Snow Day
Please stick to the reading schedule as you see it in the Outline section, despite today's snow day. We should be all caught up by the end of next week (Feb. 4).
Citations and Certificates
A couple of local programs you should be aware of:
The Interdisciplinary Multimedia and Technology Citation, which several of you are already enrolled in. 16 credit hours; ENGL 467 is one of three requirements. Additional information is available here.
The Science, Technology, and Society Certificate. 21 credits. ENGL 467 is not listed as an elective, but I'd be willing to talk to the program director about changing that if any of you are interested.
William Gibson Reading in N. Virginia
William Gibson (who coined the term "cyberspace") will be reading is at the Borders in Bailey's Crossroads (http://www.bordersstores.com/stores/store_pg.jsp?storeID=45). The store is in Northern Virginia, at the intersection of 7 and 244 (Leesburg Pike and Columbia Pike). It's taking place on Feb. 16th at 7:30 pm.
HTML Sampler
In addition to the MITH tutorials, this page is an excellent way to expand your tag vocabularly. Simply view the source code in your browser, and look for the corresponding effect on screen--then try the tag out yourself to make sure you understand how it's working.
Messing around on your own is the best--really the only--way to get comfortable with writing basic HTML.
FTP
You can get a copy of WS_FTP (the same FTP client we've practiced with in class) here.
If that link doesn't work, go to the OIT page and follow the download directions.
Help With Images
HOW TO DOWNLOAD AN IMAGE AND PLACE IT ON YOUR WEB PAGE
1. You're surfing the Web and find an image you want to use on your own page. Right-click your mouse over the image, and choose Save Image As from the menu. Save the image to your hard drive. If it has a long, complicated name best to change the name to something simpler when you save it. Avoid spaces and mixed upper/lower case in your file names.
2. Make sure you retain the .jpg or .gif or .png suffix--these are the ONLY image formats that will work on the Web. If your image does not have one of these three suffixes, it will not display.
3. Now you need to upload the saved image to your WAM account. You will do this with an FTP client.
4. Open WS_FTP. (Note: you may be using a different FTP client, with a slightly different interface, but the basic procedure will remain the same.) Enter, in the appropriate fields, the name of the machine (also called the host) to which you are connecting (wam.umd.edu), your login, and your password.
5. Once connected, you will see the directories for your local machine
on the left and your remote account (WAM) on the right.
6. On your local machine, change directories to whereever it was you put the iamge you download. On your WAM account, change directories to ../pub
Note: if you forget to do this, you will wind up putting your image into the private portion of your WAM account and it will not display on the Web.
7. Select the file(s) you want to transfer and use the right-arrow icon to send it to your WAM account. Be sure that FTP is using the BINARY setting. If you do not transfer your images as binary files they will not display on the Web.
8. Your image should now be in your WAM account, alongside your HTML files. You can use the image tag to insert it into your document.
TROUBLESHOOTING
If your image isn't displaying:
1. Make sure that the file name of the image and the value of the src attribute in your image tag correspond EXACTLY, including upper/lower case. (Remember, file names ARE case sensitive.) This is why I recommend using simple file names and all lower case--there's simply less room for error that way.
2. Make sure your image has a .gif or .jpg or .png suffix.
3. Make sure you indeed put the image in the same directory as your HTML files (you can see if it's there by using the "ls" command when logged in to your account via telnet).
4. Make sure you FTPed the image in binary format.
Steven Johnson in Town
Stephen Johnson, author of Interface Culture and Emergence (we'll be reading a short excerpt later in the semester) will be in town talking about his new book, Mind Wide Open (subject: brain science), at Politics and Prose this Monday.
Extension
As noted in class today, I'm offering an extension on the HTML assignment: it will be due by 11:59 PM, Friday, March 5 (actually midnight's fine, but it would be confusing to say "midnight Friday" so 11:59 PM it is).
To submit the assignment, please send me an email with the following:
- Your full name
- The URL of your project (test it to make sure it's correct and working!)
- The email address to which you'd like comments (and your grade) sent
We'll have half the class for workshop on Wed.--bring your questions.
Cybertext Studies in NY Times and at Princeton
"The Ivy-Covered Console", NY Times, Feb. 26, 2004--on academic game studies.
See also this upcoming Princeton conference on Video Game Criticism.
MOO Study Session
There's going to be a virtual study session tonight (Sunday) in my office in the MOO at 6:00 PM (hosted by William).
To get to my office, go to the Maison Chapuis from the Dock, or else type:
@go MattK
InfocomBot
"If you have an AOL Instant Messenger account, send an IM to InfocomBot, InfocomBot2, or InfocomBot3. I set up an automated bot to play classic Infocom text adventure games from your favorite IM client, T-Mobile Sidekick, or any other device that connects to AIM. It supports "save" and "restore" commands, so you don't need to lose your place."
My Fall Course
ENGL 475: Postmodern Literature
MW 2:00-3:15
Postmodern literature, with an emphasis on works published within the last fifteen years. A consistent sub-theme this semester will be urban aesthetics before and after 9/11. The major novels we will read are: Paul Auster, _City of Glass_; Susan Daitch, _The Colorist_; Kathy Acker, _Empire of the Senseless_; Don Delillo, _Underworld_ and _Cosmopolis_; William Gibson, _Pattern Recognition_. Additional texts will include a sampling of postmodern poetry, a graphic novel (possibly _Transmetropolitan_) and at least one work of contemporary electronic literature. We will also discuss the origin and nature of postmodernism, and aspects of the "postmodern condition" such as the collapse of identity, the erasure of cultural and aesthetic boundaries, and the dissolution of life into textuality.
Requirements: class participation and attendance, responses papers, midterm, final, and long (10-12 page) term paper.
Snap
I haven't looked at this closely, but Snap advertises itself as an amazingly simple to learn language for creating interactive fiction. Might be something someone wants to explore for the final project.
In the News
Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages was Slashdotted.
"Call Me E-Mail: The Novel Unfolds Digitally" in the New York Times (non subscription copy here).