Thanks People

Ok, mostly that’s thanks Lauren Midler, who was the only person out of a good thirty that I checked who actually talked about the unlecture.

Apparently, it wasn’t great. Oh well, and it seems like all that was talked about could be talked about in the posts about readings, i.e. Long tails and scaled/scale-free networks. That’s… inspiring.

Thanks anyway, Lauren, but I just don’t see what I can talk about.

I like the Long Tail? I guess. It’s pretty good, all those niche markets. Gotta love the niche markets.

Let’s talk about something else… Biscuits. I have these ANZAC biscuits on the desk next to me and they are pretty good.

Well, that was a good story.

I’m going away now.

You wanna talk about Narrative?

LOST

 

Bitches be all ‘But Lost is shit’. You know what, ninety percent of the people who say that have never watched the show, or worse, watched an episode ‘here or there’. No. Lost is one, giant narrative. It’s not freaking Desperate Housewives where you can tune in and out and still understand EVERYTHING. If you miss the introduction of Time Travel in Season Four, then no episode of Season Five will make sense. If you miss the first episode of Season Three, nothing ‘the Others’ do is going to make sense. If you missed Episode-fucking-one, NOTHING is going to make sense.

That said, everyone – EVERYONE – needs to watch Lost’s pilot. It is, in my opinion, the greatest pilot ever made. It cost $12 million plus, so expect some spectacle, including plane crashes, explosions, giant structures tumbling to the ground, more (amazing) characters than you can poke a stick at and some of the prettiest locations ever featured on television. This is the first episode. Death, destruction, mayhem, mystery, intrigue, French people, mountain hikes, flashbacks, makeshift surgery, blood, bones, dogs, polar bears and giant monsters. The greatest pilot ever.

That said, Lost is not a show to be divided into episodes. Lost was based on seasons.

Season One – the survivors of a plane crash… survive.

Season Two – The survivors of a plane crash try to form a society while facing off against the mysterious forces of the island (the mystery wasn’t so important in season one)

Season Three – The survivors of a plane crash are separated and struggle to survive while being attacked by the island’s monsters and the strange ‘Others’.

Season Four – The survivors face rescue, maybe.

Season Five – HOLY SHIT WHAT’S GOING ON? It’s a mix between now, then and god-kn0ws-when as time travel comes into play.

Season Six – Everyone needs to be wrapped up, QUICKLY. Go! Go! GO!!!

And no, they weren’t all dead at the end. That’s a misinterpretation.

Reading Script

As I’ve mentioned and most likely will continue to mention, I am well into writing a script for the pilot episode of a television drama. Below is a carefully chosen image of the script itself, chosen due to its lack of spoilers or potential spoilers. Also, for whatever reason my camera is set to the ‘noir’ filter, meaning that everything is black & white with intense contrast.

The show is coming along great, and there are a lot of people who are to thank for that: Georgia Symes and Karen Dennerley, who are producing with me. Nicholas Stevens, who is EXECUTIVE producing. And William Newcome, who is the co-writer of the script.

We have no real crew or cast yet, a surprising amount of interest. RMITV is aware and stuff, we have the funding, we just need the official OK to get going on real pre-production. For those interested, the show will likely be filled over late November and early December, looking to be located around Docklands, with maybe a few shoots in other locations.

Oh, it’s called ‘Spines’, and it’s a conspiracy drama wrapped up in a friend drama. You know, typical stuff. We kill a lotta peeps later so it’ll be fun.

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Culture

Of all the definitions in our readings for this week, it was Brian Eno’s version of ‘culture’ that I found the most fascinating, in that it is ‘everything we do not have to do’. That’s art, music, cuisine, architecture, recreational sex, drugs, ritual, religion, dance, sport, language and so much more, and I think that about covers culture.

Maybe. I don’t know. The point is, I’m not overly sure what culture is. I’ve never really considered it or plan on considering it. I just didn’t know, and now I feel like I have some kind of meaning that I can attach to this complex concept.

My Thoughts on Other’s Thoughts

Now this is all kinds of mediation: I, once again, am interpreting Adrian, Brian, Elliot and the other person’s ‘unlecture’ through the interpretations of those who actually attended. Like last week. And the week before.

I’ve read like four blog posts – so that’s like… going four times, right? – and I’ve picked up on one or two things: First, I’m an idiot. I’ve read the wrong readings again. Already fixed that problem by reading Week 7’s fairly interesting readings, and I’ve already done a quick post. Cool. Second, games. I love games.

Ok, that’s half-true. I suck at them. I’m as a close to a COD-junkie as I am a cod-junkie, which, if you know me, isn’t close at all. I despise fish. Regardless, games are… fun. Like most things that are designed to be fun. That’s said, some people say all things designed to be fun are games, so… yeah. Pinball is a game, as someone said. Chess is a game. Mahjong is a game. Arguably, some people have claimed that there is no narrative here: I’d disagree. Especially with Chess and Mahjong, two games with a huge contextual narrative – Chess is about war, homies. That’s a hell of a narrative. Aside from their histories, though, all of these games have a simplistic, beginning – middle – end story. You know, start: player moves pawn/ball comes out/breaking the wall. Middle: play. End: a winner is declared or the player beats/fails the game. That’s a narrative. A boring, shitty one, but it’s a narrative.

It’s a stupid argument, leave me alone.

No, the argument about the stories in games is really about one thing: games with stories. Most video games, for example. Role-playing games, ala Cluedo or Scotland Yard. You can’t say that Bioshock has no story, that’s one of the most fascinating plots I’ve ever encountered, with an overarching narrative that’s frighteningly detailed. Wait, what’s Bioshock?

To really get the ‘hypertext in gaming’ speil, head to another of my blog entries at: blah blah blah. For now, this is just about narrative. And yes, there is narrative in gaming. Now shut up about it.

Why I’m an Idiot

Turns out I’ve once again read the wrong readings for the week. So, this morning I burned through the 80/20 Rule and the Rich Get Richer, both of which I found to be surprisingly entertaining. I’m serious!

In high school I was the nerdy kid who hanged out with the arty kids. As in, I did best in the maths and science subjects, and found the humanities to be pretentious and overwrought. I didn’t like thinking too much, and for the most part mathematical theories and chemistry and biology are all quantifiable, largely unbreakable systems that are based on rules and processes that don’t change depending on interpretation. There are exceptions, but there are always exceptions. For the most part, the number-y shit was just easier to comprehend, and I appreciated that. Therefore, to have a complex notion, such as why some sites succeed on the web while others fail, expressed using rules was great. Especially when they were mathematical rules. I’m all over that shit!

I mean, look: NORMAL DISTRIBUTIONS!

Ok, that normal isn’t actually relevant to the topic at hand, but you get the idea. Most distributions that have a random varying factor (someone who can English good could explain this better) have a distribution that looks like this: heights, rainfall, stuff along those lines. A normal distribution means that the grand majority of what is being graphed takes place within a certain statistical area. To understand this, you’d have to look into standard deviation and stuff, but for the most part, it doesn’t really allow for much in the way of extremes. That said, unlike what the reading implies it does allow a very, very small chance for something to arise that significantly deviates from the average, but the chances are minuscule.

Apparently, if you measure the number of links per hub in a network, you don’t get a normal distribution. There is no standard deviation, pretty much, which means that you end up with an exponential distribution, i.e.

That means that the decline away from the average is not as steep as in a normal curve, which significantly increases the chances of there being statistics that deviate greatly from the average. There you go. I get this.

In the case of the exponential graph, the number of links is represented in the x-axis, while the number of hubs with that number of links is the y-axis. Simples. Apparently this is because of preferential attachment, or the ‘Rich Get Richer’ idea. Sites with lots of links are more likely to be linked to than sites without a lot of links, so naturally sites will move along the x-axis as they pick up more links, picking up speed as they do it and moving faster and faster down the line. Still, 80% of pages just linger in no-man’s land, but the 20% that seem to make it down the winding x-axis do well for themselves, and props to them.