although the people had several hours warning, they were already flooded and thus many couldn't escape.

I'd say about 100 people turned out; based on the conversations I overheard before the talk began and the questions asked, I'd say the crowd was full of local history buffs and/or people with connections to Johnstown. Other than a poster version of the DVD cover, there were no visuals at the presentation -- not even clips of the DVD, which I found disappointing for Peter's sake. (He sat pretty still, though he lost interest after about 25 minutes and started playing with my PDA. His age was about a tenth of the average age of the audience members, so he did remarkably well.)

When I taught advanced technical writing, I frequently used risk management examples, so I was hoping for a bit more about the engineering involved. And while the presenter mentioned that the circumstances generated a lot of folklore surrounding the Johnstown flood incident, he didn't relate any of those folk stories in any depth. So I was left feeling unsatisfied in both the technical and humanities areas. At times, Burkert seemed to be enjoying the carnage too much. I can understand his excitement over the subject matter, but I couldn't help thinking of John Carpenter clutching his little statue and shouting "I am the kind of the world!" and reveling in the personal fame and fortune that the Titanic disaster eventually brought him.

Burkert described the event as America's largest one-day loss of civilian lives before 9/11, and said that the extensive media coverage and psychological impact was comparable. (Of course, I wanted to hear a little more about that, but Peter wanted to play with the Thomas the Tank Engine trains.)

An article in the local paper previews the Burkert talk. I'm assuming that the Johnstown Flood Museum website uses Flash or some other multimedia application; I've installed a utility to disable those bells & whistles because I find the long download times extremely disruptive. Those sites who know how to design good content invariably have a plain HTML introduction and a button that invites you to click on a multimedia presentation; if the plain HTML introduction looks worthwhile, I disable the Flash-killing feature and reload the page. But if not, I don't bother.

From pictograms to pixel fonts, written language has evolved over time, changing in response to communication methods and printing technology. This overview is presented as an introduction to the origins, evolution, and applications of modern letterforms. --The Evolution of Type (Medium Bold)

The ubiquity of the word processor has changed what it means to write. I still hear professors talk about "note cards," which were part of the writing process taught to me when I was in high school. The idea, of course, was that you could rearrange your note cards during the early drafting process, so that you would have some idea of the organization of your ideas before you actually started writing. For those of you born in the last 25 or so years, yes indeed, we actually wrote our papers out by hand, and then when we revised them we had to write them over again. We had a motivation to cut deadwood, since we could get the draft finished faster if we didn't copy that whole wordy opening paragraph and instead just copied the one sentence that actually introduced the subject we were really going to write about.

I'm not advocating that students should go back to the process of hand-writing their papers; instead, I'm simply noting that today's most experienced teachers learned to write in a very different way. I started word-processing some of my school assignments in middle school, around 1980 (although some of my teachers were refusing dot-matrix printouts). I have a great, satisfying sensory memory of picking up a stack of fan-folded paper, tearing off the rows of holes on the outer edges, and then separating the pages. I never bothered to tear apart all those perforations unless the printout was intended for someone else to read, and to this day I associate tearing perforated paper with that "job well done" feeling. When I was an undergrad at U.Va., for major assignments I would walk my disk to the laser printers in the computer lab (my favorite was a few steps from Cabell Hall at the other end of the Central Grounds from the Rotunda).

Since it is now push-button easy to get high-quality copies of drafts that are in progress, I wonder how much that affects the ability of today's students to recognize when they have put sufficient work into a paper. In medieval times, if you wanted about 20 pages to write on, you had to kill a sheep, skin it, and tan the hide (I recall the process has something to do with urine). So all writing that was produced was precious. That's taking it a bit too far, of course -- to make a mistake was costly, in terms of both time and resources, which undoubtedly affected the activities of a scribe (whose main job was to copy faithfully and accurately the words that somebody else had composed).

Instead of being dollars or euros or kroner, links seem a lot more like the major prison currency, cigarettes, in the hands of a heavy smoker who cares more about smoking than about any other prison commodity. First of all, you can do something with them; as an afterthought, you also use them to get more PageRank if you like. --Nick Montfort --Linky Lucre (Grand Text Auto)

Nick's reading of Jill Walker's paper Links and Power comes up with some interesting observations. I've often thought of blogroll-hunting as a kind of game (one which I keep telling myself I shouldn't play so often). My goal is not so much to encourage people to link to my blog, but rather to find -- as soon as possible -- the links that other people post. For instance, Eric Mayer was poking through lists of weblogs and recognized my name from the interactive fiction community; I found his blog entry a few hours after he posted it. This kind of link-hunting keeps my online research muscles limbered up, and it's something I can do in a twenty-minute time window (while waiting for the kids to go to sleep or when a student doesn't show up for an office visit).

While my link-collecting activity is, from one perspective, no more meaningful than manipuliting blobs of light in the shape of spaceships or warriors on a video screen, or passively watching blobs of light reproducing the motions of professional atheletes thousands of miles away, my particular collection of links represents my memory (how many times have you blogged something just so you'd remember it?), and the aggregation proceeds according to a set of criteria that I may not always articulate (Mike Arnzen has noted a recent explosion of blogs relating to games, but that seemed perfectly natural to me since I've just bumped a few game-related projects higher in my priority list). I'm not sure whether eating dots in a maze or watching professional athletes creates anything of even the slightest value to others; but, as Nick points out, "Google likes blogs - but people like blogs, too! Google likes blogs for all the right reasons."

I remember a short story about a future society in which people are screened for intelligence in a sort of maze where they live their whole lives and try to attach meaning to the events that occur within the maze. One such event involves the collection of metal discs that occasionally appear on the walls. People pry these disks off, making their fingernails bloody (though one wonders why they wouldn't just use one of their discs to pry off the other disks...). These discs serve no purpose other than being collected; I forget what the other meaningless activities are, but robot caretakers encourage the humans in all their activities but one. There is one room that humans are told to avoid; the protagonist, whose name I rember is Jon, ignores the warnings and enters the room, which I think contains nothing more than a big question mark. (I wish I could find that story again. I must have read it in the 80s.)

Anyway, the collection of links on a web page is not as meaningless as the collection of ornamental metal discs, since I use other people's links to find information, people who share my interests, and, yes I admit it, sources of good links.