To be honest, I’ve been surprised to see my little blog covered nationally. But when major lobbying firms are planning a coordinated PR attack, that’s — that’s just out of control.
hobo -> Occupy Bangor!
[a more substantial entry]
The title says it all — I’ve taken up with the Occupy Bangor crowd these past two weeks.
It’s a peculiar thing. I could be in a heated shelter with a lot of drunks, or “roughing it” with protestors.
I don’t follow the news, but from what I get, the portrayals are all wrong. The movement, in Bangor, at least, is run by various middle-Americans, who have access to the substantial, white-collar, meaningful organizational work, and staffed largely by homeless guys, who are out in the tents.
That’s not a disqualification, in my estimation. The economy really is bad, producing lots of high-functioning homeless folks. But the interesting thing is that the organizers — the non-leaders — tend to refuse to allocate white-collar, meaningful organizational work to homeless guys. Refuse out of hand.
Meanwhile, they make unilateral decisions about camp life without consulting the campers. For example, they just moved the food tent across the park. The new location cannot safely be supplied with electrical power, so now no hot food, no coffee. The people who did this do not live in camp.
Anyway, I’m blogging about it. I’ve got a backlog of stories, so there’s some lag:
http://conradcook.wordpress.com
Conrad.
ps – I’m for the movement. In my thinking, it’s a mistake to consider the system to be a thing out there on Wall Street. The system is inside each of us, and we need to fight it on that basis.
C.
The Latest: Occupy Bangor!
update –
I’m running with the Occupy Bangor crowd this past week. I’m online with a blog relating to that experience, which you can find at http://conradcook.wordpress.com.
That’s an unofficial blog. What you see in the news about the 99% crowd doesn’t really capture the reality.
The Latest…
The latest for me is that I seem to be wrapping up my walkabout. I say seem to because these things don’t involve a decision from me.
Wikipedia tells us the walkabout was primarily about shirking work and institutional regulation, and from my point of view this is a nontrivial dimension of it. So to speak. But on the other hand, the rumor really is true: at some point, you meet yourself.
Hard to explain.
Ron asked if I’m going to be involved in IF Comp 2011. I expect not. I’m currently without a laptop, and I’m putting my daily one hour online toward a bigger project.
I remember questioning, two Comps ago, whether interactive fiction had a social code. This due to that trivial but constant meanness we see, on r.a.if, out of that guy who pretends to be Jacek Pudlo, and so forth.
When I vanished on my first walkabout, it turns out a few of you guys got together to try to find me. You were worried. I got an email about it later. It was very kind, and I realized later how definitively it answered my question. IF does indeed have a social code.
Thanks, guys.
I have a few ideas for games, which I mean to write up sometime. But I’m really into this calamity prevention and recovery planning, and I’m not sure when I’ll get around to text games.
My college friends would often end up with spare computers kicking around. If you’re reading this and you have an old laptop that you’re not using, it’d help me be more productive. An hour a day doesn’t give me much.
Currently, I’m working on what (minimal) knowledge set would be needed to bootstrap modern high-tech civilization. It’s a peculiar problem. Currently, it seems you need kilns, to make bricks for blacksmith’s furnaces, and plenty of steel digging tools, for mining.
Without those tools, you end up in a catch-22: The most accessible coal is deep underground, the stuff on the surface already being used up, and you can’t easily set up a blacksmith shop to make steel mining tools without coal…
It’d be tough. It’s not inescapable, but it’d be tough. Especially with a serious knowledge gap. Some picks and shovels scattered around would help tremendously.
Anyway, yeah, if you have a laptop you don’t need and aren’t using, email me. It’s taking me longer than I counted on to find work.
Wrapping Up the Comp & Surveys…
We’re all getting ready for the end of the Comp. I’ve had my first author inquiry about his survey data, and I regret that I had to tell him that he had only three people respond for his game.
C’mon, people! I mean, I know we’re all busy. I myself had Life get in the way and I haven’t been reviewing nearly as many games as I wanted to. But three people? (more…)
Play IF on a Haunted Typewriter!
I don’t know if he’s actually selling them…
http://upnotnorth.net/projects/typewriter/
…but if he is, you’d better sign up quick!
ps. Isn’t somebody out there looking for a way to bring IF to kids? “Back when I was your age, we had to play computer games on typewriters…”
“Mom! You’re Breaking the 4th Wall!”
I have a friend, Becky — (Hi, Becky!) — who describes herself as an ex-hippie. She dislikes representations of violence, and wouldn’t buy her son video games.
Becky told me today that when he was old enough, her son bought a copy of “Grand Auto Theft.” She could hear it and wasn’t too happy about it, but it wasn’t against the rules and she let it slide.
Then one day, he had his high-school friends over. They were all playing Grand Theft Auto, and laughing in a rowdy way. So she decided she had to do something.
She went to the room. On the TV there was a little old lady crossing the street. Her son was at the controls, and he ran her over. And all the kids laughed.
Becky demanded, “Did you just run that lady over? Why would you do that to her? You probably killed her!” — and continued in this way for about fifteen minutes, as they passed the controller around.
Finally, her son turned it off and said, “Ok, ok, will you just go?”
IFC10 review – Flight of the Hummingbird
This is a review of a Comp game, and as often happens in reviews of Comp games, I will be Saying Things about this game. There’s one thing we need before we begin…
There. I’ll get a new one soon.
Flight of the Hummingbird, by Michael Martin, is a fine game. It’s entertaining, fast-paced, and very well-polished. I gather there are a few alternate solutions. I have only minor criticisms of this game.
I suggest, if you want to play a fun two-hour text game, you make it a point to play this one before reading further. (more…)
IFC10 review – Gigantomania
This is a review of a Comp game, and as often happens in reviews of Comp games, I will be Saying Things about this game. THE PICTURE is coming up…
There.
Gigantomania, by Michelle Tirto and Mike Ciul, is a beginner game, with some faults. If you need a hint or don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing, I’ll post the main goal of each section (as I understand them) in a moment.
The title is not a reference to Stalin, by the way. In order to create an economy of scale, there were plans to combine villages together into huge farming combines. These schemes were later called ‘Gigantomania.’
