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June 28, 2008
YouTube: The Sorta Expected
I've been working on some thoughts about YouTube, and while this wasn't the place I had anticipated starting, I just spent the last 45 minutes with it, which is one of the usual indicators that I should say something about this.
This is Cory "Mr. Safety" Williams' Choose-Your-Own-Adventure film in which you help him find his lost cat, Sparta. Williams has set the films up as a double challenge: 1) find the cat; 2) compete with your friends (and total strangers via YouTube comments) to find the cat in the fewest number of clicks.
This is what we expect YouTube to do: provide amusing, entertaining diversions in video format. I think it's interesting that the TV is being displaced by the Internet as the preferred method of wasting time in the Western world, as the Internet provides not only a practically infinite array of web pages to visit, but also a host of sub-domains that each provide practically limitless opportunities for time wasting (blogs, MySpace/Facebook, YouTube, porn etc.).
I liked Williams' video, and I was glad to see him acknowledge how much harder a CYOA is to create than a more traditional video. As we've seen in the video and computer game industry, any narrative with branching paths radically increases the time and energy required to produce the work. Ask any of my students who have attempted something similar -- they'll all tell you that CYOAs are a major pain in the butt. ...But they offer an interesting set of opportunities and demands for the reader/viewer/player.
One of the most familiar and frustrating of these demands is the problem of having to make choices without adequate information. How is the creator of a CYOA supposed to provide you, the r/v/p, with enough information to make an informed choice (which is not to say the right choice)? And how is the creator supposed to provide this information without making the r/v/p feel inundated with boring exposition? We're not Williams, and so we don't know Sparta's habits, nor do we know the layout of Williams' apartment or the rules of the house. Williams does a pretty good job of explaining these to us, but only after we've made a choice. I'll leave it to you to find these moments in the film -- I don't want to spoil any surprises.
CYOAs are a subject in one of the later chapters of my book, so I'll have more to say about them, and about Williams' effort, in the near future. But for now, enjoy the hunt for Sparta.
Posted by reparent at 3:50 PM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2008
...And Sometimes You Snore
Post coming soon. In the meantime, know that DD has been thinking, deeply, and possibly a little creepily, while you've been sleeping.
And snoring.
Posted by reparent at 6:40 AM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2008
Flower Power
Taking a break from most things digital today, here's something completely different.
Gardening. The mere word can strike fear into the hearts of even the strongest and bravest among us.
I don't like gardening. I suspect it has a lot to do with my parents' technique of using yardwork as punishment for me and my brothers. In a Texas summer that can be a death sentence. Boy howdy did it ever suck.
So, while I'm not fond of gardening, when The Spouse and I moved into our lovely townhouse, it featured a front walkway that just screamed wasteland.
See? That's our door on the left. It's at the end of that long, barren strip of vegetative death and despair.
After receiving some very generous gift cards to local fave Gardener's Supply from my parents and brother and sister-in-law, The Spouse and I set to work. (No one told us plants cost so freaking much. It was a very good thing those gift cards were so generous!)
The walkway presents certain challenges to the aspiring gardener. First, one side is very shady.
The other side is not only wider (requiring different plant cover strategies), but it also gets a lot more sun, which means that you can't put the same plants on both sides. So much for symmetry!
On top of all of that, the "soil" along the side of our walkway is barely that. It's mostly large rocks and clay. This isn't a problem if you're Martha Stewart circa 1996, and have an army of minions to "turn the soil, replacing it with 3-4 feet of hand-mulched soil enriched with your garden compost -- it's a good thing." Being not thus gifted with an army of soil-servants, we did the best we could with several bags of potting soil. Good luck, little plants. You're gonna need it.
And finally, we put in some clematis which, we hope, will soon grow up the fishing-line trellis we strung up in front of the house. Though you can't see it in this picture, those little guys have really gone nuts in the past few weeks.
And the best part of all? All of the plants we "installed" (as The Spouse calls it) are perennials, which means if these suckers survive we're done! Woo-hoo!!!
Posted by reparent at 5:13 PM | Comments (1)
June 22, 2008
Messed Up
Well, Movable Type just ate the relatively amusing entry I was about to post. So now you're stuck with this. It's a three-parter, and you really do need to click through and read the link targets.
First, this charming story of a much-beloved sadistic science teacher in Ohio.
Then, read this charming entry in the Conservapedia, the Wikipedia for and by conservatives.
Finally, read this charming reaction to the Conservapedia entry by Lawyers, Guns and Money's D. Make sure you read the comments -- they're choice.
And then, as a special added bonus, since I feel bad not dishing out my usual degree of meta-awareness and commentary, here's a meta-LOLCat to brighten your day.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bake some chocolate-chip cookies while I despair for humanity. And try to figure out how to accomplish all of that branding, home-schooler-tormenting, and sexual-immorality-promoting I need to demonstrate so I can get tenure and not have to care about whether I do a good job in the classroom.
Posted by reparent at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2008
It's the Return of Silly Web Quiz Saturday!
Hey everybody!
| I Am Cheerios1 -- And I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions2!!! |
 Like other Cheerios eaters, you want to be a responsible adult. But you can't help but still be a kid at heart! You try to make good decisions. You're a clean cut, conscientious person. You're the type of person who would never skip breakfast. Part of you thinks that breakfast is too important to miss... But a bigger part of you knows it's too fun to miss! |
1 This web quiz is available here.
2 For background on, and explanation of, the "I am aware of all internet traditions" internet meme, see here. For more examples, see here, and here, and here, and ...
Posted by reparent at 2:54 PM | Comments (3)
June 20, 2008
Cydonia Countdown
A while back, I included Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" video in a post about neo-retro-Westernism (I'm thinking of trademarking the term, or copyrighting it, or something... I'm sure The Spouse will be happy to explain the difference to me yet again). I asked you then to watch the video and pick out all of the allusions you could to other media and/or narratives and/or narrative/visual tropes.
Faithful commenter Liam rose to the challenge and did a great job. I was especially impressed with his catch of the blue-tinged holograms a la Star Wars.
But wait! There's more! I also noted the following:
- The early training sequence is strongly reminiscent of Paul Atreides' sparring session with the fighter drone from David Lynch's Dune.
- The "Flaming Energy Ball" pose is straight out of the manga/anime series Dragon Ball Z, in which it is a combat staple.
- The raptor makes me think of Ladyhawke, even though it doesn't do quite the same thing. In fact, the hawk-like bird doesn't fit at all, as it's forced to serve two narrative tropes at more or less the same time: it's both the alter-ego for our hero and a (vulture-like) symbol of the death awaiting him.
Which brings me to a great, though non-allusive sequence:
- The hawk raises its wings as if in flight (though it is clearly standing on a perch.
- Our hero bounces up and down as if riding his horse (though he is clearly standing on the ground).
- "A Gustof von Musterhausen Production" we're told in intertitle.
- Our heroine appears in a choker-shot (extreme close-up), mouthing "Oooh" -- is she impressed with the "moving" hero/heroes, or with Gustof? Who can tell? It's fabulous.
Back to the allusions.
- Liam flagged the "come hither" wave, which is a "taunt" used endlessly in anime and martial arts films. The deployment of said taunt almost always drives the enemy/ies into a mindless rage (hence the name), provoking them into charging recklessly toward the hero/heroes and thus their doom
- I could swear I've seen the car with jet rockets on its rear fenders (at 3:08 in the video) before. I thought it came from Cherry 2000 or Circuitry Man, but now I'm not sure. Any ideas?
- I truly love the shot of the camera crew visible in the mirror at 3:14.
- And I also love the irony of our hero mouthing, "No one's gonna take me alive!" at 3:51... while he's firmly and securely captured and restrained in the town stocks, soon to be pelted with manure.
- The woman in the shiny armored bikini on the unicorn is straight out of Heavy Metal.
- The sloppy licking-kiss the villain gives our heroine is Jabba's "kiss" with Princess Leah in Return of the Jedi.
- Our heroine's gallows outfit is Wilma Deering's from Buck Rodgers (go Erin Gray!).
- The motorcycle-in-the-old-west trope is the central plot point of Time Rider.
- Our hero's costume change from slimming black to not-so-slimming white plaid is reminiscent of Gandalf's reincarnation/return as Gandalf the White in Lord of the Rings.
- And finally, the Zoro mask our hero wears upon his return... speaks for itself, and yet makes no sense whatsoever.
Whew! I'm exhausted. What did I miss?
Posted by reparent at 2:54 PM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2008
Cars... and Disaster
This post was going to be about new "outrageous" cars, the cars that auto makers either produce one of, show off at auto shows, and then never put into production because they're just too cool, or that cost so much money that you and I and everyone we know will never ever see them? Yes, those.
But then I was catching up on some long-overdue blog reading last night and I learned that our good friends Sster and Attic Man (their noms de blog) have become victims of the Midwest flooding.
I mentioned our local paper yesterday, the Free Press, which published this picture (from the news wires, naturally):
The Spouse noticed it first, doing a double take on the grainy black-and-white picture of houses that had floated downstream like flotsam and jetsam, washed up against a bridge trestle. Turns out that Sster and Attic Man's house in Cedar Rapids is very near that bridge. They haven't been allowed back to their house yet, so no one really knows what's going on and how bad the damage is. If you know Sster and Attic Man, check out Sster's blog and zing them an e-mail of support.
But, because life goes on, and because thinking about flood victims half the country away who you can't do anything for at the moment is a sure recipe for depression, I guess we should look at a few of the outrageous cars.
First up is a video from BMW's new GINA project:
I especially liked this bit from Chris Bangle: "Emotion is really the added value to this. I mean, one way is saying you get better function or you get better alternative ways of doing things... but really we want to achieve a higher emotional plane out of this." Because when I first watched the video, I had a number of OMG! moments.
Having owned a convertible, I'm extremely hesitant about the GINA's road handling, though. Even tightly-stretched and clamped down convertible roofs flap and flutter in the wind as you drive the car with the top up. I'm left wondering how the GINA's skin will react to speed and atmosphere, especially with the split hood (which is incredibly cool).
The Spouse sent me this link to a Yahoo story about outrageous cars, and many of them are very cool. But one in particular caught my attention, and it wasn't even included as a picture in the article! (Bad, lazy Yahoo!) Here's the Jeep Renegade:
If you've ever played the game Halo, you recognize this as a blatant rip-off of the Warthog vehicle from the game (minus the chain gun, of course).
But while looking for the Jeep, I came across this concept car from Volkswagen, and I think it's a much cooler variation on the same theme:
And so, as gas prices head for the $6 mark, and as our friends try to figure out what to do now that their living room has become a sewage-filled aquarium, we can at least dream about better times and better, cooler cars.
(I'm still waiting, however, for the flying cars I was promised we'd have by the year 2000.)
Posted by reparent at 5:56 PM | Comments (2)
June 18, 2008
Today's Topic: STEALING!
Okay, I'll admit it -- I like Coldplay. Sigh. I know.
My not-so-secret shame has been getting a real workout with the all-Coldplay-all-the-time media blitz surrounding their new album. We were in England Outer Space when the first single, "Violet Hill" launched, and we got to hear it nonstop on BBC 1, 2, 3, 4, and Cymru. And it wasn't bad. So, yes, I downloaded it from the band's web page when we got back. It was free. Sue me.
Then the title track from the album, "Viva La Vida," launched. I really liked it. And then I started down that slippery slope of musical turpitude that ends with me buying the album... which hasn't happened yet, but it seems only a matter of time.
But then The Spouse noticed that Dr. Atrios over at Eschaton had dropped this bombshell:
Wow. The new Coldplay song, Viva la Vida, really is a Buggles ripoff. I hope Chris Martin at least wears the trademark specs when he sings.
(If, like me, "Buggles" rang a few bells, but nothing really came to mind, it may make you feel better to re-learn that Buggles (no definite article) were the New Wave band behind the first video broadcast on MTV: "Video Killed the Radio Star." So now you know.)
Personally, I don't really hear it. But beyond "VKtRS," I'm not a Buggles aficionado. More's the pity, I suppose, given my love of all things New Wave. But I digress...
And then, to make matters worse, I spot this video over on the Viral Video Chart:
Now I don't know what to believe! But it seems that Mr. Gwenyth Paltrow has some explaining to do.
And speaking of having some explaining to do, WTF is up with the Associated Press? The New York Times explains:
Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.
The AP position is that quoting from AP articles in a blog post is stealing from the AP, which sells its articles to newspapers for reprinting. Unfortunately, the AP here runs seriously afoul of the Fair Use doctrine, a problem noticed immediately by a huge number of prominent bloggers across the political spectrum. (For a good rundown of some of the heavy hitters weighing in on this, check out Cernig's post at Newshoggers.)
There is, of course, a boycott of AP now, as bloggers attempt to show the AP exactly what it is that quoting from them and linking to newspaper sites that publish them does for those newspapers. (Hint: it increases their number of page views, which increases their advertising fees, which increases their profits, which increases the demand for AP articles. Pretty neat, huh?) Well, not any more.
This is a real problem for me, and has been for a while, frankly. Not because I deeply want to steal from the AP (I don't), nor because I'm especially angry that the AP is trying to steal the right of Fair Use away from online writers (they can't). It's a problem because here in bucolic Vermont our local paper is positively filled with articles from the AP. In today's Burlington Free Press, for instance, the front page section included 26 articles from the AP. There were 4 articles from Free Press reporters.
I read the local paper every day and the New York Times on Sundays. If I want to share with you or anyone an article I read in the paper, I have an 87% chance of running into the AP news blockade. And I'm not talking about the boycott -- the Free Press doesn't put AP articles on their web page. That means that if I want to post a link to an article, or print it out for my students, I have to try to track down another newspaper somewhere that also ran the story and print it out from something like the DesMoines Register or the Dallas Morning News. Ugh!
Posted by reparent at 3:14 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2008
It's Not Random If You Use Numbers
As they say in my homeland, "Howdy!"
The downtime has been lovely, but as part of the new workplan I'm going to be posting something short each and every day to keep the writing mojo flowing.
So, to kick things off, a veritable potpourri of interesting, thought-provoking, and wiinsome (sic) stuff. And, as the title indicates, it's not a random collection of stuff because it's numbered!
~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~
1) Wii now have a Nintendo Wii! Oui, c'est vrai. And we even have a few games for it that allow online play with other proud Wiiple. At present, we have MarioKart Wii, Endless Ocean, and Trauma Center: New Blood. So, if you've got a Wii, and one or more of those games, too, zing me an e-mail so wii can exchange super-secret and highly irritating Wii-codes, which will then allow us to enter those codes into our Wii systems thus unlocking online play on a game-by-game basis. (Yes, the process seems to be exactly that tedious.)
~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~
2) With all of the gay marriage going on in Massachusetts, and now in California and New York (though New York took the easy way out by recognizing gay marriages without performing them), I imagine straight, married people around the country must be reduced to quivering piles of lime-green jello as they await the inevitable dissolution of their own marriages. As we've been told time and again by the "marriage is a straights-only club" members, gay marriage is the final straw that will break the (straight) marriage camel's back. And now, via AmericaBlog, we have proof:
~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~
3) Somebody, somewhere, posted a link to this Talking Jesus Doll (I kid you not), and I haven't been able to get the darn thing out of mind for days now.
It's not that I'm particularly religious... I'm not. I just think Talking Jesus is kinda hot. I really appreciate it when "toy" companies put in the time and energy it takes to make Talking Jesus an attractive Caucasian guy with flawless hair and a reassuringly upper Midwestern newscaster accent (i.e., the accent most Americans can't hear as an accent).
~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~
4) While I was poking around, looking for the original link to Talking Jesus, I found this on BoingBoing, a link to t-shirt designs refuting one of the primary arguments of Creationism/So-Called "Intelligent" Design"
See, the Creationists argue that you don't have to teach Creationism, per se in science classes, just teach "the controversy" over evolution, which would require teaching Creationism and/or "Intelligent" Design. Of course, among scientists there really is no controversy. Evolution is accepted as the paradigm for the appearance and development of life on earth. And yet they try to weasel religion in any way they can. (Goodness, this is becoming quite the theological post, isn't it?)
I bring this up in part because I like the shirt designs, and partly because I have an editorial cartoon on my office door that makes the same points with astrology, alchemy, phrenology, and other pseudo-sciences. But these are wearable. Cool.
Posted by reparent at 6:43 PM | Comments (1)