miscellaneous topics

i'm caught between two platforms...

robotwisdom.com will blink out again
at the end of this month
unless another volunteer host turns up

i was appalled to learn that google
declines to index pages with more than 100 links
assuming they're spam
(i think pages with <100 are lazy)


google-reader-shared
has killed linkblogging for me
at least temporarily

i've fallen in love with reCAPTCHA

the little boost of knowing
i'm proofing random texts
makes that burden a joy

i tried the new online Monopoly
and find it pointless
except the perspective it offers
on googlemaps AI

if it implemented a map-recaptcha
i'd love it
to fill out the googlemaps model
with geographic intelligence

(Monopoly relaunches this week
if you want to try it out

about the only strategy
is sabotaging neighbors
or not

rural areas have few/no neighbors)


it may be a dark age for linkblogging
but it's interesting times for web 2.0

with tiny tweaks from myspace to facebook to twitter
bringing revolutionary vibe-shifts

which have many evolutions to go

it has to go back to
usenet's decentralised distribution




and i've got an idea
for a new antimath symbol
probably just "+"
that represents
a hypothetical absolute moral ideal

snubbed by almost all
subbing half-measures

pursued tirelessly by one or two

 
 
 
 
 
.

Rulebase for simulations

is there a site yet
collecting universal rules
for every sort of simulation game?

eg fighting rules
like 'guard your vulnerable regions'

with annotations about which games
implement those rules well/badly/not-at-all

Where is games' Alan Moore?

all my best work
(imho)
falls in the no man's land
between robot and wisdom
science and literature

and i've learned patience
regarding recognition

(there's a loose inverse correlation
between how highly i rate
any given page on my website
and how many inbound links
it's managed to attract)

but the general topic
of psychological semantics
now grows perceptibly in popularity
year by year
(eg especially with The Sims
and the Semantic Web)

but when an A-list brainiac
like Quinn Norton
asks the very basic question
Where is games' Alan Moore?
it forces me to recalculate
the yawning gap remaining

and seize the opportunity
to sketch my analysis
of gap-bridge engineering...




we're long overdue
(last i checked)
for a website about game-semantics

that reverse-engineers
for every important game
what internal variables it deploys
to map the changes in its
state of play

especially those variables
describing players
and NPCs
(non-player characters)

so most all games know
players' X and Y positions
and probably their state of health

and possibly some of their
strengths and weaknesses

and adding new variables
is one important way
game designers can innovate

because each such variable
allows a small set of new subplots

verbs that increase its value
or decrease its value

powers that emerge when its value
crosses a hidden threshold

and even Alan Moore
could do little or nothing
of enduring literary value

with the impoverished palette
of variables and verbs
so far understood




one of the grandest virtues
in game design
is orthogonality

in which a limited palette
is milked to its utmost
by exhaustive combinatorics

(X-com was outstanding
in this regard)

and it's instructive to explore
the possible plot-combinatorics
of (eg) a familiar variable
like health:

valued-friend-falls-ill
desperate-search-for-power-up-item
friend-recovers or friend-dies

mysterious-plague-infects-many
scientists-seek-vaccine

old-age-brings-health-vulnerabilities

powerful-being-has-achilles-heel




but implementing any of these
in a game
in a dramatically effective way
normally requires
many new supporting variables
which may or may not
contribute an orthogonally
(dis)proportionate
payoff




and when these
foreseeable subplots
are weighed
for literary impact
against, say,
Polti's 36 situations

or any more-recent
inventory of subplots

it becomes clear
that we just don't yet know
where to start
adding literary depth

which variables to choose
to encode which basic set
of stories

More: Representing stories in Web2.0

The idealism crushers

the previews for 'bully'
raise my hopes, a little
because they suggest a battle
(in the setting of a school)
between idealists
and idealism-crushers

which is a classic literary theme that's
so far
problematic for computer games

the classic/generic modern political novel
shows an idealist learning the ropes
and suffering infinite compromises

or via charm/luck/authorial-bad-faith
turning some corner of the tide

and the same for novels about journalists
and the same for novels about soldiers
and the same for novels about scientists
and the same for novels about educators
and the same for novels about artists
and the same for novels about social workers
etc etc etc

history offers few inspiring success stories

and computer game authors
resort to the same bad faith
to give idealism room to win

(can the political reformer ever hope
to knock on enough doors
to counteract the corporadoes'
swiftboat campaign?)

but in the miniaturised society
of a boarding school
surely one can knock on every door
and enlist fair-minded allies

Most innovative game platform

i have almost no interest
in playing games
but i'm fascinated by their potential

so many recent games
have sounded interesting
that i'd lost track of their compatibility
with various platforms

so this little table
is meant to remedy that:

      Animal Crossing DS
      Electroplankton DS
           Nintendogs DS
            Warioware DS
             Katamari    PS2         PSP
          Guitar Hero    PS2
    Taiko Drum Master    PS2
DanceDance Revolution    PS2 Xbox
Simpsons: Hit and Run    PS2 Xbox PC
          Psychonauts    PS2 Xbox PC
                Sims2 DS PS2 Xbox PC PSP
           The Movies             PC
          Second Life             PC
              Lumines                PSP

PS2 is the clear winner, but the DS gets extra credit for lo-tech creativity.

Bookmark ergonomics

if interface-design
ever gets a theory

its core must be
ergonomics
ie
calculating
and minimizing
the effort required
by each interface command




managing Web bookmarks
to minimize longterm effort
requires considerable
advance setup-effort

but will repay handsomely
every time you click




i see three major groupings
for bookmarks:

rss-ables
that largely take care of themselves

non-rss regulars
that i group by update-schedule
as toolbar icons

and irregulars
which i'm addressing now




pick a category like
movies music books games

and think of all your favorite
irregular sites
for that category

eg for movies
i use imdb
irregularly
when i want reference-background
on a particular movie or movie-person

rotten tomatoes
when i want an overview
of critics' opinions

script-o-rama
to look for online scripts

one of the spoilers site
when i want a full plot summary

cap
for its measure of offensiveness

robb's oops gallery
for vidcaps of its nude scenes

etc

and each
irregular time
i need one of these

i have to track down the url
maybe just from memory, retyping it
maybe in my bookmarks file
maybe via google
maybe via another site

but ergonomically
all of these methods are
vastly more expensive
than rss or toolbar icons

so suppose
to optimize
we (each) create a custom page
with a normal toolbar icon

that's our irregulars jump-page

that loads instantly
(by minimizing html-junk
and keeping a copy on our local hard drive)

that sorts these reference-sites
by category:
movies music books games
reference firefox html

with each category getting
one line's worth of links:

movies: imdb tomatoes scripts spoilers cap robb's [etc]
music: webjay yahoo lyrics [etc]
books: OlB pGut used complete dy [etc]
games: reviews jay goodexp [etc]
ref: dict thes rhymes wildcard [etc]
firefox: extensions updates [etc]
html: entities [etc]
etc:

so that your top n-hundred
irregular sites
require the same icon-click
followed by a simple second
scan and click?

isn't this ergonomically optimal?




and further
suppose we use Ning
to share and compare
these jump pages

tweaking them from time to time
and re-generating a simple-as-possible page
for download?

poll: would this work for you?

I've done something similar
I've done something better
I use a similar page created by others
My bookmark manager does fine
I'd use this if it were automated (eg at Ning)
I plan to do it, Ning or not
It's too much work
I don't understand it yet