All posts by markdangerchen

Mark Chen is an independent researcher of gaming culture and spare-time game designer. He is the author of Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. Currently, he is looking into experimental and artistic games to promote exploration of moral dilemmas and human nature, researching DIY subcultures of Board Game Geek users, and generally investigating esoteric gaming practices. Mark also holds appointments at Pepperdine University, University of Washington, and University of Ontario Institute of Technology, teaching a variety of online and offline courses on game studies, game design, and games for learning. He earned a PhD in Learning Sciences/Educational Technology from the University of Washington and a BA in Studio Art from Reed College.

elections getting in the way of work

or maybe I should say that my emotions over elections are getting in the way…

Apparently, the governor’s race in WA might be going to the republican Rossi instead of dem Gregoire (even though she’s just barely ahead in polls) due to good early voting turnout in rural areas. I think the fear is that people in Seattle and other cities won’t bother voting since the country will go for Obama with or without us, not realizing that their state’s governor is at risk, too.

[Edit] What the ? Check out this completely different account saying that Gregoire leads by a wider margin than polls indicated among early voters.

In California, prop 8 looks scary as hell, too. 🙁

Makes it rather hard to concentrate on work and these two papers I have due later this month.

Fallout 3 gets delivered to my door this afternoon, which surely can’t be good either…

Some states already have more early vote-by-mail turnout than their turnout in previous elections!

And… it seems to be coming from states with higher percentage of black voters!

FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: The Black Turnout Surge, Already In Progress

site seems to be working okay

I switched to a new hosting plan with more bandwidth so hopefully this site won’t exceed its limit any time soon like it did a few days ago.

Also, all I did was ftp everything over and create/populate the wordpress database with a backup of my old one. I’m amazed it all seems to be working, but please let me know if you find any broken links or whatnot.

thanks!

satire illustrations of the candidates

Zina Saunders

(via BizarroBlog)

Reading in Grad School

Check out Sean’s tips on graduate school level reading!

This is timely for new grad students, and, coincidentally, a couple of new students I know here at UW have mentioned the difficulty of reading on a grad level, so yay!

Of particular note, which I haven’t done but damn, that’s a good idea… is to make a simple database to keep track of papers read and their main points, etc.

Transformation Tracker » Blog Archive » Reading in Grad School

Switching web hosting plans

This site might be down for a while some time this weekend as I move stuff over to a new hosting plan.

In other news, I found a torrent for the old, old 1993? game Darklands!

Roger’s photos from Copenhagen!

Check them out on his flickr acct!

Some highlights:

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

IR9 Copenhagen

My Google map of Copenhagen


View Larger Map

Know what’s sad?

I was singing that Smiths’/Morrisey song Girlfriend in a Coma on the way to Miller Hall today… well… singing in my head… and I thought, man, I bet most of these kids around me have never heard it.