ENGL 680M: New Media

In the Fall of 2006 I received an email, filtered down through the chain of departmental command, regarding my course website from the previous Spring. The email regarded a comment exchange between two students from my Technical Writing class. Now, I make it a practice to at least skim all of my students’ comments. Early on in the semester I read them more carefully to ensure that students are “getting” the appropriate content, style, etc of blogging. Once I’m assured that they understand the basic principles, the 100+ comments a week don’t get the same careful attention.

There was a discussion of Whiteness as a study field, so I tracked down a brief explanation that seems pretty satisfactory.

It's always tough for me to hear about white privelege, as when I'm under stress (as for the last few weeks) I tend to put the blinders on to how other people's suffering is worse than mine. And yet I can begin to recognize how many cultural advantages I'm granted because of my whiteness (and maleness).

If I my CV is the topic of my blog then can I put my blog on my CV?

I'm just tossing this question out there because it's been an interesting discussion on the WPA listserve this week? Or at least at one point. It's so hard to tell know when information is new. It pretty much becomes new whenever I get to it. But I digress....

i have lived my second life for long enough to know i don't want to live that way any longer. . so now i'm at the drawing board again. normally, i would go ahead with the project despite losing interest, but i'm determined to be jazzed by the projects i have to (get to?) work on. so...i'm thinking about a number of things. a lot of them revolving around music and whether or not music is considered (can be considered?) new media.

I've spent the last couple of weeks figuring out what I want to do for my final project, thinking about other projects that have been done, and getting advice from tech-savvier people than me. I found a space to publish my final project (the OWL, not surprisingly) and even got H. Allen Brizee, fearless OWL coordinator, all worked up about it. Upon the advice of my tech savvy friends and after a little investigating on my own, I've decided to use Adobe Flash for what I want to do.

A miracle happened: I was able to log on to second life. I had, all the time, been blaming Vista for my inability to get onto SL, when all along it was Norton Anti Virus causing the chaos (and not letting me access the library data bases, or listen to NPR). Now that Norton is gone my computer is almost fully functional.

So I’m designing a Flash, persuasive game for my final project (walk by the computer lab in HEAV sometime and you might hear me cursing at the screen), and I had an odd thought during my hours and hours of desperate, frantic frustration. Basically, that the desperate, frantic frustration I’m having while designing a video game is very similar to the kinds I get while playing them. There’s a lot of similarity between the two processes.

I saw this really quick blurb on game pro about "causal gamers and it got me thinking about how we define "casual gamers," or how casual gamers define (or don't define) themselves. I find myself wondering about the "shame" of gaming, or taking on a "gamer" label.

For example, my mother refuses to call herself a gamer, but she plays minesweeper, Myst, spider solitaire, and various other games on a regular basis. When I asked her about the discrepancy, she said, "you're right, but I'm not serious about it [playing games]."

So this is a game whose sole purpose in life seems to be mockery of other games... and in the process it really makes some excellent (albeit tongue-in-cheek) points about "real" games.

amazingly, these are not lovesick zombies (that's the title of the game)

I just stumbled across this on Milk & Cookies...uh,...then some place....godonlyknowshowIgotthere....

Just use the link.

It's a hoot!

http://www.gamesforwork.com/games/play-6639-Haunted_House_Candy_Hunt-Fla...