Wow. That's all I can say here. Not only is this some of the highest quality LARPing I've ever seen, but it's also phenomenally well-shot documentary footage. Really nicely put together to illustrate the seriouisness of this play. It's great. The juxtaposition of imagery is excellent, especially in the sample here (http://www.darkonthemovie.com/darkon_video.html) but there's another promotional video sample that is availalb here ( ) and you should definitely check those out.

And I think, (e:paul), that this documentary shows why our project is a somewhat different thng than "LARP" proper. I would like to think that we're going to alter it and mainstream it so that, in general, it is a bit more flexible to provide the user experience people deisre at a range of levels. The technology will certainly take away somewhat from the fantasy roleplay element, but for other stories I think it will be excellent. What I think is crucial is that we tap into that energy the interviewees here talk about, which is that visceral quality of doing something in a location with a group of people. Facilitating community play.

I think our system could be better for some stories, too. For example, role-playing a Shadowrun or generally Cyberpunk/SciFi LARP would be very difficult without some kind of technology integration. Our system could be ideal for that.

Some thoughts... I'm so excited...

From BoingBoing (http://www.boingboing.net), but I can't resist this image -- woot, li'l cowpokes!

The artists who created these covers probably never meant for them to to be used as spank fodder, but being the mean-spirited, immature, asshole that I am, I've decided to do the only thing that a grown adult would do: point out juvenile observations of unintentionally sexual acts on comic book covers.Quoted from: Unintentionally sexual comic book covers: Part 1.

I just heard about this site, Our Media (http://www.ourmedia.org/), which apparently is some kind of relation to the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), which is one of my most favorite things in the world.

Anyway, Our Media seems real cool so far. I'm trying it out right now. here's my link (http://www.ourmedia.org/user/11582)

The StorTroopers are back, after like a few year hiatus. The site is cool for generating little avatar images and stuff, and I appreciate those kinds of applications. StorTroopers has high "net.ster" appeal and a historical meme quotient to trade on (talk about advertising, eh?). But it's so sadly cute. The girls can't even have glasses. It's OK for guys to have glasses but not girls? WTF? I for one much prefer glasses. I don't need to wear glasses, but I have a pair just in case I want to look real cool sometime. I love to wear my sunglasses. Glasses are awesome. Read David Shield's excellent piece, "Girsl With Glasses" if you don't believe me. s-e-X-X-y, yo.

Anyway, here are the avatars I generated of me and Sarah:

Missing Image ;(

Missing Image ;(

And here are some hipster images I did of us. Although I prefer my new coinage, net.ster for a net.hipster:

Missing Image ;(

Missing Image ;(

And, just for comparison, here's a graphic I did to illustrate my love for Sarah last Fall on the occasion of her October birthday (you know, Halloween):

Missing Image ;(

Missing Image ;(

A friend of mine pointed me to this link (http://www.ocma.net/index.html?page=upcoming#Yucef_Merhi:_Poetic_Engineering) about an upcoming exhibit at Orange County Museum of Art which happens to be at the same time as E3... Hmm, I wonder if we'll be able to make it out? I gotta find out more about this. Let me know if anyone knows more about Yucef Merhi, the ePoet featured in the exhibition.

I love the interdisciplinarity of electronic literature and poetry. It's so great to me that people on the Electronic Poetry Center website (http://epc.buffalo.edu) range from Eduardo Kaz and his holopoems (which lead to his awesome inter-species communications exhibits and other super-rad things) and jodi (http://www.jodi.org) to John Cayley and Talan Memmott, who are working out of such a Lit and fiction mode. And many of these folks bridge the gap between writing critical essays, performing readings, publishing online and exhibiting in galleries.

Missing Image ;(

If anyone sees Mike Peutz around, let me know. He used to be my roommate and was a really great guy. I haven't seen him for like almost 10 years. So I figure I should find him. I found his old university website, but it was gone. He drew a comic on my old site (go to the art section) . Anyway, I also wanted to try out the tooltips...

And here's another tricky thing to try... Hmmm...

Missing Image ;(

This is a google poem and image assembled on the fly. Whee!

Wow, I haven't like a cop drama in ages, but that JC Supercop is a bad shut-cho-mouth. I love the part where Jesus shoots the thug, then brings him back to life to get the last bit of information out of him, then shoots him again and walks away. Jesus is one cold mofo. hehe



check it out on Channel 102

helping (e:paul) test out the server -- seems super spiffy!

nice work!

Wow, I just received payment for my Sync Magazine (http://www.syncmagazine.com) article about Sociolotron (http://www.sociolotron.com). Sync is supposed to be like "Maxim meets Wired" which is kind of, well, not really necessarily my thing (although I'm more into macho tech than cars, sports, or exercise). But my editor is real nice, and they want some clever game coverage, and it's a print magazine with 200K subscribers in North America (distro in EU, South America, and SE Asia/Australia, too). You might actually see it on the mag rack (but apparently Wegman's doesn't carry it, so I'm not sure if I'll ever see it myself... hehe)

I should get off my butt and go to Talking Leaves to look for it. Does anyone know if they carry Sync? They carry 2600 (http://www.2600.com)... that's enough to get me there...

Anyway, since I've been at UB I've slacked on my writing. I've written only a few articles for GF! and almost no school papers at all. I've written a couple papers about projects I've done and stuff, and I do consider my interactive stuff (http://www.shawnrider.com/onlineWork.php) "writing." But, wow, there's something about putting finger to keys in a particular way to create an article or story. I've written a LOT in the past -- I think I've published something like 200 reviews on GamesFirst ! (http://www.gamesfirst.com) But I've never written for a mainstream mag like this. It was really educational. It really brings home the freedom that we have with GF! And not just me, but my writers. I don't mean to imply that I was treated poorly. I was treated very, very well, and I hope to write for Sync or Ziff Davis more in the future. But the corporate world is something I might enjoy much more on an occasional, freelance, kind of engagement.

I <3 teaching.

and I <3 t e h Interwebs.

So is this just one big advertisement to get you to look for my stuff in the April/May issue of Sync Magazine available on your local cool guy mag rack? I dunno...

Oh, and Ajay -- just for clarification [inlink]ajay,318[/inlink]

I wasn't talking about personal websites. I mean homepages as in a customizable web portals -- like My Yahoo!, which is what I set to my homepage for easy access to lots of info, a handy calendar, local movie listings, daily comics, etc.

Actually, maybe you're a good person to ask: Know of a good, free, customizable personal webportal package? Something that would be easier than writing it myself in PHP and just aggregating feeds, etc? (I already use Vacoom! to gather some web comics for myself -- )

(e:Paul) said he thought it was pointless to duplicate Google's planned video blog features (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=1236), and I can understand not wanting to "compete" with Google -- I'm a Google lover of sorts. I mean, I use Yahoo for my home page, but... (and that's another thing -- why can't I do the basic homepage things with Google that I can do with Yahoo!? Shouldn't that rank higher priority than getting videos online? Whatever; Yahoo! works well...)

Anyway, I think pretty much everything I get at (e:strip) is available all over the place. I could build it myself (not as well as Paul has) or I could just use any number of open source or free solutions to pretty much get the same features as (e:strip). In fact, I used to participate more heavily in a blogger blog. But (e:strip) has pulled me away? Why? Because I read (e:strip). This site is a different place. It's not the whole world. It's a village, becoming a town, and one day it might grow into a full-fledged city, but it will never be the whole world (I hope not, at least). It will always (hopefully) be a cool little corner, a place where I can niche.

So who cares what Google is doing? Whether or not video is "right" for (e:strip) is an issue on its own, and definitely not one to be taken lightly (all kinds of concerns on that one -- space, bandwidth, tech issues, etc.). I am not really arguing for or against that here. All I'm saying is that we got something Google ain't got, no matter what.