ENGL 680M: New Media

A close friend of mine recently found out that his WoW account had been hacked. Someone gained access to his account, took all his characters' (9 or so of them) items, money, gear (including all the clothes his characters were wearing), etc. and sold them on the auction house or transferred them to his "best" (highest level and favorite) character, his hunter. The hacker then proceeded to pay ($20) to transfer his hunter to another server.

How many of you have seen the meta-games on gaming over at Kongregate? I blogged it a bit back so that I would remember to share it with ya'll and forgot There are 4 games in the series and I highly recommend them.

This is more a cry for help than anything...

I rolled a character in Second Life over the weekend, since all the cool kids were doing it. (Points at Kristen.)

I'm having huge problems with lag... like soul-crushing, 30-second-delay, hold-on-I'm-going-to-get-a-snack-maybe-a-pita-and-some-hummus lag.

Any SL vets have advice for how to clear the lag up? My ping in other online games is typically around the 65ms mark, so the problem seems local to SL, where my ping hovers around 350, then spikes occasionally up to "pony express". The SL FAQ and forums have been less than helpful.

You know who you are. Have ya'll seen the Summer 2007 issue of the Innovations journal with all of the SL case studies? Check it out.

So, I'm obsessed with that Unicef game that we played in class; I can't stop. I've actually gotten pretty good at it, though, in the sense that I can keep the whole family alive and debt-free for all four seasons. I wanted to share a couple of strategies that I've discovered:

1. Don't let your daughter go to school. It's a waste of money, because there aren't any available jobs that more education qualifies her for anyway. Just make her work.
2. Don't let the wife go to school either. It doesn't qualify her for squat anyway, so it's a waste of time and money.

First, what ever happened to Terrence Trent D'Arby?

Second, do things like "attack" applications on Facebook (Zombies, Vampires, Super Poke) count as games? Do they count as new media/electronic games?

Purdue has 2 art galleries that are easy to get to (besides the ones ALL the way over in the art & design building). One's in Stewart near what I hear is a "library." I haven't been to this "library," but the gallery space is nice. The other gallery is in the Union on the upper floor near the entrance on Grant.

Right now the gallery in the Stewart Gallery is an exhibition called "Dried· Cracked· Wet· Dripping· Blooming
Installations by Charles A. Gick." This features some digital art and mixed media stuff. New Media anyone?

Like Lars, I wondered if Bogost’s concept of procedurality is really specific to videogames. While I was reading, I kept thinking about the board game Life. My brother and I always used to play it when I was a kid. I would inevitably lose (he's eight years older and we played when I was like, 9), and then I would lay awake all night worried that because I couldn't win at the game of Life, I would end up sucking at life. I was an anxious child.

For some reason, the section on JFK Reloaded in Bogost really crystallized for me what procedutal rhetoric is. Couldn't find the game, but there are a number of Youtube videos of people recording their playing of the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqV-tNL0vbE

Edit:

Correction, I have found the game available for download

http://www.cool.com.au/computers-technology/personal-computers/jfk-reloa...

Downloading now, haven't played it yet.

K-Dawg and I (that’s Ms Kristen Moore for those of you not in the know) are currently working on a research proposal for Empirical class that involves assessing to what extent, and in what specific ways, instructors are utilizing new media and visual rhetoric in English 106. The way I’m approaching the research is to wrap it around the fact that the 106 Goals/Means/and Outcomes do specifically ask for New Media in the class.