Ponderance

You know it must be Halloween when even the bananas are talking back being very rude about it!

[X] Reuters notes "When the violent video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas hits stores on Tuesday, its sales could eclipse Hollywood's most successful films, even as it draws the ire of critics." There is also now an online survivial guide for GTA: SA, but if buy or play don't forget to think about--as Stewart reminds us--who should be playing the game and how old they should be!

[X] Slashdot points to a wonderful new machinima effort featuring a rendered Snoop Dogg encouraging all to vote (and the Dogg gets taken out by a Bush campaign van!). The machinimation premiered at the State of Play II gaming conference; State of Play is being throroughly blogged at Terra Nova (so far here, here, here, here and here).

[X] The Internet turns 35. (Not the web.)

[X] Apparently Joss Whedon has sworn off TV production for the imaginable future. It would appear talk of a Buffy Mini-Series were rather premature!

This flickring effort from jurvetson is hilarious! [Via Boing Boing]

RX, the mash up artiste behind The Party Party has seven amazing freely downloadable and streamable mp3 tracks that everyone will enjoy and anyone voting in the US should have as a soundtrack to their lives for the next few days!

The Party Party
01. Imagine 03:48
02. Dick Is A Killer 03:48
03. Who's the Nigga? 03:48
04. KGBtv 04:59
05. Sunday Bloody Sunday 03:09
06. Boys and Girls 04:38
07. I'm John Kerry 04:44

Download them all, for free, here, and join the party party!

Apparently, the first second Perth Flash Mob is going to assemble tomorrow at 1pm. Details here. (Sadly, I'll not be there, but if anyone is, can you post photos please!).

Update (3pm, Oct 29 2004): Rob comments that there has, indeed, been an eariler flash effort in WA. Since I was busy today, I'm still ignorant: DID ANYONE GO? Are there pictures?

Feeling unashamedly nerdy? Then check out Tron: The Rock Opera! :) [Via WaxyLinks]

There is much blogchatter about Eminem's new anti-Bush song 'Mosh". You can find a torrent to the videoclip or torrent to the mp3 if you know where to look. While I must confess disliking a lot of Eminem's past efforts (every with irony, misogyny is hard to "enjoy" lyrically), I do think he has a lot of influence, and thus I'm firmly behind this resistant effort (and I shan't even launch into a rant as to whether he really "means" it or is just jumping on the must-be-anti-Bush-to-be-cool-and-sell-crap bandwagon).

You decide. Here are the lyrics:

[I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the Republic for which it stands
One nation under God
Indivisible?
people (this is it) It feels so good to be back..]

Scrutinize every word, memorize every line
I spit it once, refuel, reenergize, and rewind
I give sight to the blind, my insight through the mind
I exercise my right to express when I feel it's time
It's just all in your mind, what you interpret it as
I say to fight you take it as I'm gonna whip someone's ass
If you don't understand don't even bother to ask
A father who has grown up with a fatherless past
Who has blown up now to rap phenomenon that has
Or at least shows no difficulty multi task
And juggling both, perhaps mastered his craft slash
Entrepreneur who has held long too few more rap acts
Who has had a few obstacles thrown his way through the last half
Of his career typical manure moving past that
Mister kiss his ass crack, he's a class act
Rubber band man, yea he just snaps back

Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,
Come with me, and I won't steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,
We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors..cum
on.

To the people up top, on the side and the middle,
Come together, let's all bomb and swamp just a little
Just let it gradually build, from the front to the back
All you can see is a sea of people, some white and some black
Don't matter what color, all that matters is we gathered together
To celebrate for the same cause, no matter the weather
If it rains let it rain, yea the wetter the better
They ain't gonna stop us, they can't, we're stronger now more then ever,
They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go,
Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know
Stomp, push up, mush, fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home come on just...

Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,
Come with me, and I won't steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,
We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors, come on

Imagine it pouring, it's raining down on us,
Mosh pits outside the oval office
Someone's trying to tell us something, maybe this is God just saying
we're responsible for this monster, this coward, that we have empowered
This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding,
How could we allow something like this, Without pumping our fist
Now this is our, final hour
Let me be the voice, and your strength, and your choice
Let me simplify the rhyme, just to amplify the noise
Try to amplify the times it, and multiply it by six
Teen million people are equal of this high pitch
Maybe we can reach Al Quaida through my speech
Let the President answer on high anarchy
Strap him with AK-47, let him go
Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil
No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country we're patronizing a hero
Look in his eyes, it's all lies, the stars and stripes
They've been swiped, washed out and wiped,
And Replaced with his own face, mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you'll know why, because I told you to fight

So come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,
Come with me, and I won't steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,
We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors

And as we proceed, to mosh through this desert storm, in these
closing statements, if they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we
set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this
weapon of mass destruction that we call our president, for the
present, and mosh for the future of our next generation, to speak and
be heard, Mr. President, Mr. Senator

Read more at Music For America.

Apparently a podcast may be made of the various talks from BlogNite, so I'm just going to mention a few things which occured to me during the many interesting blogging related presentations...

Putting Faces on the Blogs: It was great to meet Richard Giles and Bret Treasure who I've read and spoken to via email, but never met in the flesh, as it were. They were the driving force behind BlogNite and I suspect their optimisim (even utopianism, at times!) will acutally drive meetings like BlogNite into something bigger and better in the future (and there is even talk of a full BloggerCon in Australia, which would be nifty, but would Bret or Richard have to play "Dave Winer down under"?).

Highlight for my brain: Robert Corr's talk on Blogging and Politics which showed historical similarities between blogs and past media, especially the pamphlet. While I think Robert was a bit pessimistic about the overall impact of blogs, he certainly made a very clear and thoughtful argument.

Highlight for my taste-buds: Anthony, the spiceblog guy, was half-time entertainment and made sushi in front of our very eyes (in a lecture theatre, no less, but don't mention that to Curtin Health & Safety!). Anthony has a lot of personality and is definately a peformance chef far beyond his blog!

Wacky Fact: Chris Clark of decaffeinated (which, incidentally, is the most elegant and simple blog design of all the Perth blog set) looks way too much like Xander off Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Chris: this is meant as a good thing, since I'm a big fan of Buffy. Surely someone's said that in the past, though?

Overall: Very diverse night, many great ideas, some disheartening ideas about selling ads via blogs (but, I guess, a reality now), and a good starting point for future face2face discussions and no doubt an experience soon to be reflected upon across the perth downunderblogosphere!

PS There was mention during the night of an airline hostess who got suspended from work for posting "suggestive" pictures in her uniform. The BBC report is here.

Update (10:05am 28 Oct 04): David of StayPuff has blogged a bunch of photos fom BlogNite, so click here to put faces to the names (or see them again!). I have to ask, though: does this blognite make me look fat? ;)

[NB: This is the written version of the brief talk I gave at Perth's BlogNite where I talked up Blogging at University]

My segment tonight is on blogging universities. I'm going to share a few insights gained from using blogging as a substantial part of the upper level unit Self.Net: Communicating Identity in the Digital Age which I taught this semester in English, Communication and Cultural Studies and the University of Western Australia.

I guess, though, I should quickly establish my own blogging credentials: I've been blogging using the free platform Blogger for just over 18 months now. A quick check of my stats reveal that I've actually written just over 110,000 words in that time, which stuck me as quite a lot. The PhD I've been working on for four years is, after all, going to clock in at less than 100,000! My own blog is centred on my fascination with digital culture and technology and covers everything from games, films and television to the politics of blogging and participatory culture. It has also turned out to be an excellent archive when I need material for lectures.

To situate my teaching a little, UWA, like Curtin University, has recently purchased a campus-wide license for the US developed courseware system WebCT or Web Course Tools. This system is large and designed to facilitate and enclose all facets of online learning; course content such as handouts and recordings of lectures are found in WebCT, as are potentially discussion boards, homepages spaces, chat rooms, quizzes and a number of other optional tools. WebCT uses security protocols to make sure that the only people who can access a particular course are those enrolled in that unit or granted special access by the course coordinator. Now, WebCT has many uses, but its fundamental architecture and design is inward-looking. The message it gives to students is that everything you need online is within WebCT. Even when students are asked to visit a website outside of WebCT they go and visit it via the web, but then return to their protected and insular little course space. For many courses, this is probably a good thing, but for a course like Self.Net which encourages critical thinking about online environments, WebCT is just too closed.

In order to combat the inward-looking nature of WebCT, I decided to have each tutorial group establish their own tutorial blog. I decided to use the Blogger platform since I was familiar with it and, since Blogger is aimed at the general public, its interface and posting tools are very straightforward. In the third week of the course, students participated in a Blogging Workshop in which they signed up to Blogger and joined their respective tutorial blogs. During the course there were a number of mandatory posts, including notes about tutorial representations before the tutorial, reflections on their presentations, their entire first assignment and notes on a couple of guided workshops. Students were encouraged to also post items of interest that fell outside of these mandatory posts. Most importantly, after students posted their first assignments, each student was required to make a comment on two other students' assignments. In doing so, student's had the opportunity to gain direct feedback about their work not just from their tutor, but from their peers. Indeed, one might consider the mechanisms of feedback and reflection that a blog facilitates to be a form of peer-to-peer learning. Getting students familiar with learning from each other and critiquing each other is, I think the greatest educational benefit of blogs, but there are three others I want to quickly mention.

Firstly, using a public blog as opposed to a password protected discussion space in WebCT forced students to start thinking about their own public voice online. There has been a lot written in the last year or two on the idea of 'participatory journalism' which argues that the democratic nature of blogging-insomuch as, anyone online can have a blog-means that there is a whole new wave of serious journalistic-style writing being done by amateur bloggers outside of the journalistic profession. While this notion has both pros and cons, for students wrestling with this idea while participating in a publicly visible online blog meant these considerations weren't just abstract; students thus investigated issues of authority, legitimacy, responsibility and immediacy in both theoretical terms and in the very real terms of their own blogging efforts. During a survey I conducted toward the end of the course, a number of students stated they had initially been a lot more nervous using blogs since their writing would be visible via the web and thus potentially anyone could read it. Although a little nerve-wracking, these students also said they were more careful with their writing due to the blogs being publicly readable. So, in effect, writing in a public online space makes more thoughtful writers.

A second strength of blogging as a teaching and learning tool is that students can blog whenever it suits their schedule. Initially I was surprised by how many students were writing blog posts late at night or even early in the morning. Then I realised that this is the time many have put aside to do their studies. Many are, after all, holding down part-time or even full-time work while completing their degrees. So, unlike a synchronous online interaction like chat, blog posts can be made whenever students have time. In my experience, if I scheduled a week for posts to be made on a particular topic, about a third would be made during the normal working day, another third late at night and the final third in the five minutes before the absolute last time the post would be accepted! So, tutorial blogs are very useful in accommodating the flexible schedules needed by students today.

Thirdly, since so many students are already using a blog of some kind, often in a personal journal form, learning to use blogs as critical thinking spaces is immediately applicable to their students own experiences. Indeed, learning to think critically about everyday practices is probably as important as learning new things, and blogs actually bridge this gap: students who are blogging already both reflect on their own blog style and learn new ideas about the role of blogging in digital culture. And it seems a number of students in my course who didn't use a blog before the course have now developed their own personal blog which suggests that what they're learning through blogging will stay with them long after the course ends.

Before I move on, let me answer two fairly obvious objections to public blogs as teaching tools:
[X] Firstly, won't students cheat more if they can cut'n'paste from blogs? Basically: no. I believe that students plagiarise for the most part because they don't understand why it's wrong. Blogs make students a lot more aware of linking and showing sources through links, so, if anything, they're learning why not to plagiarise. Also, in doing searches online, students often realise how easy it is to track down sources, so they're more likely to think twice about plagiarising an online source when they know how easily the original source could be found.
[X] Secondly, doesn't relying on a public platform like Blogger mean education becomes dependant on technology that the university doesn't control. This is actually more of an issue. Some educators who use blogs will set up a Moveable Type base and run their blogs via that software on their own servers. This, of course, has the downside of the course coordinator having to maintain the technicalities of the blog, which is certainly beyond my current know-how. In practice, Blogger seems very stable and given it's now a subsidiary of Google, that is likely to remain true. There is also the issue of ownership of content, but the recently refined public licensing systems such as 'Creative Commons' mean that students can, in effect, copyright their own work to whatever extend needed. Indeed, in using a Creative Commons License via a blog, many students have the first understanding of their own intellectual property rights.

Of course, the question remains: do students actually think blogs are worth using? In a survey of fifty students in my Self.Net course, the results certainly seem to confirm the utility, ease and enjoyment of using blogs for students. When asked if blogging was a useful part of the course, 90% of students agreed that is was. Even more importantly, when asked if they thought blogs should be used in other university courses, 74% said yes. So, from this survey, students seem to be almost as enthusiastic about blogging at universities as I am!

To conclude, et me quickly summarise, then, what I see as the key strengths of blogging at university:
[X] Blogs encourage peer-to-peer learning, allowing students to teach and learn from each other as well as the course tutors and lecturers.
[X] The publicly accessible nature of blogs forces students to consider the construction of their own public voice online, which often improves their writing.
[X] The always-available nature of blogs means posting to blogs can be done whenever it suits students' schedules, thus creating a more flexible learning space.
[X] Since so many students already blog in some form or another, using blogs as learning tools forces them to reflect on their own online practices thus linking their personal and learning spaces in potentially very useful ways.
While I suspect some courses aren't geared towards use of blogs, I do believe that in the arts and humanities, blogging could potentially become one of the most useful eLearning tools available.

It seems that one of the most artistic and talented people I know has been in the blogosphere for over a month without me cottoning on! Now I know, I must welcome and urge others to read the wonderful Jo Gray!

Jo, as some will remember, designed the wonderful ponderance logo...

Now, following Jo's Mosaic making instructions, I bring you, the ponderance logo mosaic:

[Click to enlarge.]

And Panda-watch has been initiated, too!

I just gave my first ever radio interview on RTR (Perth, 92.1 FM) in the lead up to tonight's BlogNite. It was an interesting experience. I suspect I may have talked poor Ian Dawson's ear off as he looked a bit surprised when he checked the time at the end of my rant. It was fun, but I'm sure I left out some things I really wanted to say, and mangled some things I did say. Despite loving the digital, I must confess being rather glad fm radio doesn't live on the web to haunt you forever. That said, there's talk of podcasting tonite's talks, so I shall have to actually use notes...

PS It appears I'm not the only person giving interviews at the moment, eh Stewart? :) (on TV no less!)

[X] The Smart Mobs blog reports that a mobile phone camera filter originally designed for night photos has been modified for use as a sort-of X-Ray camera which may make clothed people appear ... less clothed. Does anyone else remember comic book ads from the early 1980s which made X-Ray Glasses advertised; they didn't work, so I wonder if this really does?

[X] Engadet reports that iTunes Music Stores have opened in nine more countries. Australia is not one of them. *sigh* Also, about half the blogs in the world report today that Apple has just released an new 60GB iPod with a colour screen, photo sharing capabilites and more (details here). iFeel obsolete! I did feel slightly better reading Ian Bogost's post at Water Cooler Games which calls the photo-ready iPod the "dumbest piece of consumer electronics I've seen all year"! Oh, and there's the official U2 black iPod, too.

[X] The Feedburner folk have just made podcasting a whole lot easier, even for those of us using Blogger. Check out their RSS enclosure friendly SmartCast system!

[X] Finally, Alex Halavais notes that a neural network grown from rat cells is currently playing computer games!!

[X] /. is speculating about a Google-branded FireFox browser. GBrowser.com seems to be Googlespace!

[X] Naomi Klein is reporting in from Baghdad. [Via William Gibson]

[X] Podcasting seems to be maturing with audio.weblogs.com carrying the last 100 feeds. Can you remember a time before weblog.com's wonderful ping central? I don't have the bandwidth to listen to all that many, but I enjoy the Engadet Podcasts; they're used the theme tunes to both The Transformers and G.I. Joe in their first few podcasts!

[X] As of today, Technorati is tracking "4,393,859" blogs. This isn't a particularly special number, but is useful to know in case needed at BlogNite.

[X] You thought Bill O'Reillywas f**ked after OutFoxed? Check out The O'Sexxxy Factor and the sexual harrasement lawsuit he's earned!

[X] As much as I love (or, at least, am fascinated by) The Sims, why would EA need to advertise Sim City 4 as "from the creators of The Sims" when The Sims was (or, I presume was) sold on the back of the Sim City virtual worlds?

After months of proving that it's already the best browser out there, even in pre-release, the countdown to the FireFox 1.0 release is on. The exact date is not yet official, but rumour has it that "Friday, November 19 - Sunday, November 21" is the window to watch!

To announce FireFox to those who have yet to embrace the browser of teh future, the open source Mozilla campaign is trying to raise enough funds for a full page open source funded advertisement in The New York Times! I think this is a fantastic idea, and have already pledged my (sensibly sutdent priced) $10. If you're interested, check out the details here. As part of your contribution, all those who donate have their names added to the advertisement; it's like being part of open source history!

Perth FireFox fans: there is a FireFox release party planned for Saturday, November 20th at Fast Eddy's in Northbridge. Full details here. The rest of the world has parties going on everywhere, so check here to find yours.



Update (11.55am, 25 Oct 04): According to Asa's comment, the official release date is actually November 9th! Woohoo!

Earlier this year I was sure that Cate Shortland's Somersault had to be the directorial debut of the year, but now that I've seen the absolutely stunning In My Father's Den from first-time writer/director Brad McGann, I suspect Somersault is relegated to a close second. In My Father's Den is undoubtably the best New Zealand made film I've seen in the last decade (I don't count Lord of the Rings as an exclusively New Zealand production, but even if I did, I'd have to think hard about whether Jackson or McGann did a better job!).

In My Father's Den is shot in Central Otaga and shot well by cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh (who also framed The Piano); every visual captures the beauty of unspoiled land, every frame is pristine, every clould a water painting in motion. The human story, though, is radically juxtaposed with the landscape; it's a dark tale of complicated pasts, terrible family secrets, and a series of revelations that will leave you stunned. The film opens with Paul Prior's (Matthew MacDadyen) return to his home town, a tiny village in New Zealand's south island, from which he's been absent since leaving abruptly at the age of seventeen. There, he is awkwardly and briefly reunited with his estranged brother, Andrew (Colin Moy) after their father's funeral for which Paul has returned. Andrew has married the gaunt and haunted Penny, who is brilliantly and yet subtly played by Mirando Otto. However, the truly stellar performance comes from teenager Emily Barclay who plays Celia; she strikes up a friendship with Paul, and without giving it all away, Paul and Celia share a bond which is both unexpected and amazingly well developed. The film, although shot primarily through Paul's experience, is really Celia's story. We find out the Celia's mother, Jackie (Jodie Rimmer) and Paul were inseparable as teenagers, but something happened to drive them apart. While Paul made a life as an outstanding war photographer of international repute, Jackie has taken a less fortunate path and leads a dissatisfied life as the local butcher, raising three children and avoiding thoughts of the life not had. When Jacky has to deal with Celia's friendship with Paul, she has to confront a past which she and Paul have both chosen to forget, but when Celia disappears, the mysteries bubble to the surface making unexpected patterns.

While some parts of In My Father's Den almost fall into the realm of cliché, McGann's direction and his brilliant cast prove that with the right people, places and emotion, any story can feel profoundly deep. Indeed, even one revelation which feels like an idea taken too far ends up acting as an emotional sledgehammer for which you can prepare by taking a box of tissues with you to the cinema. This film, like Somersault, shows that Australia and New Zealand are overflowing with talent waiting to be embraced by the rest of the world. Of course, both films paint their countries as somewhere to worry about! Indeed, Peter Calder writing in the New Zealand Herald rightly notes:

In My Father's Den seems likely to add to our national reputation for making dark and doom-laden stories about tortured people in small towns.

Even so, In My Father's Den is a brilliantly made, impeccably acted, majestically photographed film which tells a story you certainly won't forget any time soon. Without a doubt, the best film I've seen this year.

What happens when you mix the web, reality tv, The Sims 2 and an eccentric family in the Netherlands? You get The Sturkenbooms, as CNEWS describes them:

Crowded into a cube-like trailer with two glass walls, the Sturkenbooms, along with their two sons, are living on display for four days, monitored via webcam and in person around the clock. To computer game aficionados, the story is all too familiar. The family is posing as a human version of The Sims, a popular game where players control a virtual family. Similar to their animated counterparts, the Sturkenbooms are instructed to perform tasks. But unlike the virtual Sims, whose survival depends on players' instructions to exercise, eat and shower, the Sturkenbooms are also assigned more playful chores by Redwood City, California-based game maker Electronic Arts, Inc. [...] The exhibition on the outskirts of Utrecht, 40 kilometres from Amsterdam, is a publicity stunt for the Dutch version of Sims 2, a sequel to the original game.

Check out the webcast video here (although you need DSL to get "Breedband", the dialup "Smallband" is pitiful quality). Is this a Sim Sim?

Some of you may have noticed a photo badge appear on the sidebar (to your right -->) which is generated using the wonderful photograph storing/sharing/narrating platform Flickr. I'll be trying to take digital photos more consistently from now on, so have a look every now and then. You can also view my full photostream at Flickr.

I've been looking at all sorts of photos, but this one from Gabriel Castro really stood out...

I wonder if other G4s are secretly going to uni so Apple can eventually be run by the powerbooks, for the powerbooks? :)

Another Flickr thread worth following is the emerging the world of Flicktion which Jill has recently blogged. Flicktion is fiction written around an interesting flickr photo. You can follow all the flicktion here. Flicktion reminds me of Fontaine's ideas about the world being a chorus of voices coming from objects, not just people, in William Gibson's novels:

Everything, to Fontaine, had a story. Each object, each fragment comprising the built world. A chorus of voices, the past alive in everything, that sea upon which the present tossed and rode. (All Tomorrow's Parties, 158-9).

It can also be fun to follow the photos people are taking of your city (don't get confused though, as there is a bizzare doubling going on since there is also a Perth, Scotland; you can pretty much pick quite photos are from Western Australia and which are Scots, but it's a fun mix!) Live long Flickrnation!

Who would have expected to find George Dubyah and John Kerry living together in The Sims 2? In five pages of Sims screenshots, we learn that co-habitation is only the beginning of the story! On page one we discover living together can be frustrating for John: "Dammit George, how #*&($! hard is it to cook a TOASTER PASTRY?!" Then, afer a stressful day and a bit of a back rub, things get worrisome as John and George start to forget their differences! By the third installment, things are getting hot it here ... but is that Saddam joining the lads in the spa? He seems to be stealing people's mail, too:

Of course, by the fourth part of the Simulation, George and John have issues (and attend Saddam and Osama's nifty bbq!). And it all ends with another John turning up and Dubyah suddenly fitting nicely inside an urn!

I was very impressed by this little Sim Rom Com! Well done Tviokh! [Via WaxyLinks]

Since the presidentail debates in the US, everyone's been asking Is Bush Wired? At first, the debate photos showed a strange device strapped to the burning Bush:


But now the truth has come out...

[Source, Via]
While I'm pleased Bush has accepted he's a cyborg, isn't this cheating via the terms laid out for the US presidential debates? Mind you, that never seems to have bothered the Blow 'Em Up administration in the past...

Okay, having talked up the machinimatic potential of using The Sims 2 moviemaker, I've been dying to see what the Rooster Teeth boys were going to do with their new series The Strangerhood. Yesterday the first full episode was posted (although checking today I couldn't get to the site, which suggests some pretty heavy traffic going their way!) Now, it might be unfair to compare this to the first episode of Red Vs Blue, but I can't help it: the Strangerhood's first ep just ain't all that funny. I suspect this is more a function of trying to introduce a much larger cast of characters (insomniac Sims who don't know that they're Sims!). However, politically, I thought The Strangerhood started fantastically...

After the debates about gay marriage in The Sims 2, I was delighted that the first two Sims we meet in The Strangerhood were two male Sims waking up in a bed together--with no memory to be sure--but one Sim saying that their lack of memory and waking up in bed together must be evidence "of a great party!". That's a text, my friend, not a subtext. So, kudos to Rooster Teeth for introducing queer Sims in their production. I suspect The Strangerhood will be more like a reality TV show: you take a while to warm to the characters, but get very invested toward the end of the show. Technically, though, the movies are far more advanced than other machinima which just uses the game engine, so I'm still very taken with the machinimatic uses of The Sims 2 and think The Stangerhood may develop into quite a little series (it just needs to get a lot funnier in the coming episodes!).

PS Season three of Red Vs Blue has just begun as well: check out Episode 39 of Red Vs Blue here.

Lawrence Lessig is currently talking up the new P2P Politics site. I found it really useful to see an archive of Kerry campaign ads, but trying to pitch the site as not politically aligned while launching with only Kerry ads makes me wonder if it will work. That said, I really enjoyed the anti-Bush ad which iconified him as a video game character!

Pros and cons of sms, txt and the like: con a study which shows sms bullying makes those bullied feel they have no safe space to hide at all; pro a study which shows that sms and text messages are a great help to deaf people.

Australian IT carries an article about Google's Desktop Search causing privacy concerns on shared computers. I agree, it would, but why would you use it on shared computer? For my purposes, it has given me far greater and quicker indexing of the hundreds of word documents with my notes in, so I'm keeping it!

Also, check out a really detailed and thoughtful History of Social Software from Christopher Allen.

PS Like your mp3s dark? Get an official black iPod!

That's it, I'm moving to Melbourne. Why: an official, free, creative and public-focused gaming centre at the ACMI. Details via News.com.au:

Computer game players have found a home in one of Australia's cultural institutions.

In what it claims to be a world first, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image has allocated permanent space on the ground floor of its Melbourne premises for discussing, playing and watching computer games.

The lab's two rooms in Federation Square, which replace the centre's retail store, will be used for workshops and forums on commercial and independent games.

Workshop topics will include making videos using computer games (known as machinima), software and hardware modifying and online communities.

Read more... If there are any lecturing jobs in Melbourne in the near, future, I'm going to be trying really hard to get one...

Science Fiction News has a topical interview with the South Park lads about their upcoming political spoof movie Team America (official site; imdb; trailer). Think Thunderbirds (the puppets not the--by all reports--crap live-action remake) cross-bred with Michael Moore with all the 'deep' humour of an Austin Powers film! A quick byte:

Stone: To parody a Bruckheimer movie, you have to do a Bruckheimer movie, basically. We went back and forth between parodying Bruckheimer moments, but in more of a hero's journey, kind of like a George Lucas-Matrix kind of movie. A Bruckheimer hero isn't like a Luke Skywalker, because a Bruckheimer hero knows from the beginning he's awesome, and then has a moment when he falters, and then in the end he's awesome, whereas the Frodo or Luke Skywalker, they don't believe they're the one, they don't believe they're the one, and then finally they're the one.

They know they film-form at least, and I suspect this will be a great parody, although I fear how far the humour might go (I love South Park but from time to time have to supress a cringe!). Team America has opened in the US, but, sadly, down here in Australia we're waiting until December 2nd.

Comparative Literature Studies vol. 41, no.3 (2004) has just been released. This is exciting because (a) it's a special 'cybernetic readings' issue, guest edited by N Katherine Hayles, and (b) because my article IatroGenic Permutations: From Digital Genesis to the Artificial Other is in this issue. However, I can't read it! Since my university isn't subscribed to this jounral, I can't get into Project Muse to read the online version! I haven't got my print copy, yet, so I really want to see how it turned out, but the internet won't let me (or, to be precise, the password sentry and Project Muse won't, but it's still annoying!). Hope the print copy turns up soon... (some of the other articles sound great!) ...

Is that a fallen white wizard throwing fire from atop a tower? Is that the same white wizard who got very upset when his lines were cut from the theatrical release? Must mean that the stunning trailer for the Return of the King: Extend Edition has been released. It looks amazing! [Via /.]

Without a doubt, the weirdest Flash Animation take on the upcoming US election has to be this Bollywood version...

What can I say? DISHOOM! I was amazed Arnie could dance! [Via 2xBoing]
If this is all a bit odd, heck out Hob Galding's Bollywood background info.

[X] The NYTimes has a slightly depressing article discussing how few women game designers and professionals are in positions of influence in the industry. While there are some annoyingly essentialist takes on gender...

Now, though, manufacturers are starting to think about making games that are more appealing to women, like the Sims, a role-playing game that is viewed as one of the most popular games among women.

"Do women not play games because the games that are out there are designed for men, or is it just that women really don't like computer games?" said Elizabeth Sweedyk, an assistant professor of computer science at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. "My guess is they don't like the games that are out there."

...the article does seem to suggest women should and increasingly are having influence in gaming design and production.

[X] The M/C Journal issue where academics talk Porn has just been released. While the articles are very short, some are quite provocative and have interesting things to say about online porn in its many remediatations! I'd put good odds on the most read article going to be "Blogging Business: SuicideGirls.com"! (No pix, worksafe for those who need such disclaimers).

[X] And I just Googled my Desktop! For academics and postgrad students who have most of their notes in word documents and the like, this new desktop indexation tool is a godsend! Sadly the Google Desktop tool is only for Windows XP and 2000 so far! :(

Guess who's back in the blogosphere and ain't pulling his punches?

Oct 13th:

Why?

Because the United States currently has, as Jack Womack so succintly puts it, a president who makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln.

And because, as the Spanish philospher Unamuno said, "At times, to be silent is to lie."

Oct 14th:

But the creative intelligence of my friend from the DoD, and so many others like him, prevailed not at all -- in the face of ideology, cupidity, stupidity, and a certain tragically crass cunning with regard to the mass pyschology of the American people.

One actually has to be something of a specialist, today, to even begin to grasp quite how fantastically, how baroquely and at once brutally fucked the situation of the United States has since been made to be.

Keep reading here.

Obviously there is interest in blogging in Australia as I recently participated in my first press interview as I'm part of the Perth based "blogging at the end of the Earth" BlogNite. The PC World article by Dahna McConnachie is online here. The little bit that came from me:

Associate lecturer from University of WA Tama Leaver (http://ponderance.blogspot.com) will be talking about the benefits and problems associated with using blogging in tertiary education.

Leaver believes blogging is under-utilised in Australian universities.

"As far as I am aware, I am the only person to utilise blogs as part of a course at the University of Western Australia," he said.

"Blogging, in effect, forces students to be concerned with their public voices in a more immediate way, which means that when they are writing or interacting online, they will, I hope, carry that critical awareness about potential readers, and the power of their online voices, into other contexts."

Leaver is excited about where blogging is heading in the future, as it becomes more widespread.

"I think it will hybridise with other media forms and become less recognisable as 'just' blogging."

As an example, Leaver pointed out that blogging began as text only and then included pictures. Now there is audio blogging and video blogging (vlogging) and mobile phone blogging (moblogging), where a series of photos is posted using a wireless-connected mobile.

"Blogging certainly has a role to play in terms of both culture and the future of technology," he said.

Sure, it's not exactly ground-breaking stuff, but I'm quite happy with that as what remains from my interview. I'll post the full text of what I said after BlogNite since most of what I said for the interview I'll be saying on the night. Hope to see you there if you're in Perth on October 27th!

Although I think the term convergence is over-used and often over-hyped, some days all I can see around me are convergent media (and convergent media franchises). Case in point: The Urbz: Sims in the City features music by the Black Eyed Peas, but for the first 700,000 purchasers of the game, they'll get a free iTunes download pass for 3 new Black Eyed Peas songs including ... wait for it ... a version of "Let's Get it Started" in Simlish, the Sims version of giberrishy English! In similar terms, Christopher Lee and Heather Graham have just voiced characters for EverQuest II. (EverCrack just got more addictive!) Even virus writers are using cross-media platforms: the BBC reports a new spam which entices people to visit a website purporting to have evidence of a David Beckham affair, but really the website just infects the visitor's computer with a virus!

Okay, I'm getting very, very, very bored of articles which still think you can argue for technological determism regarding the internet. Earlier this year we had the joyous span of articles which suggested the web causes cannibalism. Now, apparently it causes suicide. The New York Times begins an article thus:

9 Die in Japan Suicides Tied to Web
By JAMES BROOKE

Published: October 13, 2004

TOKYO, Oct. 12 - Nine people were found dead on Tuesday in two rented cars with the windows sealed and charcoal burners at their feet in pacts that the police said were facilitated by Internet suicide sites.

The police said that in the first car, a minivan that had been rented for the day, they found seven bodies, including teenagers and a 33-year-old woman who had left a note for her children. Parked on a mountain road in a Tokyo suburb, the gray van had been wrapped in blue plastic sheets with the windows taped closed. Inside, the woman's body was in the driver's seat, and there were three bodies on each of the van bench seats. All were believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Mother is going to die, but I was happy that I could give birth to you," said a note found next to the driver, according to Kyodo News. An empty package of sleeping pills was found near the van.

The group may have come together through a suicide message board on the Internet, Japanese news media quoted the police as saying. Japan has a suicide rate about twice the rate of the United States, and there are Web sites where people discuss suicide and suicide techniques. Some Web sites even sell kits offering "painless" suicide.

Using a cellphone, one of the seven in the van e-mailed a friend in northern Japan on Monday evening, giving the approximate location of the van, a police spokesman for Saitama, a Tokyo suburb, told Agence France-Presse. All the van's occupants were dead by the time the police arrived, just after dawn.

Some books contain information about suicide and even painless sucide. Do we see "books may have caused suicide"? Not recently, no. So some people made a suicide pact via a discussion board. "The internet made them...". They also arranged to meet by mobile phone. "Mobile phones made them...". In fact, they died in vans "Vans caused suicide pact...". Do you see a trend? No single factor outside the people caused them to do anything. They used a number of technologies and even a number of communication technololgies to meet and commit suicide together. The internet is as much to "blame" as cellphones/mobile phones ... i.e. not very much at all. So reporters, stop suggesting technological determinism as a way of attracting readers to your crappy articles or the internet may cause certains journos to have laptops sticking out of places from which, I assure you, the sun doesn't shine! Grrr.

[X] The first substantial blog post I ever wrote was about the Star Wars Kid. Now, eighteen months later, SWK has made his virtual return as a hidden extra (I don't want to say Easter Egg) within the videogame Tony Hawk Underground 2. Andy Baio has more, including captured video from the game.

[X] Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is number one at last week's UK box office. I'm rather looking forward to seeing this one when it hits Australian cinemas. I want to see Mr Darcy in a sari...

[X] Boing Boing notes that the very popular romance advice column Dear Prudence has just delivered the first piece of "wisdom" for a MMORPG romance! (Dear MMORPrudence...)

[X] Now virtual politics takes on a whole new face as users of the virtual world Second Life are streaming the next US presidential debate into the 3D virtual gamespace in realtime!

[X] Slightly bizzare article "Is that your joystick? Or are you playing 'Leisure Suit Larry?'" on upcoming games with sexual content. Contains a quote for the week, though: "Digital is the new silicone."

[X] Bizzare examples of How to Torture Sims here. [Via Boing Boing]

[X] On the off chance you've not read one of the sudden explosion of blogs about podcasting, read all about it here, and get your podcast feeds here, and enjoy it all via the wonderful opensource program iPodder.

R.I.P. Christopher Reeve, an inspirational Superman.

Click to Enlarge.
Possibly just a photoshop effort, but very kewl!
[Via AICN]

Rest in peace Jacques Derrida, one of the last century's most provocative philosophers who died on Saturday at the age of 74.

Losing a great mind to the winds of time seems sadly appropriate given the conservative turn in the Australian Federal Election. I'd say more, but if you've nothing nice to say ...

BBC News has a really interesting story about a gallery exhibition at the Proud Gallery called Alter Ego:

Virtual people are to step offline and reveal themselves in a "real-life" photography exhibition. The Alter Ego display shows what kind of virtual characters people choose to be in online games and 3D worlds. [...] Photo-journalist Robbie Cooper wanted to see if people's real lives were echoed in their digital alter egos in role-playing environments. "It seemed really fascinating that there were people interacting in these environments and getting to know each other through avatars," Mr Cooper explained to BBC News Online. [...] According to Sony 58 million people worldwide interact in online games and that is set to grow. To Mr Cooper, the creation of virtual people, or avatars, for online environments is another form of art. [...] "Technologically-mediated interaction is made out to be dehumanising and unnatural, and I think that is maybe a bit exaggerated," said Mr Cooper. The self-images that people create vary, but most show that there is an echo of the person in the avatar. "Mostly people go for either human, or a variation on humans, like a dwarf or elf or humanoid alien," said Mr Cooper. But the more control players have over how the avatar looks, the more there is some sort of reflection of the real person. "It is quite a subjective thing, putting together a likeness. Your real life is bound to be reflected in it." But those echoes are not necessarily physical. They may be aspects of a person's personality rather than a look.

I love that expression, "an echo of the person in the avatar" and I find the images fascinating. Some people living fantasies, some mapping their physical selves as closely as possible. The joys of online avatar diversity ....

Logos: "A term used by Greek (esp. Hellenistic and Neo-Platonist) philosophers in certain metaphysical and theological applications developed from one or both of its ordinary senses ‘reason’ and ‘word’". [OED]

Logo: "A logotype is a graphic element which uniquely identifies corporations, products, services, institutions, agencies, associations, events, or any kind of organizations in order to differentiate publicly the owner of the logotype from other entities. A logotype is really a brandname set in a special typeface/font arranged in a particular, but legible, way. In later years however, it has come to describe signs, emblems, trademarks, coats of arms, symbols and even flags. At the end of this article there are true logotypes, whereas the others including non-letter graphics of some kind usually can be described as emblems, brandmarks, trademark or company-mark, which all can include text. Emblems with non-textual content could never correctly be described as a logotype". [Wikipedia]

My Logo(s):

Thanks to the wonderful, artisitic and general all-around uber-lovely-person Jo Gray, I can now answer the question, "what's my logo"? A hybrid of Rodan's Thinker, a map of Australia emphasising Western Australia, and a silhouetted figure with iPod earphone leads, with a very healthy dose of irony, and you have the brand new Tama Logo! Now I feel like I'm a true citizen of media culture. Ah, Baudrillard, you'd no doubt tell me I was a victim of my own simulacra ...

Perth is feeling very parochial today as I keep seeing exciting events in the world that are too far away for me to attend. Perhaps tomorrow's election will cheer me up (finger's crossed), but today I'm running with my negativity. Two very strong arguments for living in a capital city with a more developed new media cultural centre.

[1] Argument one, Melbourne and the ACMI:

INTERNATIONAL GAME CULTURE EVENT

GameTime sets out to provoke questions about game culture at large and invites audiences to engage, critique and play!

Symposium convened by Anoanetta Ivanova,Novamedia & Josephine Starrs, Sydney College of the Arts.

October 15th & 16 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Federation Square, Melbourne.
Keynote Speaker Friday, October 15th 6pm

Tetsuya Mizuguchi from Japan, creater of REZ and Space Channel 5 will speak on
Emotional and Invisible Game Design

Other speakers include :
Katie Salen, USA
Game designer, writer and Director of Graduate Studies in Design and Digital Technology, Parsons School of Design

Ken Perlin, USA
Director of NYU Media Research Laboratroy and Center for Advanced Technology.

Isabelle Arvers, France
New Media consulting curator for Centre Pompidu in Paris, specialising in computer games, web animation and digital film.

And many more! Further details.

Having recently read Katie Salen's amazing co-written guide to games, Rules of Play , I'm very sad to be missing the opportunity to meet her and immerse myself further in Australia's emerging academica gaming hub.

[2] Argument two, California and the UC campuses and The Global Interface:

The Global Interface

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together new media scholars across a variety of disciplines to investigate the global distribution of information technologies and to explore the possibilities for cultural production through the interface between human and computer. The interface serves as the nexus between artist, viewer, programmer, technology, and industry. It is the site where production and reception intersect. The click of the mouse on the web acts as a form of production, be it ideological, economic, or political, at the same time that it marks the subject’s reception of networked information. For example, the number of people who follow a link to a website (artistic, commercial, or personal) generate the site’s information capital, or "hits", which in turn translates into ideological significance, economic value, and position in Internet hierarchies. As subjects "surf" the Internet, they experience the possibility to perform alternate identities in virtual worlds as well as the prospects of participating in transnational communities that attempt to overcome restrictions of physical space, financial constraint, and varying political ideologies. While the global interface serves as an overarching theme of the workshop, our sessions will focus on such issues as post-human embodiment, online communities, digital art and narrative, and networked cultural production.

The timing of this workshop comes at the opportune moment when UCR is building a strong scholarly foundation in new media. The University is currently in the process of recruiting a new senior hire in Digital Media and Digital Arts, who will further support the development in this burgeoning field. According to the position description, this new hire will be “central to shaping the development of undergraduate and graduate programs for the study of digital art/media technique, execution, and critical analysis in collaboration with the U.C.R. Bourns College of Engineering.” One key goal of this workshop will be to create a forum to foster dialogue among the diverse voices currently working in new media, but in dispersed fields across campus, including dance, music, art history, visual art, literature, computer science, and film.

This critical collaboration across the disciplines of the academy mirrors the dispersed interconnectivity of the global interface itself. Mark Poster outlines how digital technologies like the Internet can traverse the limits of traditional communication models, such as print and broadcast, as follows:

1. Enabling many-to-many communications;
2. Enabling the simultaneous reception, alteration, and redistribution of cultural objects;
3. Dislocating communicative action from the posts of the nation…
4. Providing instantaneous global contact;
5. Inserting the modern/late modern subject into an information machine apparatus that is networked. [2001]

Humanity is no longer constituted by clearly bounded subjects, but instead begins to function more like a network, in which individuals act "as a point in a circuit" (Poster). The global interface serves as the site where this post-human transformation occurs.

Just as there are compelling potentials introduced by the global interface, there are also certain critical problems that the workshop will explore. While the technological interface has seemingly infinite possibility, "reality" and the physical body introduce certain material restrictions. Since Donna Haraway's seminal work on cyborg subjectivity, "The Cyborg Manifesto" [1985], the transforming status of the body at the human-computer interface has become an influential topic of debate. While Haraway formulated “the cyborg” from the perspective of global feminism, Allucquere Roseanne Stone [1991] takes up the issue of the transgendered virtual body. Margaret Morse [Virtualities 1998] argues against allowing virtual embodiment to obfuscate the material conditions of race, class, sex, et cetera borne by the physical body before the computer screen. Recently, James Tobias [2002] has argued that agency resides not solely in the virtual or the physical, but is produced between the two by the interface in a form of “medial agency.”

Additionally, economic conditions still shape who has access to digital technologies, and the influence of corporate capital has a persistent influence over digital cultural production. Artists in digital and new media must negotiate the conditions of capital in order to distribute and show their work. Recent work by Toby Miller and George Yudice on critical cultural policy confronts these artistic material considerations [Cultural Policy 2002]. These issues include how are digital artists trained and paid? Where and how does their work circulate? Who owns it? What are the interfaces with art spaces? What sort of system -- corporate, NGO, state-sponsored -- is the cultural production embedded in? For example, corporations invest in the academic field of game studies, focusing on mass marketed video games, while smaller scale works of net art and electronic literature lose institutional funding and often, critical attention.

Given the importance of digital technologies and the global interface in our daily lives, and UCR's current developments in new media, this workshop will take up the much-needed critical work of exploring the possibilities of community, embodiment, and cultural production enabled by digital mediation, as well as the restrictions of mediation presented by economic, material, and social conditions of existence.

Noah at GTxA has already posted notes from N. Katherine Hayles' keynote session which sounds like it was amazing (not least of all for serious discussion of Greg Egan's work at Permutation City in particular). They're even using a blogger blog as the main discussion space ...

I supposed I should be thankful, at least, the Perth is sunny today...

In August this year, an Australian political simulation game saw Prime Minister John Howard hybridise with a 1980s split-screen verison of the Donkey Kong video game and Donkey John was born. In an effort to drawn attention to the Howard Government's ridiculous and unjust stance on the oil fields "shared" with East Timor, social justice campaigner Joe Boughton-dent, with the help of a few dedicated programmers and designer, developed and launched Donkey John. Below is an interview with Joe, detailing the origins of the political simulation, its inspiration, and the Joe's take on the role of political simulation games in Australia.

Interview with Joe Boughton-dent, producer of Donkey John

Tama: Joe, thanks for taking the time to talk about the development of the Donkey John political simulation game. Could you please explain the genesis of Donkey John; who came up with the idea, who put the simulation together, and who or what body paid for the development?

Joe Boughton-dent: In May 2004 I was contracted to do some work helping to co-ordinate the Timor Sea Justice Campaign in Sydney. The Campaign aims to pressure the Australian Government into changing its hardline position in negotiations with East Timor over maritime boundary negotiations.

As a new country East Timor does not have maritime boundaries with any of its neighbours and the sooner it establishes these borders the sooner it will have access to revenue from oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. The country desperately needs the money so it can begin to rebuild infrastructure levelled by Indonesian backed militias.

The oil and gas negotiations involve complex legal arguments but can also be seen as a a clear-cut question of justice. Under international law East Timor has a legitimate right to a larger share of the resources in the Timor Sea. At the time I began working for the Campaign, the Australian Government was refusing to acknowledge the validity of East Timor's claim.

I felt the best way to gain support was to simply alert people about what was going on. There wasn't really a need to convince anyone of the merit of East Timor's case because it speaks for itself - the disputed oil and gas resources are a lot closer to East Timor than they are to Australia. If it was possible to raise general awareness of the issue I was confident the Howard Government could be put in a situation where it was called on to defend a fairly indefensible position. Donkey John was one of the first ideas I came up with for getting the message across in a simple and appealing form.

The initial idea came to me during a solo car trip from Canberra to Sydney. I've done the drive many times and as I don't have a stereo to sing along to, my mind often wanders during the drive. I started thinking of possible cartoons that could express what was going on in the negotiations between Australia and East Timor, and eventually I stumbled across the word play of Xanana Gusmario. Once I had the fictional blend of the Italian plumber and the East Timorese President the rest wrote itself.

In the mid-eighties I spent a lot of time playing the hand-held game on which the Donkey John parody is based. Funny enough, the first time I clocked the score on the original game was at some political event my activist parents had dragged me to. I think I was about seven.

Anyway, once I had invented Xanana Gusmario there was only ever one format for the game - an internet based parody of the original hand-held game, with Prime Minister John Howard filling the role of the angry, barrel throwing, monkey.

I decided to keep the project separate from my coordinating work with the Timor Sea Justice Campaign as I was unsure of what would come of the idea, and I didn't want to be soaking up the limited resources available to the general campaign.

As such Donkey John was a side project that only became a reality thanks to the skills and generosity of two people in particular - Kaho Cheung, who did all the coding and design work, and Tom Spiers, who was responsible for the illustrations and splash screen. Both guys gave up a lot of time to take the game from a loose idea to a playable piece of online campaigning. Kaho, in particular, worked really hard to get the game-play right, giving it the infuriatingly addictive quality of the original.

T: Were you aware of other political simulation games (such as Escape from Woomera or the many, many US games centred around their upcoming Presidential elections? If so, do you have a favourite?

J B-d: I heard about the Woomera game when it got a bit of press as a controversial choice for an Australia Council grant. (I checked out the link when you sent it to me - very impressive) And I have seen the US games, of which my favourite is Bush Game, linked off the Punk Voter site.

However, I think my initial inspiration came from a site called Joe Cartoon. One of my workmates pointed the site out to me years ago, and since then I have spent endless hours enjoying its unique blend of cute animation and hill-billy humour.

T: After the initial launch and reception of Donkey John, do you believe the political message behind the game is being clearly received by people playing and discussing Donkey John?

J B-d: There are difficulties, of course, in monitoring what individual players take away from the game. The internet can be very one-sided that way. You put something up on a site and then others take it from there, interacting with the content in whatever way they choose. As a form of feedback I have become addicted to typing "donkeyjohn" into search engines, to check where the game has ended up and what people have to say about it. Something that stands out is that although there is no discussion forum on the donkeyjohn site, the game pops up in a lot of other online forums, and people are taking the chance to explain, or ask questions about, the politics behind the game.

As far as I'm concerned it's an ideal situation. Political campaigning like this is not meant to be a sledgehammer. Rather than preach bumper slogan soundbytes it aims to chip away at ignorance and apathy; to catch people off guard, get them thinking about what the oil deal means to East Timor and what they can do to affect the situation.

However, that's not to say we were totally above a few bumper sticker moments of our own - the loadscreen was designed as a gateway to the game that shouted the main political points and also hinted at some to the subtler stuff to follow.

Is the message missing the mark? I don't think so. The feedback I have indicates people like the game and enjoy the parody. And considering it was put together for only $33 (for the domain name), the site has gained a fair share of publicity. As far as I know it has been covered in Sydney's main papers, on radio, streetpress and popped up on websites based as far a field as Europe and the US.

T: Do you believe that political simulation games such as Donkey John will become a substantial and lasting part of the process of getting across political messages in Australia? Would you consider making another political game to explore/express ideas centred around another political cause.

J B-d: A few years back it looked like the Australian Democrats were going to play a substantial and lasting part of the Australian political process, so you can't take anything for granted really. Seriously though, online games are just one way of passing on a political message. The real battle is to engage people's imagination when it comes to politics, get them thinking, talking and taking action on issues that, if given the opportunity, they really do care about. Personally I think such a goal is too big an ask for a simple internet game. The real power to engage rests with our political leaders, their ability to offer leadership and capture the imagination. I used to think it didn't really matter who the Prime Minister was because, in terms of day-to-day living, the role is far removed from my daily experience. However, over the past six or so years I have seen reconciliation drop off the national agenda, a republic fall by the wayside and innocent kids locked up behind razor wire in the desert. And what happened to beating climate change? Being a leader should encompass more than just having the top job, and managing to keep it.

Games, songs and other examples of creative political expression are outlets that reflect frustration with the way things are and a desire for change. I am optimistic that the ballot box will catch up, but in the meantime these are just some of the ways we can keep ourselves sane, and entertained.

T: Was the use of the split two-screen handheld game style a specific reference to the 1980s and the international era of conservatism in which these style of games were popular? (If not, what did inspire the design choice)

J B-d: The game and watch split-screen style was not a direct comment on the conservatism of the era, but it is linked. The particular design for Donkey John says more about the age of those involved in putting the game together than it does about Thatcher, Reagan and the pre-statesman, pro-eyebrows, 80s version of Howard.

Thanks to the programming skills of Kaho we were able to put together a game that has a bit more to it than a lot of the simple animations that have emerged in the 2004 Australian election. And looking at Escape from Woomera, the genre is going to go a lot further, which is great. If you can combine a few good ideas I think it helps engage a wider audience. Lets hope the politicians pick up on that one.

For more information on Joe Boughton-dent's Donkey John, check out an audio interview here from SBS Radio (from 23rd Sept 2004).

I've been meaning to write detailed posts on a whole bunch of films, but I haven't found time, so here's a few very brief notes/ideas/thoughts instead:

Somersault: After being nominated for a record 15 Australian Film Institute Awards, Cate Shortland's amazing debut feature film looks to be on the way to getting the recognition it deserves. This is without a doubt the best Australian film of the year (in all fairness, there's not that much real competition after a pretty lacklustre season at Aussie cinemas). Abbie Cornish is an absolutely amazing actress and her central character Heidi actually looks sixteen as opposed to the Hollwyood "teen" actors who all look mid-thirties! The drama is realistic, compelling, disturbing and, despite all of this and the gritty realism of its tone, the film is ultimately hopeful. Shortland deserves the best director AFI, and will almost certainly win it. While the film might be accused of being a little too artistic--the use of handicam is overdone at times--this is a minor criticism of an exceptional film and more importantly points to a lot more exciting work to come from Cate Shortland (hopefully some of it still to be made in Australia!).

Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut: I was pretty nervous about seeing the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko because I had enjoyed the original version so much. The extras on the DVD (from which almost all the extra footage comes) includes a commentary which made me realise I enjoyed my reading of the film far more than Richard Kelly's intended reading and I feared that the Director's Cut would lose much of the ambiguity that I thought had the film so fantastic. Half way through the director's cut I was concerned, but by the end I think that was is added actually hightens the ambiguity. The major changes to my mind basically made the Darko family seem far more caring to one another (especially Donnie's relationship with his parents), made it far less likely that you could read Donnie as psychotic (his psychiatrist confirms that his medicine in a placebo in the director's cut), and the Tangent Universe looks like it could be some sort of technologically enhanced simulation since we see ones and zeroes flash across the screen as the Tangent collapses after Donnie accepting "his fate". Oh, and the Philiosophy of Time Travel book plays a larger role; the various chapters in the book end up appearing to frame new sequences in the film. Overall: I think I actually prefer the Director's Cut and think people will be arguing about what it "really means" for the next fifty year (which, for me, is the mark of an exceptional film!).

Outfoxed: Low production values, but very high impact. Looking at what ex-pat Rupert Murdoch's Fox News does to any notion of "truth" in US media coverage is astoundingly gut-wrenching. No wonder Republicans get such good Fox reporting; Rupert is running ART (All Republican Television) 24/7. The doco is slow at times, but is well worth watching to see how much manipulation is running under mainstream US new media. Power to the resistant bloggers, I say! ;)

Hellboy: Nice effects. Ron Pearlman is fun. The film desparately needed a proper ending, though (it was such ani anti-climax that I'm sure there was a different ending written and they ran out of money to film it [or do the many sfx]). Still, not quite up the comic book's high graphic standards.

After the banning of the adult oriented game Manhunt, The Age notes that the politicians in Victoria have noticed that the distinct lack of an R18+ category for games is stupidity incarnate:

The Victorian Government wants R ratings to be applied to computer and video games despite the Office of Film and Literature Classification review board banning the controversial video game Manhunt. [...] Under the Victorian proposal, the game could be considered for an R rating, meaning it could be sold or hired out to anyone over 18 years of age. Attorney-General Rob Hulls said the Bracks Government had pushed for uniform laws covering all mediums, but the Howard Government had refused to support the move. R ratings apply for films and literature, but the highest rating for computer and video games is MA15+. The banning of Manhunt last week also prompted the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia to describe the legislation as socially out of sync. "As part of a national classification regime, the Federal Government needs to act to resolve a clear gap in the system whereby computer games, unlike films, are not subject to R18+ or X18+ ratings," Mr Hulls said. IEAA chief executive Beverly Jenkin said the guidelines failed to recognise that more than 70 per cent of video game players were aged over 18 and 20 per cent aged over 39.

With any luck, the Victorian amendment will pass swiftly, the Office of Film and Literature Classification will see the sense in the amendment, and it will become Federal Law. I suspect that transition might be easier under a Latham-led Labor government (although I'm not 100% sure after Latham's conservatisim in other areas. Still, it's a lot more likely than Menzies Howard seeing sense!) Sadly, I still think that's the only way Western Austalia will get an R18+ game ratings category, because as a whole our state is nothing, if not conservative.

Well, unless you've been living under a rock, you'd know that Fox News finally made complete fools of themselves by posting an article which completely fabricated quotes supposedly from Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. In the aftermath of the Presidental Campaign Debate the article in question claimed among other things:

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Mr Cameron's article, purportedly quoting Senator Kerry after the event.

"Women should like me! I do manicures," the story also quotes Senator Kerry as telling the crowd.

The article also has the Democratic candidate contrasting himself to US President George W Bush.

"I'm metrosexual - he's a cowboy," Mr Cameron quoted Senator Kerry as saying.

While Fox has been caught and withdrawn the article, the damage was already done after these ridiculous statements were live on Fox's news website which sees a great deal of traffic. After being caught out and widely embarrassed by reports in other media, this tiny apology appeared on a FOX Campaign 2004 page on Friday:

Editor's Note

Earlier Friday, FOXNews.com posted an item purporting to contain quotations from Kerry. The item was based on a reporter’s partial script that had been written in jest and should not have been posted or broadcast. We regret the error, which occurred because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice.

While I'm pleased to see an apology at all, surely they could have been more specific about what they were apologising for! (I don't believe for a minute it was an accident, but I didn't expect Fox to admit they were seeing how far they could push their fabrications during an election!) It seems Outfoxed was right on the money! Oh, and for those who live in Perth (where I live), my copy of the Outfoxed documentary has arrived, so if anyone wants to sit down and watch it (and lament the powerful media!), let me know!

PS I was very disappointed to discover that if I chose the Blog category on Jeopardy I would only have got three out of five. I'm such an ignorant nerd! :P

The ultimate accessory for the gamer who is also aware of their figure, the First Person Game Runner! Details:

Cyber-Athletics, the Future
The future of electronic gaming belongs to cyber-athletics. No longer does leisure activity have to negatively impact the health of those who enjoy playing video games. The GameRunner is a clean and complete solution to the health risks that go hand in hand with being a video game addict.

A Whole New Level of Addiction
You think gaming is addictive with a joystick, or a mouse? Try out the GameRunner and you'll never turn back. You'll be blasting through games so hard and fast that you won't notice anything else until you're finished. After a few days you're body will begin thanking you for the wonderful fitness sessions you've been having. Maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle is important in order to be able to function at work or school both mentally and physically. The GameRunner is the answer to your fitness needs. [...]

Military Applications
The current trend in America's Department of Defense is toward computer based simulation to produce strategic advantages as well as cost savings. Simulation training is 70% more effective than conventional instruction. In advance of a military mission, we are now capable of accurately mapping enemy terrain in great detail. Mission and combat rehearsals are greatly enhanced with the increased retention of crucial logistical information possible when troops actually walk through these locales on the GameRunner. This type of rehearsal is vital, because one wrong turn or mistake in reporting logistical information to air or tank support can be deadly when operating in foreign territory. The GameRunner will prove to be an invaluable resource for military training.

Now you, too, can get fit while being psychologically f**ked over by the many, many varieties of torture going on to "texture" the world of Doom 3! Learn to kill your foes on "realistic" Iraqi soil while pumping your body with adrenalin from intense excercise! *Sheesh!* [Via WaxyLinks]