Even the puppetmasters at the CIA make mistakes. What was thought to be the correct decrypted text of Kryptos 2 was wrong, not by fault of a decoder’s transcription error but rather that of the person who did the encryption.
Hey guys, I’m available for hire as a proof-reader.
Although it’s more directed at RPGers, the essay “A Feminist Gaming Manifesto” (part one, part two) makes some excellent points about the nature of gaming as applied to men and women, as well as the basic differences between the genders. He has a list of 20 points where his “gender privilege” of being male kicks in. Here are some that I’ve run across in my own life:
“5. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my gender.” [a.k.a. I Am Not A Soccermom]
“8. I can speak in public to a powerful group without putting my gender on trial.”
“9. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my gender.”
“12. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my gender.”
The point of the essay is to demonstrate to game designers that there is a reason that a large percentage of gamers is male: because women feel out of place in the community. He asks men to quit being so defensive when points are brought up and to listen to what they’re being told rather than to deny it.
The funny thing about ARGs is that the gaming community is pretty evenly split 50/50 between men and women. I’m not sure what the magic bullet is there. Strong women characters? A welcoming community? I’m sure there’s some good meta discussion material, though.
I finally got around to dusting it off and polishing it up.
Creative Embassy asked me to call in to his radio station today for an interview on Alternate Reality Radio. If I can find an audio file and get permission, I’ll upload it for listening.
Over the last few days I’ve been attending panels at South by Southwest Interactive and covering them for ARGN, the Alternate Reality Gaming Network. Here are the articles I’ve written:
The Wisdom of Crowds
Designing for Global and Local Social Play
Serious Games for Learning
Cluetrain: Seven Years Later
Interview with GMD Studios’ Brian Clark
I had a fantastic time hanging out with Brian Clark and Dan Hon and learning more about the corporate/consumer relationship, marketing, groups, and play.
I’m on a press pass for SXSW Interactive this year, covering it for ARGN. I was also invited to a party hosted in part by GMD Studios on Sunday night.
My problem was that I did not have any suitably hip clothing to wear. So I headed over to my trusty shopping mecca, Stein Mart and grabbed a bunch of fairly business-like but slightly hipster clothing, plus something cocktail-ish with enough cleavage showing to make hubby mutter.
On the way home I had the window of the Prius rolled down and was enjoying the perfect weather. I was silently coasting downhill, the engine not running, when suddenly from the yard I’m passing comes a hellacious booming noise. “Oh crap,” I thought, “I’m shot!”
Turns out it was some guy pounding his canoe. This is not a euphemism. Hope he got it straight. *cough*
I landed my first paying gig. Started work on it tonight. I’m tickled pink.
So maybe I will be a writer. It’s a possibility. I have some passable stuff in my portfolio now. My thoughts turn to this: I should hone my words and practice writing some of the detailed and lovely description which, to me, makes writing so good. I’m re-reading the Kinsey Milhone books and realizing that Sue Grafton paints pictures with words, in her terse, film noir style. I admire that. So I get a few phrases which percolate up from my subconscious and I am afraid to set them down on paper. Maybe I’ve plagiarized the idea from somewhere. Nah, probably not. More likely for my fear: Maybe I’ll plagiarize from myself somewhere down the road. If I start to write, how soon before I run out? Am I a replenish-able resource? Will new words fill the empty space inside the lake of Me when the old ones trickle out? Or is it stagnant, dead water, smelling funky, moss growing on my interior dictionaries and thesauruses, their pages bloating up in the muck and becoming unreadable?
I think what I need to do is more practice writing. Mental exercises. Get used to the craft again. Understand that there are infinity words out there with as many ways to string them together. Come to terms with the fact that all stories have already been told, but we keep reading them anyway because some authors make them fun. I want to be the fun author, and therefore I will practice. If I were talking about a piano, I’d be doing scales: do re mi fa sol la ti do. What’s the typewriter equivalent? The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?
Yeah I might be jumping the gun, but I do have things in my future that I am both sure and unsure about, and this skill set would be helpful with all of them. Might not get me far if the world blows up and we need survival skills, but I guess for that I can shoot guns and raise children. And make up stories to tell people around the campfire.
Beware, I’m letting my imagination off its leash. Send out an APB for a growling mass which is bitter for having been caged up since 1987. It should be considered armed with well-honed wit and extremely dangerous. If you approach it, give it chocolate and it will be your friend.
(ETA: It’s only after the second dose of Chardonnay that I tell you I never wrote anything “real” from the day my mother died in January 1987. Whether I needed her input or just lost my nerve I will never know, but I have a mental image of her ghost twiddling its fingers and waiting for me to get off my ass and do it. She thought I was a writer. I thought I might have been a writer, but when my direct backup system was knocked so quickly from under me I began to doubt everything. EVERYTHING. As in, ’twas death that taught me God was dead. And 10 years later, ’twas death that taught me God was alive and had his hand out for me. Ok, the wine is getting loquacious, and I should probably go to bed before it embarrasses me further.) (It was beautiful, though.)