TEH GREATEST YOUTUBE EVER

omfg. I'm sure it helps that I'm really out of it and a lil loopy right now, but this is fantastic.

CLICKIIIEEEE~!!!

the metaverse is coming the metaverse is coming!

The article describes it as a "mental typewriter"..I think it's far more interesting in its potentials beyond typing and into interface. Play a game merely by thinking about where you're moving...metaverse, anyone?

In other news, I've gotten places on my capstone. \0/ Kinda. Only now there's this video project due on Friday...

In still other news, I found the spot on Fredonia's website with graduation info!!! (such as it is). For everyone's benefit, since we're all so fecking confused, the relevent info is this:

Cap & gown & etc: Pick up at bookstore anytime between now and Commencement. It's like $40 for the package of everything needed. Honors cords are free, Media Arts cords I think we get at the last VAP, if I remember right. Cap & gown is required. Gown must be black.

Tickets: okso.. The site says they "anticipate" everyone can get at least four tickets into Steele Hall (could we not find an uglier place for graduation?? sigh), and then two (first-come first-serve) into the ice rink where they're relaying it via video monitors. We can pick up tickets in room G-141-143 of the Williams Center, 12-3 on the 23rd, 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. on the 24th and 25th; also from the Campus Life Office weekdays from Wednesday, April 26 until Friday, May 5.
This is very reassuring to me.

oogIamtired.

america online no longer...

america online officially changes name to aol

that just strikes me as odd. granted, no-one's called it "america online" in ages, but.. hmm. also interesting was their reasoning why - admitedly, they're right, scary as it is, they were my first connection to the internet as well. (apart from grandpa's.. goodness I don't even know what it was, I think some version of telnet run through at&t, all I remember was being utterly confused that I couldn't find any games. *g*)

...

...and read the third comment on that article while you're at it. hmm.

history of paper

...I realised the other day that I needed to look this up, so I'd know whether to make the paper the stories are written on lined or not or whatever. ^^; So many crazy little details going into this.

A few Google searches later, and it appears blue lined looseleaf has been around since before 1860. Which really surprised me, actually, I figured it only went back about a hundred years. The paper was heavier and more acidic though, when still made with wood pulp.. can't find an exact date on that, but acid-free paper is new enough to still be a selling point on things, I'm pretty sure our photo albums from the '80s weren't acid-free, so.. basically just up the disintegration rate on the older paper, and I think I've an idea of how the older lined paper would've looked.

Wheeeeee~~

on a more positive note...

...and then I swear I'll stop doing damage to the internet and go to bed.

Having just finished all the statements, I just want to say that I am immensely proud of everyone in this class. I am so impressed by everything that you've all come up with for these projects, both in concept and in realization. I'm really freakin' blown away. The amount of originality in these, the strength of the messages, and the willingness to chip away at the works until they are the epitome of what you want to say, is really, really stunning.

Cheesy as this sounds, allow a fellow senior her moment of sappy affection, when I say that I really, truly, am honored to be in a class with all of you. The work that comes out of that lab really blows me away.


(damnit I'm going to miss that lab so much.....)

the failure of the educational system

WARNING: frustrated english geek rant ahead. read at your own risk.

Alright, so I'm down to reading my last two artist statements... my apologies in advance not only for my cramped illegible handwriting (and the huge disgusting loopy font on my own statement - hadn't time to fix, windows fonts do not equal osX fonts), but for the massive amount of things scrawled all over everyone's paper. I just want to formally say that I don't mean anything personally, except to whoever sets the english standards anymore. Really. There's not a person in the class who I don't think is highly intelligent, I'm really blown away by everyone's ideas, but..

Grammar and sentence structure and everything along those lines just *aren't* taught well anymore, and it drives me up the wall. The only reason I do alright is because I spent my entire childhood reading, and absorbing writing styles. (And I read old books. Like all the old girly things, everything Louisa May Alcott ever wrote, as much Lucy Maud Montgomery as I could get my hands on, that sort of thing. I read exactly one Goosebumps book, and while at first it was intriguing, the ending was so pathetically lame that I never read another one again. Point being, I tend to write crazy old-school, as any of you who've taken a glance at the stories for this project will know.)

I'm not sure offhand if any of you were in Systems Languages and Protocols when Tom Loughlin taught it like I was, but, remember that time he tried to draw an analogy between writing and coding? And we diagrammed a sentance in class? And only two people had any fuck clue what was going on?

...I'm not promoting diagramming sentances by any means, I spent the better part of fifth grade doing it (wooo for homeschooling) and hated it and didn't really retain anything useful from it. And I'll be the first to admit, most of my apparent skill with grammar and syntax and things is intuitive, I tried to help my sister with some homework the other day and I hadn't the faintest what a.. good lord I can't even remember what it was called, some sort of propositional something or another.

Point is, when people can barely get the difference between noun verb and adjective, I start to worry.

I help friends with their papers now and again, I really don't mind doing it, I like being able to help. But to be honest, there have been numerous times when a foreign student's writing has far surpassed someone who's spoken English all their lives. (Though admitedly, she's an amazing writer, and once she's worked out a few more of the eccentricities of our language, any of us who'd like to write will be DOOMED.) I'm not a grammar nazi by any means, I use as many abbreviations online as anyone (I've made my own up, for that matter...though I will NEVER use "u" and crap like that, ugh), my speech is full of slang, I spent half my childhood purposely saying "ain't" and not pronouncing the final "g" on "-ing" things (I wanted to be a country singer -_-;; ), my blog entries occasionally have no capitalization, and I write the worst run-on sentances EVER. But... when I want to sit down and write something that other people will be judging me on, at least it's comprehensible.

I realize writing isn't everyone's forte, and the way things are going, it seems it's going to be even less important of a skill. ...which to be honest, I think is very, very sad. Writing can be so incredibly beautiful, and can convey so much, of both a person and their ideas... but so many times, poor structuring can completely obscure what great thoughts are caught within the words.

Again, I'm not trying to rag on anyone at all - promise I'm not, you all know I'm one of the least pissy people in the world - I'm just really sad, because I look around me, beyond this class and this college, and I see that so many teachers and mentors along the way simply don't take the time to work with people and help them build a skill that will enable them to present themselves as the intelligent people they are. I'm all for the honesty of vernacular, but, take a look at "Huck Finn" and things - first time around, I literally had to read anything Jim said aloud, I couldn't read the dialect silently, but even so, things made sense when I read it out loud. The dialect was there and perfectly (as far as I know) accurate, yet by accurate and appropriate writing, it was completely intelligable.

My younger sister is a phenomenal writer, won't be long before she's far better than I am, but even she admits that spending extensive time on aim and in irc damages her grammatical abilities. The Internet doesn't give two shits if your grammar makes sense, all it asks for is your attention and for you to say something that grabs someone else's attention. It won't ever correct you, nor will any of your friends, and what begins as a small time-saver ends as habit and custom. It's not cool to use capitalization and punctuation, let alone get on someone else's case for a sentance fragment. And I worry, because what isn't practiced is *very* soon forgotten, and I don't think it's unlikely at all that our kids will hardly see a red mark on their papers, unless they got a fact wrong. I lucked out and had a phenomenal teacher my senior year of high school, but aside from a few bits here and there, how much have we been taught about mechanics since elementary school? Yeah it's boring as hell but y'know what, it's worth it.

...I'll save my rant on drawing for another day very late night when I should be sleeping.


ugh I shouldn't even post this, it's such a rant, I sound like such a cranky little grammar nazi. honest to goodness this was NOT a result of reading the statements, guys, this has been building up for years. but I'll feel better if I get all this out. thanks for being understanding and not taking anything personally (because it's not meant that way) and not hating me. ^^;;;

the world is ending

O_____O omgomgOmg.

Yet another sign of the apocalypse:

Google and Nike hooked up.

...I wish it would hurry up and get here, I don't want to have to face horrors like this all my life. -___-;;;

(yes I realise upon reading up on the actual venture that it seems pretty harmless... but that's still fecking creepy.)

Artist Statement

Beneath the Dust

      I have always been drawn to old things, to old places. The sense of history, of lives lived before mine, is very strong, almost tangible to me at times. I feel as if I could only look long enough, or pass through the dim layer of dust which covers an object, I might be able to see what it once was, what it once meant to someone, what part it played in that person's life. I feel a very strong connection to people I have never known, and there are times it seems if I had only turned my head a little quicker, I could have caught a glimpse of someone quite like myself from the corner of my eye...
      In this project, I hope to facilitate interactions between the viewer and the history of an environment, revealing the ways people's lives interrelate through time. Common themes and elements in the stories, connections between both the characters and hopefully the viewer, will show that there are core commonalities between everyone, despite differences in time and cultural groups. Another element of the project is describing the history in everyday places and objects, and showing that though not in always a visible manner, everyone leaves behind some trace of their self in the places they have been.
      The piece itself is a Flash-based website, showing the interior of room, wherein the viewer is able to click on certain objects or locations. A click on those areas, denoted by a whispering sound, will bring up one of a number of short stories. The room, which is hand-drawn in charcoal, is empty of any person but the viewer, containing a few old pieces of furniture, the walls worn with age and much use. The stories will appear to be handwritten on sheets of paper, the age of the paper and the style of the hand dependent on the setting and main character of the story. Each story is set entirely within the very room the viewer stands in, though at different points in the room's history, which spans about a hundred and fifty years. Fading gently around the corners of the room are soft sounds, of voices not quite heard, faint scraps of melody from unseen instruments, and the sound of air breathed once breathed by those long-gone.
      The contents of the room are partly products of my imagination, and partly borrowed from things and places I have known. When I first moved from one town to another as a child, it never quite sunk in that I was leaving a place until I stood in my empty bedroom, with all of the things which had made it my home taken away - it was then that I felt a terribly forlorn sorrow, an overwhelming sense of loss at all that the room would no longer be. The rocking chair in the room is based on one that has been in my family for a generation or two, the locket which appears in one story was derived from a few that I have been given by each of my grandmothers, and I own a number of old books, which provide reference for the books as well as the sheets of old paper. The contents of the stories have been drawn from countless influences, books I have read, personal experiences, things I have found on the Internet that intrigued me, strong emotions I felt on a particular day, or simply an idea that popped into my head as a possibly backstory for an object I had drawn into the room. A previous work I did in Flash, providing an appropriate setting for a number of poems I had written about a particular set of characters, provided inspiration for taking this project in this direction, as I had been so thrilled with the results before (though they were much simpler). The series of Myst games, by Robyn and Rand Miller, as well as the related novels which were later published, showed me just how effectively an environment can enhance a narrative, and even suggest things far beyond what is provided in words.
      As I progressed through the stories and working through the drawings, I began to discover even more connections between the stories and surroundings than I had intentionally created. To me, that proved the success of the project, as even I am continually surprised by what I discover between the stories, the setting, and my own experiences.

Audio Update

..over on the crit blog, direct link to the post here.

(I'd've added a title and things, except for whatever bizarre reason, the log in name and password refused to work for me. I am not surprised.)

virtual worlds

So, sweet as we think Second Life is.. it started way before that. Listening to one of the Retrobits podcasts (show 13, on QuantumLink) lead to putzing around on Wikipedia and Google (I'll let you do the same, rather than linking directly here).. There was an attempt at a 3D internet browser, starting all the way back in 1995, ActiveWorlds, with avatars walking around and 3D websites set up to walk around.. basically all that I remember once envisioning as the internet, back in like 7th grade when internet malls and shopping and things were just picking up, back when we thought it would be a complete world to access. Apparently ActiveWorlds is still around, though it costs to set up a site and all, but I'll look into that a little more and let y'all know if it's at all decent.
And, its creation was inspired by Snow Crash. heeh.

Going even further back though - self-designed little humanoid avatars, walking through environments with other little avatars, going into bars and stores where you could buy new outfits and if you stepped outside the main areas, you could even steal from people.
1985.
Commodore64.
...there was a program called QuantumLink, that was a primitive version of what AOL would eventually be (Steve Case was in on it), featuring chat services, email, and even the colourful little rectangles set in a grid with the names of the different areas written on them, that I remember so well from my first log-ons.
Around 1987, there was a joint project between Q-Link and Lucasarts, to make the first graphical virtual world. Cartoony and 2D, but you still had your own little house and things, there were in-game events to go do.. Apparently they couldn't keep the servers going, and cut it back to Club Caribe, where everyone was homeless and stranded on a desert island, and Q-Link itself was gone by 1993 (though there's a project in-progress to bring it back).. but apparently the Tomorrow project wasn't so far-fetched.

..and holy crap, looking at screencaps from the old thing...the chatrooms were just the same as I remember from aol back when it was still cool (1995ish), the same random chatter and even the ::some random action:: format I used so many times, and no-one knows anymore...