There are two people in my life I have shared a room with for more than 6 months at a time and enjoyed it. One is my husband. The other is the girl I shared a room with at Skjeberg Folkehøyskole, Heidi Eng. We split up 21 years ago, but this week-end she came back into my life and was her old exuberant, emotional, honest and enthusiastic self. It felt like those 21 years had been a vacation, a short time apart in which we both have experienced a lot of exiting things we can share, and now life has settled back into the normal routine of sharing space, time, knowledge, friends, make-up and the stash of snacks in the closet.

Norwegian research has shown that using cell-phones for messages does not ruin the Norwegian language. An article in the Norwegian Newspaper Dagbladet quotes researcher Kjell Atle Halvorsen at the Norwegian University of Technology in Trondheim, who's been involved in a case study of school-children between 13-16, which is supposed to be the group most dependent on Smart Messaging System - SMS. In conjunction with the research of Berit Skog at NTNU, who leads a project called Mobil Youth Culture, it's now official that cellphones help teen-agers to manage their social life better, they develop language and are more concious of genres, they don't take the SMS-language into the writing they do for school, and only 10% use it to cheat at tests.

Sounds like technology isn't so dangerous after all.

The importance of being Turok
first question: Would you change your name to that of a dinosaur hunting video-game character?
I think there are a lot of young men out there who'd think it is a cool idea, and who'd not worry about annoying (or perhaps enjoy annoying) their surroundings by legally changing their name for a year as long as they get a game-consoll, all the games they like and some cash. Wearing a nick-name which indicates some fantastic identity is second nature to that group of people anyway, and so why not be a dinosaur-hunter just as well as your average Joe.

second question: Would you trust your product's reputation to the kind of people who would be willing to do this?
A person who'd be willing to change their name in order to advertise a product might be of the early user, if not the innovator group: risk-takers, active sekers for information or innovation. People in this group are often considered opinion leaders, because they test out things in advance and the people around them know that. I expect this to be the logic which makes Acclaim UK plan for Identity Marketing. They expect the users to be people to be looked up to, people who are admired and trusted, and rolemodels for others.

The flaw in this logic lies just there. If you are a role-model, secure in your social network, known, respected and one who helps form opinions, it also means that you alread are a strongly profiled individual. Your identity is not something you want to flee from, it's something which brings you status and recognition. It's worth much more than a few games and some cash - it's more rewarding to you than the fiction of being a fantasy character: you get your rewards from being yourself.

The people who do not enjoy being themselves are normally insecure, have low self-esteem, have low status and a weak network. They do not overlap with the opinion leaders of diffusion theory.

But hey, they do get attention - just look at me, I am already writing about them!

this is crazy. Tonight mikesthougths were there again... I checked several times... then suddenly, the moment I have written a new question to the help-system at blogger... my own blog is back. It's like a ghost, haunting me, slipping away the moment I notify somebody who might understand what it is.

Oh, well, it keeps me alert.

Yesterday's top post looks ridiculous if you can read it. Here's what happened, from my side of it: When I tried to go to torillsin.blogspot.com, I got to the correct URL, but instead of finding this blog, I found something called "mitchsthoughts", a few posts by a young man who was continuously talking about things he did not like, blogger among those. The word he used to describe what he did not like was "gay". The band he had listened to with some friends was "the gayest thing he had ever heard", etc. Aside from the assault of stupidity, I was upset with the thought of how easily I could lose my voice on the net. A glitch, an unfriendly hacker, an unexpected formatting of a disk, and more than a year of work will be lost. Scary.

Well, the blog is back, I hope it will stay here, and I feel like I have come back in the warmth after having lost the keys while some stranger had a party in my house.

I logged on, went to my blog, and somebody else's blog was on it. What happened!?!

And if you read Norwegian, you might be interested in noting that Dagbladet consider Rimi-Hagen's colleagues to be the grocery-chains, the food-industry and the farmers. Somebody working in the finance section of the newspaper ought to take a trip out of their normal venue and figure out the difference between an average Norwegian farm and the private mansion of Rimi-Hagen.

If you read German, the electronic journal from the university of Munich: Medien Observationen might be worth a look. Interesting topics, and I found descriptions of two game-related German books in the article: 2002: The Year We Make Contact.

Among startling trivia such as links to articles of tool using birds, the weblog of the invisible city, Invisible Broadcast introduces interesting and exiting little tidbits of thought and information for those who are interested in role-playing games. I found this through Jeremy P. Bushnell's blog Narrative Technologies. This is a weblog where he discusses the serialised story Imaginary Year.

I have a weakness for stories told in serial form, I like to be restrained and kept from the gluttony of reading an entire book in one long sitting, I like to read a short piece created specifically to satisfy the reading pleasure of the moment, and I also like conglomerates of interlinked topics: narrative, discussion, links to related threads and of course the occasional delightful detour into personal matters. And Jeremy is a gamer too - what more can I ask for?

Avalances - one thing I don't worry about.
Anders Fagerjord worries about the global warming and fears the end of the world as we know it. It's very, very hard not to point out that rain in Eastern Norway, particularly Oslo in July always makes the people at the other side of the mountains worry about the global climate. While even the specialists share some of his concerns, I want to put at least one of his worries to rest: the worry about the avalances at the western coast taking new paths.

It's not really the avalances choosing new routes, it's the humans who have forgotten how to avoid them. Modern developers plan in new manners: they worry about traffic-flow, about water, waste and electricity and the untapped potential represented by undeveloped land between properties which have to be supplied with cables and piping anyway. And so these spots fill up: nobody have ever seen an avalance do any damage there, right? Sometimes I wonder if these developers all practice the fashionable off-pist skiing...

Most of the recent damage by avalances on modern settlements is due not to global warming, but to urban planners who go by text-books rather than asking the people who have lived in the area. Avalances are after all directed not by temperature, but by the lay of the land - temperature changes influence the probability of an avalance, not the direction it will take. Around here, if you build at the wrong spot probability is a bad gamble: if an avalance can hit your house, sooner or later it will, in this century or the next.

(And do you think I am exaggerating in order to make Volda sound interesting? Avalances are like the wind: something to be considered and included in weather reports, this one from the NATO exercise Strong Resolve this winter/spring.)

One of the things I struggle with when I teach, is how to negotiate between theory and practical studies. The students at the media department tend to spurn the theory as "just theory", while they feel they do something "real" when they create something: write an article for the college newspaper, make a 15 - 30 second piece for the local radio, or perhaps even get their face on television. As long as they can get something "real" for their efforts, they have no urge to understand why it's good or bad, what consequences it might have or what cultural influences have made them write just so. They don't care if they are being manipulated by the establishment as long as same establishment is willing to accept the product they deliver.

It's my job to make them look not only at the product of the media puppets, but also at the strings. The problem is that the strings are only visible through the filter of cultural understanding, ideological criticism, through analysing texts and testing theories. Which, to these students, all lumps into the big bag of "theory". In this case theory means: "books I have to read in order to pass the exams I have to take so that I can get the piece of paper from this College in order to secure a job in a big newspaper/television station/corporation."

This problem of "real" is however very familiar to me. Something "real" in this case isn't exactly a table to put the food on, but it has a lot of the same qualities. It's tangible, it can be displayed, the skill of the craftsman is visible and can be shared through the pleasure others have from using the product, and it's possible to give meaningful feed-back on several levels. "I really liked the pictures" is valid praise for a leaflet, as is: "that was funny", or "nice music" about a radio program. It's however a lot more difficult for the layman to give praise to a theoretical product. "I love the colour of your thesis" doesn't quite cut it, and "I laughed several times as you presented your argument" is not trustworthy either. This means that the most common ways of evaluating a product for the people who are important to the students, are not valid when it comes to the work they do with what they call theory. The product becomes less "real", as it appears to be ruled by different rules, those of a small arena and a group of participants which they relate to out of necessity, not from desire.

Theory appears to be the game, the play-ground we have created for them to play around with toys and tools of the trade is seen as the real world. What I need to do, in order to make the students perceive theory as "real" is to skew their entire conception of what reality is. I need to tone down on the products and emphasis the analysis, change their priorities and shift their alliances and their trust. Wish me luck, it's going to be a busy autumn in Volda.

A grey day - finally. It feels like a relief. I actually feel bad about being at work when I could have been outside in the sun. That might have something to do with being brought up to believe that the only real work is the work that puts food on the table in a much more direct way than mine does: such as fishing, tending vegetables, fruit or berries, looking after animals or roaming the mountains looking for berries or mushrooms. The only real alternative to work which puts food directly on the table is making the table itself, the room it's in or any other item which can be used to shelter humans or add to the process of growing and gathering food. A lot of this is best done in nice weather. Dark cold horrible winter nights was for passing time through reading, writing or telling stories, not to mention playing games. Luckily - the autumn is almost here, it's dark at midnight, a sure sign that the summer is coming to an end.

Finally, a test that claims I am rational. Can I please have it on a piece of paper and with a couple of convincing seals and signatures?

I am still digesting the last comments Espen gave me on the thesis. The thoughts of what I need to do with/to it surface at intervals in this mad rush to prepare for the start of the semester. A discussion which bordered on argument today brought with it a sudden clarity.

Academic evaluation, while we like to think that we measure the skill and knowledge of the student, is actually only a measurement of the student's ability to convince us of skill and knowledge. We don't really look into the student's head and measure knowledge and understanding. The students are performing for us, and we are convinced or not, depending on the skill of the performer. Yes, we can ask questions which will make it very difficult for the student to convince us that he or she is smart. We can demand that an essay, an oral assessment or a multiple choice test is part of the performance. But in the end, if the student can't master these genres convincingly, it's all moot.

To finish a Ph.D. is like practicing for a performance. It's not enough that I have understood something about my topic: I need to present it and I need to present it convincingly. That's the hard part. The good part is that even if I know there are flaws, weak points, areas which should have been explored more deeply or detours into territory where I should never have ventured - as long as I present all of this flawed, skewed, limping mass of assumptions, knowledge, understanding and questions in a way that convinces my assessors that the thesis contributes in a constructive and desirable manner to the accumulated knowledge of the world - I'll be fine.

I hope this realisation will be able to carry me past the final editing. I really need a boost of some kind.

Cultural differences are normally experienced when we go abroad - at least here in homogenous, social democratic egality-focused Volda, Norway. But this summer, the cultural differences have come home to us.

My daughter sings in a choir, and this summer they have a greek dancing/singing group visiting. All the families of the youths in the choir have two or three greek visitors to look after, house and feed. The housing part is simple - we have lots of space and it's fun to have guests. The feeding part is a lot more complicated. Norway isn't exactly famous for exiting and good food, but there are a few things you can get here which definitely deserves attention. Smoked salmon, for instance, a delicacy all over the world - and quite common and easily available as well as very good here. Of the less well known things there's fenalår: Cured mutton thigh, with a pronounced taste as rich as any of the famous hams of southern Europe. In the summer, potatoes in Norway are extremely good - new potatoes is a must, and you have them with sour cream for most meals. Because of the low temperature and blonde nights, all Norwegian vegetables and fruit get a flavour that can't be copied elsewhere. Of course, the growing season is short and risky, but what's made is extremely good.

All things considered it was with quite a bit of pride and pleasure I started out with common Norwegian meals for the two 20 year old girls living with us. The problem was however soon detected. They didn't dare taste the food. The salmon and the ham was carefully avoided. The cheeses, chosen to suit sophisticated continental palates were ignored. Not a leaf of salad or a slice of vegetables reached their plates. And when it came to the meat, they tasted that with great suspicion. Although the venison and chanterelles passed the test - the great hit was a spagetti bolognese which basically came out of a jar - the McDonalds of pasta sauces, as foreign to a Norwegian meal as the hamburger in a bun. They survive on bread with rasberry jam, and in desperation I started baking cakes. No Norwegian housewife can endure having her cakes rejected, that is the final test of your skill in the kitchen: to be able to make a light, tasty, elegantly presented and irresistable cake. Finally, I found something they could endure. So the girls here have, for 9 days now, been living on bread, lefse and cakes - chocolate cake, apple cake, cream cake, a progression of cakes which they never sit down to eat. They eat on the run: grab a packed meal and then spurn any healthy looking food we might have packed for them, and clean out the cakes.

At least they get enough calories. But as a score for Norwegian cuisine - I am not entirely certain that I feel comfortable with it. Still, thankfully I am not the one who need to worry about the greek relationship to time. That has been an educational experience for the nice, reliable and always-on-time members of the choir. The relative meaning of "five minutes" has taught our very proper girl the frustration of cultural differences - before she has even gotten out of her own home in the morning.

One of the things I have to plan this autumn, is a beginners course in writing. Luckily I don't have to teach it, but I need to plan the contents. A search on the net brings me some pages of other resources, such as this: Writing Resources on the World Wide Web, which might be useful, but not really what I am looking for.

There are lots of tutorials for HTML out there, and this is one that looked comprehensive - but rather old. Still - that might be my level of competence - at least at first, and I might be back to that... I should learn enough about writing on the web that I can at least understand what the students are doing from more than an analytical position.

Looking further I found what looks like a well-planned course in web writing: Writing for New Media, a course at Towson University in Maryland with Thomas Lieb. It's a bit ambitious for what I am looking for, but I like the way he progresses from the personal web-site (which I expect the students to have a particular interest in making and maintaining) and to more analytical assignments. Still, perhaps not surprisingly, University of Texas has a very interesting web-writing course with instructor Tonya Browning (A website in the fridge... perhaps so it will be cooler?) which includes a female perspective (women on the web) and building for MUDs, both MOOs and Diku-MUDs.

This is supposed to be webcam which shows the building in which I work, and the road to the main building on the campus. If you're lucky, you might see me hurrying across here, on my way to the main administration, library or just going to get a cappucino with my lunch.

Volda College consists of three large and scattered small buildings, all but the newest main building a mixture of styles all the way from the classisism of the old Teacher's College from the 19th century, by way of the functionalistic buildings of the District College, not quite 30 years old, touching on functional barracs from just about any period up to the modern, sleek building signifying Volda College, unifying the District College and the Teacher's College: A postmodern boathouse for space-ships which accidentally got a main eating/mingling space that's the best concert hall in Volda. That was not planned, they tried to deaden the sound because it's quite exhausting to be able to hear everything in that very large room, but to no avail. And since the room is built kind of like an auditorium, with levels sinking towards the wide floor at the bottom, it doesn't just have great sound, but also offers a decent place to see the performance.

In summer, when there are no students around to see the teaching staff behave undignified, we play whispering games in this room - walk all across and speak, quietly - or whisper - to see how far the sound will carry.

Vacation is officially over. Now: planning a new semester.

Some links from a Danish role-play research web-site: Rollespillets Forskningsforum.
The Norwegian official (?) role-play portal: laiv Norge. At kunsnett.no live action role-play is defined as improvisation theatre.

Jill writes of warmth and shadow. What I hunger for through the long winter is the sun, the light, the heat, melting me, scorching me, I don’t care, I want it.

My legs are tanned, and look longer than I remember. It’s been such a long time since I felt like this: as if I am melted all the way to the bone. I lie flat out in the sun, letting it work on my skin, a sensous touch of heat all over. There is a short story by Ray Bradbury, in the collection called The Golden Apples of the Sun, about a woman who pulls energy straight out of the sun in order to reshape herself. I look at my tanned legs and brown hands, the light dusting of freckles over my eyelids and the way the pale shirt contrast the dark skin of my neck, and I feel like her. The sun and the summer reshapes me, muscles develop in my calves, I find my courage is still there as I dive into the green waters of the fjord, cooled down by the melting water off the glaciers and the dramatic (and expensive, thank you) blonde stripes in my brown hair are integrated into a natural sunbleached mane.

What's new? Oh, yes, that's right, Gamestudies is finally out with issue 2, and I have an article there. It's on methods for research on MUDs: Playing with Players. This is an early version of what's now the methodology chapter of my thesis. This chapter is six times as long, so reading this article I keep saying to myself: but there's so much more! Frustrating, but I guess that frustration is one with the nature of publishing. Which I do like, exhibitionist that I am.

I have been sleeping. I don't know when I last slept like this, relaxed and safe like a child, without a worry in the world, without waking up, without listening for sounds or movements. I fell asleep sometime during one of the familiar american series on television last night, their soundtrack a lullaby as I stretched on the couch, comfortable at last. Sometime during the night I moved to bed, and according to reports this morning I agreed to having the cat in the bedroom (I am allergic - were I conscious I'd never allow it.) I woke up late this morning to glorious sunshine, to a country of shimmering waters and intensely clear colours. From the bedroom window we did not see the idyllic views of Jersey, or the old walled city of St. Malo, or the City-sprawl of northern London, but a fjord, a mountain, and the light of late morning. It was an awakening from a dream. The sounds were right, the smells were right, the cool air from the window was right... and the dream of the last three weeks of travelling - it all started when I went to Bergen, after all - was gone. I was here, at home, and I had finally been able to sleep.

I know, in a few days I'll start longing for travelling again - but not until the too-real laundry has been done.

and I loved this story about what theory can do to the mind. Warning: don't watch movies or television with me if you don't want a running commentary on structure, references, context, style and genre alongside it... (Several friends and family members have had their viewing pleasure altered for life this way.)

I am in London, at a Virgin Internet Cafe. And this machine has a keyboard! *contented sigh*

This has been a busy holiday, and most of the time I have been so exhausted that I haven't had time to think about how much there's still to do with my dissertation. Reading Hilde's blog today didn't help - I find myself sick with stress, rather than relaxed and happy after almost two weeks of vacation and a long week-end to go. What am I doing here when I could be in front of a computer day and night, doing the (many) adjustments Espen suggested when we met in Bergen two weeks ago? I have given up so much for this, why couldn#t I just skip this vacation with the kids as well?

That is why. I promised, last year, that this year I'd go with them abroad, spend my vacation with them, not the writing and the reading. I am so close... I don't want to come out at the other side not knowing my kids.

So, I have been to Jersey and gotten a sunburn hiking along the cliffs of the north coast - wonderful, hiking has always been a favourite thing to do with the now-teens, once they are warmed up they are like eager dogs running ahead and turning back, waiting at a viewpoint or eagerly struggling on some detour! I had an other sunburn - and desperately sore feet - spending two days in St. Malo and Mont St. Michel, stretching what I remember of gothic architecture to the limit as we walked through the wonderful monastery - a part of my mind thinking what a GREAT site that would be for Live Action Role-Play. I have walked through Harrods and been too overwhelmed to spend a pound - and I have bought new bras at Rigby and Peller - which is where the Queen of England has her made. And That brings me here - stationed at Virgin Music, at an internet cafe, waiting for the rest of the family to find a sheet music store where they might have that special Gerschwin book my ambitious saxophone playing girl needs for the audition to the big band she wants to join. I haven't found the red shoes I have been looking for... and don't think I will... but hey, I have seen Les Miserables, I have seen A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe theatre - standing area - and before I return home I want to visit Tate's Modern - and then I'll be happy, my cultural alibi is safe.

I feel like screaming. I am annternetconnection which is a red box with no keyboard, and type with a stick, a if i wa paralysed. Only the light sunburn reminds me that i should relax and enjoy st. malo. and no, no link - this thing will not let me multitask!!!!

Vacation - almost
Tomorrow morning, at 06.55, the plane leaves Volda for Bergen, where I am to see Espen and Jill. After two days in Bergen, I am off to my little sister's wedding, which I suspect will be a quite colourful affair, and then two weeks vacation in England with husband and kids. I'll most likely update this blog when I get to a computer, but that won't be regularly. But don't worry, I will be strictly supervised by my very sensible and responsible teenage kids all the time, so I and everybody else will be safe and sane until I return to a computer in August.

And when I get home, Baldur's Gate II just arrived by mail, so my spare time is taken care of.

Monster attack on Denmark!
Chatting with my NYC-connection, he mentioned a movie I have not had the pleasure (?) of watching. Perhaps Lisbeth or Jesper knows about it: Reptilicus, the "most dangerous 200 feet of rubber snake ever to menace a small European country." According to the net it even exists on DVD - and yes I am looking for a copy. I think this is a must see - particularly to get a good look at the well-dressed Danish extras fleeing this horror!

Blogs, news and Big Media
Economist.com | Weblogging
Should Old Media Embrace Blogging?
by way of www.blogger.com

In this article Andrew Sullivan claims that:
“Blogs have emerged as an instant critique of major media,” says Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic, whose weblog book reviews can lift a title into the top ten on Amazon. “At the same time, bloggers are parasites on big media, relying on them for stories and raw material.”

This is an interesting statement, as it gives blogs one of the characteristics of what I assume Andrew Sullivan calls "the Big Media". According to one of the most used and quoted articles on media ever written: The Structure of Foreign News by Galtung and Ruge, news isn't news unless it's already been defined as news. This positions blogs, if what Andrew Sullivan claims is true, firmly in the tradition of exactly the media he claims blogs are parasites of. The logic conclusion should be that all media are parasites - and that is more than partly true. Media don't, after all, live from producing news, they live from selling us, the audience, to the advertisers. They are not really parasites of each other, they are parasites of us. Andrew Sullivan is such a parasite himself. According to The Economist, he makes a measly 6000$ a month on sales from products he promotes on his site. Now he probably has to pay a little bit for his connection and server space, and taxes like the rest of us - but at least to a Norwegian Academic, that sounds like a decent living.

So what do big media groups stand to gain from adopting a format that delights in promoting competitors' content, and relies on relinquishing editorial control?

Editorial control in media is a myth, today. It has been relinquished to the advertisers and owners, as well as to competition and popularity polls, a long time ago. Blogs just might make that somewhat more visible - and perhaps honest.

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan
Blogging as one of the things that's "right" about USA.
By way of www.blogger.com

PINK CADILLAC
In case you wondered why Americans can't have small, sensible, ecologically sane cars.

A room of your own...
Bedroom Culture and Media Use
A very interesting article on where children spend their time, and what having your own room means for kids, as well as how it influences their social life. I am still looking for where I read about the change in childrens games in New York, from being social and not controlled by adults, to being solitary and controlled, mainly out of the fear for letting children out of sight. There might be a little article here somewhere...

Girls and boys at school
Hilde writes about the fact that the boys are falling behind, and there's speculation that this is due to boys being discriminated against.

In a way that is what is happening. Society is changing into a place where the early development and better physical control of women is becoming an advantage over men. The school system rewards and nurtures students who are able to sit still and concentrate - something boys are physically less able to do than the girls. This wasn't really a problem earlier, as boys could choose different careers, careers which depended on their physical strength, endurance and manual skills, with teaching in the apprenticeship system which involved more parts of the body in the learning process than ears and eyes. Today even becoming a carpenter involves sitting still and listening for long, endless hours.

As a result, more and more boys are registered as having learning disabilities. They need special attention, special resources in order to keep up, or the teachers just give up on them and consider them stupid.

I don't think this is a result of the women's movement going too far.. I rather suspect that a lot of the success of women over the last 50 years is tied closely to this development of a need for different skills and abilities: a development which leaves men at a disadvantage because they are men, just as women were at a disadvantage in a society where brute strength and not bearing children was important to maintain health and gain status.

What we need isn't as much a men's movement as a human's movement: someone to see to it that all men and women have equal opportunities according to their abilities. But that will take quite a bit of redefinition of what's important in our society, and how to reach those goals. Until then, the struggle of conflicting interests is the best way to get anywhere towards a society where all have the same chances. I think.

Francis Strand is slightly chilled by excessive American flag waving. It's interesting what an important symbol flags are. I don't like nationalism - but the Norwegian flag has a history closely connected to the development of the country as an independent nation (which we haven't been for a hundred years yet), and has been a symbol of independence and defiance right up to the 20th century. At first Norwegians had the Norwegian Lion on the Danish flag, then the Swedish flag with a red corner and a white diagonal cross, then the Norwegian flag as we know it was a compromise between the danish and the sweedish - with the top inner corner carrying the union mark (the "hering salad"). The Norwegian flag as we know it today would later be flown as a protest against the swedes, when the "clean" flag, with no union mark in the corner, was outlawed. Later it was outlawed again during the second world war, together with the red knitted cap! Norwegians take any opportunity to wave flags... but we have an advantage over Americans: nobody are worried that this flag-waving signals an ambition to take over the world, it's more a quaint little tradition, just like the pretty embroidered national costumes.

People buy digital cameras in Norway this summer, and according to an article in Aftenposten this makes spouses argue as wives protest. The husbands want the pictures on file and are quite happy with that - the wives feel that they won't have any paper copies for their albums, and protests against digitalised pictures.

This assumes quite a few things about Norwegian households and modern technology: 1) Men buy the technology. 2) Men use the technology (take the pictures). 3) Women process the outcome of the use of the technology (make the albums). 4) Women use the product (pass the albums around), particularly for network-building and maintainance. 5) Women haven't grasped the idea of processing through technology (getting a photography printer). 6) Women don't email pictures to their friends.

I would have loved to see a study of the use of slides. Slides are similar to digital pictures in that you need some particular technology in order to access them. You need to take them to the photographer in order to copy them to paper and glue them in an album. What I'd like to know is, did the women say: "No, don't use that film!" when their husbands took slides or perhaps even made little movies with old-fasioned film cameras? And did they protest the move into video, because they couldn't look at the tiny pictures on the tape without using special technology?

Me? I am going to look for that credit-card sized little logitech camera this summer.... despite the fact that I know we have five other cameras which will all give better pictures. But then again - colleagues have claimed for a decade that I am not really a woman.

I have decided to keep the temporary title The Digital Juggler.
I googled the name, and the only hits which were a perfect match were to this blog. I did however get one interesting hit: The High-tech Juggling Jukebox. This is the site of a juggler who experiments with motion sensors in his juggling act, playing music dependent on his motions. I find that quite fascinating, how the body can control the technology through new interfaces. And I am fascinated because it's so very science fiction: Like just putting your hands under the tap at public toilets, and the water will flow without a touch. It's almost like those novels and films where doors open and lights go on and off controlled by movements in the room: arcane handsignals mystifying the primitive visitors to such future wonders. The school my son was at experimented with motion-sensors to control the light, by the way. The problem was that when the kids were too well-behaved, the light would go out. Or perhaps that motivated them to be particularly quiet?

A delightful little hypertext for Norwegian readers: Thomas Hylland Eriksen's: Bivirkninger, en tekstlabyrint (Side-effects, a text-labyrith).

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is one of the more colourful Norwegian scholars: a social anthropologist who likes to comment on Norwegian culture, exploring Norwegian popular and common culture and scrutinising it from the viewpoint of a very well trained and quite sophisticated academic. This makes irony almost inevitable, because who can take either position seriously without choosing between them? But that's one of the things I love when I read his writing: that little voice of rebellion against both his roles - or all.

(link by way of Trygve)

Klastrup's Cataclysms
Lisbeth doesn't gaze longingly at games and wish to play them again, and I have to admit that I don't either. But the CD-rack of games is always either empty, or filled with games I have no idea where they came from. And if there's a game I want to look at, I have to book it sometimes a week in advance. Because in this house, where there are two teen-agers who grow up in a household and a time when games are like books and comics, part of the cultural environment, games are things to swap, to borrow and to lend, to copy, to test out, to comment on, social and cultural objects that float around together with the videos and dvd, the music CDs and the copied minidisks.

Ben, one of my interviewees, told me that he prefers the classic, simple games, and he used to help maintaining a classic gaming site. I think it's just a matter of time - I feel a nostalgic longing towards that special feeling when I pick up a certain book or perhaps a comic strip. The feeling I long for is not so much the experience of the book as what that experience reminds me of: a moment of innocense, a time of transcience, a period of tranquility or escape, and for that to happen the object must have been part of your life through these periods. I suspect that over the next 20 years we'll see adults who pick up and install their favourite game when they need to re-encounter such a time of their life. Let's just hope technology becomes flexible enough to make it possible.

One more article - this a short and not-so-formal one - sent off. It's about the internet as the playground of amateurs, where I argue that the non-professional market for hardware, software and network access is what keeps the net growing - and that games are an obvious (almost natural, but I won't use that about something as constructed and cultural as the www) tool in the process of making computers accessible. Oh, well, one more little paper to my credit when the dean counts research and publishing achieved this year.

Five years ago, the Media Department at Volda College was considered the least research- and publishing-friendly department here. After the college devised a system for registering articles, lectures, and different kinds of publications, it turns out that this department, which is about the tenth of the college, does more than 25% of the academic publishing. Short of doctorate theses' (which are rare all over), we publish at all levels, from the simplest little newspaper article to larger research-based reports. That was quite a shock to some of the other departments, as the popular rumour was that we can teach others how to publish - but never get around to do it ourselves.

Leafing through sites of electronic poetry, I stumbled on Xylo, an animated poem by Peter Howard. I found it at Word Circuits, by way of John Cayley's links.

Xylo is a lovely little mixture of music, text and pretty design, the animation controlling the movement of the roaming eye, the dancing split-hair circle distracting as well as leading the eye to this or that text, adding rhythm of movement and colour to that of music and text.

The strangest catch so far. I found the august highland collections by clicking on the newly updated link at blogger. When I find sites like this I always end up in a conflict of emotions that make me eventually reject them - although I like to make up a good reason for this rejection first.

The august highland collections is a collection of experimental writers and writings. The texts I have seen look like they have been generated by a computer, translated to an other language through babelfish and then translated back to English. I have seen similar things done in other contexts, John Cayley for instance lets his texts morph through random sequences into new texts, achieving much of the same scrambled result - but in his case the scrambling is a transitional stage and highly evocative.

What I am left with is a feeling that somebody might find the august highland collections interesting - and I think I have met that kind of people from time to time. There's something deliberately defiant, planned-as-underground, calculatingly chaotic about them that makes me think of bourgoise punks and week-end bikers. I know there are words to be used to describe it which would convey meaning and elicit admiring gasps from the crowd watching. But I just feel too common, too little educated into the mysteries of "high art", 20 years of academic life notwithstanding, to find those words. Still I leave the link here, because august highland is the kind of site that should be rejected or loved subjectively.

Somewhat late in finding this, because Windows XT and Mac OSX might have added new factors which ought to be considered, but I still really enjoyed reading Neal Stephenson: In the beginning... was the command line. He writes easily and eloquently about the Mac/PC cultures, and he has some points I like. Some of them I have used for years in order to strike back at the mac-users (who occasionally sound more like a congregation than users of a product), and some are entirely new to me and have made me look with more enlightened eyes on all operating systems.

When I came to the end of the (very readable) book I got a problem with his opening metaphor though, where people pass by the free tanks lined up along the street in order to get the ugly station-wagon which is Windows. When you have to learn a LOT of specialised information in order to use an operating system, it isn't really free, is it? Time is an investment too, and Neal Stephenson forgets that in his delight - or perhaps this is a new love-affair, this time with Linux.

And if you follow that link to amazon: check out his fiction as well! I really like this writer.

Technology Review - The Wireless Arcade
Finally somebody understood that gamers grow up and want to look the part - even if they want to go on playing.

Handheld, wireless games for polite people who wait their turn.

Technology Review - Power to the Players
Henry Jenkins on computer games and the first amendment. Thanks Gonzalo.

Mark has tried a touch-typing teaching program, and he's annoyed at a little viking jumping around on the page as a substitute for intelligent responses. By the sound of it, the developers of that program have read the book Jill has ordered from the library and which I have right here on my desk-The Media Equation. According to this book, we should react positively to a smiling, active and positive person on our screen, particularly one that gives us positive feed-back, tells us how smart we are and how well we are doing. According to the studies of Reeves and Nass, Mark's response to the program: perceiving it as unintelligent and a waste of time and energy, is not a normal and polite response. They found that people tried to avoid hurting the feelings of computers, they agreed with computers that flattered them, and were more open to criticism when it was wrapped in flattery.

Apart from the serious flaw of this book of being culturally biased - not to say blind - towards the USA-American culture where "normal and polite" means a particular flavour of US normality and politeness, the very annoying habit the writers have of not quoting other people's research in the text but just mentioning it in annotated end-notes, and the consequent muddling of the distinction natural/naturalised, this book totally lacked a critical and self-critical aspect which might have made the book appear intelligent rather than polite. And that's the American version of polite - flattery breeds suspicion in Norway, not liking. I am very suspicious of that book.

I have not been blogrolling for a while. But today I felt like looking for some friends out there.

Mark has been busy with what Tinderbox can do, and although he has turned back to some interesting comments on narratology lately, what I am mainly looking for when I look in there is an announcement that Tinderbox is out for PC. I want to play with that neat toy too!

And Laurel has experiences which echo Francis with the same strength of estranged observation - I love the image of all the people riding up the hill of Holmenkollen - through air like water.

Francis made a comment on culture in today's post on "how do you like it in Sweden".

Being without a culture certainly allows me to be lazy - I don't feel I have enough of a toehold in the culture to be able to make accurate and fair judgments about political issues, for example, and so I'm not burdened with having to make the effort of finding out more or trying to change things one way or another, something I most definitely felt when I had a culture. It makes me sound like a bum, though, doesn't it?

The way he writes it, yes, he does sound like a bum. But at the same time culture sometimes is better observed from the outside. Perhaps this is exactly why I love Francis' writing, because he observes like an ethnographer: from outside of culture. He is an alien in a strange land, and that makes his writing fresh, different and filled with delightful little surprises.

Anders launches The New Media Theory Chair, shared by him and Lev Manovich. I have the same chair - in black leather and with a matching ottoman.

Hilde appears to be so efficient, and as always I read her site for comments on news on computers, gender and power. But a recent email revealed that she has way too much strawberries. Here's one Danish and one Norwegian recipe for you, not the right one, I fear.

I am looking forwards to read the article Lisbeth wrote with Susana on writers' blogs. But until then, I am enjoying the little drops of comments on EverQuest through Lisbeth's blog. When I grow up I want to have time to play Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games, and then I want to find Lisbeth online and we can play and then analyse: two deliciously stimulating things in one! Looking forwards to things like that is part of what makes me trot on towards the finishing line now that most resources have been spent.

Jill has done a lot of interesting new things on her blog lately. The questionnaire was a cute test, the comments and the tag board perhaps even more revolutionary. It has changed her blog-site for me, I think of it and approach it differently when I can write there. Among other things it confuses the issue for me as to where I should comment. Should I write in the comments to each post? Should I write on the tag-board? Or should I keep my comments here? In a way it scews the focus away from what she writes and draws attention to what others have written on her page. It also becomes the site of other people's conversations, such as Anja and Elin, who use that tag board and then leave that board to finish the discussion elsewhere. Perhaps the reason why I react is based on the economy of links:

When I link to B, I give B a link. That link translates to a precise (though undisclosed) value in Google's PageRank and in other indexing systems like Blogdex. The link has a clearer value to B than the content of Bs page has to me or to my readers. I pay B for Bs content with my link.

The tag-board and the commentary is a free link to the site of the person who uses them, if we type in our url's when writing to Jill or leading discussions. In a way it seems appropriate for me to repay that through addressing the topics on the site, in much the same way as I feel it's polite to pay attention to the person who buys me lunch. But perhaps the tag-board and comments have some other value - perhaps the site can become more interesting because of what others contribute, increasing the value of the site rather than stealing the price of a link.

What's your password?

According to this article, the top ten passwords are:

1. no password at all
2. "password"
3. Cartoon characters (Homer, Road Runner, Mickey Mouse, Dilbert)
4. Football team or player's name
5. Pet's name
6. Astrological sign
7. First love, boyfriend/girlfriend's name
8. Profanities/obscenities
9. Any sci-fi or fantasy characters (Gandalf, Frodo, Jedi, Wookie, Hercules)
10. Company name

This is kind of obvious - what's interesting here is what they call "social engineering" - other would call it knowing the culture. But I guess if we know the culture in question knowing how people would think and associate has to be some kind of engineering in order to be interesting. Semiotics, Watson.

DAC 2003: Digital Arts and Culture will be arranged in Melbourne May 2003. Conference chair is Adrian Miles. If I can threaten or tease the money for the ticket out of the department - I'll be there!

This is a huge leap from my mostly manual old nikon, which I have used as a journalist and a tourist for more than twenty years... but I drool just at the gadget value of the thing.

Somewhat outdated, but still with some interesting links: a (Norwegian language) list of webcams

advertising by annoyance - does it work?
On second thought - be vary of this site! It did something really odd - when I lead the mouse over a link it showed for instance the url to Ålesund Harbour, but when I clicked it took me to Fodor's travels. Annoying is the least you can call it.

Things like this surprise me because of their total lack of logic. Why do they think that a person clicking on a link to see Ålesund Harbour wants to go travelling? Or do they think that seeing the harbour will make them NOT want to travel, so let's get them to the travel agency before they see the harbour? Because they can't expect the name of the travel agency, the brand of computers or what ever pops up, to become positively connected to anything in my mind. This is advertising by annoyance, the way kids get their parents to give in and buy candy. But that only works with your own parents, who have already decided they love you. Perfect strangers just walk away and swear never to have children of their own.

Interesting list of links to people who write on or are interested in games and game design.

Friends and contacts.
Tinka at distantsun looked in on her blog to tell us that no, she's not feeling good, but she has people who looks after her. That is reassuring - but somehow it made me wonder what I really need to know. Distantsun has been one of my favourite blogs since I discovered it, but before she went on a hiatus I was wondering if I checked the blog controlled by the same mechanism that makes people stop and look at accidents.

I was never one of those who stop to stare, I was always more of the "let's get out of the way and let the ambulances and fire-engines have space" kind of a person. But the net invites this kind of voyeristic gloating over an other person's pain. As the original energy and intellectual analytical pleasure drained while Tinka poured it all into finishing her thesis, it was as if I stood by and watched her burn out.

In such occasions I wonder: is it possible to act in any really supportive manner? Tinka got a lot of very nice messages and well-wishes, and I was one of those who wished her all the best, but who knows - was that right of me? The illusion of broad and busy social contact which computer-mediated communication can give seduces those who are inclined to depressions and isolation into thinking that they actually have this many friends. One of the people I interviewed emphasised this: it's an illusion of human closeness, because you have such a wide net of contacts, you think you have a lot of friends.

It's hard to be a friend online. It's hard to find a friend online. I hope Tinka found some, it's good to know that she has more offline who look after her. And I don't think I'll look in on her site for a while. I still wish her all the best, but I don't want to be that person who stands and stares. If I can't be useful or supportive, I had better move on.

Revisions, sex, porn and public information
In August I start teaching at a very changed study. We have expanded to a three year study, but since at least one of those years is to be open for the free choice of the student, we don't have to deliver more than two years of teaching. There will however be quite a bit more administration, since we have to administrate three classes rather than two, and all students within these three classes theoretically can have different choices and specially designed tracks of study.

I find myself thinking about this as a linked text rather than a linear text. I understand how to organise the semesters with all the different options as if they were a labyrinth and not a road - or perhaps a house where the doors stand open. When I worked with computer games and sexual information, I found Bianca's smut shack at bianca.com.

No, I don't link to Bianca's any more. When I found it way back when, it was a series of chats and message boards where the metaphor was a building, each chat-room a room in this building - in the cafe there were tables of course. This was expressed graphically like a map, in a time when the convention was that all links were displayed as a list in the margin, normally to the left. To the right, or perhaps even on top, was daring design....

Today Bianca's has changed into a place where you're not just encouraged to pay for a handle and some benefits, but the code has been set up to demand that you join. They sell the emails of their members, and support robots that track ip's in order to collect email addresses. The structure of Bianca: the design and the way to navigate, as well as the chat-system hasn't changed for 8 years, perhaps more. Or if it has changed it has become less interesting: the map of the house no longer is the most efficient way to navigate the site, it demands more clicks and in that way creates longer corridors between each room. It's no longer a shack, it's an appartment building where the stairways, lifts and corridors are not particularly well designed.

The days when the porn-and-sex-sites were the best designed pages on the web is past. There is too much which has to be displayed - rather than being tempting and nice little budoirs, they are huge unwieldly monsters where the browser is used ruthlessly to trap you and hold you in with all the insistance of a desperate prostitute. Today the most interesting and manouverable sites tend to belong to academic organisations and research organisations, with non-commercial gamers sites and public information pages as a close second. These places offer information rather than push it, and as such rely on being open and easy to use rather than on forcing the user in one particular direction.

This is how I have to think about organising the study as well. Of course, there are things the students have to study. There's a minimum of topics which we have to control, in order to give them a bachelor's degree. But when in the next three years they study certain topics can only be controlled through what we make available, not through what we insist on. The design has to be logical and open, and the links between the different topics have to be easily and clearly visible. OK, so I don't want to build a smut-shack, but I do want to build a house where entrances and exits are clearly marked, where it's easy to understand why certain rooms are on the same floor, and where the stairwells and elevators don't get clogged by students who insist that they need to be somewhere else.

And no, I am not planning on selling their email-addresses. At least not to commercial interests...

The Real Topic
My thesis is about a lot of different things. Today I am trying to find a title. I have three suggestions so far:

Pleasures of the Player: Online Games and Offline Actions
The Digital Juggler: Flow and Control in Online Games
The Player's Game: Imagination, Control and Participation in MUDs

I think I prefer the two last ones. I am not really writing about offline actions. I like the image of the Digital Juggler, and it's been at the back of my mind ever since I started writing. But I am afraid that it's nostalgia which makes me keep it: that or inertia - that I can't see the changes in my own work. Still, the Digital Juggler is a fertile image, an image which for me points to flow and control.

The Player's Game is a nice image too: the Player as subject, active and controlling. But I have already published one fairly large report in Norwegian: Spillets leser, leserens spill - The Reader of the Game, the Game of the Reader - and this refers to and playes with pretty much the same image, and might lead to confusion, particularly when you add the report I wrote with my sister on offline role-playing games and computer games: "One of those reports on playing and reading from Mortensen something - don't remember which..."

Perhaps a mixture of two and three? The Digital Juggler: Imagination, Control and Participation in MUDs? No, I am not sure yet. And the main reason is because I need to write the conclusion. I have attempted conclusions several times. Some of them are:

Games are not stories, but can be narrative environments.
Players are not writers, readers, actors or performers. They are players - even if they commit several of the same acts.
Computer Games are not open texts, but not closed texts either. They are ergodic texts (yes, I know Espen Aarseth has already concluded this), but they don't stop at being ergodic texts. Games contain ergodic texts, just as they can contain or communicate little stories, videos or pictures.
The gaming experience can not be studied without immersion and reflexivity.
Game culture is fragile and change-oriented.
Players are smart and problem-solving oriented.
The computer is a perfect arena, and all aspects of it invites play.

I still don't really know what is the most important conclusion. I don't know which conclusions I have omitted here. I don't really know how these things connect and what they mean. I have these 250 pages, and I look at them and I ask myself: So what?

That's one of the major questions when I criticise research: so what? I had better find an answer to my own question - and write it down in somewhat accessible language. BBL.

Media and Games online network
Discussion boards for Computer Games.

UFD - The Competence Reform in Norway
They call it "Competence Reform" in Norwegian. I wonder whose competence is to be reformed.

Raftevolds Hotel
The department has been away, staying Tuesday to Wednesday at this hotel, to discuss the "quality reform" of Norwegian higher education. The reform has been nicknamed "the quantity reform" - it's still an open question where the quality will enter into it, but we will have to deliver more teaching to more students, preferably cheaper. Isn't that what all reforms are about?

Neil Gaiman's Journal for you, Lisbeth.

Thesis update
Chapters 1-5 proofread.
Chapters 6-10 sent off to proofreading and for a look-over by Espen, my supervisor.
literature list corrected and updated

to go:
editing chapter 5 after proofreading
writing chapter 11 (and the whole discussing with Espen, proofreading it and editing it ceremony)
writing the science-theory essay
presenting same essay
convincing our graphic designer that I need a cool design for the front page
submitting the whole sorry mess.

yes, I am starting to get fed up with this.

a meme just because
Francis quotes jillmatrix, because he loves Nancy - I couldn't resist, mainly because of my soft spot for Francis:

"Five things that pick me up when I'm feeling blue. Now, how 'bout you?"

• A new fantasy or science fiction novel.
  
• One of the teen-agers in a cuddly mood.
  
• Tea carried by some considerate family member all the way downstairs where I have hidden in the music/TV room in order not to bother anybody else with me being blue.
  
• Long online chats or games with some favourite friends, like my NYC-connection.
  
• Trying on old clothes. I haven't blogged this before, but I am losing weight this spring - surprising amounts of weight! I am down 11 kilos, and I have only a few kilos to go until I can get into the trousers I wore in 1985 - before both pregnancies, a thyroid malfunction and years spent before the computer screen. It started out as an online duel, but now the other woman is so far behind that I have stopped posting pictures of the new me and updates on how I shrink. But I get quite a kick out of reading my journal documenting all of this - a kick I'd normally get from chocolate. (This diet permits chocolate! I guess that's the only reason I can stick to it.)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players

Shakespeare gives the answer to why games are so popular!

Baldur's gate and The Sims are two very different types of games. But they seem to have several aspects in common, most important perhaps the attempt at convincing the players that the avatars are "real people" or characters, that they are ruled by certain laws, and that the player needs to relate to them not as agents of random acts, but as personalities, with a logic which can be explained from the physical and social reality they live in.

MMmmHmmm, can you tell I want to go home and try the game?

Yesterday, I bought a copy of The Sim's, with the Livin' Large expansion (Livin' it Up in Europe). What I think about it? That my kids seem to be pretty involved! They are both in front of the computer, discussing in quiet harmony, and I don't expect to have time/opportunity to test it out before their characters are quite established.

For myself, I am looking for Baldur's Gate II, which is not easy to find for PCs. But I'll keep looking. And it has to be the "Shadows of Amn" version, not the "Throne of Baal" expansion.

In order to be able to write - even to read - I need to be in this very special state of mind. Other people go to beautiful, quiet, clean and peaceful places like Volda to achieve this peace of mind, to be isolated from the bustle and aggression of their every day lives. I can write just about anywhere - in an uncomfortable chair, in a computer-lab with chatting students all about me, in a tent while it's raining... The one thing I can't handle is guilt. And the last two days my guilt of being a bad colleague, a bad mother, a bad daughter, in short, a very, very bad woman guilty of the sin of putting my work before the needs of everybody else, has caught up with me with a vengeance.

I don't know how to deal with it. I am going to bed. I am so sorry. Tomorrow I'll try to be good.

I never used to being good at accumulating lists of references and citations. Even now, after four years of information gathering, it's not really such an impressive list. But still... it keeps accumulating. A little quote here, a little clearification there - and slowly the list grows, like some fungus appended to my chapters... And despite the fungus-metaphor - I enjoy watching it grow. It somehow makes me feel adult and oh-so-serious.

Sometimes I hit the "recently updated" links on www.blogger.com just to see what is out there. Most of the time I find something which looks nice enough, but I am just not the target group for it. Sometimes I find little treasures of interesting writing and irony... and sometimes I find something really bad and with absolutely no sense of humour.

Today I found Kirc's very desperate expression of love to or dependency of his wife, and through his blog a link to Melissa's weblog. According to their logs, he cheated on her in 1993, moved out, then he moved back in. Now she's sick and tired of him and he's trying to save the marriage. He's been lying, working and drinking with his friends, but not at bars, because according to Melissa he doesn't go to bars. Melissa has also been slamming his mother in her weblog, and now she's deleting all of those posts because she has discovered that Kirc was a spoiled brat before Alec got leukemia.

Still not confused? Get a glimpse of real life soap through blogging. It's out there.

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Simple password holds the key
Sometimes, not-so-inventive security is a good thing. This was at the Aasen Center - which is just next to that cute little airport so often mentioned here.

Netacademy on JMM Journal Homepage
The International Journal of Media Management. Yes, I do other stuff too, like teaching public information and communication planning - and this journal looks relevant to that part of my life.

Reality TV
An article by Marie-Laure Ryan - just to remind myself that I want to read it.

No wonder I was confused about ethnology/anthropology. This is what Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia has to say about the topic - courtesy of my colleague Eivind Rønnestad:

Different terms are used to describe the fields of anthropology in the United States and Europe. While in the United States the term anthropology is used to name the whole subject, in Europe the name ethnology is applied. (Ethnology is defined as the science that studies the many races of mankind their beginnings, characteristics, differences, and distribution.) What is called "cultural anthropology" in the United States is also termed "ethnology" in European countries. The term physical anthropology is used in both parts of the world.

Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1993, 1994 Compton's NewMedia, Inc.

After I shared my confusion with the department where I work, Øystein Sande was quick to reply with his understanding of the terms, giving me the correct answer based on the etymology of the words.

But Erling Sivertsen put me on the track of a book by Thomas Hylland Eriksen. And Jill, Hylland Eriksen is an exellent example of a researcher who used the net to communicate his opinions as well as write journal-like entries long before blogging became a fashion, He should be on your list, I think. At least he's an example to remember when we talk about this in Norway.

Back to anthropology versus ethnology:
According to Hylland Eriksen, ethnology comes from the french ethnologie, and the distinction is between ethnographie: a description of society and culture, ethnologie: regional comparisons and anthropologie: The general comparative science of mankind, society and culture.

Hylland Eriksen however focuses on social anthropology, and he would of course use a definition of the topic which positions the anthropology as the main or dominant category, which the other categories are subordinate to. My confusion has been caused by the American/European use of the words described in the quote from Compton's, as the texts I keep referring to position themselves randomly (appearantly) within the one or the other paradigm. The texts themselves however refer to the same kind of theory, problems, questions and methods. And that's no wonder, since it's the same thing, just different terms.

Now I can go back to the thesis and change a headline. That's a relief!

The difference that makes a difference... So what is the difference between Ethnography and Anthropology? I don't know, I can't find the answer online and I don't know where to start reading.

From Book Crossing, a testimony:

Take BookCrossing.com. On the face of it, it presents no profound challenge to established publishing practices and to the modern concept of intellectual property. Members register their books, obtain a BCID (BookCrossing ID Number) and then give the book to someone, or simply leave it lying around for a total stranger to find. Henceforth, fate determines the chain of events. Eventual successive owners of the volume are supposed to report to BookCrossing (by e-mail) about the books and their whereabouts, thereby generating moving plots and mapping the territory of literacy and bibliomania. This innocuous model subversively undermines the concept - legal and moral - of ownership. It also expropriates the book from the realm of passive, inert objects and transforms it into a catalyst of human interactions across time and space. In other words, it returns the book to its origins: a time capsule, a time machine and the embodiment of a historical narrative.

by Sam Vaknin - who's working in a surprising, but interesting field - that of narcissism.

From the NYC blogger-page: CHF's Life and Times on media and digital communication. I particularly appreciated the post from May 24th on Book Crossing. That's something I might want to do. I have left enough books in random airports and buss-seats - this way it would feel like the act has a purpose.

It’s 10.30 pm, and the sun is setting on the veranda where I sit, computer in my lap. The light reflected off the fjord is golden and pink with sunset, the ferries cut shimmering lines through the water. Kept apart by the deep, lush green of the mountainsides, sky and water are light and reflection. From the gardens along the quiet streets there are careful voices or happy laughter. It’s too late in the evening for barbeques, but there is the occasional tinkle of glasses meeting for a toast. It’s summer, filled with a rare and unexpected heat which makes the days a burden but the light, warm nights a luxury such as children will remember when they grow old. The fragrance of the flowers, hurried into frantic bloom, the warm asphalt slowly cooling, the salt of the fjord and the delight of that feverish chill as sunburned skin meets the light breeze off the water; it will all make for those nostalgic attacks of longing for childhood, for early puberty or for that year you fell in love, that year which was all different from every other year… And through the silence of the evening the sound of a boat-engine pours its exuberant vibrations into the perfumed, purple evening of future nostalgia.

It's hot here. I am learning new tricks:
Iced Vanilla Coffee
Creamy Ice Coffee
40 coffee recipes
Cold Coffee recipe index

I have been smuggling for years, I just didn't know about it. According to Norwegian Customs, I am only allowed to take one kilo of chocolate into the country, without paying for importing it. That was scary, next time I have been to Economy Candy in NYC before getting on the plane home, I'll have that guilty look and they will take me aside and go through the entire luggage looking for the illegal substances that make me look like that. And then they'll grab my stash of chocolate, optimistically hidden underneath the books, and fine me severely for years and years of pushing sweets.

Anyway - talking of luggage: One more piece arrived today - it was the backpack with some clothes, books and back-up CDs. It was soaked. Not good - damage-report already registered, one bag missing still. The last bag has been sighted though, and should arrive this afternoon.

Weblogs at the UC Berkeley: a course in journalism.

I will pass this link around to my colleagues, as I think both the concept and the technology is something journalists and editors have to discuss seriously in the next few years.

link by way of leuschke.

Normative Studies
I am writing a little paragraph about Normative Studies, using Provenzo Video Kids as an example. To me that book is the video-game version of the media panics sweaping over the western continent all through last century. But where is the limit for normative? At which point does the expectations and political or religious conviction of the writer start dictating the reporting/research and turn information and enlightenment into preaching?

I hope I find out before I have to defend my definition of that line.

The Placebo Effect
I checked again, even if I by now have absolute proof that at least 1/3 of the information on the site is wrong. It has a soothing effect, but it doesn't bring my luggage back, and it doesn't tell me where the two missing bags might be. But my mind is preoccupied with them, I keep memorising what is in them. The new dress and jacket. Two pairs of shoes. Medicines and cosmetics. Underwear - and clean too. Not to mention the books. All of the books I have been working with lately. I am trying to remember what I slipped into the top pocket. That was something I had almost forgotten, then remembered in the last minute.

My mind obsesses over these possessions, and I seek solace by giving myself this substitute for information. One of the players I interviewed said that levelling in games is something people do not because it's so much fun - not even because it lets them kick the other player characters' behinds - but because they can do it. We are often powerless, adrift, victims to circumstances beyond our control. In the game, the one thing the players can do is level: gain experience points and check out equipment. And so that's what they do. It's not a cure, but it feels like a cure, it's at least something. There's a place where I can log in and see that they have all the information I gave them. I can see that they have the right address. I can see the numbers of the luggagge tags and I know that when somebody finds the bags they can search by way of the tags and find out where they belong. And it doesn't really change anything, it just offers the illusion of control.

The pretty earrings. I was complimentet for those at the Eyebeam Soiree. Now I wish I had forgotten to pack them. They would have been safer in NYC.

I keep getting emails in duplicate - one from the college, and then immediately afterwards one from verizon.net, both from the same sender. The one from Verizon.net has infallibly been cleaned of this worm: WORM_KLEZ.H

The ones from the college have not been exorcized... The worm is apparently already within the walls of the college security, creating addresses from our server to spread the infection. If you get any mail from verizon.net or hivolda.no, from a sender you don't recognize, beware. I hope the fact that I am not in a habit of opening spam or attachment I am not familiar with should keep me safe, but I can't guarantee the pristinity of my mailbox if the college server has been comprimised.

More about this worm here.

The journalists are on strike in Norway, and today the local paper of this district joined. I wonder who will be left to cover the fact that the journalists are on strike? Because it's not like they will get any attention if all of them refuse to produce news!

It doesn't look that hot, but I am almost fried here in my office, with no air-conditioning or shades, and sunlight in the window. I normally never whine about being warm, I like heat, but this is draining me.

Forskerbasen
Utnytt databasene og søkemotorene!

Free Surfer, the ultimate popup stopper by EMS-Project
Finally a good idea.

Without any help from the internet tracer services, one of the lost pieces of luggage found its way to the house, carried to the door by one of my favourite airport employees, one of those guys who knows every passenger by name and books journeys to any place I want in the world, cheaply, easily and with an uniquely personal service (remember, when you come home, you will need ID. We can always find a way to convince the people at Oslo Airport that we know you, but it's a little harder if you try to get home from Copenhagen without something to prove who you are...).

From the kids' point of view, that was the most important piece of luggage, my daughter's new case for her saxophone; the case stuffed with presents and sweets. I am however still waiting for the books, and my new shoes. The books, or course, are the most important...

Bag 1 Status: PENDING. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER
Bag 2 Status: PENDING. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER
Bag 3 Status: PENDING. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER

If you're going by plane by way of Amsterdam: take only handluggage! (At least keep your medicines, most valued possessions and clean underwear for a week with you.) They are changing the luggage-handling system, and it needs a wee bit of tweaking. As of this morning, more than 300 pieces of luggage had not arrived to Oslo from Amsterdam - at one handling company alone.

Yes I am an addict... but I try to stay addicted to the good stuff.

I escaped to the end of the R-Line, Brooklyn, for the same reason why this girl wants to leave. So I am twice her age - it just means I have had all that more practice at dreading phone-calls when I try to focus on something else.

Henry Jenkins: Game Design
Continued

Last Tuesday I read quickly through this article and promised I'd come back to it. Today I have been going through it more carefully in order to figure out what it is about this article that disturbs me. I agree with a lot of Jenkins' statements. His view of games is very close to my own opinion on this topic: they are not narratives but environments which can accomodate or support narratives and can have narrative elements. The argument on spatiality is to the point and captures one of the main differences between games and narratives, and his argument as to why games basically focus on science fiction and fantasy put something in its proper place for me:

Often, such works exist on the outer borders of literature. They are much loved by readers, to be sure, and passed down from one generation to another, but they rarely figure in the canon of great literary works. How often, for example, has science fiction been criticized for being preoccupied with world-making at the expense of character psychology or plot development? These writers seem constantly to be pushing against the limits of what can be accomplished in a printed text and thus their works fare badly against aesthetic standards defined around classically-constructed novels. In many cases, the characters - our guides through these richly-developed worlds - are stripped down to the bare bones, description displaces exposition, and plots fragment into a series of episodes and encounters. When game designers draw story elements from existing film or literary genres, they are most apt to tap those genres - fantasy, adventure, science fiction, horror, war - which are most invested in world-making and spatial storytelling. Games, in turn, may more fully realize the spatiality of these stories, giving a much more immersive and compelling representation of their narrative worlds.

However; much as I agree with such keen observations, I can't reconcile myself with the article. I think that is because I find that it has conflicting agendas, or perhaps goals which cannot be achieved with the information Jenkins bases his writing on. The goals as I understand them:

1) To end the feud between ludologists and narratologists
2) To tell the ludologists how important narrative still is for understanding games
3) To argue for why game-designers should learn about film theory

1) Ludologists and narratologists
Who are these mysterious ludologists who just can't understand that narrative is important to games? According to Jenkins, it's Markku Eskelinen and Jesper Juul. It's a testimony to the fragility of narratology in popular culture that two voices are taken to represent an opposing community. Jenkins devotes an otherwise exellent article on narrative elements in games to the "ludologists'" lack of submission to a certain theoretical approach, in order to educate, convince and might one perhaps even thing silence them? Among scholars who devote as much time and energy to the study of games as Jesper and Markku and have the same claim on being "ludologists", there are other voices. These are however mostly ignored because they pose no threat to the hegemony of narratology. The strategy of positioning in a field is a well-known and effective rhetoric technique; pick one or two enemies, create the largest gap possible between yourself and them and then argue against the extreme expressions of the oposing paradigm. That is where the perceived bloodfeud between "ludologists" (whoever they are) and "narratologists" is at right now, and where it will remain as long as the criteria of news value rules academic attention.

2) Tell ludologists about narrativity
Jenkins argues as if he thinks "the ludologists" don't know narrative theory, and are incapable of doing independent analysis of the narrativity of games. I find that Jesper Juul's thesis contains among other things quite nice discussions of the narrative elements of some of the games he studies. The assumption that enough knowledge of narrative theory will bring enlightenment to the strayed sheep is a political or perhaps religious conviction rather than a valid academic argument. At the end of Jenkins' article someone who studies games rather than stories can only nod and say: "yes, all of this is correct, but games are still different from stories, and we need to take those differences seriously, rather than try to incorporate the games in a too narrow field." This conviction of the faith of ludology is also based on study and research, and is as entitled to respect as is any other fairly well researched belief in Academia.

3) Teach narratology to Game Designers
Where did this come from? Or perhaps I am wrong about who the ludologists are? Are they the game designers? In that case I agree, just as I agree that my journalist students need to learn about advertising, propaganda and fiction writing: Because game designers need to be able to communicate with their audience, and they should use as many tools as possible in order to do that. Along the same vein I think that fasion designers can benefit from taking classes in art history, and architects should study comparative politics. The one thing isn't the other, but it's possible to benefit from knowing about it. Just don't confuse Game Designers with the initial "ludologists" and this should be uncontroversial.

....
To answer Gonzalo's question from last week: I agree with a lot of what Henry Jenkins writes, and I know there are several dissertations about to be finished on the topic which will give more space to this topic than he can do in this short article. I don't agree with the rhetoric goal of the article, as I find that it is based more on sensationalism than on actual knowledge. Still, it's the best piece I have read on the topic games/narrativity in quite a while, and as mentioned, there are one or two passages in that article for which I am quite grateful to Jenkins.

I am trying to decide what style to use on my references. Yes, I know that's a tad bit late, but I have been fairly good, I just don't know if what I have been doing has a name; and now I have to find and pick one style in order to be able to agree with my proof-reader.

So here are some samples.
My proof-reader claims I am using the MLA-style.
I have been trying to use the style used in Norsk Medietidsskrift, but I don't know what it's called in English, and the journal doesn't tell.

Lost Luggage
It makes me feel like I haven't really arrived yet. Or like I was never away. There are no backpacks filled with dirty laundry just inside the door, no heaps of books waiting to be sorted out and taken to the office, no bags in different states of unpacking surrounded by chocolate paper and bubble plastic from gifts and souvenirs. Perhaps I was never gone - the only thing I have to indicate my month of absense is a bottle of tax-free booze and a box of chocolates - and the chocolates are almost gone already. But I keep checking, hoping to hear that my bags are on their way to Volda. Without them, I feel like I have just lost a month.

Some people want to take home puppies - I want this cute little computer cart. Make sure to watch the HD-series in motion!

Defecation rule
With this in mind, I hereby establish the defecation rule: A defecator is at liberty to commit the act, but he may not commit it on his neigbor's doorstep or in the quiet street in front of his neighbor's house, or in his neighbor's alley, or in his neighbor's customary place of work, or any place where the neighbor or any other passerby may step in it by accident in his own zone of privacy and tranquility.

From Sheri S. Tepper: Six Moon Dance, page 32.

Once upon a time - Oh, might that even have been in an article - I seem to remember saying something about there not being much flaming in blogs. Looks like Des is doing his best to prove me wrong:

I do have my own site, obviously, and one of the rights I exercise here is the right to decide that some things are better said elsewhere, or not at all. (The idea of being told how I should use this space by someone who patrols her own borders so fiercely has He Who Yearns To Use The Word Phallogocentric In Anger straining at the leash, but I have him yet, I have him.)

And I acknowledge that same right in others; yea even unto the gate-keepers of the Sacred Groves of Academe. My concern, like Foucault's, is with the exclusion of certain kinds of voices, rather than their "owners". Being told that I can have a say (if I scrub behind my ears and eat up all my greens, and write where and how I'm told) but that He Who Ululates Elsewhere With My Throat cannot isn't a solution. It's the definition of the problem.

I still don't see what Des' problem is, unless it's that he really wants to be able to write in certain blogs, but the owners won't let him, because - surprise surprise - they don't like to be told what to do in their blogs either. Gets him lots of attention though, and that should keep boys-who-don't-like-to-eat-their-greens happy.