Isn't this claim slightly anglo-centric?

(link by way of laurel)

Mother's day (Yes, I know it was yesterday here in Norway)

Grandma: "You never call, you never visit, all the other Red Riding Hoods...."
Little Red Riding Hood: "Where's the wolf when you need it?."
nicked from here

Gonzalo at Ludology.org / Videogame Theory asks where The Sims' clones are.
The most important difference between a first person shooter and something like "the Sims" is in the attention to detail and the resources going into developing it. A fps is just the good old target practice in an other scenery. The Sims are a simulation of a society, where first you have to plan the society, then you have to plan the reactions. then you have to keep developing the game in depth, and then you have to be sufficiently original that you won't be accused to stealing from The Sims. More effort in the development means more danger of something going wrong. In today's economic climate, game-developers don't take that kind of risks.

How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons - word of the day: min stora kærlek.
Francis can be sweet and sticky anytime he likes, if this is the kind of writing that comes from it.

Monday morning, and Jill's safely on the plane. Working through the week-end, morning-to-night writing and editing, with endless discussions over dinner reminded me why I do this at all. It's not just because I like cooking, the fresh koriander seduced both of us into spending time over the meals instead of getting back to the writing. It's not just because we're both "gamers", game-scholars with a practical and a theoretical approach to games who thoroughly enjoyed having our armies beaten to pulp by my 13-year-old Risk-playing son. It's not just because we didn't want to be outsmarted by the 15-year-old girl who kept reading through the bits and pieces of the article, ask complicated questions and generally had a critical, but constructive view on the ideas being thrown around over the various meals and snacks.

It's because thinking, writing and figuring things out is plain fun.

But don't tell my boss, the pay is bad enough as it is, if she isn't going to start taking advantage of the fact that scholars might like what we do.

I think it's interesting and a little scary that Jill's visiting... and I still checked her weblog first when I turned on the computer this morning, to see what she's up to. Took me a split second before I remembered that I had just seen her walk into the bathroom in her pyjamas.

Wretch
By Johnny Bravo

There was angry thunder in his voice
and a lightning fire in his eyes
as he stood and pounded the lecturn,
calling out for all to hear his opinon-
No others were to be heard-
no other could be heard
over the droning ire that consumed him.
And the louder he spoke,
and the longer he ranted,
the less the audiance was likely to hear
as they grew adapted to the venom
that dripped from his tongue.

I would really like to update to Blogger.pro and support Pyra - but I work from too many computers with too many different browsers, and a program which restricts my access from different browsers doesn't work for me. I'll do what I always do when I want a new electronic "thing" (duppeditt - Norwegian word of the day - means a thing which doesn't really have a name or any real significance and mostly lies around waiting for the moment in three years time when you really need it), wait and reassure myself that getting it later means I'll get better quality for the same price.

Pure Capitalism:
BlackSnow Interactive (BSI) is a group of individuals that play, buy, and sell in various Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). Growing from only one person nearly two years ago, to seven full-time people, this group has successfully developed a market in which they are able to supply players with gaming currency, items, or characters at competitive prices. Mythic wants BSI to cease all sales immediately.

Pay real money for items which give you nothing but status and entertainment in a make-believe world - The Norwegian law of spiritual works (åndsverksloven) aside... Money is an abstraction, the exchange of one abstraction for an other is pretty close to an economy of exchange of goods. But isn't this the high-point of industrialism? Getting paid for the time it takes to earn items which are nothing but symbols? It makes it clear that the only thing of real vaue is that which we cannot stop, cannot earn, cannot hoard: time.

Very few typical Norwegian names among the most popular names in Norway 2001.

What I was looking for here was an easy rule for foreigners: why Toril/Torild/Torhild/Torill can't be anything but a female name. I made a search for male names ending on -il, to see if I could use the rule that -il comes from -hild and as such must be a female name (Hild was one of the Valkyrie, and the meaning of the name is valkyrie or shield-maiden, warrior woman). The problem is that Arild, Egil, Eskil, Kjetil and Torkil would all be annoyed if I said anything like that. However: you can safely assume that names ending with -ar are male. Reidar, Gunnar, Bjørnar, Runar, Oddvar - they are all names which mean some kind of guardian. Runar = guard of the mystery (Rune+ar).

The Teddy-bear is travelling on. I occasionally drop by to see how it's doing, but linking to it induced familiarity I was not quite prepared for. First the owner of the site tracked my email down, which is OK, I don't mind an email with a comment or two. But subsequently I was on a mailing list, where I was notified of the travels of the teddy-bear. Blogger Pro has the option of getting updates to blogs by email. Somehow that feels intrusive to me and is one option I will not use. Emails are like telephone-calls: not quite that urgent, but the medium I use when I want the attention of an other person (one reason why I am at very few email lists). Bloggs are like radio, or the lunch-room: some place I go or tune in when I want to catch news or gossip at my own leisure.

I still like the travelling teddy bear, and I think it can become a fun little diary - I just feel protective about my mail-box. Oh, and for those out there who might not know: Torill is a name made from the names Tor and Hild. In Nordic languages it would never be mistaken for a male name. I know the English-speaking do so, I have more than once been treated as my own secretary by american men who want to talk to Professor Mortensen. That's why I have my middle name on my business-card; my full name is Torill Elvira Mortensen. And I am female. Definitely.

I received two sample pages from a proof-reader. He had been going through my language to see what he'd have to ask for proof-reading my thesis. I think it will be a while before I feel confident about writing in English again. Yes, I need him. No, the price indicated that cleaning up the language in my thesis isn't more work than writing a new one.

Tuesday and Wednesday - I'll be in a hotel with the rest of the department, trying to figure out how to adjust a two year study to a three year course without increasing the amount of resources in terms of money, teaching and administration spent on it, but giving the students 20 more credits (vekttall). If it's important, you probably already know my cell-phone number.

PLogger - a typo when looking for blogger... but such a good idea!

BBC News | DOT LIFE | Games by players, for players
Some call it agency. It's a type of power: the power to adjust your own entertainment.

Your Reading
Yes, this looks genuine: an answer open to interpretation, ruthlessly exploiting cliches of popular mythology and steeped in double-talk. Will I ever finish? Remember: you can never step twice into the same river.

The Silicon Valley Tarot

Sea of Cubicles
An expanse of workers' cells touches the horizon in all directions, a parking lot of lost souls. Only the murmur of tapping keys betrays any life. You wander aimlessly, looking for J-347. But there are no numbers or markings anywhere. You are marooned. Loss of direction, inability to move or concentrate, necrosis, dissolution. Reversed: hazard and adversity, a great adventure.

UFD - Do your duty - Demand your rights
I have written about the "quality reform of higher education" in Norway before, but at the time in Norwegian. This is an English summary of the report which comprises the base of the reform. 11 years ago, green out of the University, I created the structure for a two-year study which has proved to be inspirational both for other Colleges and for the people working in it today. Now I have to take it all apart and recreate it - luckily together with experienced and highly competent colleagues this time.. Bittersweet, somehow... The card Death in the tarot-deck: the end of something is also the birth of something new.

Three academic practices
1) Cultural Studies, the Birmingham School (Today: department of Cultural Studies and Sociology). My main inspiration from this area is the eclectic relationship to methodology, and the choice of more than one, and the interest in the commonplace and the non-glamourous.

2) Reader-response theory: I view the user's activity as meaningful, and study how the players relate to the gameand how the game relates to the players. Perhaps decontructivism is of the past, but there are still useful points here for me.

3) Ethnographic studies: This is more about methodology than about theory. but I still need to relate to Ethnography as well as Action Research, to understand the pitfalls in my approach to information-gathering.

Done teaching for a while. Not so bad. I had forgotten all about students. I had forgotten about making them laugh - somehow there's enough of the entertainer in me that I don't mind them giggling at either planned or inadvertent humour. I don't mind them asking me complicated questions - I have been thinking alone or together with people who know my field for so long I really need a refresher course in explaining things clearly. I loved telling them about my own research. After almost six hours of talking about the development of the field of media influence, I could position my own research there, at the end of the last lecture, and tell them that here, this little spot here kind of in between these three academic practices, that's me. Best thing about my job always was students. I am looking forwards to getting back to them.