Madrugada
I got Madrugada's cd The Nightly Disease as a present and it just blew me away. It's right there, among some of my all time favorites, The Sisters of Mercy, The Cranes, This Mortal Coil, Nick Cave, Morphine, The Doors and (the early) ZZ Top. Highly recommended.
Wat de muziek van Madrugada voor mij heeft is de pijn van het verlangen naar datgene wat je weet dat je kwijt bent, maar wat je niet kunt benoemen.
"It is the story of the necessity for loss and alienation and of the necessary longing for the lost and alienated" (Stephen Tyler, The Unspeakable)
Dec 3, 2001 @ 11:03 » no comments » General
New entries
Some new additions to the Online Articles section:
Bruckman, Amy S. and Mitchel Resnick (1995) The MediaMOO Project. Constructionism and Professional Community. Available: [html]
Ferris, Sharmila Pixy (1996) "Women On-line. Cultural and Relational Aspects of Women's Communication in On-line Discussion Groups." In: Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century, Vol. 4, No. 3-4, pp. 29-40. Available: [txt]
Juul, Jesper (2001) A Clash Between Game and Narrative. A thesis on computer games and interactive fiction. Available: [html]
Maxwell, John W. (1996) House of Words. Designing Text and Community in MOO Environments. Available: [pdf]
Oughton, John (1993) Genderbending on the MUSH. Available: [txt]
Poster, Mark (1995) CyberDemocracy. Internet and the Public Sphere. Available: [html]
Poster, Mark (1995) Postmodern Virtualities. Available: [html]
Trias, Jennifer Vaughn (1997) Democracy or Difference. A Literature Review of Gender Differences in Online Communication. Available: [html]
I've also gone and updated the Authors Homepages section of the Cyberculture, Identity and Gender resources.
Dec 3, 2001 @ 23:10 » no comments » Research
quote of the day: Words
"Hot and cold are words. Think of them as words. We have to use words. We can't just grunt." (Don DeLillo, White Noise)
Dec 10, 2001 @ 10:35 » no comments » General
Plates online in Miller and Slater's 'The Internet'
I've had Miller and Slater's book The Internet. An Ethnographic Approach on my shelf for a long while now, but hadn't gotten around to reading it, until today. I'm about halfway through it and I think the title doesn't quite fit the book. The book is an ethnographic study of "Trinidad and Internet" or maybe "Internet and Trinidad", focusing on use, role and understandings of Internet in Trinidad (and among the diasporic Trinidadian community around the world). "Trinidad and the Internet, an ethnographic approach" would have been a much better and less hypey (sp?) title.
Another thing that's rather annoying is that in the book the authors refer to plates (illustrations) but these plates are nowhere to be found in the book itself. The plates instead have been put up on a website, and although this site is mentioned on the Contents page of the book, it took me about two chapters to realize the plates just, really, weren't in the book. This I think is a very bad mix of two rather incompatible media. I want my book to be complete and when I'm reading it somewhere out of reach of the Internet, I still want to be able to see the illustrations (or whatever else the authors are referring to). Even sitting next to a computer it's awkward switching between the printed page and the screen/keyboard/mouse to look up some illustrations. I'm all for an electronic reading pad (as long as it's got the visual quality of a printed page) that wirelessly pulls (interactive) content off of the Net, but since I don't have that, I'll settle for good old paper and never mind mixing up incompatible media/metaphors.
Regardless, it's an interesting book and I have some theoretical points that I will discuss here later.
Dec 10, 2001 @ 15:11 » no comments » Research
Access issues and flat fee
Miller and Slater discuss in their book The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach various issues regarding access and use of the internet by Trinidadians and interestingly note (on page 32) that the Trinidadians seem to make little use of MUDs and Usenet newsgroups.
For a long while I figured that relatively little people in Holland were playing MUDs because of the prohibitively high cost of metered access. We still don't have flat-fee local calls in Holland (although there are some serious looking initiatives cooking), just like the situation Miller and Slater describe, but a fair amount of people in Holland now has access to either ADSL or cable-modem internet access and both are flatfee. Before I had a cable-modem, I racked up phonebills up to 450 guilders a month (that's something like $200 US per month) just for dialing in with my ISP. You can see how this kind of cost would keep people from logging on for extended periods of time, like you need to for mudding or chatting. Most people I know using the internet back then kept themselves to logging in, receiving and sending mail, maybe getting posts in the Usenet groups they're reading, maybe quickly (15-30 minutes or so) checking some websites, but then they'd log out because they knew the meter was ticking.
The Trinidadians (generalization, I know, but I was talking about the Dutch in the same manner and I didn't and don't mean to include everyone whether they like it or not, but you know that already *grin*) on the other hand, as Miller and Slater say, don't use newsgroups much, but they've quite taken to ICQ for chatting. Okay, they're talking about 1999 in Trinidad and I'm talking about 1995-1998 in Holland, but still... metered internet access.
So maybe there's more to the fact that in a relatively small population (Trinidad ~ 1.3 milion; Holland ~ 15 million) relatively few people do MUD. (Leaving newsgroups out of the equation here, because they're being put to good use in Holland.) Maybe it only looks like there is quite a substantial number of mudders, primarily from the US, but also from the other English speaking countries like the UK and Australia, but relative to their much larger population their number might be similarly small. I'd be interested to see some numbers on this. If you know where to find this kind of 'demographic' data, let me know :)
Dec 11, 2001 @ 10:34 » no comments » Research
Digital Beauties
The other day I bought the book Digital Beauties, edited by Julius Wiedeman, about "2D and 3D computer generated digital models, virtual idols and characters" (published by Taschen). As you would expect, the book is mostly about the gorgeously printed full color images, with a lot of seemingly obligatory nudes (and no male models or virtual idols). Each 'idol' or series of idols is complemented with some info about the artists, the way they work and their preferred software. Not too much theory here then, but with a recent movie like Final Fantasy and the rather impressive animation of Aki Ross in mind, it's still an interesting document of the state of the art. More information on the book here.
Dec 11, 2001 @ 12:19 » no comments » Research
You think you had it
"You think you had it, but you're nowhere near" (Madrugada, Black Mambo)
Dec 12, 2001 @ 09:50 » no comments » General
Harry Potter
I went to see the Harry Potter movie last night and I was pleasantly surprised, just like when reading the books. I started reading the books and went to the movie rather critically, slightly put off by all the hype, but since several friends whom I trust said it was good, I figured I'd have to give it a try anyway.
I enjoyed the movie with the books in mind and during the movie it was a constant 'ah, cool, there's that' and 'oh, okay, so they left that out.' I'm not sure how good the movie is if you haven't read the books. Like the books the movie focuses on Harry and his friends in a world filled with details and the story line (the quest or intrigue) plays a slightly subordinate role. This is changing in the later books and the story line becomes more important, which is also why I think the books are getting thicker and thicker... Rowling still needs to fill in all those details, the whole Potter and his friends tale next and on top of the now more important story line. The movie was very much in line with the book in that the story line about the philosopher's stone was (or seemed) subordinate to the tale of Harry arriving in the world of magic.
The book of course has much more space for dropping clues, spending a line or two here and there on the story line, keeping the reader informed. Having read the books I can fill in what is left out in the movie and that's why I wonder how I'd appreciate it if I hadn't. In any case, the visuals are stunning (I want to see Quidditch matches every weekend!) and the characters much like you'd expect them to (but Hagrid's accent should have been much, much worse) and all the details are there. If anything, seeing the Potter movie now kind of prepared me for The Lord of the Rings movie, after a book that's even more obsessively filled with detail, but which, in my opinion, has a stronger and maybe clearer story line than the sort of episodic story lines in Harry Potter.
Dec 13, 2001 @ 09:04 » no comments » General
Plates in Miller and Slater revisited
I complained the other day about the fact that Miller and Slater in their book The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach refer to plates/illustrations that are not reprinted in the book, but are located on an accompanying website. To be fair, a lot of the illustrations they use actually are complete websites and they've done a good job in archiving those websites, keeping most of the depth and interactivity of those sites intact. I don't think that these sites could have been adequately reproduced in the book and apart from including a cd-rom with the book, setting up a site next to or in addition to the book, like Miller and Slater did, is the most practical way to reproduce this kind of material. Nevertheless, it's annoying to have to switch between two very different media, assuming that I'm reading the book near a computer with internet access in the first place.
Any simple solutions that I can think of? Not immediately. What might have worked, is treating the website not so much as an illustrations repository for the book, but more as a work by itself, next to the book. More text, explanation and analysis on the site, so that going through the site would yield the reader more information, more insights, while only reading the book would still yield a satisfying image of the study. That would also mean, I think, that the book would have to make less explicit references to the illustrations on the site, but the authors could compensate by including more descriptions and/or some static reproductions of salient features of certain important websites.
Dec 13, 2001 @ 10:11 » no comments » Research
RobotStreetGang
A new games and gaming site, RobotStreetGang, subtitled "Game Theory and Lifestyle". Their mission statement reads:
"Robot Street Gang is a publication dedicated to video games, and the lifestyle of gaming. If you visited for framerate information or cheat codes, you may be disappointed. What you will find are thoughtful articles and essays about games and the experiences they provide."
Well, looks like they've been around at least since August and so far the site is looking good (probably based on Slashcode or something the like). This week they open with a great "chapter from Peter Olafson's forthcoming book, tentatively titled "The Gaming Life," [in which] the author describes his struggles with "Alien Resurrection" for the PSOne, and game design in general". This is definitely a site I'm going to keep my eyes on.
Dec 14, 2001 @ 10:33 » no comments » Research
In the mail
Translation: "It came with an e-mail!"
Dec 16, 2001 @ 14:57 » no comments » General
Funky stuff with Lara
I never played Tomb Raider when it came out, when I was running Win95 on a Pentium 100 machine with a 2 meg video card. So when I saw Tomb Raider The Trilogy for sale a while ago, I just bought it. Tomb Raider 1 won't run on Windows 2000, which is what I'm running on my box these days. It's a DOS game that will probably run under Win95 and/or Win98, but I couldn't get it to run under Win2000 at all. So for a while now I've been playing Tomb Raider 2, which did want to install properly.
I've advanced up till level 9 (I think, it's called Living Quarters), partly thanks to Stella's Tomb Raider walkthroughs. A walkthrough is a funny thing. I can imagine that in another situation a cheat or a walkthrough could turn the experience of the game not into a sense of accomplishment, but that it would actually strip that feeling away, like Peter Olafson argues in his thoughtful article. But right now, for me, the game is not about accomplishing anything, other than catching up on the experience of Tomb Raider. Filling a lack if you will. So reading how I should solve the timed run to turn off all the burners in 40 Fathoms saved me from running around that piece of the level for an hour until I had figured out the sequence of all the levers. It feels like I'm playing Tomb Raider the movie, which necessarily simplifies and leaves out some of the more intricate details of the plot, and I'm not reading Tomb Raider the novel, which does go into all that detail.
Now for the funky stuff though. Tomb Raider 2 installed without a hitch on Windows 2000 and Lara's been running around quite happily for a while, but I get these funky error messages when I try to move from one level to the next. Usually between levels there's a cut-scene, but I don't get to see most of them (I think) because the game quits and I'm looking at a dialog box on the desktop saying that "File such-and-so needs a newer version of Tomb2.exe to run (version 134488)" or something of that ilk. This is very annoying as you can imagine.
It gets weirder. I have 2 cd-rom drives in my box, one 48 speed Aopen cd-rom drive and one 12x10x32 LiteOn cd-rw burner. If I run Tomb Raider from the Aopen drive, from which I installed it, I will get the background music and the occasional cut-scene, but because this drive spins down real quick, the game almost freezes or at least jerks really badly when it has to load some stuff from the cd-rom. Also, if I run the game from the Aopen drive, it will pretty much quit between every level with the above mentioned error message. If I run the game from the LiteOn drive it's smooth as hell, no hickups, no freezes, no error messages between the levels, but also no in-game music and no cut-scenes.
That's pretty annoying. What I end up doing is play the game during the level from the Aopen drive, so that at least I get the in-game music and if I'm very lucky, I get a cut-scene at the end of the level. Save the game often, so that if it craps out, it's easy to get back in the saddle. Then, if it craps out during a level change (which is 9 out of 10 times), switch the cd to the LiteOn drive, go back to the last save point, finish the level, miss the cut-scene, save immediately as I reach the new level, quit the game, put the cd back into the Aopen drive and play on. *mutter*grumble*kick* Anyway, with a little help I made it about halfway through the game and I kind of dread going all the way... what if the game totally craps out on the final cut-scene and I don't even get a slightly satisfactory end to my Tomb Raider 'movie' experience?!
Update: Actually, what it says when I try to finish the Living Quarters level is: "FATAL: Level 10 (G:\data\deck.TR2) requires a new TOMB2.EXE (version 1255194) to run" with the cd in the Aopen drive. When I put the Tomb Raider 2 cd in the LiteOn drive, the level finishes and I proceed to the next level. If you happen to know if there is supposed to be a cut-scene between the Living Quarters level and the next one, feel free to drop me a line or post a comment. Also, if you happen to have a solution handy, I'd like to hear as well.
Dec 17, 2001 @ 08:40 » 11 comments » General
Atari 2600 Lord of the Rings game
Slashdot has an article up, referring to this article at Atari Age with details of a never released Lord of the Rings game for the Atari 2600. You can even download the ROM image of the game and run it on an emulator. Cool :)
Dec 17, 2001 @ 11:15 » no comments » General
Lara factoid
Interesting... I never saw this described anywhere, but it probably is a known feature of Tomb Raider (2?) anyway. If you're hanging from a ledge (action/ctrl button pressed) and you also keep the shift key pressed and then you 'pull up' by pressing the up key, Lara will do a hand-stand, bend over backwards and then right herself. As far as I've been able to see it's not very useful, but it's a pretty cool move.
Dec 17, 2001 @ 17:20 » no comments » General
Online World Timeline
1973 Talk-O-Matic, a proto-IRC with handles and chat rooms, is on PLATO at this point (it may have existed earlier).
"One of the more popular activities was "Talk-O-Matic". Five people at a time could write messages, and read each other's messages, on the same screen. Today, Internet chat rooms work on the same principle. One of the remarkable new features of this page was that you could log in with an invented name, and pretend you were anyone you wanted -- any name, any age, any gender. One favorite trick was to log in using the name of someone else already logged into the page, simply to confuse everyone else." - Guy Consolmagno, SJ.
This little snippet of info comes from Raph Koster's Online World Timeline. (Thanks Lisbeth for the link on your MOO page.)
It's great to see these kind of early references to playing with online representation. I'm interested in stuff like performance, authenticity, impersonation, gender-bending as ways of constructing realities, even if they're virtual realities. Seeing that early on the 'computer' and the computer network were playful and evocative spaces is telling me that this is an integral part of using computer/network technology. If you read the rest of the timeline, it's amazing to see how much time was spend in the early days of computing on playing and writing the games one could play.
Dec 19, 2001 @ 08:48 » no comments » Research
Uptime
uptime: up 93 days, 19:59, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.01, 0.00
Nothing much special, but I'm kinda proud of my little FreeSCO Linux based router/firewall. For three months it just worked without a hitch, something that my Windows 2000 workstation should be envious of!
Windows 2000 is rather stable and I've managed to blue-screen it only once in the past year (funky cd-rw drivers). But if you work on it for several days without rebooting it, Windows 2000 starts behaving a little strangely, forgetting settings and snapping back to the default, refusing to start my online banking software (which is an ancient DOS application), etc. I have even managed to break the Windows-update function by trying to install Bearshare and then refusing to have it install all kinds of spyware. I got rid of Bearshare and the spyware, but Windows-update is now broken and I have to download and install each patch by hand. I'm reading really good reviews of recent Linux distributions (here and here) so I figure my next upgrade will be to Linux and not some new activation-code plagued Microsoft product. In the mean time, Windows 2000 is "good enough" to use a term favored by Jerry Pournelle (of Byte fame).
Dec 19, 2001 @ 10:44 » no comments » General
Wishes
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody :)
Dec 24, 2001 @ 11:48 » no comments » General
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