I'll keep this short and sweet:

Spanks for the memories, the posts, the blogging, the wiki-ing! Thanks for making my almost-last English class at this college an experience that was so different (in a good way) from any others that I've taken. I will miss blogging here and I'm glad that you all made this class and blog worthwhile for me. =)

Spanks!

It's already been said in numerous posts that the increased blogging activity in the last day has been quite interesting and amusing. This has been the first time that I have visibly seen evidence of shared procrastination, and yet again, is another sign that this class has done so much for me in changing the way I view academics and knowledge exchange. Also, coming to this blog the last day has given me seizures. I can't keep up with all the new posts! It actually forces me to skim everyone's entries just because there's so many, whereas before I actually read all the entries word for word.

This past week has been a ridiculous affair for me as I've been scrambling to get all my final papers in and studying for finals. The internet has not been helpful at all, and this blog has definitely been a procrastination tool for me.

It's funny that this blog is simultaneously class-related "work" and also one of my main sources of procrastination. This past semester, whenever I am not in the mood to study or am simply in a procrastinating mode, my tools for procrastination have been the following, in this order:

1. Email
2. Xanga
3. Facebook
4. This blog
5. Our wiki
6. Youtube

When I was writing my hypertext for my final project, I couldn't figure out a way to end it. That was because when I usually write anything, I don't go in with a clear plan. I normally just sit in front of my Microsoft Word document and write in a stream-of-consciousness way, letting the ideas rush out as I'm typing. So, when I needed to finish writing my hypertext, I was having a lot of trouble ending it, which was also due to the fact that it IS a hypertext and that format isn't very closure-friendly.

Anyway, I kept asking my friends what I should do to "end" my hypertext, and I got at least half a dozen responses telling me to kill off the main character (which was a problem, because she starts out dead anyway). But anyway, people seem to think killing people is a good way of ending any type of narrative.

A couple things--

1. Everybody's projects are amazing and I'm so impressed with everyone's work over the course of the semester. It's really cool being able to see what exactly everyone's been occupied with over the last two months. Would it be possible to make one post with links to everyone's projects? And to keep that post at the top of this class blog so that it's accessible all the time? (one thing that's always annoyed me about blogs is that if it's an active blog, then you have to keep clicking "next page" to get to fairly recent posts because everyone posts so much) So is there a way to put everyone's projects in a single post and keep it on the front page? I definitely want to take time to explore more during my own time. I like everyone's projects so much that I feel like we deserve to be mentioned in the institute for the future of the book or some other techie world site, because it'd be cool to share beyond our class.

As marmalade brings up in her post, the issue of identity is everywhere, whether it's online or not. A number of presentations today, especially tophat1's bit about avatars, reminded me of how easy it is to lie about oneself online.

Here's an example: a friend of a friend likes to play chess. I've heard my friend tell me some very strange stories about this friend of his. Apparently his friend--I'll call him "James"--likes to play chess online, and he pretends to be somebody else when he plays. James says if he has a boring screenname like "James188" or something like that, then he won't get a lot of people requesting to play with him. So instead he makes up screen names like "cutiepiegirl" or "omglolGirlfriend" or something else utterly ridiculous so that people will play with him. James assumes that most of these chess players in these forums are males, and he thinks that changing his screen name to something that ridiculous will entice players. And it actually works a lot of the times.

After reading GAM3R 7H30RY and talking to marmalade yesterday about publishing networked writing in print, I've started thinking a lot more about authorship as it relates to the transfer of online-to-print material.

Among other things, lately I've started thinking about the publishing industry since graduation is looming, and in particular, I was curious about publishing writings from compilations such as slambooks. What if somebody wanted to publish a childhood slambook? Who gets the credit--the person who took the initiative and went through the formalities/procedures to getting the actual book published, or would there be some sort of "thank you to Mrs. C's sixth grade class of 1996"? I think a year or two ago, when I was in an Urban Outfitters store, I saw a book that was basically a collection of some random guy's middle school notes that he passed around behind the teacher's back when he was twelve. He'd saved all those notes and then published them in a book. I can't remember if he credited his classmates or other note writers. I remembered this example again when we read GAM3R 7H30RY and all these issues about credit and authorship came up again.

Silversprung's entry about an encounter with a fellow student blogger over Thanksgiving break reminded me of two incidents I had over the break. Since taking this class, everything technology-related reminds me of this class. If I run across an article about videogames or blogging or anything remotely related, I suddenly think of this class. I'm beginning to get a little creeped out by this, it's literally everywhere! I wonder why I didn't notice these things before.

Anyway, onto the first incident. A good friend of mine writes articles for Escapist Magazine, a gaming magazine, and I told him about our class. He got super excited that we were actually learning about ludologists and all the theory behind video games. When I asked him about his thoughts on the gamer and academic divide, he confirmed a lot of what we'd discussed before. He said that in his experience, the more time a person spends gaming, the less time they devote to the theory and critique behind the games. I'd thought that perhaps there could be some kind of harmonious interaction between the two areas, but even he thought I was being naive. Hmm...I still remain hopeful, but I guess reality does make it hard to achieve.

I agree with other people who've already posted here and there that Michael Joyce's "Walking Mornings" is a very beautiful piece. I actually liked that he wrote less about the electronic lit world and more about his personal journey as a writer and human being. I was glad that he brought in his experiences as a hypertext author into the piece because it gave me some context to understand his sense of "walking," but I'm also grateful that he didn't solely focus on the hypertext world.

After reading the homepage of The Onyx Project and watching the two clips, I'm still a little unsure as to how this "movie" is navigated. From reading the description on the site, I felt confused by the viewing descriptions and from reading tophat1's entry and her link to a NY Times article on the Onyx Project, I'm overwhelmed by the fact that there are over 400 scenes!