. Spinning .

Well, there’s just no way I can think about getting another job when Dennis Jerz brings even more "reading" into my life, resurrecting interactive fiction (of the text sort) with a couple of entries this morning on new writing software as well as leading me to Nick Monfort’s Book and Volume–which just hooked me into a download. 

So there you have it:  IF, Hypermedia, Games and plain old books (70, I think, on the hearth alone), along with all the learning programs that go along with new media and what I want to learn to do, as well as digging into the philosophy and basics for thought and history that are on my list.

Need a job that pays me to read–and write!!

Nice rundown on the base of interactive children’s books by if.books complete with pictures to call up memories to help us understand direction of the written word.

I’d never had the opportunity between generations to come across the My Adventure stories, but had heard the reference made many times. 

Even with the thought of taking new directions, there are many ways to map these out as well.  Another post at if.books leads us to an online novel writing interactive piece that reminds me of something that I recall from the past about a novel where each chapter was written by a different author–this was back in the seventies, I believe.  Story can change via paths, or story can be enhanced in backstory and perception by allowing readers to travel from without set structure.  Linear, yet forking. 

Read the posts and do your own interactive thing:  Follow the links to see where they take you.  In just this post alone I’ve given you three options.  You need go no further, you can choose to click the first if.book link or the next. 

Wow.  Looks like some neat new stuff happening in IF with sound and relationships.  Check out Quoth.

(Thanks to Dennis Jerz for the link)

Whew and neat-o! From J-Walk Blog, this weird little scenario called Hotel, an Interactive Tale that combines hypertext with IF, a plot of sorts and visuals.

With any luck, this is the kind of stuff I’ll be just tasting in a course this summer.

Here’s a category I haven’t posted to in a long while–Interactive Fiction. It’s another of those things I WANT to get back into, but along with the pile of unread books, has been woefully neglected.

Luckily, one of our writers in the Narratives is really into it, and has, by learning the process through John Timmons, written a piece that I eagerly tried out this morning. It look great so far–I’ve already gotten hopelessly lost and my very important mission briefing has turned into dust before I thought to read it.

I intend to bravely enter Christopher Coonce-Ewing’s Early American Anomalies later this afternoon, armed with pencil and notebook to chart my course and have some fun along the way.

Hope I don’t get ripped to shreds by dogs, shot by mysterious enemies, locked in rooms I can’t fly my way out of, or any of the other myriad traps and pitfalls I’m sure he’s worked into the piece.

Just came home from a visit with Michael at Twists & Turns and it was an odd visit at that. I began reading his post, “Last Night’s Adventure” and read through to the end before realizing he was describing a dream he had. My own interests (coupled with the guilt of not tending to some of them lately) have changed dramatically and influenced my comprehension of the entry enough for me to suddenly discover that I had been reading it as Interactive Fiction.

With my past troubled experiences and delights at this form of new media, I eagerly found my fingers poised over the keyboard as I read, ready to type in “go north” or “examine room” and was a bit disappointed that I would not be allowed into this “adventure.” I’ve done this once before with a short story written by S.E. when it was presented piecemeal, and even had a map of the floorplan of the house in which the story took place.

Michael has another website called Dreams, and he’s a writer. Twists and Turns is an amazing name for a weblog, as well as for the maze of IF. It seems he’d be a natural for writing that type of fiction!

As part of our writing group, we are particularly interested in new media methods of narrative as well as working in the old fashioned (computerized text, which still crosses several boundaries) methods of writing and story telling. To get a jump on a planned summer course, Professor John Timmons is starting to publish the basics and I naturally want to fulfill one of my 15 resolutions so I’m jumping right in there and trying to build a house. I’ve spent most of the past two hours trying to build a house in some of the programs that I’ve had available for when we had the money to put on a real addition and I blew it in the stock market instead (1999-2001, remember?). I’ve lost or given away the simplest of design programs which was an old Expert Software version for Win 95, and the latest are just too damned unwieldy to maneuver for the simple needs in Interactive Fiction mapping. I finally went to Paintbrush, but I think I’ll just download the Tools John mentions on his site and quit being so stubborn about making a rambling English manor type with angles and extra rooms that make you still feel wonderfully lost after staying there a month. Guess I’ll stick to simple and save the creative for the story line.

I’m back to old habits of last year already, three hours into the New Year, but I think you’ll all find this as exciting and inspirational a website as I have. Via Stick Your Neck Out, I wandered onto the site of their currently presented artist, professor and writer, Joellyn Rock where I found a most beautiful array of narrative pottery reminiscent of the orange and black Greek urns that I fell in love with when studying early art. In addition, there is a section on the site called Vasalisa that is graphically fascinating in the telling of a fairy tale in hypertext format. While I am preparing to take a course in hypertext and new media next summer that will be a prototype of a collaboration between our English Professor Stephen Ersinghaus and Art/CIS/Communications Professor John Timmons, I am most interested in learning how the techniques can be mingled with the creative to produce this total involvement of the senses (except smellovision, I don’t think they’re planning on introducing smellovision into the mix) to remain aesthetic, stimulating, interactive yet open to visual speculation.

So there. I’ve justified my little morning run on the silky strands of the web.

How much more excitement can you get: You’re in the deserted mansion of your father looking for money, find a contraption on the table, open it to reveal — a clove of garlic.

Love this type of format for it’s very nature of making you sit there and laugh at yourself.

So here’s the plan: In the weeks before Christmas, we’re going to put on a big push for reading, writing and interacting as gift-giving ideas. When I was a kid (and I have plenty of pictures of my sisters and I through the years on the same Howard & Barber store’s drunken Santa’s knee) I always asked Santa for the same thing. A doll, books, and games. My mother was able to take advantage of her daughter’s boring predictability to buy on sale long before Christmas. A Madame Alexander doll—one of the most expensive at the time, but she’d buy them cheaper naked and sew beautiful outfits for them herself, one or two games, and bunches of books. From The Little Golden Books right on through Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, she was set for years.

Books are ideal for gifts: Classics, How-tos, Biographies, Mystery, Contemporary, Technical Guides, all of them. We could give away floppies containing Interactive Fiction games, notebooks and pens, “I Love Edgar” buttons, whatever.

I’d like to relight some fires under people who really want to get back to some of the basic pleasures of words.

So look for me in the cafeteria or lobby. I’ll be dressed as the Little Match Girl. All I need are some elves and a believable Santa with a beard that doesn’t pull off…

Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa! I was smart enough to take Inventory early in the game. As a superhero, I have some handy James Bond-like stuff in my belt, and I was even smart enough to eXamine each item and find out what they were and what they did so I can use them when my first crisis comes along. Actually, the first crisis came along early in the game when I couldn’t call the waiter over to find out why I wasn’t given a spoon, and had to go back and restart the game a few times. This time around, I was smart enough to immediately Take the knife and fork I was given, figuring they’ll come in handy for something as well. Might need them immediately however since I’m about to maybe order something to eat in this galactic restaurant.

I’m still not real good at this, huh?

Relax all you IF fans; Square One is not a brand new game that I stumbled across and you didn’t know about yet. I’m referring to going back to square one in getting back into the IF mode.

I was determined to get back into this, so I spent some time running back and forth between the house and the barn (my shop) to prepare the shop computer and download some games because I didn’t have WinZip or WinFrotz on that drive, got floppies of some of the other stuff I needed because it took too long to download online using the phone line. Since the shop only has the phone line, I was downloading onto floppy in the house via the cable line, and then depositing it back into the shop computer. Oh yes, I also of course did not want to tie up the shop phone line too long because customers may be trying to reach me. Thought of that one the other day when I was trying to download IE 6 on it for two hours.

Anyway, the good news is that I now have Anchorhead, Shrapnel, Curses, Savoir Faire, and The Adventures of Helpfulman (couldn’t resist the title, guys!) on both computers, and can play whenever I want. The bad news is that I forgot the tricks to playing IF and have practically been told by the game to go make a batch of brownies instead. Just means I’ll have to spend a little more time strategizing.

In finding out that in fact I must take an additional 4 courses to obtain a Liberal Arts degree, it occurred to me that computer media courses were not included nor even left as options in the program. How odd, since computers are so very basic to the contemporary reader, writer and artist. I should hope that this area is better covered in a four-year curriculum plan, and will investigate it wherever I move onward in pursuit of education.

Another brief sojourn into the twisted mind of some techie-tainted writer. I finally was able to spend but a few minutes playing—no, interacting—with Anchorhead. Once more I am reminded of my smallness as I scurry like a rat around a maze. My piece of cheese a bottle or a lantern. I find my way with difficulty once more to lose my way once more at the very-self-same spot I was before. But now I get there faster, and there is some small sense of pride in that. Ah but tomorrow is another day, and yardwork is now mostly in the past, with other chores about caught up and Christmas shopping way ahead; perhaps I’ll play again tonight.

I must organize my time to accomplish some measure of doneness to both the wannados and the haftados. I haven’t had the chance to go back to Anchorhead and get in much deeper than I’ve gone before. It’s like that special prize that I hold off in the distance—the promise of an ice cream sundae when you clean your room, the carrot on the stick that leads the rabbit onward oblivious to the pack of dogs behind him.

And there are more, I’m sure that I’ll want to get into. Shrapnel I’ve abandoned; same with Autumn Muse. If I search online I’m overwhelmed with opportunity, and facing the amount of stimulation that is out there, I back away in confusion. Rather, I will savor going back to visit Anchorhead, the way I used to feel upon buying Stephen King’s latest book. Perhaps tomorrow, if the haftado Spanish written assignment can be done tonight.

A question for the esteemed professors: Are IF titles properly italicized or underlined?