The music of life
The basement is filled with music at odd times: drums, piano, guitar, saxophone, clarinet, even the occasional sound of trumpets. The sounds are punctuated with song and laughter, steps running up and down stairs, and scents of baking, of pizza or other, odder concoctions. I sit in the upstairs livingroom and enjoy the sounds of happy life and activity from a discrete distance. Listening, I understand something about why my mother is so unhappy about her empty, quiet house. Large houses need sounds like these, sounds and scents and footsteps, doorbells ringing and the vibration of the bass notes through the floor, sudden flurries of happy voices as a couple of longlegged teen-agers run from downstairs to the computer, or pay a quick visit to the refrigerator. Did I mention I love having my kids around?

A little late
but very appreciated! Only two days Anja :).

feeling clever?
From Anders Fagerjord, fellow suffering almost-done-with-his-dissertation doctorate candidate, a message for all those people who feel smart out there.

Craft-based MUDs
Greg Costikyan describes A Tale in the Desert as a different MMPG:

Essentially, the core mechanic of A Tale in the Desert is a materials-processing tree tied to a tech tree and a list of skills. You gather basic materials to build gizmos that let you transform the basic materials into more complicated materials so you can learn more skills and build more gizmos and even more complicated materials...

This sounds very much like the system we tried to develop for Lu'Tamohr, a MUD that was set up by a group of the players and administrators from Dragon Realms. It also resembles some of the ideals from Aarinfel and Azhad: MUDs less reliant on hack'n'slash and more on skills, craft and trade, development through negotiation rather than killing.

I am looking forwards to see if this game really does keep the players around for more than the 7 months which seem to be the average of games like EverQuest. Dragon Realms kept a stable player base for almost 4 years, through a combination of hack'n'slash and role-playing. Aarinfel and Azhad lasted much shorter, Lu'Tamohr was too complicated and ambitious for a bunch of amateurs to get properly off the ground. While there is intellectual challenge in puzzle-type games, there is very little to kick your adrenalin into flushing your veins, and sometimes there's nothing like a good fright!

The Real Language
I just downloaded and installed Opera on this computer. Now Opera, while being the fastest browser on earth, is a browser that speaks not just Norwegian, but new Norwegian.

If you don't know about Norwegian language debates, you are ignorant of something essentially Norwegian. We don't fight over land or religion, gender or race. Norwegians fight for, about and with language. Norwegian was actually lost in the black death. The entire literate class died in the plague, and the country was repopulated with public servants, teachers and priests from Denmark. That forced the linguistic drift towards Danish and later, after the Danes got us involved in the Napoleonic wars on the french side, towards Swedish when all the same functions were replaced with Swedes.

The idea of a Norway seperate from Denmark and Sweden, an independent nation of Norwegians, was a rebellion from the districts against the capital: west and north against the south and east, farmland against urban areas. And the most important activist was a man called Ivar Aasen. He was important not for his political views, but for the research and linguistic creativity. Out of language spoken in the Norwegian countryside, he reconstructed an independent Norwegian language, one based on how the people spoke, rather than the upper middle (danified) class. And in modern times, the desire to use new Norwegian was even strong enough to shift Microsoft.

I am linguistically more than a little schizophrenic: I speak new Norwegian, write book Norwegian and read English... but with Opera, I surf the net in New Norwegian! There's something about words like "snøggbufferen" or "utsjånad" - not to mention "bunad" - that makes me feel like I am home, linguistically home. Opera speaks the language in which I think my most sincere thoughts. Perhaps not the brightest, perhaps not the most sophisticated, but the thoughts that are deeply true. Don't trust me if I tell you "I love you". But if I look away from you, hide my eyes, shy and scared, and whisper "eg elskar deg", then it is real.

New Love
I have had this beauty for almost a month, but I haven't had it set up to my pleasure until now. But today I am testing it out at home, and it has already passed one important test: I can sit in front of the large windows in the livingroom and it still gets a strong and good signal from the router in the other end of the house. I am in the best chair in the best spot in the house, with the best computer and connected. Life is good!

Spring
The sound of a cod orgasm...

JOVE
The Journal of Virtual Environments - JOVE, formerly the Journal of MUD Research.

Health and stress
Just to remind myself again that yes, there is a connection between mental stress and physical health:
Stress undermines immunity
Stress that is ineffectively managed and remains too high for too long can contribute to physical illnesses.
Immunity and stress - Rats and rabies. Somehow this feels particularly relevant.
Jest for the health of it - One of the few known antidotes!

Flickwerk
Just to remind you all of Anja Rau's blog. She has had a burst of creativity, and her blog is worth a look.

New Blog
Always good to find an other voice which speaks of interesting topics - and makes sense while doing it.

Action Research (Signs of brain activity)
Elisabeth Lane Lawley writes of weblogs and sense-making, and my brain labouriously shifts into gear.

My experience with sense-making is from the public relations study which I established back in the last milennium, and which I lead today. Brenda Dervin's sense-making approach has always been an important alternative to other methodologies for audience/receiver studies. I do find, however, that Action Research is a wider and more rewarding methodological choice for web-studies. The development of technologies, software and web-communities which are dependent on the user rather than the designer need to be studied not just through the act of common sense and understanding, but through cooperation with the people who actually use and develop said communities. Action research also has the advantage that it assimilates the changes which the study itself causes in the community. This is a meta-aspect which is particularly important with transient and easily influenced groupings such as you find online. The degree of reflexivity in the research needs to be high.

Home
Still coughing rather than sleeping at night, but oh, it's good to be home, good to cough in my own bed, good to see the kids, good to sit in my favourite chair at my large (if by now, full) desk, good to breathe fresh air unpolluted by propane-gas explosions.

Lesson of the week - if you travel: don't get sick.

Going home
This time, my stay in NYC did not lead to inspired blogging or any other fun stuff for readers and listeners alike. I have been without a voice physically and mentally, for more than a week. I could have set up a webcam and let you all watch the grass grow at midwinter, and it would been slightly more thrilling than my last ten days. (Or perhaps a link to David Gallagher's pictures of entombed cars - although that is rather funny.)

Tomorrow I'll be with my family again, though, just in time for my birthday. I am so looking forwards to that! When I know I will be away from the kids for a month or two, I don't really miss them... when I get delayed a week, it feels like I can't get back to them quickly enough.

Dr. Hilde
The good news today: Hilde defends her dissertation, and after this will be Dr. Hilde! Congratulations, wish I could have been there to watch, learn and applaud!

Still in NYC
I should have left for norway last week, but due to the flu I couldn't fly. Now I am declared well enough to fly - once I contacted the insurance company and convinced them I could NOT fly last week, I needed a doctor's report to be allowed to get back on a plane again - and I am just waiting for the travel-insurance company to book me a ticket home.

I have been working like a maniac all winter, and I was afraid that exactly this might happen. I ignore my own exhaustion and go on until I have no resistance left. This is why I had cleaned my schedule for these two weeks, they were supposed to be a vacation. but since I didn't manage to finish the thesis before I left, it became two more weeks of intense and stressfl work. Friday, when I was supposed to rest, my body screamed stop, and I got a fever higher than I have had for several years.

So, instead of getting on a plane Sunday, I read and slept. there was a blizzard in New York, but I didn't notice anything, I was competing with the radiator for heat. The last week-end, when I was supposed to say goodbye to friends and do some last-minute shopping came and went, and I was coughing my lungs out in Brooklyn. My son's birthday, which had been carefully considered as I planned the vacation, zoomed past, and his present is right here in my suitcase. matthew, my NYC connection, friend and surrogate family has been doing his best to spoil me, but not even he could change the view outside his window from one of backyards and houses into the cool, clean view of the fjord which I have been aching for.

I guess I am cured for a while now, not of the flu - I am still coughing and my voice isn't good - but of the bug that makes me want to get out, away, onwards to foreign countries and different ways of life. All I want now is to get home, settle into the manageable orderliness of my life, and rest... for a very long time.

sick
And stranded in Brooklyn. The fever dreams were just the first hint of how hard the influenza virus hit me. I haven't been out of the apartment since Saturday, when I was to see a doctor in order to get the note the insurance company needed since I was NOT getting on the plane the next day. So now I am here, without a voice, without a return-ticket until I have been declared well enough to travel, and without the energy to do anything at all about it.

Dreams
I am a virus, floating in a stream of signals which glow as they zip by at different speeds. What am I looking for? I know it is here, somewhere... and like moisture I seep through a firewall into a library. Each book is changed as I attack them amd turn them into the generic "book", But every generic book is different, influenced by the book I was before this one. What is my mission? I am here to gain control of the reading of the world, of one particular book, and every time I open my eyes in this feverish haze in which I dream, I know I am one step closer, one little victory nearer to my target.

I am not sure what my target was tonight, but the journey stayed with me. Somehow my mind was more than flesh, and the ideas of Gibson, Stephenson and Dick mingled with my own desire of being connected. Waking up to only the senses of the flesh was almost sad, as I found myself once again isolated in my own body.

Lisbeth blogs again
and I recognize her problems immediately. Here I am, tucked up in Brooklyn, getting ready to get home and finish the thesis... and I am running a fever, I who never get a fever. I get a cold, I lose my voice, I sniffle and cough and whine... but here all I do is sit around staring at the walls, feeling My inner temperature go up, up, up... fingers shaking and mind numb at the thought of being trapped here by something which won't let me finish, submit and get on with my life.

New in my world
While I have been semi-conscious with the shock of glimpsing the end of my dissertation struggles, Anja Rau has been busy getting the first number of Tekka out, Anne Galloway wants to know if anyone ever submitted a blog as their PhD dissertation. (Sorry Anne, I don't know, although it's an interesting thought - in Norway you can submit a collection of articles, but that's as liberal as it gets here, I fear.) David Gallagher at lightningfield.com is in California and the pictures make me sick with envy, Jill's blogg for the course on web-design which she's teaching this spring looks great and very interesting, and I am looking forwards to lunch with Eric Zimmerman tomorrow.

Oh, and unless you like the thought of fungus covering your tongue, don't read Stephen King: Dreamcatcher.

A niece!
I just became an aunt, for the third time, this time to a girl. It's my younger sister's child, so now Storm has a lttle sister. I wonder what she'll be named - I am highly in favour of what they suggested - Tora (thunder).

So close...
I have 20 something comments to remind me of little things I can't do from here, and which I need to do when I get home, and perhaps a days work re-transcribing an interview where the file has been corrupted, I need to insert a nice model which a colleague has made for me, I need to make five copies of the whole load of paper and I need to write the request to be permitted to submit the thesis... And then that will be it. I have never been this close to finishing, and it makes me feel nauseous with exitement. Now I will send copies of the file to all my mail-boxes, family and colleagues, to make sure it's not lost to any errors, and then I'll lean back on the bed and think restful thoughts. I have a little work to do, but compared to what I just finished with, it's nothing. Now... just one day when I come home...

Counter-strike
Tony Manninen writes of Cooperation in Multi-User Virtual Worlds, the example of Counter-Strike.

Confined children
I just took a little time to sit down and read prof. Henry Jenkins' article Complete Freedom of Movment, in From Barbie to Mortal Combat. While there are parts I don't recognize, such as his description of the gendered difference between playspaces, I guess those are as much social and cultural distinctions as gendered distinctions. After all, working-class girls and boys in Norway had pretty much the same duties and the same freedom. Apart from that I embrace fully the argument of how computergames and the passive consumption of media among children is not caused by the media, but by the development of our culture: towards a society where we restrict and control the free time of our children to the point that they have no freedom, no secret place in which their imagination can roam but their inner space.

Freakin' crazy
yelled at the top of your lungs, with a sharp, nasal voice. It's the Brooklyn kind of crazy, and it's how I feel today. No, nothing special, just the usual type of pre-submission labour-pain.

Death of the videogames
Read Greg Costikyan's argument concerning why videogame is an obsolete term.

Another gaming blog
videogames this time: Brian-Mitchell Young presents: jccalhoun Popular Culture Gaming, a blog with not-so-frequent posts. In the middle of a long rambling one concerning games-as-art (january 16th 2003, no permalinks), doing a certain amount of kicking in open doors etc, he had a point:

This is why it seems that the question, “Are videogames art?” should be thrown out. There are other questions that are more pertanant. Why does it matter if it is art? What does it get the gaming community? Who benefits from calling it art and why? All of these are questions that need to be asked when one tries to argue the “Is it Art?” question. It does not seem that much if anything is gained by videogames being classified as art. [My italics]

Who benefits is always an important question. Academians certainly benefit. Define games as art, and they can suddenly be studied in different contexts. The designers benefit. Art doesn't just give them respect, but real money, not to mention protection through the legislation designed for works of art and different from the more anonymous mass-produced text belonging to a more public domain. The audience benefits. When you call it art, active criticism isn't just desired, but also expected, and on a different level from popularity ratings. This is a first step towards greater diversity, and it opens up for different demands from the audience - demands to quality, to inventiveness and to formal and expressive beauty which so far has only been glimpsed randomly.

The question, I think, isn't so much why we should not call games art, as why should art be so narrowly defined, and why is it defined by such a small group of people? For that, I recommend studying the works of Pierre Bourdieu.

Monday Morning Lag
(the post that caused my trouble...)
Still jetlagged, which means that I have been sneaking around this apartment as quietly as possible for hours, reading a little in the light of a red lamp (yes, very brothel-like, but nowhere near that interesting).

The trip here was good, and I managed to catch two movies of the type that will never make it to Volda. One of them was S1mOne, over a similar topic as Gibson's Idoru - about a man who has an affair with a virtual actress. But where Al Pacino gives life to Simone to the point that his own minds starts playing tricks with him, accrediting her with more independence than his computer-generated female avatar has, Idoru is a whole different entity, independent of men, developing through nanotechnology into not just an artificial intelligence, but also an alien intelligence, capable of independent emotions.

They keep moving!
But if you want to find them, Hilde's blog has moved here, and gone through a metamorphosis in the process (lovely, Hilde!), while Jill/txt has just had a few minor readjustments even if it has moved as well.

And finally, I got to post and say that....

???
I have had a few bad days bloggerwise. I kept getting error messages, and when I tried to go into the blogger help-files, their links to the possible answer came up with an error message. then I tried to write and tell Blogger about the errormessages on their helpfiles, and was told that since I am a free blogger user, I can't expect that they look at my requests for assistance.

Yes, I am aware that I use blogspot for free - although I am paying to keep my blogspot ad free. But why haven't I bought blogger pro? Because it doesn't offer me a good alternative yet: I need to be able to post from a wider range of browsers than blogger pro offers me. I also don't need all that blogger pro offers. Is Blogger about to do the mistake of so many other types of software for publishing and sharing? Make blogger pro so advanced that most people don't need more than a little bit of it, and then charge the users for all that superfluous software that they might need... all the while forgetting about the people who made the software known in the first place, those unwashed masses who just wants something fairly simple, perhaps not entirely free, but close... but who want this simple part to work well?

Anyway... thanks to Phil Rignalda's troubleshooting blog the problem appears to be solved, and I may go on publishing for free like the freeloading parasite I am.

Oh, baby
do I have a groovy new little toy...

First we'll take Manhattan...
Or actually, it's Brooklyn I am about to re-invade. Bay Ridge area is traditionally Norwegian turf, so it is very home-like. There are meat-balls and milk chocolate from Freia in the deli by the subway, a danish bakery and - best of all - I can see the sea with just a five minute walk. OK, so its somewhat more brakkish than Voldsfjorden, but it smells of salt and there are boats on it, more than the two ferries running back and forth over the fjord. I'll be in Brooklyn from tomorrow and for two weeks, hiding from all the trivial questions like how to keep the roof dry, the car running and the food on the table, immersing myself in the big, important questions, such as: "how can I cut an other 22 pages from this (bloated) manuscript"?

Citing Games II
Jill asks who to put as author. It is complicated, and I may get it wrong, but there are a few hints.

If there are sequels, and one or more names show up in the same main spot: for instance as director, creative director, lead artist or what all those titles are, fairly high on the list, either on top or with just a producer or some administrative positions above, I take my chances with that/those name(s). I also try to read about the game, interviews etc. That's a lot easier when I know which names to look for, search engines are wonderful things. I occasionally try to write the press-department, but so far I have only had one reply. For those of you who might need to cite Myst or Riven, here it is:

Dear Torill,
There are several methods of displaying bibliographical data (APA, MLA). I'm not sure which you're using. Here's one format:

Cyan Worlds, Inc., "Myst", 1993. Ubi Soft Entertainment, SA
Cyan Worlds, Inc., "Riven", 1997. Ubi Soft Entertainment, SA
Presto Studio, Inc., "Myst III Exile", 1999. Ubi Soft Entertainment, SA
Cyan Worlds, Inc., "URU", 2003. Ubi Soft Entertainment, SA

The authors of Myst and Riven are as follows:
Author/Developer: Cyan, Inc.
Publisher: Broderbund (originally), now they are both published by Ubi Soft
Entertainment, SA.

Myst III Exile:
Author/Developer: Presto Studios, Inc.
Publisher: Broderbund (originally), now published by Ubi Soft
Entertainment, SA.

URU (to be released August 2003)
Author/Developer: Cyan Worlds, Inc.
Publisher: Ubi Soft Entertainment, SA

Chris Brandkamp

As you see, for Myst and Riven, there is no personal author, but a company. Espen, beloved advisor to both Jill and me, insists on a personal author while the company developing the game insists on a collective author in the shape of a company. This is an interesting conflict which reflects the creative process of a game as opposed to the more traditional products for academic analysis. This problem is already discussed in film theory, read for instance Bordwell and Thomson: Film Art, where they emphasize the point that a film is a collective effort . In some cases, such as with Tomb Raider, the game originates with one person who is listed in the credits, in other cases a game is the result of collective thought, brainstorming in groups within the different companies. This indicates that both the personal and the collective approach is "correct" - and that a poor scholar will never win...

Chapter 11
Which might easily be chapter 10 before I am done, is sent off for proof-reading. Now I just need to slash 51 pages from the 350 page document, to achieve the desired 299 pages the thesis should sprawl over. I already have a taker for chapter 10, if I don't use it in the thesis (it's a really good chapter, I think it's my favourite, but I am not sure if it belongs in the dissertation. At the same time... I removed an entire chapter from my master's thesis, with disastrous effect!). I have two days left at the college before I take two weeks off from administration and teaching. It's been a rough fall and winter, I have been pushing and pushing against the sluggish material of final editing, while introducing a three-year education rather than the two-year one I left, implementing the "quality reform" and since just before Christmas leading the Information study. Now I have two weeks away from all of that, starting Friday. This was supposed to be a vacation, but it will be used to finish the thesis. When I return from NYC I hope it's the last time I carry the manuscript - the next time I'll carry the book instead.

Cyborg Mommy
I just found the blog of a woman I have seen in real life. Pattie Belle Hastings was Cyborg Mommy at DAC 2000 in Bergen. The name of her blog? Cyborg Mommy of course. And I found it by way of Cyborg Woman... one of the Cyborg family at blogspot? Actually - there is a http://cyborg.blogspot.com/, but cyborgman, cyborgdad and cyborgboy are still open.

Here or there
Sherry Turkle quotes one of her interviewees:
Finally, Thomas took a job as a bellhop in the hotel where I had just given my lecture. "I thought that working evening hours would let me continue looking for something that would get me back into the middle class," Thomas says. "I haven't found that job yet. But MUDs got me back into the middle class."
Thomas sees himself as someone who should be headed for a desk job, a nice car and life in the suburbs. "My family is like that," he says, "and they spent a lot of money sending me to college. It wasn't to see me bellhop, I can promise you that." during the day Thomas carries luggage, but at night on MUDs he feels that he is with and recognized by his own kind. (Turkle 1995:240)

The new game for women called There takes the consequences of this desire to be middle class. In There players can go shopping and design items. The items you design can be worn by your avatar or sold to others in the game. This sale of designed items happens with "There-bucks". The difference from MUDs is that there-bucks have to be bought. In this manner There inc. try to avoid Sony's "problem" with EverQuest, as described by Edward Castranova in his by now well-known article Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand account of Market and Society in the Cyberian Frontier. In EverQuest people sell the items their avatars gain in the game for real-world money, on e-bay. In There not only is There inc. planning to keep the profit of their products (or rather, the products of Nike and Levi Strauss), but also a profit of the designs you make and might want to re-sell. And to keep complete control, you can't just design any old sweater to wear in There, it has to be approved. After all, the game has an image to uphold:

"It's more like Club Med than the real world," said Darla Marcomb, 38, a controller with a health care company in Fremont, Calif. "Hunger and death don't exist in There. But shopping does. The start-up last week announced partnerships with Levi Strauss and Nike to make their apparel available in the game, so players can dress their avatars in the latest styles." (Chris Gaiter)

An easier online life, more chatting and shopping, less effort and less life-like qualities than Sims Online is supposed to be the way to success. Personally, this game makes me want to sign up for Sims Online out of solidarity.

Game Credits
These can be tricky to track down. I am increasingly relying on Moby Games. If anybody know of a better site to find the credits of the bibliographic data of games, I'd love to hear from you!

Computer illiterate
ph8 rants about how hackers are supposed to work for free for "the suits". Being a person who can't hack, I tend to fish for favours for hackers, but I normally reward them somehow, and I totally agree that anything else is rude. However, there was this interesting little passage:

Aside: What's so special about this so-called "computer illiteracy"? Most people you meet who genuinely cannot read (are illiterate) are duly ashamed of their illiteracy, and many are (commendably) working to overcome it, but only a vanishingly small number of the self-described "computer illiterate" are even remotely embarassed by their failing -- many of them act proud of their (invariably self-imposed) ignorance. Far more annoying, these "technologically challenged" types use their "challenge" as an excuse to avoid work -- how many times have you heard (or uttered) "Oh, I'm computer illiterate, so you'll have to do it for me"? Simply using (as opposed to hacking on) a computer is no more difficult than driving a car and obeying the most basic traffic laws, but you don't hear people (seriously) trying to escape a ticket with the excuse "Oh, I'm vehicularly illiterate, so you can't expect me to obey stop signs".

I have heard, over and over again, people try to avoid doing a job by saying: "I don't know how to operate the dishwasher." "I always botch the laundry." "I can't help out because I really don't know how to cook anything but a fried egg." "Sorry, but I don't know how to clean the floors." And there are people who commit to life-long contracts - called marriage - in order to be permitted to do these things for their partners... Hopefully, the cooking and cleaning illiterate are vehicularly and lawn-movering literate.

MUD performance
I want to point to Ragnhild Tronstad's exellent article on Semiotic and nonsemiotic MUD performance (pdf). She argues the distinction between theatricality and performance in MUDs, and she does so comprehensively and elegantly.

Using performance and theatricality as metaphors to describe MUD adventure games this paper starts out by defining a difference between ’performative’ and ’theatrical’ acts within MUDs. Performative acts differ from theatrical acts in that they are effecting ’real’ changes to the MUD environment, thus directly influencing the game in one way or another. It is argued that to understand the performative aspects of MUDs it is necessary to separate ’acts’ from ’meaning’, and to pay special attention to the former in order to avoid confusing the questing process (which should be our main focus of attention) with the experience of having solved a quest.

Space and place
In ph8, an other interesting weblog from the blogs of note list (whoever picks that list these days has a taste in blogs disturbingly close to mine), there's an interesting little prelude to a discussion of space and place in computer games. There are no references in the blog, but read that post with Marc Augé: Non-places for full intellectual enjoyment.

New blog of note: Game related
By way of bloggers blog of note list: Games * Design * Art * Culture by Greg Costikyan, among many other things game designer and member of the board of reviewers for Game Studies. His blog is an other interesting addition to the developing field of game criticism, and I add it to my blogroll with great enthusiasm!

Fragile sun: Volda version
Jill wrote about suddenly seeing the church in sunlight, and the pale, pale sky. Up here the church is so close to the water level that the sun doesn't reach it at winter, so I can't match her near-religious experience of beauty that way. I had one which was perhaps a little more - ummmm - sensual?

A benefit from working at Volda College is free access to the very nice pool. I try to go swimming at least once, preferably twice a week in the winter half of the year. This morning as I arrived, me and my friend Heidi agreed that we would NOT turn the lights on. The windows face south-west, and from the pool we could see the sky change colour from a dusky blue to that fragile eggshell colour of the winter sky. Contrasted against that delicate colour was a mountain, Rotsethornet, at first a faint pink, but as the sun rose and the rays coloured the snow-covered mountainside it turned a bright, intense colour. We swam through the shadowy waters of the pool, watching this spectacular display of winter colours: warm and comfortable and all alone in that large pool, privileged and sheltered against the elements, while nature was putting on a colour-show more fantastic (and with more daring colours) than any lazer designer could imagine.

I think perhaps some night, I'll try to get Heidi to go swimming with me while we can watch nothern lights from the pool. That would be so decadent!

Procrastination and urgency
I have a reputation for being a very good administrator and very accessible for the students. What the world doesn't know is that it's all procrastination. I sit here with the text full of Espen's hand written comments on the desk next to me, I have the appropriate file open on the computer, and every time I try to edit the thesis I remember something which needs to be fixed - right now. Good thing there's a cleaning service at this place, or I'd have washed the entire College because it was so urgently needed...

I think there might be a formula there somewhere, where urgency of n tasks depend on level of resistance to task A. Perhaps I should track down somebody who can help me work out that formula... perhaps I should do that right now...

A brief introduction
Jonas Heide Smith writes Computer Game Research 101 - a brief introduction to the literature in Game Research. The article is exactly what it says it is. Good for a start - don't lean back and assume you've found it all after reading this.

Delight, envy and guilt
is what I feel, in that order, as Hilde Corneliussen, a dear friend and fellow PhD candidate, announces that she'll defend her thesis February 21st.
CONGRATULATIONS HILDE!!!.

Now if you'll all excuse me, I have a thesis to finish.

Anticipation
I am getting a new lap-top, but I don't know exactly which one yet. Yes, I leave such an important decision to the College IT department. After all, they are the ones who will suffer when my computer for some reason doesn't work. Sometime next week, I'll have a new toy. It feels better than Christmas!

Live Action Role-Playing
I have only done it once, so if you'd like to get a hint at what it's about, have a look at Esther's photos of the wonderful players in her group. One of the things I really like about role-playing is the incredible creativity displayed in all details.

Practical Existentialism
SMS story by Robert F. Walsh

"But I need to find myself," I stammered. My father picked up the newspaper saying, "If I were you, I'd find myself cutting the lawn."

From the-phone.book.com

And for some friends out there: Dream of a Ph.D.

The sound of my own voice
Doing research, isolated in my office, my topic and my head for months - not to say years - blogging was a way to hear my own voice. All the little things that I was thinking, all the things that somehow connect to other ideas and thoughts, but didn't belong in the thesis, came out here.

Over the last couple of months I have become increasingly annoyed with my blogging. Not because I think it takes too much time - no, it's as easy and effortless as ever - but because I don't feel that urge to communicate. After the first few lectures this semester, I think I see what happened. I have started teaching again, lecturing, interacting with students, answering questions and introducing ideas, questions and thoughts directly to an active, intelligent and critical audience. When a lecture is good, I manage to weave my own thoughts and ideas into it, show the students how current affairs connect to theory, demonstrate how the things I read and enjoy can be analyzed and questioned. I get to display different types of criticism, I get to recommend books, and I get involved in discussions over the topics that interest me.

This is exactly what blogging does for me.

However: where the lectures and topic-bound and sporadic, the blogging is constant. My mind works all year too - so lectures can't fill all the need for a place to think and express myself, even if I don't get to hear my own voice here. It's actually a pleasant, clear and distinct voice which sounds very good on radio or television, although it doesn't cut through the din of a noisy auditorium. (My silence is very loud though.) I am hoping that my writing voice, my blog voice will settle to be something of the same. (Although I imagine that silence in the blog will not give the same effect as silence in front of the class... "ssshhhh, stop the writing on the net everybody, so Torill can start....")

Guardian teachers
I just finished the lecture, and am still riding on the high of a good performance. Because it is a performance. For 2 x 45 minutes, I have kept about 100 people in their places, watching me and listening to me. Of course other things than their fascination with my voice does that. The structure we are within has considerable power: I am a teacher with more power than for instance their high-school teachers. Besides trying to teach them what is in the books, I can influence what books they have to read, I can influence the questions they have to answer to their exam, and most important: I will be part of setting their all-important grades at the end of the semester, based on what they have understood of the literature I refer to, and of my teaching. All of these things make students come to the lectures, it makes them sit relatively still and behave reasonably well.

These things can't make them attend to what I am actually saying beyond the automatic taking of notes which academia teaches us. The trick is to make the students think. If I can make that happen, I don't mind if what they think is: "I am going to show that bitch that she's wrong even if I have to read through the entire library to prove it!" That particular trick was something my favourite Norwegian-teacher from high-school, Marta Lynge, taught me - 23 years ago perhaps? Marta greatly encouraged my poetry and writing, but I fear I disappointed her there. However, she also influenced my thinking by being a role-model and an example of how it's possible to be woman, intellectual, independent and strong and still keep a wicked sense of humour and adventure.

One of the male students claimed grandly that women should always fight oppression, and should never take advantage of the fact that they were women. He was of course quite annoyed with the fact that his female future colleagues might one day get a better interview than he could just because the men in power might feel protective or attracted to the female journalist. My argument was that to put such a burden on women as a group is further oppression. Still... women would not have the opportunities we have today without the individuals who are willing to live their lives acording to their ideals. And when ever I talk to students about feminism, gender differences and individualism (actually, on quite a few other topics as well, she never put limits on her opinions while teaching), Marta is there in the back of my mind. She is not a conventionally beautiful woman, her laughter is characteristic and not for its pearly qualities, she can be quite sharp and outspoken and she is able to argue the other side of any point given 5 second notice... but she's the closest thing to a guardian angel I'll ever have in the auditorium.

Weather, again
We went to bed with a western gale blowing, and woke up to snow. My aversion to the climate in this country increases with every day I can't repair the roof.

Feminist Criticism
I am giving a lecture about this tomorrow, and although it's a repetition of a lecture I did this fall, I feel I need to prepare (or over-prepare) again. Here are some links found in the process:
Feminist Literary Criticism and Theory: a bibliography sorted by topic.
Gesturing Toward the Visual: Virtual Reality, Hypertext and Embodied Feminist Criticism by Carolyn Guertin (1998): An article which discusses feminist explorations of Virtual Reality, and the role of female researchers in hypertext studies, lamenting the male dominance.
Definition of Feminist Criticism, a page from a site that was not available as I did the search, captured by google.
Feminist Criticism defined by Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown
An other bibliography of Feminist Criticism, this one annotated.
Feminist Criticism applied to a fairytale by Grimm, my favourite so far. Check out the different approaches to this fairytale, apparently a student project for a class in German.

The truth will come out
And this picture explains a lot...

Weather exercize
If you want to understand Norwegian weather forecasts, you need to understand the very precise language describing wind-forces and weather. As an aid, I found this little guide to weather in Norwegian. So when I tell you today is "sterk kuling økende til liten storm" that should explain why I am in front of the computer and not on the roof, fastening tiles. Between 15 and 20 tiles had been moved and/or broken. We need to lift at least three, perhaps four rows of tiles (30-40 tiles) and nail the two or three lower rows to the roof, drill holes in the lower row in order to fasten them twice, and put it all back. This needs to be done in one operation, which means we need nothing more than "laber til frisk bris" and preferably no rain for approximately two hours. Snow or ice will make the work impossible - but if the temperature drops, so will the winds, and there won't be any additional damage. Living in this climate is such an adventure...

(And yes, electricity prices are dropping... on the business market, not to the individual consumer. This winter will most likely cause changes in the legislation concerning the sale and distribution of electricity.)

Pleasures of the north
Tonight since 3 am I spent all my psychic powers holding the roof onto the house. I was only partially successful, and the hurricane which blew south-west along the fjord with a deafening roar picked tiles off the roof. I need to get up there and put new ones on before the next storm, which includes several operations: I need a 10 meter ladder, new tiles since the old ceramic ones of course are cracked, and a little respite in the wind and rain while it's still daylight. Wish me luck - too much wind, and I might be Torill Poppins for about 3 seconds...

The bright side? A few more days like the last three, and the energy crisis should be over: The dams must be filling up now, and as long as the wind keeps tearing down the electricity supply to large parts of the north-west coast of Norway, we don't use much either. I can add that the falling tiles did not blow in through the windows, they were also all ripped off the edge of the roof not the center where a leak would have done real damage.

(According to this article - in Norwegian - tonight's storm wasn't really a hurricane (orkan) this far inside the fjord, since it did not sustain the required force for long enough periods - it was only hurricane strength in gusts which lasted less than 10 minutes. So I stand corrected - it was only "sterk storm" or a "strong storm". The word of the day is orkan, which means a wind with an average speed of 63 m/s for more than 10 minutes.)

Fatpower
By way of several leaps, starting out in jill's linklist of women bloggers: Fatpower, mainly pictures of city life. For some reason the city as theme is extremely attractive and romantic to me - perhaps because I have my tea in front of windows opening right out on some amazingly beautiful views of nature. All that fresh air and healthy living can get really old...

Big job number four (out of five)
This was delegated away from Me while I was away, sick or hiding in a corner trying desperately to get all the other things done. Isn't it great to work in a place where others can help, assist or step in when you really need it? This means that once I have done three minor jobs in the shape of lectures, I can get around to the fifth thing on the list: final editing of the thesis!

And I mean it - this is final. Espen said it is starting to look like a thesis, and he isn't insisting that he wants to see it once more, so I'll edit, proofread and submit!
(But that word is still very difficult for me to relate to...)

Signs
Layers of meaning - this time in tattoos on convicts.

Space time social games
I need to get my head back on the game-thinking track, so I am playing around with google. I typed in space time social games, and these are some of the more interesting hits:

Games, Entertainment and After: A short essay by Fred McVittie (1992) on the relationship between games and plays, with a sharp little kick in the side of avant-garde theatre.

Space Games: Puzzle your own galaxy but beware of the annoying pop-ups!

Time and Space for Children: "Let's stop consuming our kids" is Elizabeth Goodenough's modest proposal. In an interesting essay on secret spaces of childhood, she touches on some very important issues pertaining children in the modern world.

Reframing the Cultural Space of Computer and Video Games: Kurt Squire at MIT with a very well-thought out article on games as a teaching tool, games as a tool to question the state of the world, and the violence/games discussion.

The Weekly Noun:Time: Time in role-playing games - what time means for your character. In Game Grene: For the gamer who's sick of the typical.

And to round this little list of more-or-less interesting search-results off:
Prime-time Primates:keeping the Peace: No, it's not a case-study from UN, but of chimpanzees in over-crowded environments. Unlike for instance rats, they develop coping behaviour. Perhaps somebody could learn something...

Play yourself fit
I actually think Reebok has a good idea here. I just wish they could make a bike which could deliver energy for the television as well. With the prices for electricity in Norway these days, it could solve the energy-crisis as well as the weight-problems of the nation, lower the expenses of the health budget and cut down on the heart-operation waiting-list.

Hei Hilde
I like the way you have renewed your blog-design - although I am very happy that you kept the pictures at the side - nice!

600 seconds
A fun little project from a group of bloggers: Write for 10 minutes about a given topic. Make sure to visit their archives!

By way of NYC bloggers, this blog is located at 86th street on the R-line, that is Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Jon Lech Johansen won!
Remember Jon, the boy - or young man by now - who hacked his own DVD and then made the hack accessible online? He was charged by the Norwegian unit for economic crime, and faced the possibility of two years in prison. Yesterday, three years after it was discovered that he had written the program that let him view his own DVDs on his own computer, he was aquitted. The court ruled that there was no evidence against him, and that he had not comitted a crime.

Internet research ethics
a.(o)i.r - Association of Internet Researchers - has made public the recommendations of their internet research ethics comittee.

Three...
We make work-plans for our students each year. At times we are tempted to make dietary plans and financial suggestions, as well as setting curfew hours and plan for exercize and hobbies, it feels like we are that detailed when it comes to planning student lives. These plans contain everything we can imagine that students will need to know and then some, and is a very useful planning tool.

A well-made plan relieves a lot of stress, as most questions can be met with: Do you have your work plan? Now open it up to page.... A badly made plan, however, is a nightmare. It demands constant updates and corrections and is a major source of confusion and frustration. Last fall the plan wasn't really so badly made, under the circumstances, but due to illness it became obsolete in the first few weeks of the semester for the new students. This meant major confusion, insecurity and student angst, which lead to stress, guilt and short tempers at the staff side.

This semester I have been working on this plan since November. I have been through it I don't know how many times, and harassed colleagues to make them keep the deadlines in relation to the plans. In a few hours I'll give them over to the students, and at that point I expect to see THE ERROR. Something has to be wrong. I just hope I'll find out fast.

Awaited arrival
And hey, the long expected parcel arrived, and only the CD-covers were broken. (It's hard to break jelly-beans and other vitamins.) They were totally smashed though... But mine for NYC has not arrived yet - although that was sent somewhat later. So my anger at learning about the privatisation of postal services is now less personal and more a matter of principle. I am still not happy though.

Self-evaluation
I haven't tried this out with students before, and I don't even really know how to go through with it, but this year I am going to spend time making the students think about their own learning curve. Adrian mentioned a method he used, but I don't think I can just adopt his approach. I have to find a way to approach this within the context of this college.

What I want to do is have the students put into words what they expect they will be able to learn, on the base of the syllabus for the semester. I'll make them write this on a piece of paper, and hand it over to me. Then in 6-8 weeks, when the "quality-reform" insists that I have a meeting with the students to discuss their plans for their education, I will pull out this little paper and ask them how they find themselves in relation to their original expectations. Third time - I like the number three, it tastes of magic and is nicely fulfilling - I discuss this with them will be at the very end of the term. I haven't made up my mind yet though if I want that to be in public: all the class, and the students discussing each other's work, or one-on-one. Or a combination: let them do the same as the first time, only this time assessing what they have actually done, not what they will do.

My goal is to make the students aware that while I can teach, they have to learn! Learning is not a passive experience, and as long as they don't take responsibility for their end of it, I can be the most brilliant teacher in the world, it won't help! Me just being your average lazy college-professor, they have a lot of work to do...

Adrian also lets the students assess each other's work. At first I thought that would be impossible, but after some thinking I realised that we have been doing that for years. All practical assignments are assessed like that, as well as at least one presentation of literature each semester. I didn't even think of this as he was speaking, because it's just one of those things we make the students do in order to teach them how to give and take criticism in their future jobs as journalists or information professionals. I won't do anything about that, except ponder how we can make better use of the student intra-net to do that. We will use this net to publish little articles this semester: to let the other students see and criticise the work of their peers, perhaps I can expand on this in other contexts... It needs some thought though.

My mood
By way of Esther and her elegant newly designed blog, poetry to suit my mood:

I Would I Might Forget That I am I

I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body's tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessed the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone.

George Santayana (1863 - 1952)

Fear of flying
I was never afraid of flying - and I am still not. But I am afraid of bullies, and according to the reports I read from USA airports, that is what I can risk meeting the next time I go to NYC; which will be in February. By way of Mark, a very amusing but also very sad report of what happened when Penn, of Penn and Teller, didn't want to have his crotch grabbed by a security guard. Read it in conjunction with this description of how Nicholas Monahan and his pregnant wife were treated in a similar situation.

When the time comes I'll let you all know when you should expect to hear from me at my return. If you don't see a blogpost in time, please send the Red Cross and a couple of trained tracking dogs to the Newark dungeons...

Two down...
Finished grading exams today. It's my nightmare of Christmas. The fall term in Norway is very short, and in our college it always includes exams for all classes of students in almost all of their subjects. This means a big load of work for the students... but an even bigger load for the staff. It is however in the students' best interest to make sure the staff is happy while reading those papers, so here are some hints for students who want to have happy people grading their papers.

1: Read the information you get about writing papers. There is a reason why we tell you that you need to quote in a certain manner, that you need to make your literary list in a certain manner, and to make sure you check what the different scholars you refer to REALLY wrote.

2. There is also a reason why we want you to work on your introduction and your main question, and it's not because we need to know certain things or because we are sadists who just like to see you suffer before you even start writing (well, that might be true but it's not the ulterior motive). It is because if you know what you are discussing in your paper, your discussion is infinitely easier to go through with!

3. PROOFREAD!!! Don't think that you'll spellcheck when it's all done. The spellchecker won't catch missing words, correctly spelled, but wrong words, incorrect names and terms which are misleadingly similar in writing, but have very different meanings. When it is about your grades it's stupid to leave the responsibility for our understanding of what you say to Bill Gates.

4. Make an outline. Even if you never use it: make an outline. Even if you find that it's awful and you don't agree with it and this is the most stupid rule you have ever heard of: make an outline. Why? Because if you know why you can't structure your writing the way your outline was structured you might think enough about structuring your work that you avoid writing a stream of consciousness. A bad outline is better than 20 pages of random placement of something which might be related to what you perhaps stated that you thought you might write.

5. Get your friend to proofread. After a while you become blind to your own writing. Your friend is most likely also writing his/her paper, and is blind to his/her writing and needs somebody to proofread. Switch, use a red pen, pretend to be your worst nightmare of a picky teacher (for some poor students I am aware that it's me, there is a reason why I was nicknamed "the butcher from Volda" early on in my career) and start picking at what you don't understand in your friend's paper. You do each others no favour by being kind, after reading 20 BAD essays, I won't be.

6. Now that you have written the paper, sit down, read it, see what you have REALLY discussed and done and how you have concluded... and write the introduction.

7. All you need to do now is check your attachments, check your bibliography, proofread one more time, have a cup of tea, repeat the process... and submit. You have just increased the chance of decent grades as well as given your assessor a chance at a better, nicer and happier reading experience. And what else can a student want for an exam?

One down...
Just sent off the final draft of an article for a "real book" - one published not by a college or a scholarly publishing house, but a more popular and public one. It's going to be a collection of articles describing some of the research within the large Norwegian research programme which has financed my research - SKIKT. The Norwegian Board of Research is about to close the program as the new one - KIM - opens, and I have written a small article describing the playing of a RP-MUD. It's called "Tatt av spillet" - "Gone with the game" - and is in Norwegian.

Writing in Norwegian was a pleasant experience after all these years of practicing my English. I have always written well, quickly and easily (although the content tends to be a little lacking, I write faster than I think at times), and to write of this topic which I now know so extremely well was a pleasure, fun and almost ridiculously easy. Typically, the publishing editor liked my writing better than the academic editor, but since this is supposed to be somewhat popularised research publishing, I went with the publishing editor's view - as did professor Knut Lundby, the academic editor, once they had discussed it.

So all in all, despite this being only one of 5 urgent matters that need to be resolved RIGHT NOW, I feel rather good about the morning.

Lost gifts
If you want to make sure your loved ones think you have forgotten all about them, send a parcel between USA and Norway. Since the beginning of November 2002 the Norwegian mail does not deliver parcels between Norway and USA, that task has been taken over by Expressgods General Parcels. This has caused a severe delay on all parcels, even the ones that are supposed to be air-mail and normally used to arrive within a week. But as if it's not enough that the parcels arrive late, when they arrive, the receiver has to pay a transport fee. So, to add to the insult of a package arriving a month or two late, you have to pay to get it!

How do I know this? I am of course waiting for a package. My NYC connection sent it more than three weeks ago, and he paid handsomely to make sure it would get here by Christmas. When I started checking why it hadn't arrived, I was told to contact either General Parcels or Ekspressgods. Neither place is of any help to me. I am angry and impatient, and quite a bit worried about the parcel.

So how do I start a meme? I would love it if every time somebody make a search for ekspressgods, general parcels and "forsinket pakke USA" they learn that the privatisation of the Norwegian postal system DOES NOT WORK! It gives us worse service for more money!

Role-play games and murder
In Sweden they have found the head and the legs of a young man, the remains of a gruesome and unexplainable murder. In the different newspapers (all in Norwegian so far), he played vampire role-playing games, games with a heavy emphasis on the romance of death.

Role-playing games have been accused of inviting deaths before, as well as been used as an excuse in the defense. In 1996 Roderick Ferrel killed the parents of a young woman he took into his coven. Ferrel was 16 years old at the time, and he clubbed and stabbed the parents to death. According to the article I found online, he did it to save the daughter - save her from what is not clear.

The idea of vampirism is however not a new phenomenon. The German Fritz Haarman was convicted for killing 27 yong boys. He chewed their throaths over while sodomizing them.

This post was however prompted by a friend of mine, who asked "If this is a real role-playing killing, what will be the impact on the role-playing groups in Scandinavia?" The answer to that is of course, I don't know, but I can still say something about this incident in a role-playing perspective.

To answer the first part of the question, I don't think there is such a thing as a "real role-playing killing." If the young decapitated man in Sweden was killed as part of a role-playing ritual, who ever killed him didn't role-play the killing. To be able to go through with the dismemberment they have carried out, the person needs to be beyond play. It is the act of a severely destabilised mind or a very desperate person.

To answer the second part of the question: Most people get killed by their friends and relatives, still we keep having friends and relatives. All killers are some person's child, yet we keep having children. Teachers kill, students kill, but we still have schools. People are killed in extreme sports, but people still do base-jumping. Not to talk about sex. A lot of people are killed before, during or after sex, because of too much sex or too little sex... but we still do it. People are killed because of books but we srite them, people are killed on television and we watch it. I don't think it will have such a large impact. There might be a heightened awareness in certain groups, such as those who do bare steel fencing as a part of their role-playing, but apart from that it won't change anything.

The burning of churches didn't stop "satan worship" even when the beautiful stave-church at Fantoft burned down in the early nineties. Just like we keep visiting family over Christmas despite the horrible statistics of violence, role-players will play.

brb
Fighting a bug that has caused me to lose rather than gain weight this Christmas, and also made me horribly late with a lot of important things. Back when I can eat, think and write.

Educational games
By way of Gonzalo, so that Kym notices, a link to the draft of an article on Serious Play by Jennifer Jenson and Suzanne de Castell.

Sober Santa
From Francis Strand, an entertaining little game for those of us who don't really believe in Santa any more. Francis sent this well before Christmas, but it's not until today that I have had a chance to sit down at the computer and play it. Thank you Francis!

Wish me luck!
My husband has a high fever, the account was empty long before Christmas and I don't have anybody to look after the cat while we are in a house with 15 people who at other times of the year live as far apart as we can get (there's a reason for that). This mans that for the next couple of days all my energy will be directed towards survival, and blogging isn't a survival strategy in this context. I wish you all a Merry Christmas, mine will certainly be two things: eventful and spent with the family - good things I suppose - we tend to remember each Christmas distinctly.

Keiko revisited
Remember the killer whale who was set free - only to cross the North Sea from Island to Norway and show up in the Halsa fjord? He's still in Norway, waiting, like so many others, for the hering migrations.

"Real gløgg"
One of the things I have not had the time to enjoy so far this year: Gløgg
This recipe can't be Norwegian or even really Scandinavian. They are burning the brandy!
In this recipe they boil the wine. What is this, a conspiracy for a sober Christmas?
A Professor's gløgg; this version isn't too bad, but what a waste of good aquavite.
Here they claim that it's a Danish drink.
Whoever wrote this recipe know a few things about Norwegians...

It's quite interesting to see all the different versions of "real gløgg". But if you want to make gløgg in Norway, you need to remember a few things.

1) Norwegians never waste alchohol. Cooking wine, burning brandy or anything else which may lead to a loss of alchohol from the brew is banned. Good gløgg is strong gløgg, and the quicker people get drunk the better the party is. Give Norwegians free drinks, and they turn into happy barbarians.

2) Norwegians don't care about complex tastes - be heavy on the spice, pour the syrups liberally, after all with sharp spices less of the taste of the home-made spirits - so delicately termed "moonshine" in American - will be discernible.

3) Norwegians like novel ways of getting drunk, so soak those raisins well before they are dropped in the pot. Nothing like snacking your way into the holiday mood.

4) As long as it is red, sweet, alchoholic and can be drunk, it can be poured into a pot of gløgg - don't worry about "appropriate".

Gløgg is not a complicated drink for elegant parties, it's a simple, warming winter drink for people who live in climates where you need to be warm inside and out before you dare loosen up enough to smile, to laugh, to flirt - or even to unbutton your jacket. It's as if the layers of clothing are wrapped around your mind as well as your body, and the cold of the winter nights has frozen your smile off with your fingertips and toes. The purpose of the drink isn't to placate spoiled palates, but to warm frozen souls and hearts quickly and efficiently, lower barricades built into the culture and bring out the warmth and generousity of a reserved, shy and socially insecure people. For that purpose you need three things: a potent brew, enough of it, and enough people gathered around the pot that they come close to each other by necessity.

oral exams
No, I have not started a second career as a dentist, but Monday evening, Tuesday and Wednesday will be spent assessing students. I will not blog the proceedings, even if the process sometimes can be quite entertaining and in many ways enlightening.

Nostalgia
I am not the only one, it seems, who occasionally thinks fondly of Dragon Realms. The game is closed now, but Megistias' Dragon Realms page exists.

Special interests
I don't create software and I don't own a mac (which seems to be a must if you want to get the full benefit of what Eastgate produces), but I know Anja Rau and love her sense of humour as much as I admire her keen intelligence. So when she's the editor of a new magazine, it's worth notice: TEKKA, sponsored by Eastgate.

Since we're talking about it
Start teaching them safe sex while they are little....

It's all about...
sex, she said, over dinner. I hadn't even noticed, and I normally do. After all, she's this lovely slender successfull doll of a woman with a love-affair that defies space, the child of intellectuals and sister to artists, while I am the dark mean bitch, crawling, slithering, kicking and clawing. I am she who wears normality as a warm sweater and protection against reality, while my mind roams the dark corners and my students can't use a ketchup-bottle after graduating because of the images invading their hot-dog meals. The pretty danish waiter flirted skillfully, secure in his handsome maleness, knowing that if he made us feel good about ourselves, intelligent, witty, wanted and attractive, tips would fall out of our purses, and yes, it did. A touch of a hangover from italian wine at inappropriate hours was repaired with more of the same while I told her another outrageous true story. And she laughed, her dark eyes alight with wicked amusement as she shared a taste of my sadism.

But it kept returning to sex, to words licking the g-spots of our brains, to ideas fertilising receptive minds, to images penetrating texts violently rather than emerging in tranquility. And I remembered her fingers caressing the lid of her computer, the flush of her cheeks as she listened to a brilliant statement, and I nodded, unable to do anything but agree; the lust - yes the lust - fed at this moment by the red meat and the creamy sauce on our plates. It's a love-affair, not a lifestyle, and I mourn at the knowledge that I have to break up. This passion burns out. This thesis has to be concluded. And I need to end it in a civilized manner, as I strive to appear to conduct all my affairs, in the hope that there will be enough warmth left that in the near future it will settle into being a sweet part of my past.

Thinking
I had an odd, but nice, little letter in my mailbox today. jirayu, who speaks both thai and english, wrote that she (or he - I really don't know the gender of that person, and others keep doing this mistake about my name - I'll go on assuming female, since I think I understand this person) felt the title of this blog described her feelings. She feels that she expresses herself more clearly when she uses a computer than spoken or even in hand-writing. After the first moment of flattery at being known to a masters student who's most likely situated in Thailand, I re-thought the title of my blog.

The title of this blog comes from the way I have always been thinking. I am not one of those people who can sit down and give a thought shape in my head, polish and present it to the world as a child of my brain. I need to give it shape somehow, through writing or drawing. At high-school I used to draw in the books in order to remember what the pages said: my memory recall is basically through understanding, if I can't understand, I need some kind of visual aid: an image. When I write, I am often surprised at what comes out, as if my fingers know things my conscious mind does not. No, this isn't automatic writing, when I see the words I understand where they come from and where they are taking me, but I don't always know which rational decision-making process took me to this point.

This way of thinking has however not developed with my use of computers. I have always needed to write in order to know what I think. I am old enough that my habits and skills of writing were developed before computers vere common in households or even at universities in Norway. I am even old enough that I have read - and boicotted - newspapers set in lead, and been banned from the journalists' union because I used computers. To me, the computer is a different tool for writing and thus thinking, but it's not the only tool. When I feel that I really need to give my thoughts shape I sit down and shape them by hand, letter by letter, ink flowing onto paper and spreading over the page until order emerges from chaos, leaving a trail of ink like a slug's trail along the forest floor.

(By way of the intervention of Mark Bernstein, I learned that my first assumption was correct, and it's a female name. Good to know!)

Back from Bergen, still alive, but exhausted from the weight of carrying my thesis around. Do you hear those rustling pine-needles? It's the trees that will be saved from the way I'll cut parts of my thesis rather than trees to print it on.

Tomorrow, in Bergen
But I don't think I'll have a chance to get to a computer. I am off to talk to Espen Aarseth about the thesis, to see how much I must do before I submit it - hopefully in January. Wish me luck, I just might need it.

Where are the ethical wizards?
I just want to point to this comment by Mark Bernstein and say "yes, I agree."

Swedish exotic
Inspired by Francis, I baked "Lussekatter" last night, in a sudden craving for the scent and taste of saffron. Not being a Swede, I didn't wait for the day of Santa Lucia, which is Friday, and I didn't get the designs right, but I have so far had no complaints about the taste!

December delights
Once upon a time December was a magical month, filled with the anticipation of christmas, little secret presents and an endless stream of freshly-baked cookies. A self-respecting housewife has at least 7 types of cakes, preferably 13. All of this would culminate in a wonderful orgy of lights and tastes, games and gifts.

At some point things changed. I think it was around the time when my older sisters had left home, and just came home for christmas - and by the time they should come home, the house would have to be cleaned and prepared, and everything ready for just the final touches. I had to fill the space of three older sisters in the cleaning of a huge house in the period when I had the most important tests of the semester at school. My mother had started working, so I also had regular chores added, and my father was disabled after a stroke. At that point, the shine started to go out of Christmas and it became a big, dark pit of guilt and failed expectations.

It has taken me almost 25 years and two very sweet, happy and Christmas-loving children to start to see some of the pleasures of preparing for Christmas. By now I love the smell of spices, and the way my daughter settles down to happily chat and help out when I start baking. I love the good-natured banter of my son as he helps me with the advent star, and the private little conversations about presents and wishlists, carefully conducted out of ear-shot of the other family members. I have developed an addiction to christmas-tree decorations, and I have to smuggle them into the house because of the restrictions my husband wants to put on the use of such: he insists that the tree has t obe able to stand upright after it has been decorated, and not collapse under the weight of the decorations. I even manage to take time to study japanese origami to learn of new and elegant ways to wrap presents.

Game Studies: New Issue with Guest Editor Jonathan Dovey

Game Studies, the online international journal of game research, has published volume 2 issue 2. This is a special guest edited issue, with Jonathan Dovey, University of the West of England as editor. Dovey describes this issue:

This edition of Game Studies is devoted to a small selection of papers originally presented at the Game Cultures conference at Bristol in July 2001. Curated by myself and Helen Kennedy for the School of Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England Game Cultures was the first academic conference in the UK dedicated to computer games. As such it brought some of the best work being done internationally to a UK academic audience for the first time. Apart from excellent contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field the event created the chance for academics from all over the world to come out as gamers.

This issue contains four papers from the Game Cultures Conference, and one conversation between Celia Pearce and Louis Castle. Louis Castle is cofounder and General Manager of Electronic Arts' Westwood Studios.
The articles are;
Dialogue Conventions in Final Fantasy VII
Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo
Creative Player Actions in FPS
Latin America's New Cultural Industries still Play Old Games


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This is the official line from the PR department of Game Studies, which is me. The new issue is interesting, so far my favourite is on Creative Player Actions, probably because it gives me hints on how to cheat. I love that, even in a game I don't play.

Issue 2, year 2
Game Studies is out with a new issue - I'll be back to you all with good reasons to read it once I have had the time to look at it myself!

Gender Disorientation
I am looking for an other blog to add to the list, so I had a peek at gamegirladvance.com and started clicking the names of the posters. What did I find? Guys! I guess for those who have been reading that weblog attentively, this doesn't come as a surprise, but while there is a Liz and an Esther on the list of posters to the blog, there's also Bowler, Shawn, Jake, and Justin. I know, I know, it's their blog and they can call it what ever they like - and if they wanted to pretend to be all women, they could have done that as well. I just had a little moment of gender disorientation, is all.

Nicholas Yee?
Whoever he is, if you're interested in MMORPGs his website looks very interesting.

Christmas approaches
And this year I am even more broke than usual, same year as I am about to celebrate Christmas with all of my large family. I guess I need a really good Christmas present idea.

IF on a winter's night a professor...
writes me and argues well for his view of interactive fiction, far be it from me to refuse his view a link from my blog. Dennis G. Jerz concerns himself with digital media and literacy, and disagrees with me when I claim that it's not logical to demand from games that they should tell stories. I have no idea what the english term for "skinnuenighet" is, but I suspect one of those are out prowling the internet somewhere between Volda and Wisconsin.

Direct a choir
Do you have a dream of directing your own choir?

Readability online
One of the important things for me online is that I can read the text easily, so when a friend tells me the grey-on-white isn't enough of a contrast for him, the design has to change. Thanks Kym, for notifying me that it was a problem, and I hope the not-quite-black of the text is a tolerable compromise between looks and readability.

Other Daughters of Bhaal
Yorleen Sheydar
Anomen contemplates tying his fate to that of the daughter of Bhaal (Fan Fiction on Baldur's Gate)
An other daughter of Bhaal has a good teenage fit of selfpity. (From the story of Zaerini, based on Shadows of Amn)

There's a culture of fan fiction and fan modifications (MODs) to the more popular games, and Baldur's Gate has its share.

Daughter of Bhaal
Once in a while I stop working and start playing, and what I play at those occasions is Baldur's Gate II, Shadows of Amn. I have been playing this game in my spare time since May, and I am not bored yet.

Shadows of Amn is the sequel to Baldur's Gate I, where if I had played the game I could have conquered my evil brother Sarevok and prevented my father, Bhaal, God of Murder, from returning to the Forgotten Realm. In this game I have to choose between good and evil: will I take up my evil heritage or will I turn away from it? Neither one of the Baldur's Gate games gives the player a chance to write the background of his or her own character, it's already set. For more freedom of expression, import the character into Neverwinter Nights. Instead Shadows of Amn offer tricky choices and high pressure on several levels.

The main character soon gathers a party of adventurers, and although these are NPC's, non playing characters, they are quite sophisticatedly programmed and ensure varied feedback to the player. Depending on the choices the player makes for the group, the different NPCs will agree to stay or go. The game offers a multitude of little choices, each little quest one that can change the outcome: do you turn to the light or the darkness? Little distracting quests turn up in every place the company goes, and the player's character is constantly hazzled both with the needs of the people of the Forgotten Realms, as well as the needs of the people in the group. Minsc and Jaheira, two characters who obviously have been with you since the battle with Sarevok, are the only ones who have not insisted on having any special favours yet (I am on chapter three after seven months of playing - I am slow but this game is complex). Their job seems to be to give the PC a solid guilt-complex.

On the other side of the coin is the evil wizard Irenicus. He is an important opponent, but also the devil's advocate in this game. He keeps whispering about grandeour and power. In series of dreams he comes to tempt the PC to turn to the dark side. His is the classic role of the devil, who shows the PC the powers to be had... if only the player lets it turn to the dark side. At the same time the game manages to create NPCs who really suffer. They suffer small things and larger: Tiny little experiences whch might or might not be quests colour the game, and the Forgotten Realm is not empty of life and humanity. The NPCs might be pawns just like the footsoldiers in chess, but this is chess as we see the wizards play it in Harry Potter: Each pawn speaks, each pawn pleads, suffers and dies.

Baldur's Gate is a classic tale of sibling rivalry, of rebellion against the parents, social unrest, corruption and temptation. Religious sects mislead the unwary, corrupt leaders of society take advantage of the people, and children are sold, used and abused. The parents in this game are either evil as in Bhaal, pathetic as in the case of Anomen's father, or absent until he's found to be dead as in the case of Nalia's father. There are no mother-figures at all so far, unless I count Nalia's annoying and narrow-minded parasite of an aunt. This is more in line with the general motif of parental betrayal than any slur against women, since we find women wielding many different types of power in Shadows of Amn.

All of this is however just the framework, the fictional background against which the game itself is played. The game is based on AD&D, with the same system of rolling dice in order to determine the outcome of battles as well as quests (the computer rolls for you, of course). The main enjoyment comes from using the full range of abilities available to the group in order to beat the opponents, and to choose skills and abilities which will advance the progress of the group through the game. While the fiction is pleasing as a backdrop that allows for spectacular graphics, mysterious dungeons and wicked traps, the many little puzzles which influence the progress of the characters in different manners is what makes the game worth playing. Shadows of Amn has been adjusted somewhat from Baldur's Gate I, and such adjusting is the trademark of a game with ambitions to be good, at present there are no single spells or weapons that always saves the day. This forces the player to experiment, explore and test in order to determine tactics, a strategy that makes the gameplay varied, entertaining and challenging. Shadows of Amn is a game where agôn dominates over alea and mimicry: a game of skill rather than one of luck or pretense. It does however use the fictional frame efficiently, and the quests and puzzles are firmly embedded in the fictional reality of the Forgotten Realm.