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Tastee (del.icio.us) links
Links for April 17th from 17:33 to 19:07: Push-ups giving women a bad rep – I am all about doing full-length pushups. Anyway, this article is a good look at the value of pushups and what the reputation of women being unable to do them means for gender issues in our society. globeandmail.com: Women runners: Let fat be the fuel that helps you cross the finish line – This is something interesting — the relationship between fat intake and running injuries. I can see the correlation, but the causation is lacking. They mention lacking energy for basic bodily functions — why not just advise folks to eat more calories?
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Little Engine That Can
I was partway through a post about struggling to find continuing motivation when I decided to reread Zen Habits’ “Get Off Your Butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You’re in a Slump. Unsurprisingly, it got me out of my slump. The winner for now, I think, was #13, “Read about it Daily”. It had been a while since I read blogs — and most of my blog subscriptions are geared towards my goals. Yesterday I took time and read through many of the 300+ entries waiting for me, and found myself excited again. Not crunk, exactly, but ready to move forward with drive, and excited about the ideas being…
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Wearing the GM hat
I finally put on my robe and wizard hat — I mean, my robe and GM hat. I’ve been table-top roleplaying for about a year and half now, and I’m just now starting my first campaign. WO — who’s run a few games since arriving in Charlotte — found himself desperate to play in a good game. Those are damned hard to find here in Charlotte. They were — to my surprise, in reflection — a dime a dozen at Rose. Imagine my surprise when I found myself longing for my old Palladium and D & D companions. (My visit to an old GM’s blog prompted this post, in fact.)…
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Tastee linkage
The upgrade to WordPress 2.5 meant that my plugin for posting links went away for a while. There may be a duplicate or two towards the bottom of this list, but I have culled it a bit. Big, Brass Ones: Threat Level exploits cross-site scripting bug on CIA.gov – Boing Boing Gadgets – This is pretty dang slick. I need to find out how they've done that, exactly. Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » JC Denton: Not Just a Tough Guy – The clothing of Deus Ex. "I felt ridiculous having these philosophical and political conversations while dressed as a Morpheus cosplayer." The Swamp: Obama: Won't ask, don't mind tellin'…
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The algorithm is dead?
About a month ago, WO posted a podcast in which he espoused an interesting new idea: that in games, the “algorithm” is dead, much as in literary analysis, where the author is (to some of us) dead. This requires a bit of explanation of the structure of games that Gregory is using. Books typically have three components: the author (or creator), the narrative itself, and the reader. Gregory (and I’m not sure of his source here, maybe this is a common distinction in his field) notes four components in interactive works (or “games”, for simplicity): the author, the potential narrative, the realized narrative, and the player. The potential narrative, as…