Returning whence I came, ergodic literature in tow

(For an earlier build-up to this post, see Resources not Services.)

Years ago, I asked where was my Lord of the Rings? Many sympathized with the lament and it's clear they got the message: where was my "epic", my "lasting impression", my "contribution to society"? It's four years later and I've realized the Lord of the Rings was the wrong series to associate the depression with: it's just not good enough.

I've no problem with Middle-earth, and it's still an admirable thing to appreciate and enjoy. What I want to create, however, is something slightly different, something slightly more mysterious. There's been plenty written about Middle-earth, and its epic can be as simple or as complex as you'd like, but it's always optional: the additional books expand archaically on Tolkien's mythology and intentions, but none of it is truly necessary to the core reading.

What I prefer to read, and hopefully write, is something more akin to ergodic literature, something that "requires a 'non-trivial effort' to traverse the text". I consider Infinite Jest a recent example because, although you can read it by "merely moving ... along lines of text and turning pages", there's so much depth and complexity that you'll gain more appreciation via annotation. House of Leaves is another example: atypical page layouts and complexities abound. I've not read any of Thomas Pynchon or James Joyce (gasp!), but I suspect they'd also match my considerations.

Complexity and depth isn't the only thing I find palatable - one downside of the books above is that their "easter eggs" are based on the real world. Still, ergodic alternatives do exist, such as Milorad Pavich's Dictionary of the Khazars; my encyclopedic Ghyll was inspired by this work and was built by dozens of "scholars" over many months. Jorge Luis Borges and most alternate reality games like Perplex City also require "non-trivial" efforts to appreciate them.

Finally, wordplay and and a wry grin are high on my list, and most of the above works contain one, the other, or both. Vladimir Nabokov sprinkled "linguistic playfulness" throughout his work, and Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice offered an understanding of Wonderland and its embedded secrets that I hadn't anticipated. Creating something that can be read straight through, then spelunked for hidden treasure, then appreciated through research and annotation, is very appealing to me. Something "subtle", as sbp puts it.

The only problem is that I haven't written fiction for decades. I've done two technical books and a dozen articles for O'Reilly, one for Apple, a year-long column for MacTech magazine, non-fiction this, non-fiction that. Ghyll could be considered fiction, but it was written with a scholarly "voice", making it more an exercise in imagination than craft. The last time I really wrote fiction was high school, when New Hampshire English teacher Michael Phelps read one of my Dickensian works to the class and told them they'd see my face on the back of a book someday. Prophetic, and a memory that will stay with me forever. In 2003, I e-mailed Mr. Phelps to tell him of my progress and memories and he replied that, as a teacher, these sorts of updates are vitally important. If you've not reached out to yours, I heartily admonish you to.

Relearning fiction is something I'll begin shortly.


Anyone play Guild Wars?



Link Dumpage for 2009-06-19

Notable links enjoyed today:

  • Delicious tags: pixar up cancer movies death sad
    "The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie." Wonderful story, peacefully ending with "Colby died about seven hours after seeing the film." Especially poignant to me, at least, was "Pixar officials declined to comment on the story or name the employees involved.", which screams "This was not a marketing stunt. Leave us alone." Good job, Pixar.


Midlife crisis or in a rut? Make Morbus Melancholy!











Link Dumpage for 2009-05-29

Notable links enjoyed today:

  • "The Story Behind The Looking Glass Laboratories' Alternate Reality Game. The official reasons as to why this ARG was created are: There are several friends and business associates that didn't understand the concept of an "alternate reality game." Some of these friends are prospective writers who did not understand the concept and how it can be used to portray a storyline. We hope we have expressed some of those possibilities. To see what it really is like on the other side of the curtain. You can never understand the amount of work and dedication a "puppetmaster" has to put in to a project until you become one; now having been one, we have more respect for PMs than you can possibly imagine."
  • Delicious tags: movies horror classics
    "This is when I decided to make my own list of horror movies that A) people don’t know about, B) should be talked about more often, C) are as good as the known classics, and D) need to be seen, for Heaven’s sake!" Includes: And Soon the Darkness..., The Exorcist III, Bunny Lake is Missing, Hour of the Wolf, Long Weekend, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Who Can Kill A Child?, Just Before Dawn, Magic, and The Innocents.
  • Operation: Sleeper Cell postmortem broken up into preparation and design, fundraising, project management, marketing, mission design, game design, live events and website, tech, and then a recap with player comments and statistics.
  • I love reading postmortems and summaries of ARG-y things (even for ones I was a judge/consultant on, like this one:) "Operation: Sleeper Cell was made by Law 37 to raise money and awareness for Cancer Research UK as a result of the Let's Change The Game competition. The game ran for ten weeks in late 2008 and we raised £3668 in total. Everybody who worked on the game did so in their spare time as volunteers."
  • Delicious tags: movies endings
    "We'll just fix that in post!" has always been the rallying cry for filmmakers in the middle of a troubled production. Unfortunately, sometimes things have a nasty habit of actually getting broken in post-production, usually thanks to studio interference. Victims include: I Am Legend, Superman II, Dawn of the Dead, Live Free or Die Hard, and Blade Runner."
  • Delicious tags: sex wii games
    "Dark Room Sex Game is a Wiimote enabled game in which players try to climax with their partners - with no on-screen visuals whatsoever ... Dark Room Sex Game is an erotic multi-player rhythm game without any graphics, played only by audio and haptic cues. The game can be played with Nintendo Wiimote controllers or a keyboard. In Dark Room Sex Game, the player works with his or her partner to find a mutual rhythm, then speeds up gradually until climax. In four-player "orgy" mode, players swap partners randomly and compete to reach orgasm the fastest."
  • Delicious tags: scientology religion history
  • Delicious tags: design gamedev games
    "After last year's column I got a flood of new suggestions from frustrated players and developers, so here are nine new Twinkie Denial Conditions for the ninth installment of Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!: Failure to Explain Victory and Loss Conditions; Time-Constrained Demos; Obvious and Cheap Reskins (also known as Cookie-Cutter Games); Computer Crashed While Saving? Game Over!; Friendly AI Characters That Do More Harm Than Good; Fake Interactivity; Bad Gamepad-to-Mouse/Keyboard Conversions (and vice versa); Setting the Player Up to Fail; Your Only Save is Immediately Before Your Death."
  • Delicious tags: video corpus clock youtube
    "The Corpus Clock has been invented and designed by Dr John Taylor for Corpus Christi College Cambridge for the exterior of the college's new library building ... The clock has been designed by the inventor and horologist Dr John Taylor and makes ingenious use of the grasshopper escapement, moving it from the inside of the clock to the outside and refashioning it as a Chronophage, or time-eater, which literally devours time."
  • Delicious tags: achievements games
    "What in-game objectives ought to merit achievements? How can games best be designed with achievements (and achievers) in mind? What further rewards can be tied to achievements to enhance their effective use in games? How much worth do game achievements truly have? In order to better approach these and other questions, GameCyte consulted Rene Weber, a professor of psychology and telecommunications, and Patrick Shaw, a game designer/developer, who recently collaborated to research and define player types and motivations in modern gaming. Weber and Shaw offered us their considerable expertise in order to examine why game achievements have become such a vital part of our gaming experience."


Link Dumpage for 2009-05-28

Notable links enjoyed today:

  • "As almost everyone knows by now, various major daily newspaper published, on July 10 2008, a photograph of four Iranian missiles streaking heavenward; then Little Green Footballs (significantly, a blog and not a daily newspaper) provided evidence that the photograph had been faked ... For me it raised a series of questions about images. Do they provide illustration of a text or an idea of evidence of some underlying reality or both? And if they are evidence, don’t we have to know that the evidence is reliable, that it can be trusted?"
  • "Because so little primary historical work has been done on the classic text computer game "Colossal Cave Adventure", academic and popular references to it frequently perpetuate inaccuracies ... This paper analyzes previously unpublished files recovered from a backup of Woods's student account at Stanford, and documents an excursion to the real Colossal Cave in Kentucky in 2005. In addition, new interviews with Crowther, Woods, and their associates (particularly members of Crowther's family) provide new insights on the precise nature of Woods's significant contributions."


First in a series about the Kindle 2

The first in my technical series on the Kindle 2 has been posted over at O'Reilly:



Forcing SimpleTest to use the live database




class FunctionalGenericTestCase extends DrupalWebTestCase {
  function getInfo() {
    return array(

  // ignore SimpleTest's normal fake database creation and fake data
  function setUp() {
    // support existing database prefixes. if we didn't,
  function tearDown() { }

  // ensure items from mocks exist.
  function testFrontpageChanged() {

  // check for all end-user fields.
  function testContentTypeFields() {






Facebook gets more evil

Per Dave Farber's IP list, Facebook has changed their TOS again. It's always said "You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you [post ...]", but they allowed an escape clause: if you wanted to close your account, they'd lose the ability to repurpose your content.

That's changed, however, with the new TOS, which drops "If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire." and instead adds "The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: [nearly everything]." And, since their TOS allows passive acceptance, if you've used the service since February 4th, you've already agreed to this change: "Your continued use of the Facebook Service after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms."

And, no, you can't take them to court. You agreed not to by continuing to use their service.

More at this Consumerist post, which suggests that certain privacy settings negate this.

Link Dumpage for 2009-02-10

Notable links enjoyed today:




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