Watercooler to the World

There was no joy at Parsons...

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:10:19 -0700

This article about an NBC-Weinstein scuffle reminded me that I'd been meaning to ask you, the reading public, what you've thought of Project Runway this season. Boots and I have jumped on the international circuit to find our Project Runway joy. (I hope to do cases in comparative Runway as an extended entry at some point. We've skipped the Fillipino one, since we figured we probably couldn't understand it.)

In any case, you might have figured out that we're not that into it. But we're watching anyway. I'll tell you right now, though, if Pushing Daisies is on opposite PR, there will be no hesitation.

What do you think is wrong with Project Runway this season? (I've added a Vizu poll here-- RSS/Tumblr readers may not see it, so please come on down to the actual page to vote and let me know if it works.)

It's the timing: This Project Runway, hot on the heels of the last one, hasn't left us with enough time to really yearn for fashion, snark, and Michael Kors' outlandish similes.
It's the challenges: After four seasons, all the good challenge ideas are used up. Astrological sign? Really? Is that the best you can do?
It's the outfits: The challenges are fine, but the results fail to deliver. The contestants have figured out the formula for playing it safe and getting as far as possible, so we are not treated to wonderfully high highs and terribly low lows.
It's the contestants: Who am I supposed to be rooting for? Who is likeable? Who is even entertaining?
It's Kenley: That woman sucks all the joy out of a room. Even hating her brings me no joy.
It's Tim Gunn: After Guide to Style it's impossible to feel for him as benevolent father figure. All of Tim's amusing affectation, which were once novel and entertaining, are beginning to grate on my nerves.

Project Runway Poll

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Hoping this will pass

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:42:25 -0700

I couldn't tell you why, but my mood today transcends grumpy. It surpasses mere homicidal rage. It could not be pacified by a simple mass murder spree. Today, for some reason, I want the whole of humanity to burn in hopes that when the crows gain sentience, or whatever, they'll have a better time of things. Fortunately, though, even this sort of mood can be classified by Tom Waits songs.

Earth Died Screaming

Tom Waits

misery is the river of the world

Tom Waits

Sigh.

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Better? Not so much.

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:59:57 -0700

After losing its way for a few long months, 43 Folders' head honcho Merlin Mann posted a nice essay about refocusing and proceeded to set about refocusing the 43 Folders site. (So far, there hasn't been much activity, but what can you do?) This, in turn, inspired Ross to go through a cleansing of his own.

I've been pretty decent about not letting my inputs get too out of control, mostly by allowing for my own input triage. At its heart, it's just a willingness to have several streams of input which, if they're not viewed within a few hours, disappear into the ether. I don't need to see every funny image or read every new tech development. That process is starting to break down and needs to be described here in more detail so that I am forced to think about it make some decisions about it, but that's not what I'm trying to cover right at this exact minute.

Something is stopping me from trying to capture everything I want to do, and that's taking away from my ability to get it all done.

Sigh.

I started writing down one of my obstacles, and very quickly realized that a). I was just making excuses and b). if I wrote a long post, there was virtually no chance that anyone would comment on it and offer suggestions for "stuckness."

"Stuckness" is totally a Robert M. Pirsig word. I can't remember if he really had anything useful to say about it.

Ah well, better get to getting my shizzle together.

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Maybe this was my point

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:25:54 -0700

I think it would be swell if more companies had occasional "this is what we're working on" posts, to complement the "this is what we've done" posts. You know, mostly just to allay the (not entirely unfounded) fears of users that development has ground to a halt and no one cares about the site any more. Again, it might have something to do with how much a hang out on the bleeding edge of projects done by passionate geeks. I sympathize entirely-- plenty of things that I've started have just totally fizzled.

Or, in the case of VOX, six new themes does not constitute and exciting new idea in community-oriented blogging.

Gawd, I'm a catty bitch today.

That reminds me, though, you should totally be watching Project Runway Australia. Happily, though, I think PR USA has finally weeded out enough designers that we can actually start feeling some of the interpersonal drama. Also, in case it wasn't totally obvious NEVER, EVER mention your disabled grandmother if you're on a Bravo show. Or a debilitating accident. You will be going home.

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So get this...

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:36:11 -0700

My mother apparently did not do quite enough research into what the proper channels were to clear Bootsie and I for moving into her unoccupied condo. Yesterday I was confronted by an ancient man with a tiny Yorkie who accosted me with the words, "When were you going to tell us that you were moving in here?"

The following exchange made it abundantly clear that taking my mother at her word was an unacceptable infraction, and that any transgressions against the established Way of Doing Things was, in fact, a personal insult to this old man and his small, yappy dog.

God, I fucking hate Yorkies.

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Two Memes: Lost In A Game of Telephone

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:40:37 -0700

Or, as The Doctor calls it, "Chinese Whispers". (God bless the British for being able to unselfconsciously use "Chinese" to mean "ass backwards". God bless 'em.)

Anyway, I just wanted to point out a couple of bees in my bonnet: silly internet memes that were once clever but have now succumbed to the sort of mediocrity you'd come to expect when the crowd gets involved. The first is song charts which graph only a single data point. You remember making outlines in 7th grade, right? Having only one subsection bespeaks poor organization of your thoughts. Thus:

Not Funny

Listen, people, there are no shortage of songs out there with funny things to graph. If you have to make a graphs that looks roughly like the one above, you need to pick another song. It is not funny. Are we clear? Just in case, here is an example of a song with several data points to graph:

Funny

Moving right along, could we take a moment to re-explain the Six Word Memoir meme to everyone? Please? Hemmingway's original six word story is such a stroke of genius that you can cash in on the warm glow as long as you pay attention and read the directions carefully. This is not the chance for you to write a six word aphorism that sums up your life. You are trying to create a narrative with only the scarcest of tools. Sigh. (Sorry to... uh... whoever it was that posted the six word aphorism and set me off on this tare. I'm sure you just got a set of bad instructions.) Let's review:

For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never worn.

See? There's a story. It doesn't sum anyone up, but it hits you in the chest with loss, conflict, and questions. Please try again.

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A Little Clutch For Earth Day

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:42:52 -0700

In honor of Emily Sears' struggle with her local recycling authorities:

Green Buckets

Clutch

In other news, I am already broke. Fucking depressing. Admittedly, there were taxes, insurance, credit card, cable, therapy, and dining out just about every single night last week all in the last seven days, but sweet jeebus I'd like to entertain the thought that my paycheck might still have a few drips and drabs left by the next time I got paid.

On the bright side, it's a pay week for Boots.

In spite of a decent amount of sleep last night, I still feel groggy and sluggish. Maybe I need some B vitamins or something.

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That Longer PMOG Post I Mentioned

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:59:26 -0700

Alright, really, let's face it. There's nothing really life or death on my plate right now, and the only thing that's going to get the gears in my brain to spin up is to start writing about something that's been bouncing around in there for weeks. Since I don't have a "trusted system" in the GTD sense of the word, it's just been eating up processor time.

You might have noticed that I've been pretty vocal about how much I'd been digging PMOG in the last few weeks. You might have also noticed a sudden, sharp drop in my nattering. This is mostly because I felt like I hit a wall with PMOG where the signal to noise ratio tipped too far in the wrong direction. Or maybe not the signal to noise ratio. Maybe the possibility for interaction.

The geeks and early adopters that pick up on sites like PMOG have plenty of suggestions about what they want to see on PMOG, and they have a forum that's chock full of posts about. Maybe it's just me, but I have a serious aversion to bulletin boards as a way of producing meaningful discourse. I mean, talk about terrified sequential monologues, especially when no one wants to bother reading a thread that's gone out of control before they add their two cents. But I digress. The fact that you can't get any sort of notification if someone posts to a topic you've created, or a topic you've chosen to monitor is exemplar of the sort of basic interaction nuts and bolts that PMOG is currently missing.

PMOG is mainly a bank of "Missions" which are analogous to PowerPoint presentations that span multiple web pages. A nicer way of saying it is that they're like picture books. And like a good Richard Scarry book, the folks who read them should want to come back to the sites you've marked along the way to look for the informational equivalent of Gold Bug (a precursor to Waldo) on every page. The people who take your missions get points for every site they visit, and you get points for every person who completes a mission that you've constructed. Players can rate missions, and leave comments. If someone rates a mission you've made or leaves a comment about it, you also receive no notification, so you're left to go back through your missions to check for new comments. Tedious at best.

They also didn't really bother with any kind of comment threading on PMOG (something I still dislike about VOX, even if their "Reply To" option almost does the trick), so if someone asks a question or makes an interesting remark about something you've built, you can't respond to it except through a private message. It seems to me that discussing a thought-provoking or otherwise interesting mission would be the best way to get players to interact. They are, after all, the crux of game play.

I've also gotten frustrated by the fact that once a mission has been created, a few folks will take it and then it will basically fade into obscurity. Missions are always being made about a few of the same topics, webcomics being one of the most glaring examples. One of two things would be nice: I would like to be able to tweak and refine my missions and keep them in the public eye; I also think it would be an awesome game element if players could argue over and make adjustments to missions that didn't belong to them. That case always reminds me of memory palaces, and I love the thought of spinning off an entirely different system (an entirely different game?) that builds a glittering city of memory palaces which players fight over, mark up, knock down, and rebuild. I'd like to build that game, actually.

There's an entire subgenre of PMOG hackers who try to build missions with branching paths, but I've heard scuttlebutt that there's something in the works for that, so I won't go into it much here.

You can build a list of acquaintances, allies, and rivals and see what they're up to. Unfortunately, although it seems to show you if they've stashed a crate or foiled a mine (actions which are just about as meaningless as they sound), you don't see if they've built a new mission. At least I don't think you do.

While we're on the topic, though, there isn't really a lot of point to making someone an ally or a rival. More to the point, the main mode of conflict in the game focuses around devices that take away the number of points you have. Points are currency, points can buy you stuff to build missions, take away other people's points, or protect yourself or others from people who want to steal your points. Sure, sure, whuffie is the currency of the internet (although losing these points doesn't mean that someone else gains your reputation points or that you lose yours), but at this point, we're still just watching numbers go up and down.

There are "levels" which are (so far) meaningless. We've heard several times that there's some meaning coming at some point, and thus far, whenever the PMOG staff makes updates, they are usually pretty awesome (unlike certain other sites I could mention... *cough* *cough* VOX *cough*), but I really think that if you want to encourage even a playful sense of warfare between your users, you've got to come up with something better than making points go up and down. Nerds are a prankish lot, and I think there ought to be some sort of hypertextual equivalent of a "kick me" sign that would really get your gall up and make you plot some serious revenge. Literally being able to draw bunny ears onto a user's MySpace profile (visible only to other PMOGers, of course) or possibly turning them into a YTMND would probably be good options. The second one, though, relies on being able to get the word out that so-and-so has been YTMND'd in order to maximize the need for revenge.

Anyway, that stuff is a lot more like taking the game in an entirely different direction, but it does focus on my core point. I have a really hard time interacting with other PMOGers, which, I think, is the point of a game, right?

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.ugh file extension

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:41:09 -0700

I should probably be more relieved that it's Friday, but I'm just plain fucking exhausted.

Cool Blue reason

Cake

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The VOX revisions, too much work, and still procrastinating

nobody@vox.com(W. B. Mook) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:27:47 -0700

As much as I like passive aggressive notes, I just wanted to throw in my $.02 here in favor of direct action. Well, nearly direct action. As you may have noticed, the people responsible for the aesthetic and interface decisions which led up to the new interface have blogs here on VOX. I suspect that with a little detecting, you can figure out who they are and leave comments and/or send them private messages if you feel that your grievances are not being suitably redressed by the feedback system. They are actually people and can either be reasoned with or hazed into regretting their decisions-- depending on your temperament.

In other news, about five things all need my attention today, so writing anything here at all is probably not the best use of my time.

In spite of that, could someone restart the Calliope? I broked it.

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