Academia, Life

Trying out two new things, plus really busy week ahead

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New things:

  1. Google AdSense (see that new search thingie up at the top right? and the ad on the right?) – Fellow Reedie Erik gave me a bunch of tips to make it so regular readers don’t see the ads which I’ll try to get to some time this week. Just thought I’d see how much revenue this thing generates anyway… Maybe none, but maybe some…
  2. I finally admitted to myself that I don’t really play WoW anymore and thus uninstalled it last week. Well, sorta. I still have it on my laptop and intend to log in once in a while to finish up mail and bank stuff and get Thog in a state to park indefinitely (read: until the expansion probably). The catalyst to this uninstall? Call of Duty 4, Culpa Innata, and Gears of War take up a lot of disk space, but truth is I haven’t really felt compelled to play since August.  🙁  CoD4 is amazing, set in the near future rather than WW2. CI is a point-and-click adventure game set in a utopian/dystopian future where society is divided into a class structure based on ambition, greed, and capital. Nice fascist state, in other words. The player takes control of a character who was raised in the system and has completely bought into it. It’s interesting being forced into the role–definitely a political statement by the game developers. While I wouldn’t give it 100% like Just Adventure did (a few bugs and camera frustrations as well as kind of a barren game world), it is a pretty good game. GoW is being installed as I type this. We’ll see how it is.

Busy week:

  1. The oral defense for my general exams is this Thursday. (If you’re interested in reading my written answers you can find them here: 1, 2, old 3, new 3 (essentially the same as my app for Spencer).)
  2. I might be meeting Constance Steinkuehler and David Simkins via phone tomorrow to figure out how similar my data is to other people’s and whether data sharing/collaboration should occur. But if not, I sent them some sample data.
  3. LIFE will have a meeting about some Second Life projects that the center might want to pursue tomorrow, too.
  4. Also tomorrow, Nigella Lawson is giving a book signing at the UW bookstore. Going with Robin = fun!
  5. Robin and I really need to finish up that bookshelf we’re making so that we can fill it with the books that are sitting in boxes in our living room in time for our party on Thanksgiving…
  6. Too many games. Crysis is almost out.
Life

Surreal nights and days

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So, I went to a panel on Networked Public Spheres this afternoon that included one presenter talking about how young people are volunteering in unprecedented amounts but not voting much.  This can be thought of as a change from dutiful citizenry to actualized citizenry.  Interesting.  And then I immediately went to a ONE Campaign event pushing young voter participation.  Weird contrast.

The ONE thing was populated by a whole slew of really young undergrads.  Felt weird being there, so I left (and missed out on free pizza).  🙁   But of course the ONE campaign is much more than just voter turnout, so not sure why I left…

Now I am sitting in the HUB deciding whether to go to Lions for Lambs tonight or watch a basketball game.  😛

I watched Darfur Now earlier this week and it was really good, though I wish it ended with more information about what individuals could do.

Last evening I had a really good talk with another student who helped me solidify my research agendas.

It seems like I’ve been accomplishing more in the evenings these last couple of weeks than during the day, in sort of informal hanging out with people rather than structured scheduled meetings.  Is this what it’s like to not take classes or just a tiny anomaly slice of my life?

You know what, I bet this weird disjointed existence is related to being between major computer games…  Or maybe it’s just that I am idle and so am thinking about stuff more.

Life

Our mail keeps getting sent to the wrong place

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In the last year or so our mail is consistently misdelivered to our neighbors and vice-versa.  It’s very likely the reason why we missed the deadline to pay for her benefits this past summer and why we keep missing important stuff and/or have to request original senders to resend stuff. What a pain in the ass.

Robin did a search on the web and found others with similar problems.  Check out this great thread:

I want my snail mail! (via Ask MetaFilter)

Academia

Spencer Foundation dissertation fellowship application

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I just applied for the Spencer dissertation fellowship this morning!  It took a bit of writing and several revisions.

It strikes me as odd that there are probably several students who are applying from UW’s College of Ed this year, yet we haven’t talked to each other.  Wouldn’t it be nice to know about the others and form a support/reading group?  I’ll suggest that to ASCE (Associated Students of the College of Ed) for next year.

In line with this desire for more transparency,  below is my abstract (200 word limit), and I posted the personal statement (400 word limit) I used on my About page.  I’ve also uploaded the full 10 page proposal of my dissertation in PDF (10 pages is difficult!).  Some of my best writing I think, but it seems so unfinished…

Players of massively multiplayer online games have to master a meta-game of learning the social norms of their sub-culture and achieving a certain level of social mobility in order to complete game goals.  Certain players navigate this social networking meta-game with much more ease than others.  How a particular player learns to participate in the community’s practices is bound up in layers of socio-political dynamics that originate from both in and out-of-game contexts.  The role of educators is to help people understand and critique their social world.  Yet online games culture is at a critical point where inequalities of everyday offline life will continue to be the norm in online life.  Thus it is extremely important to look at the ways in which players come to understand their social contexts while learning to participate and work collaboratively.  I document through ethnographic means how two groups of World of Warcraft players learned to work on common in-game goals.  They did this through various online communication tools that were mediated by a shared understanding of the game artifact and the socially constructed roles they each played.

Misc.

Testing out ScribeFire!

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This post was created using ScribeFire, a FireFox addon for making blogging easier…  I’m seeing if it handles tags and categories.

ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging » Support Forum

Powered by ScribeFire.

Games

Portal: The Flash Version

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Portal: The Flash Version

(via a guildie, Euthan)

Fun 2D Flash web version of the Portal game that is getting a lot of press since it’s included in the Orange Box.

Flash version of the game Portal.

Misc.

What’s up with these weird pingback spams?

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A new kind (new to me) of spam has started happening on my blog. Here’s how it works.

Some fake blog links to your blog by posting about your post. As far as I can tell, it just takes an excerpt and prefaces it with something like “This is good…” You then get a pingback listed under your comments section which links to their blog. Then somewhere on the fake blog are links to porn sites (like in the footer or sidebar), a sidebar full of Google-generated ad stuff, or whatever.

At first I thought, maybe its benevolent spam since it benefits me to have other blogs link to me. But now I am thinking it is rather lopsided since I bet I get a lot more hits than the fake blog does.

Guess I will find a way to block these from happening… or be more vigilant about deleting them.

After some searching, I found more info about it!  Apparently, I mean “trackback.”

Games

Wii and the web?

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You know how Miis can mingle?  Is there a way to hook a Wii up to a website so that we can have a social network kind of website with Miis and stats and stuff?  Or does that exist already?  I don’t have a Wii.

Games

Full version of Bloodspell up

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Bloodspell is a 14-part film made using a game engine (AKA machinima), in this case Neverwinter Nights.

The full length film (which features some reshot and revoiced footage) is now ready to download and watch in its entirety (DivX or QuickTime)!

Academia

virtualpolitik

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virtualpolitik

Liz Losh’s blog with lots of good reflective write-ups on AoIR8.  Not like my shorthand notes kind of drivel.  🙂

sporadic ramblings of a gamer in academia