Mark Danger Chen

bob loblaw Digital Media

Unfortunately, the real Bob Loblaw isn’t a lawyer like he is in Arrested Development… boo… I wonder if bobloblawlawblog.com is taken…

I ride these buses most days… and man is it a pain!

Read the story about this photo at Slog, the Stranger’s blog.

Not sure if they coined the term, but “busterfuck” is awesome.

Moving to my own web host let me resurrect the travel blog that my brother and I ran when we biked across the country way back in 2000!

Read all about Max and Mark’s cross-country bicycle trip!

So, I finally moved my blog over to my hosted domain.  I mostly did this so I could install some cool widgets and other code into the page.  I got side-tracked by all the cool themes I could install and check out.  I think I like this one.

Also, I figured out how to use my del.icio.us bookmarks as my blogroll/links list, but in order to make it categorized, I had to arbitrarily tag some of them as “misc” which of course doesn’t help the collective social network at all.  Ah well…

Now that del.icio.us works, though, I’m going to have to start using it more.  :P

I think I will bookmark more permanent links there and share newsy stuff using the Google Reader widget.  Neat!

Up next, I need to install itty Bitty RPG.  :)

Oh and with this blog move, I was able to resurrect the old Chang’s Mongolian Grill Posse posts though I was unable to retain who authored each one.  Now I have to fix my links so they all work…  bleh.

And, finally, know what’s crazy?  Within 3 hours of installing this Wordpress blog, I had 75 spam comments awaiting moderation.  Wow.

The Ultimate D&D Gaming Cycle Flowchart

From the Great Geek Manual (via guildie Ignacio Solis).

Awesomely funny.

So, Phil Bell, my new adviser, has weekly meetings with all his students. Wow.

Anyway, he gave me some feedback on my answer to exam question 2 (the lit review one) and suggested I read some more stuff and edit the essay a bit to reflect a more focused application of the theories I named as applied to games. I could look at this in two ways… oh damn, I have to revise or yay, someone gave me feedback and I can learn from it. :) I’ll go with the latter, but can’t help but think that I wouldn’t be in this sort of position if I had access to a group project outside of classes from the get-go as it seems pretty clear that students in collaborative projects have the support needed to deepen their understanding of stuff. Or am I wrong?

I think I might have to send an email out to the Madison-MIT crazy ass network to ask if anyone wants to form a virtual reading group with me as it is pretty clear to me that I am playing (and failing) at a catch up game with people who can just talk to someone else doing games research in everyday contexts.

Anyway, also in the meeting with Phil this week, we discussed possible dissertation topics. One that I might’ve mentioned before is to look at a group of players across off-screen and on-screen contexts to see if their teamwork and general interactions and relationships are similar/different. The easier route to take, however, might be to analyze the mountain of data I collected for my WoW paper with different theoretical lenses, paying particular attention, for example, to the social dynamics and power relations at play. I could even attempt to quantify and measure certain things like level of communication events or types of utterances on different nights. Stuff to think about. Which would help the games research community more?

One thing I noticed while at GLS was that a lot of folk seemed to be talking about similar things from different angles. Here’s a list:

1. participatory culture and new media literacy (Henry Jenkins and Alice Robison)
2. ludic bureaucracy (Thomas Malaby)
3. gamer mindset (Jim Gee)

The common theme in all of these topics is that gamers and people in general are in a new age where the traditional ways of structuring and organizing things no longer applies. The gamer mindset focuses on exploration, transgression, pushing the system, trial and error, emergent phenomenon, etc. all of which is essentially a subset (I think) of living in a participatory culture. It’s not really a knowledge economy, but more of a social economy. Your positionality and network and the skill you have in plying that network will get you far in life. The old bureaucracy is being replaced by one that doesn’t attempt to control and order everything; instead it supports emergent actions and movements.

This of course has huge implications for how I teach the technology class to future teachers that Yen-Ling and I run… How do we prepare teachers so that they can prepare their students? It’s hard enough just trying to expose new teachers to the gamer mindset, Web 2.0, etc. How do we help them develop the skills necessary to help kids develop a critical view of the world they live and participate in?  In other words, I think our teacher ed program is working under the old model too much.  Kids and adults will need, if not already need, equitable access and sponsorship to new technologies.  Participation now depends more than ever on social skills and cultural capital and the skills involved with content creation and mediation.  Yet our schools and teachers are still emphasizing knowledge and facts rather than processes and usage of knowledge.

I’ve been meaning to post photos from Saturday in Madison soon… this space reserved.

[Edited Thursday... finally!]

So, after a night of way too much beer…. (and I should note that when I say way too much I mean our tables had 2 pitchers courtesy of Kurt too much which basically went undrunk… undrunken.. undrinked…? whatever. and NOT that I had way too much beer since as most of my friends know, I don’t really drink beer.)

Anyway, after a night of way too much beer for our tables, Moses and I walked to his place (partly alongside Kurt and Josh). When we got there, we were setting up the air mattress and stuff when his roommate entered (about 2:30-3:00 AM) with not one, but TWO women he had picked up or something… they went to his room and he came out to the kitchen to fix up a cocktail once they got settled. While passing us on his way to the kitchen he said something like, “holy shit.” Whispered incredulously. This was a proper time to use “holy shit” if any, I thought. We figured he was implying that he was just about to do what many men fantasize about. Ha.

Ok, so I digress from the trip to Madison. You’re probably more interested in hearing about the arts fair the next day. :P

Continue reading “GLS day 3 (the aftermath)”

I missed this because I was at the Games Learning Society conference, but it is damn newsworthy…

Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised

By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: July 11, 2007

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona said that Bush administration officials tried to weaken or suppress health reports.

I met a ton of people for the first time at Games Learning Society. Here’s a brain dump of who I can remember (I’ll link to each of them soon… running out of steam right now… :( ):

• Rebecca Black
• Samantha Blackmon
• Ian Bogost
• Ted Castranova (well, technically, we didn’t meet, but I saw him…)
• Mia Consalvo
• Ben DeVane (and wife Amanda)
• Josh Diaz
• Julian Dibbell
• Elonka Dunin
• Shree Durga
• Debbie Fields
• Justin Hall
• Erica Halverson
• Chris Holden (and wife Sarah)
• Tori Horton
• Aaron Hung
• Dan Hunter
• Shawna Kelly
• Lane Lawley
• Thomas Malaby
• Dan Norton
• Nathaniel Pope
• Alice Robison
• Lauren Silberman
• Dave Simkins
• Bert Snow
• Doug Thomas
• Bill Tomlinson
• Mark Wagler
• Dave White
• Lee Wilson
• Moses Wolfenstein
• Suze Woolf
• Eric Zimmerman
• Renata
• Matt
• Dana and I think her boyfriend from Florida
• Carole?
• Tim?
• a bunch of people at the LAN party whose names I’ve forgotten

And people I’ve previously met:

• Lisa Galarneau
• Jim Gee
• Betty Hayes
• Henry Jenkins
• Liz Lawley
• Brett Shelton
• Kurt Squire
• Constance Steinkuehler (big wit baby!)

And, of course, people I go to or went to school with:

• Laurie McCarthy
• Tom Satwitcz (now at U of Georgia)
• Jen Stone (former adviser, now at U of Alaska Anchorage)