I didn’t exactly realize how absurd this was until I wrote it in a screenplay I’m working on:
EXT. THE UNIVERSE
But is it an Exterior? Or Interior? I’m actually not sure.
And yes, this was totally worthy of a post in and of itself as opposed to just putting it on Twitter.
I’m posting this from my G1 because my site is timing out from my computer. But it still loads (not fast enough to post with but loads nonetheless) via a proxy. Also my host says nothing is wrong on their end.
Perhaps my unrelenting FTP transfers (hey, I want to get my font size to look EXACTLY right, and that involves updating the CSS over and over) triggered a red flag. Oh well. I sent the techies an email.
Oh, by the way…Dear School of Visual Arts network administrators: This is my website. It’s not evil. I promise. Thanks. Also can you give me Diggs? That would be awesome.
So now we wait…
UPDATE: A reader informed me (indirectly) about something called PortableContacts. Commentary at the end. Original post follows…
Personally, I would like to brutally murder the term “Web 2.0″ with katanas and fire. It annoys me. But regardless, I sorta kinda understand that when people say “Web 2.0″ they mean the era of the web where user-generated content (read: comments threads) became an essential part of everything. Also that whole social interaction stuff. But in the back of all these Web 2.0-loving people’s minds is the question, “What is Web 3.0?” Again, I have a profound moral and biological(?) objection to putting a version number after “web,” but I’m going to humor everyone and say what is absolutely essential if we ever want to get started on whatever “Web 3.0″ is: OpenID.
But the problem with OpenID is that it just identifies you, and perhaps passes along some little bits of info like your name and email address. Every one of those individual sites, whether they take OpenID or not, still requires you to maintain friends lists on all of them. And there’s no central hub to see what friends are doing all across the web. FriendFeed does not count, you still have to friend people again there too. If I use my OpenID at a site, and a bunch of my friends have done the same, I don’t want to go around adding them as friends there again. They’re my friends no matter where I go.
Then again, some people you meet on the web might be more “clients” or “contacts” or something than “friends,” per se, so keeping these relationships intact across the web would encourage people to stop “friending” everyone they see, and simply add them to the appropriate group; now you can finally show those photos of you getting drunk and stripping only to people you really trust. So it’s more of a “relationships” system.
Now, all this user-generated social stuff (Web Two Point Freaking Oh) didn’t really take off until the basics of the web, like HTML, were finally made (mostly) compatible with everything. So in order to move on to the next big trend in the web (Web 3.0, if you REALLY must), we have to make social networking work all across the web. So, let’s figure out how this OpenID-based (or complimentary) interpersonal relationships system would work.
First, let’s give it a name. Do you have any suggestions, Helvetica Bold 10 Dark Red?
How about OpenRelationships?
Hmm, uh, no, I’m not sure that’s the best connotation. You know what, just OpenID Friends works. Here’s what it should be…
Continue reading ‘OpenID Needs A Friends System’
Whoa! CNN used Microsoft Photosynth to compile a THREE DIMENSIONAL VIEW of the moment when Obama took the oath of office!!! Let’s go look at it!!!
Wow!!!
Dude!!!!
Awesome!!!!
Am I being too cynical here, or is it perfectly okay to criticize this for looking like crap as soon as you click on something?
Yeah, yeah, it’s “in Labs” or whatever, but that’s no excuse for a completely unusable interface.
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Gameplay Format – Because Video Game Writers Need To Go On Strike Too
I was looking for a decent way to write a script for a video game but found nothing. So I decided to create my own.
I call it “gameplay format,” because if a screenplay is a movie script, a “gameplay” should be a game script. Now, “gameplay” is already used to describe the experience of playing a game. That’s precisely why I called this format a “gameplay,” because it describes exactly that.
In filmmaking, screenwriters aren’t supposed to talk about shots or blocking or directing all that much; at most, they make minor suggestions. The screenwriter’s job is to describe the action. Why not give the “gamewriter” the same job — talk about what happens when the player’s character does what, and leave things like controls and programming to the designer and programmer?
I decided to try creating a format based on a screenplay, and I’m writing a surreal dystopian comedy/thriller game to test it out. It will be called “Status Quo”. But I want to make sure I’m on the right track as far as it being readable by humans.
I will say two things: I envision this as a 2D sidescroller simply because I can’t program or model in 3D to save my life, and centered underlined text is a “level heading”. If I have to say anything else, then this format isn’t easy enough to read, and I have failed. MISERABLY.
So, please let me know if this is comprehensible, and whether I can improve it (the format, not the game necessarily). Without further ado, after the jump, level one of “Status Quo”:
Continue reading ‘Gameplay Format – Because Video Game Writers Need To Go On Strike Too’