Flash Movie Contest

Hey everyone, just wanted to tell all of you about a flash contest...if you have time in between all of the school work. The info is at this site Flash Movie Contest 2006.

CSS Contextual Selectors and Colors

At the end of class yesterday a few of us were talking about ways to specify different styles for different parts of a web page. I put together a very simple (and very ugly) example page on "contextual selectors" in CSS. Compare the source code (which you can find by following any of the hyperlinks on the page) with the HTML source to see how various "class" assignments and nesting techniques can give you more flexibility with your styles. There are a few different approaches to this issue, each with its own problems depending upon the structure of the particular page. Experiment and find what works for you.

I've also added the contextual selector example to the Web Resources page for our class, along with a link to the Visibone Web Safe Color Table, a handy way to look up the hexidecimal (six-character) code for colors.

My Own Errand

I decided to post about the language of Errand Upon Which We Came because I realized a couple things shortly after leaving class, one of which is, upon returning home, the link to Mez’s piece does not work anymore for me, it says “file not found,” so I was kind of stuck with the Errand piece, but I did find some interesting stuff.

One thing I enjoy about this piece, that I had not noticed before is that you can freeze it with the silver butterfly. You do not actually have to read fast, you can enjoy the imagery and the words. The silver butterfly is a device some other pieces of weberature should take into consideration. I think some (or maybe a lot) of the pieces do not let me stop them when I want. I can capture the image on the screen with a screen capture, but sometimes, on the go, I want to experience something longer. I guess, maybe, the whole point is that the person or author of the piece can choose whether to allow a stop or not, therefore that is part of the decision making process that goes into the piece itself. I think a pause button and a rewind button would be really helpful with a lot of the pieces, like the Heavy Industries’ pieces especially. I think something like, “Press the P key to pause during the presentation, or press the R key to begin rewinding,” would be helpful.

Something I noticed about this piece, that has little to do with it being online, more with the literature of the piece, is the language that begins the piece. “Gentle reader, begin anywhere. Skip anything. This text is framed fully for the purposes of skipping. Of course, it can be read straight through, but this is not a better reading; a better life. You are being asked to move with great rapidity. As if it weren’t there. As if you were a frog. A frog that since it’s disappearing thinks to ask, for the first time, in which element it really does belong.” Part of the poetry of this piece is it talking about how to read itself. The piece adds to itself by explaining itself, and I do not know how many other times I have experienced this with a piece. The comment about “a better life,” is kind of weird, I do not know what to do with it. It is saying the poem is not better when read linear, though I heard Kanani say she thought it kind of was. (or maybe I was misunderstanding her) The reader is then told to read with great rapidity, which is kind of obvious, unless you are using the silver butterfly, then you could read as slow as you prefer. Then there’s the comment about in which element the frog really does belong. This is kind of like her piece, does it belong online as weberature, or in print as literature? I think this is the question a lot of people ask when making a piece online.

The last thing I noticed and I wanted to mention (very briefly) is the leaves moving over the words in the first frame. I had watched this piece and messed with it a bunch of times and never noticed this movement. I like how the leaves move from the background to the foreground, covering the words, moving the reader forward in the poem, whether they want to or not. I like these kinds of aspects of weberature, where the author gets to do more with their stuff as opposed to mess it up.

Even though Errand was a busy piece, that at first seemed a bit intimidating and unnecessary, I have grown to enjoy it. Even though none of us defended it in class, its opening stanzas are kind of beautiful in their words, even if the pictures and images are kind of cliché and busy. I think the piece is not a horrible piece, just a piece trying to do too much. I really do think the silver butterfly pause button makes a huge difference though.

Until my next post, hopefully coming BEFORE the class meets - AJ

Simplicity is the Key

Of the three selections for today's class, I enjoyed "V:Vniverse" the most. The simple design and random navigation sequence complement one another without compromising coherence and meaning. It struck me that "V:Vniverse" also illustrates Matt Gorbet's point that "the success of [a work] depends precisely on the sense of control afforded by the simple and phsyically familiar interactions" (FP 218). Relying solely on lines and numbers, constellations and stars, this text does not make use of complicated graphics, as "][ad][dressed in a Skin C.ode" does, nor does it visually abuse the viewer as "Errand Upon Which We Came" does. The viewer is left to enjoy the constellations, to read the coherent and legible sentences in peace and to navigate via mouse and/or number pad.

It is refreshingly relaxing to be in control of a piece through simple actions for which I am responsible. In this work, I am not at the mercy of the whims and wishes of my computer's clock nor do I have to race to keep up with a rapidly flashing Flash program. Instead, I can sit back and explore at my own pace, enjoying each visual and literary element. Like a few previous works, the navigation of "V:Vniverse" is determined by my random actions and the numbers I choose to key in. Unlike some previous works, however, this one is able to maintain some level of coherence. Phrases are often connected to one another or have some kind of other correlation that does not leave me feeling completely lost, dazed and confused.

I also appreciated the work's visual simplicity. I found both the other texts to be visually abusive with color combinations, graphics and fonts that combined to create a less than pleasant reading/viewing experience. "V:Vniverse" was a welcome change - simple colors were used and delicately simple images were created. It helped too that I recognized many of the constellations, that I was familiar with the images that were appearing.

Altogether, familiarity and simplicity were beautifully combined in this piece. It was not so much that there was anything wonderfully thrilling about the work, but rather that it was user-friendly and easy on the nerves! A simple and enjoyable read! :)

Examples of what not to do

][ad][dressed in a Skin C.ode repeatedly hung-up on my computer all weekend. As this it the first piece that I have had problems with, I'm guessing it has something to do with the way it was constructed or written. That being said, the little that I was able to see before Explorer stopped responding had too much code looking stuff for my taste. I disliked dealing with code in 1980 when I had a vic-20 and that hasn’t changed in 26 years. Like other forms of art, it’s not my bag so I’m tempted to skip trying to make some sense of this work on another machine.

I thought V: Vniverse was the most interesting of these three pieces. The star chart reminded me of Myst. At first I randomly selected a star but then I started entering the numbers and reading it in order. I noticed that some of the pages/paragraphs/sections could be read with the title and/or number included which gave an added dimension to the text. Other times, one or the other or both needed to be skipped because they made the sentence nonsensical. I didn’t recognize the stars (not that I have much knowledge about astronomy!) or the “constellations” that appeared when a star was selected. Nor was I able to notice any type of image that had anything to do with the written part. If I haven’t explored/read some of the essays that are linked to this piece, I’m not sure I would have grasped the link between the nomads reading the stars and my reading text by selecting a star. This one needs to be added to my places to explore page!

Errand was a rather annoying piece to me. The soundtrack was short and repetitious. The background images made the text hard to read. Thankfully, it was very short! Or maybe I intentionally overlooked some links that would have made it longer. The links I did follow looped back into each other quickly so getting lost wasn’t an issue. The text - both as objects and as words with meaning - and the images appeared to be working together - possibly there is a pseudo-subliminal eco-message in the piece. But the basic design flaws (intentional?) I noticed negated any interest I had in going through it more than twice - once in order and once using the links. Maybe it would be less annoying with the sound turned off.

Mez generates "code"

public class Mez extends CodePoet {

  protected Text generate(Text orig) {

    orig.insertInitial(this.getNextEmailHeader());

    while (orig.isCoherent()) {
      orig.insertRandom("][");
      orig.insertRandom(Dictionary.COMPSCI);
      orig.insertRandom(Dictionary.BIOLOGY);
      orig = this.obfuscate(orig);
    }

   return orig;
  }
}

Hollowbound Book - I'm Lovin' THAT!

"Hollowbound Book" has to be one of my all time favorite works! The elegance and 'class' of the work as a whole made experiencing it and interacting with it an absolute joy, while the music, graphic details and actual content complemented one another beautifully. It was also especially satisfying to see three major themes of digital literature, as laid out by Hayles, brought to life by Loyer. Those themes - remediation, kinesthetic involvement and materiality - were subtly intertwined in the work, yet concretely thought provoking.

What better way to illustrate remediation than by using a computer to simulate a book voicing its thoughts on books and computers? Talk about a "cycle of remediation!" And of course in talking about such a cycle, one cannot ignore the materiality of the work. This is a book talking to us; a book running away from its author and from the invisibility of its print existence. And where does it arrive? Center stage on our computer screens where it is subject and object, character and voice. How can we possibly ignore its materiality now? The answer is, we can't! We're forced to notice it as we interact with the work, as we use our mouse to manipulate the binding and open and close it as we would a real book.

The "Hollowbound Book" also makes the point that it has to be always on the run. That it's not safe, even here in its computer form. To me, this speaks to the fact that both books and computers are ultimately forms of containment. As such, digital literature is a means of breaking free of such bindings and of stretching the boundaries of what we consider iterature and art.

I'm Lovin' It

Sorry that I missed your presentation Sheela Jane, wouldn’t have missed that for the world, except it was an emergency. Hope you (and everyone else) had a great Valentine’s Day!

This is my post for this past Tuesday, I just wanted to make sure I put something up after having a very distracting day.

These pieces were amazing! I found these pieces to be, by far, the most interesting and engaging. I first watched Hollowbound Book, or experienced it as the case may be.

Hollowbound book was my least favorite of these three pieces. It was kind of boring, and a lot of the scenes at the beginning and end were just the glowing dot. I kept thinking I could manipulate the dots, but to no avail. Also, this piece was kind of short, especially compared to the other two. When it ended, I felt like I was left hanging. I wanted more, even if I didn’t really like the format. I liked the part where the three-prong thing changed from steps 1a, 1b, and 1c to 2a, 2b, 2c all the way to the fourth step. This took me awhile to catch onto because at first I was just bouncing the thing up and down until I saw the words had changed. It was fun to manipulate at times, but I think “Writing Machines” the book was a much more fun experience.

I knew I would like the Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries piece, so I watched it in the middle, twice over. It wasn’t as much fun for me as Miss DMZ, but it was interesting. They, once again, force us to move forward at their speed, and this time I watched it a second time because I missed a couple of words the first time around. This one had some times where I found myself frustrated because I had missed a word or two and then felt like I was not getting the whole experience. When he asks whether Kim Jong-Il has a website, I cracked up. It was funny to see the URL on the screen for that one moment. At some point there seemed to be some word play with “soul” and “Seoul,” and I thought that was kind of fun. The thing about these Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries pieces is that you do not have as long to get caught up in the wordplay because it moves so fast. I like how they both think though, their pieces seem to be consistently fun to experience.

The last piece I experienced was The Dream Life Of Letters. I clicked on this one first, but after reading that it took eleven minutes I chose to do Hollowbound Book first. This piece was fun. I read the letter that it came from first, which I had a very time understanding. Were there other languages mixed into it, because I really got lost on while reading certain parts that appearing to be in another language. Then I read his original poem, and I am very glad he chose to make it into what he did, because the original poem is extremely bland. This was fun because you could feel yourself moving forward, if by no other means that realizing that “z” would be your final stop and watching yourself approach that letter. There was so much movement, but no sound (on my computer) or colors other than black, white and orange. I thought the lack of sound helped me to focus on the moving words and on the images themselves, rather than music. I liked when the “Y” filled up with words, which then overflowed. I also liked the “O” with the word, “outside” rotating around its outside. This is something I plan on watching a couple more times, just for fun. This piece might be my favorite of all the pieces we have read so far.

Well I will probably do another post before Tuesday, but I just wanted to get one in for these pieces, which were so great. I do not usually praise pieces this much, but these were really fun, and not what I was expecting. The Hollowbound Book could have done more though with “Writing Machines.” The Dreamlife of Letters could not have done more with less. It was just alphabatized words and I was fully engrossed. Thank you Professor Zuern for exposing me to this piece! Amazing!

So until my next post: Shoots! ------AJ

Traces

These pieces of digital literature reminded me of previous works that I’ve experienced. Each one seemed to use a devise that was used in my earlier reading. The advantage to this was that I needed to spend less time learning how to interact with the pieces and could spend more time reading, interacting with them and reacting to them.

The Dreamlife of Letters is a fun piece even though I’m not sure I completely understand it. After reading the introduction and following the links to read DePlessis’ submission and Stefans response, I understood how he constructed the piece but, I’m still in the dark about the project, its purpose, and its meaning. In spite of this I like the poem. In some ways the kinetic text and mimetics reminded me of Faith. For example, when chimneysweep swirled on the screen like I picture a sweep’s broom in a chimney and when steep and split appeared together, steeply angled down the page and then splitting into two distinct words.

The title of Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries Artist’s Statement No. 45,730,944 told me about the piece and gave a hint about what to expect. Naturally, the work employed their trademark big, black, bold text flashing on a white background. But the message in the work is one I think anyone who is involved in creating art goes through, questioning the whys and the purpose of creating art. However, I also thought there was a deeper meaning to it - what is the purpose of our life? Why are we here? Questions I think most people ask themselves at some point during their life. So in a sense, the age old questions haven’t changed, just the way they’re asked has.

Hollowbound Book

I really enjoyed Loyer's piece. I think I found my heart beating to the same beat as the red dot that appears in the beginning. I like how the music makes it seem like there's something more to expect...the music makes it seem like something is going to pop out of somewhere.

The level of interaction is just right for me, it wasn't a total movie type like The Dreamlife of Letters or Artist's Statement No. 45,730,944: The Perfect Artistic Web Site. Although it took me some time to figure out how to read the text of some of the pages, I was amazed when I did.

It's interesting to see that it can become a never-ending loop--Hayles discusses an electronic text in her book and Loyer discusses her book in an electronic format. It's also interesting to see the relationship and the effect each type has on a reader.

"Interrogating the inscription technology"

A common theme of this week's works seems to be that they highlight their own "inscription technology", the medium in which they are conceived.

"Artist's Statement No. 45,730,944" does this the best. For me, it achieved what "Lexia to Perplexia" failed to do--effectively questioning the effects of technology, and the Web in particular, on our existence. It reveals how we are defined by people looking at us (our work); it explores how we understand and interface with the world (our neighbors) through the Web. And the entire work is a prolonged self-reference--another Web denizen's work calling for attention, just another cycle of uploading, waiting, and playing. (I imagine the sock-tasting is also a interesting reference, though not apparently one to the inscription technology!)

"Hollowbound Book" highlights the materiality of Hayles' book--particular it's bound nature. It expands this metaphor into the conceptual realm, holding that Hayles ties her various arguments into a single whole in a very similar way. Yet, interestingly, all of this reflection is done through interactive, electronic examples. It's a nice return--Hayles reviews such digital works in a physical book, only to be reviewed in turn by the digital.

I did not find "The Dreamlife of Letters" to be particularly enriching. Indeed, it is little more interesting than its original source material "poem(s)". However, what effect it does achieve beyond simply being a list of words, it achieves entirely through interesting animations and combinations made possible by the animation medium.

Experience Counts

[I apologize for this being late. I guess I was busy reading my classmates reactions and forgot to post my own. I realized when looking for feedback that I hadn't posted yet.]

Experience helps when viewing digital literature. After several weeks of looking at and exploring a variety of digital literature, I’m starting to develop an understanding of how to view the sites. Like printed literature, digital literature makes use of earlier works. For example, I realized (probably because I took ENG-253 last semester and we read parts of it) the painting of the bull and women in Miss DMZ was connected to Greek mythology. However, I didn’t pursue it beyond that recognition.

While reading Dakota, the use of Americana in the beginning made an instant connection with me. It seemed to draw on or reminded me of early Springsteen, specifically “Born to Run”. I also connected with the images because my friends and I used to cruise with the top down and a case of beer. Having looked at other pieces by Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, the blinking black text on a white background wasn’t as distracting as it was earlier in the semester. This probably allowed me to connect to the imagry more easily.

I thought the frames in These Waves of Girls - while distracting and not something I would use - reflected the segmented aspect of the story. Each section seemed to start with an age statement or a defined block of time which the frames reflected and forces the reader to move though them as though they were going though that block of time. I thought this idea of moving though the story was picked-up in the chapter of First Person that we read. I was intrigued by the idea of Card Shark and look forward to experiencing a piece written using it.

Screen Captures

Oddly, I had to write up something for my ICS students about how to do a screen capture today. During that, I found out that Paint on Windows XP will now save GIF, JPG, and PNG formats! In the past, it could only handle BMP (bitmaps), which are huge files that you don't want to put on any website.

Anyway, Paint is found under Start -> Programs -> Accessories. Just hit Prnt Scrn or "Alt + Prnt Scrn" to copy the image (as demo-ed in class). Then open Paint, and hit Ctrl-V (or go up to Edit->Paste). And save!

Now you don't need to mess with downloading, installing, and using the GIMP, which is rather troublesome. Paint doesn't do much more beyond what I just described though, so if you need to do any thing fancier than just saving, I still think the GIMP is still worth learning (since it's free!). Also, Paint seemed to produce a rather crappy GIF image. PNG turned out okay though.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my discovery of an easier way to do it!

The Jew's Daughter

I can honestly say that I admire this site. It works with sentences in a way that makes a reader realize that by changing one sentence in a paragraph the meaning of the paragraph changes also. The navigation system reminds me of the Don't Click It Project. It takes additional thought to not click on what I perceive as a link versus clicking on the link to move on or change lexia.

When I first started "rolling over" the highlit word, I didn't notice that the paragraph changed. I think I clicked on the word and just saw that the word was no longer blue. Once I got the hang of rolling over the highlit word, I found myself also looking for the next highlit word as well as the change in the paragraphs.

Miss DMZ

Since Miss DMZ moves at a slow enough pace to allow people to comfortably read it, as opposed to DAKOTA and many other of the Young Hae Chang narratives, I managed to sit through the whole thing. I have no doubt that the design of the page was to allow for easier reading, although it may move fast enough to turn some people off. One helpful tip to reading Young Hae Chang sites... move your head back from the monitor. The text is often so large, that your impulse to lean forward in order to read the speedy text is counteracted by the fact that the text is often so large, it becomes harder to read the closer your head sits to the screen.

It is also important to note that DMZ refers to a Demilitarized Zone, most likely the one separating North and South Korea. There is also one in Vietnam, but from reading the narrative, the subject lives in Palpan-dong, a city in Seoul, it is probably the Korean DMZ that is talked about in the story. Another key point is that the long tunnel that the subject goes through to get to the "Duty-Free" store, most likely refers to the long tunnels that were discovered running underneath the Korean DMZ. There are two in total, spanning such a length that it would take roughly an hour to traverse the length. Seoul is located in South Korea, and since it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to get from South Korea to North Korea, I can only assume that the narrator was at the Duty-Free store right underneath the DMZ, and therefore was only on the border.

This factual basis fits well with the idea of the Duty-Free store and the European Luxury hotel motif. The idea of a "Duty-Free DMZ" area also fits well with the correlation between DMZ and a store that is "duty free," or free of taxes and tariffs. Here we have the narrator entering a place of seeming freedom, but he cannot stay because he doesn't work there. It isn't clear exactly who "Miss DMZ" is, I suggest that she is symbolic of a kind of ideal representing a truly united Korea. A place where the "new customers" can blend in with the existing workers. As truly horrible a place as North Korea has become, I have no doubt that in the minds of many, a united nation is something coveted by all. Especially if you consider that the separating of the two Koreas wasn't necessarily due to internal hemorraghing, but more due to the politics of nationalist America and the Europe. The wars in Vietnam and Korea were largely political terraforming wars; we were seeking to liberate Korea and Vietnam from the Communist menace, a threat that was blown largely out of proportion by propaganda and McCarthy.

Given the history of Korea, I can imagine a largely liberal company such as Young Hae Chang wanting to get this kind of message across through its work. Miss DMZ delivers.

Enjoyment in spite of structure

I liked These Waves of Girls in spite of its hypertext structure, largely due to the grace of the writing and the power of the underlying "story" (or rather, the "narrative images"). The hierarchial overview found on some of the pages, with short linear stories from there, were the easiest to comprehend. I found the mix of images and sound to be somewhat discordant, since the text and formatting was so different between pages (and the sound wouldn't play through my plugin). However, some of them were enjoyable. The trip though the glass window of the security door was memorable.

I enjoyed the jumble of memories--short and interweaving. Many of them continue to haunt me this morning. However, I felt this experience was due more to reading them together and having them refer to each other, than due to the actual hyperlinks themselves. I felt the links were too numerous, and the relationship between their source and destination texts was often obscure. This may have been the intent--as if modeling a stream-of-consciousness recollection. But I question its use as an interface. The user is not making a real choice if they have no idea of the consequences of their actions. And each time they make a choice, they have to give up on the thread (often unfinished) that they're currently reading. The user is going to take a single (albiet, perhaps branching and looping) path through the work. The author of a hypertext work does not provide a coherent path, favoring instead a user-constructed experience of naviagation. But fumbling around blindly through a work is frustrating, not enriching. The connections should be evident in content of the work itself, not only in its technical structure.

Jew's Daughter was a very neat trick, playing with the notion of a page. Also a sort of stream-of-consciousness, the page seems to model a current moment of thought. But the writing did not keep me interested. After about 15 to 20 morphs, I bailed.

Miss DMZ was wonderful, my favorite Young-hae Chang work yet. A great story, great music, nice use of *, all brought together into a single piece. Here, I didn't feel I had to overcome the structure to enjoy the content.

Miss DMZ

It amazes, excites and inspires me that black text, a white background and a stirring instrumental soundtrack can be so powerfully moving. To me, "Miss DMZ" represents one of the most fascinating aspects of digital literature - a deceptively 'simple' use of digital media to incorporate "coherence, causality, and closure" while simultaneously providing mental, visual, literary and auditory challlenges.

It is wonderfully satisfying to experience a piece of digital literature that has a coherent structure and plot, that illustrates cause and effect and that comes to a definite end. Yet despite containing these seemingly 'ordinary' elements, "Miss DMZ" maintains a strongly unique style, an ability to challenge the viewer and an ambiguity that leaves room for interpretation and analysis. With words that flash across the screen at varying speeds and sizes and with no apparent mechanism for control, the reader is trapped, almost hypnotized, into staring anxiously and following along as best as possible. This format lends itself to the plot, to the uncertainty and sense of anxiety inherent in what occurs to the protagonist, and has the power to make the reader feel as if she herself is right there in the story.

It is especially interesting that a piece that places virtually no control in the hands of the viewer and that demands very little can have such an effect. Despite not being "the crucial creative/receptive presence in [this] digital art" I still felt very much a part of the story, very much a part of all that was going on. This feeling was enhanced, ironically, by my lack of control. I had to sit there and experience the story whether I liked it or not mainly because pausing, re-ordering and starting over were not easy, handy operations. The same is true of the protagonist - his experiences are completely out of his control and he has no power to turn back, to return to the mysterious duty-free store or to comprehend what had happened to him. In forcing us into a situation that is so much like that of the protagonist, this piece succeeds in making literature a truly virtual experience - subtly, powerfully and uniquely.

These Waves of Girls created by Caitlin Fisher is a good example of digital literature that seems continuous and non-linear. Like many of the other pieces we've seen like Hermeticon and Lexia to Perplexia, this work had many different links embedded within the text. These links would lead to totally different subtexts or sometimes subtexts that added context and background to the text you were reading previous to clicking on the link. At first, I didn't know what to do at the inital webpage of These Waves of Girls, and after waiting for about 15 seconds, a new page loaded up in my browser. There were several options that were given at the second webpage that were doorways to different pieces of digital text.

There seemed to be no end to the many stories and texts of These Waves of Girls. "The end" depended on how much you as a reader wanted to continue reading; how committed you were to spending your time and concentration reading and understanding this text. Similarly, Dakota and Miss DMZ, created by Young-hae Chang Heavy Productions had no real "ending" to it. Well in reality I'm unsure if it has a definate ending or if the pieces just loop and repeat over and over. I only committed about ten minutes to watching each piece before I didn't want to read any more. The text appears and disappears mostly at a "readable pace" that is comfortable for most people.

These three pieces of digital literature most similarly parallels the websites on the internet today. People can spend hours looking at, reading, and entertaining themselves with images, texts, and digital literature; it is truly on the conscious decision of the viewers to decide when to "call it quits." In this way, digital literature is very diffferent, but yet similar, to texts in written format such as books, magazines, and newspapers. There is a tangible "endpoint" to reading, but there is also a never-ending, time-consuming process that people can get caught in depending on how much time we spend on text or digital literature.

First Person

When I first heard the title, First Person, I did not even put two and two together to form the phrase “first person shooter.” I use this phrase at least five times a week describing some game or another to friends online or in person, and I thought it really odd I did not notice this about the title. I believe that first person shooters are the equivalent of using the first person to write a book, it puts you into the story just a little bit more.

The first game I can remember having a truly adjustable story is Final Fantasy XII. I remember that the big highlight of this game for gamers was FMVs (Full Motion Videos). Everyone loved to get to the point in the story where it would cut to one of these, and you could then view them later in a clips vault. My cousin used to watch these clips upwards of fifty times after he unlocked them. I just got a new game for Xbox 360, Kameo: Elements Of Power, and almost the whole game is an FMV. It is very surprising how far games have come. Role Playing Games in general are story based, and as we came into newer and newer technology, RPGs became these great, amazing, fantasy stories (though RPGs really never were my “thing”).

Games like Final Fantasy were nothing like the old first person shooters like Duke Nuke ‘Em or Doom. Though first person shooters put us into the action by having the villains shoot directly at us, it was these story games that really cornered the market for awhile. Everyone was looking for the next great mythical story line. Xenogears, Final Fantasy XIII and on, Harvest Moon, Evolution, all these RPGs were just trying to hit the same nerve as Final Fantasy XII did, something with an easy to follow story. Final Fantasy had a (horrible) movie come out, which had nothing to do with the stories in Final Fantasy XII and so the movie bombed. Then, just recently, they released an anime called “Final Fantasy: Advent Children,” and it sold it Asia like hotcakes. It is based on the Final Fantasy XII characters, it’s their after story. My roommate watched this movie, so I kept glancing in, and it was far superior to the other Final Fantasy movie, mainly because of the story, because the graphics were much cartoonier, and there was really nothing else about the movie that was amazing (though some of the graphics were cool). These story based games meant so much until,

HALO! I personally hate Halo. I think it is unrealistic in the fact I am fighting aliens and can jump super-high, etc. I find it TOO realistic because a correctly timed head shot with the right weapon kills the player immediately and because I can only hold two guns at once. I think the only reason Halo became so popular is because it was the first MMO shooter. Xbox Live was a new thing, and only computer games could be played online with that many players before it came about. Xbox Live changed a lot. Games like Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark were better first person shooters than Halo. They had better weapons, better looking characters (not everyone was in a spacesuit), and it was more fun when you and three friends played. Halo dominated because it was the only option.

Xbox 360 just released an updated version of Perfect Dark, with MMO. I think it will be incredibly fun (right about when Microsoft stops hoarding the 360s so I can have some friends online) eventually. Halo 3 comes out this fall (supposedly), and hopefully they don’t just remake Halo 2 (which is just a remake of Halo). Give me something new! I think MMO is really what matters, as can be seen by two very popular computer games right now: World Of Warcraft and City of Heroes/Villains. These games just have you make a character, and then you get sent into an online map, where you level up and interact with hundreds of thousands of other players. These are the future.

MMO, Massive Multiplayer Online, is a great idea. I think more video games will sell just because you can, at the very least, chat with people online, in a body you chose, with a weird profession or superpower you chose, in a game you chose. Already you and the other guy playing would have something in common, just by being there. I think gamers really like this. I actually do not like computer games. I think the chance of crashing is way too high. I think Xbox Live and PS-Online are more fun and crash less, and I think most CPU games will end up on a platform with online capability (World of Warcraft is coming to Xbox within the next couple of months). My roommate once told me that his “clan was having dramas because some guy’s real life wife (who played the game also) was mad because her husband got married to someone in World of Warcraft.” I thought this was amazing, but it really shows you how first person these games have become. People are putting their emotions, their lives so to speak, into these games. It is kind of sad, but I mean, not my right to judge. I think these uber-involving games which take ten hour of play time per day to get good at (my roommate once played for 22 hours in a 24 hour day, so said his game-clock) are where true-gamers will end up. Maybe I am “getting too old for this shit,” because I really don’t like these new games. Too time consuming, too much like trying to escape my real life, but I guess that is the gain for some people right?

Does anyone but me think that someday people might actually just put on a VR helmet at home and that’s how everybody will work and get things done? Virtual Work? I just had to bring it up, because if you are willing to spend 22 hours in a day on a video game with no real-life rewards, wouldn’t you work eight doing that? (btw, my roommate barely goes to class, so this is his life most of the time, kind of sad, but again, not for me to judge.)…

CSS and HTML Examples

Michael has been asking about how to set the margins around images for word wrap in HTML. One solution is to create an element in the CSS for the image and then assign that element a specific margin value.

I've slung together an HTML page that has an internal CSS specification illustrating this approach. The text and the image are totally arbitraty--the image has been cropped along the colored edge so you can tell that the margins are not in the image file.

The file shows you how to do other useful HTML things, too:

1. The CSS shows you how to "float" an image inside a chunk of text with "float" and how to set the alignment (right or left side of the text).

2. The style includes a simple approach to setting up, over, down, and visited specifications for your hyperlinks. You can also turn off the automatic underlining of links.

3. The link itself includes the "target" attribute with the "_blank" value that opens a new browser window for the linked file. This is a simpler approach than the JavaScript one on the syllabus page for the class, but you can't specify the size (or other features) of the new window.

4. The "../default.html" in the link is a relative path (as opposed to the full URL, which would be the absolute path) out of the "Resources" directory (where the "brat_css.html" file is located) and into the "394" directory (which contains the "Resources" directory). You can use these relative paths to link files nested within your own directory structure.

Please write me with any questions or problems you're encountering. We'll spend some time in class on basic stuff next week to make sure you're ready to put together the "beta" releases of your first paper.

Web page access

Is anyone else having problems with their web page setting getting changed back to the restricted setting?

I enable mine. Save the changes and log-out. Then it works, however, when I return to it later, I need to go through the process again.

michael