I have a novel in progress – though I’d like to add some multimedia elements to it. Not sure how well I’d construct a Flash-driven interactive story … my Flash skills are not quite at that level, but I could include Creative Commons images and reenactments through video. This is a Digital Writing in the Genres class, so I’d like to make the most of simple interactivity and multimedia as I can muster at the end of this nutty semester.

Any suggestions?

Quick run-through: Five senses. Five poems. Three languages. One sad translator service.

These five poems were originally written in English. Read the originals. They make plenty of sense, as much as poems generally do … but read the remixed versions.

My classmate ran the poems through the AltaVista Babel Fish translator four times – through Japanese, back to English, through French and back to English once again – effectively crafting a new, nonsensical language and literary endeavor. The remixed metaphors and images are different than those portrayed in the original works.

My favorite phrases:

“Of tremor of surface of man in my box of criticisim”

“You Pollute”

Check it out.

According to Technorati, 23,000 blogs are created every day.

People use them to:

• Share their daily lives with friends, family, public
• Keep diaries for later use, perusal
• Write about their passions (knitting, coffee, video games, etc.)
• Analyze and review what’s already out there (TV show Lost has grown into something much more than a fad through fan insight, perspectives, analysis … most made public through forums, podcasts and BLOGS)
• To keep society in check (Jimmy Justice, News organizations, politics)

Getting Started

1. Narrowing your topic: Get some personality. Nobody wants to read about what you ate for lunch. There are a bunch of things you can talk about on your blog, the trick is narrowing it down to one interesting and reader-engaging topic. Figuring out your topic is half of the battle.
2. Selecting your service: I suggest Blogger, only because it’s popular and easy to use. Since it’s owned by Google, your blog is automatically added to the Google search engine upon creation.

First Post and Onward

1. Start strong, no “Hello World”
2. Use multimedia (YouTube, Flickr, Soundslides)
3. Solicit opinions from readers
4. Advertise (Google, Connect Mason)

Additional Notes

Start posting.

Before you can create a free blog on BlogSpot, Blogger’s hosting service, you need to have already created an account on blogger.com.

Step 1. Once you’ve logged into blogger.com, click the Create a Blog link above your list of blogs:

Step 2. Enter a Title and Address (URL). You’ll also need to type in the verification word displayed on this page, to confirm that you are a real person and not a computer. When you’re done, click continue:

Step 3. Choose a template for your blog; this is how it will appear when you publish it. Next, Blogger will create your new blog and reserve your spot on BlogSpot. As soon as you make your first post, your page will appear at the address you chose. You’re all ready to blog!

Step 4. The posting screen for blogger is pretty straight-forward. Give your entries a title, type in the appropriate window, and use the editing tools for your blog entry as you want. We’ll talk about more advanced options for your posting later, but if you know any basic html, you can incorporate most of that code into your blog posts.

• To post or “publish” your post, click the button at the bottom of the screen “Publish Post.” If you start writing something but you don’t want to post it until later, click where it says “Save as Draft.”

• When you publish your post, blogger will process the information and then, if everything worked (and it usually does), it will give you the option to “view blog.” Take a look at it to make sure you didn’t screw something up.

I’m not sure how the creator managed to make such a dynamic, albeit frustrating piece of digital art. If he/she used Flash, I’m jealous. I once tried to teach myself Flash over a weekend and ended up throwing my mouse and keyboard against the wall. Then again, I don’t envy the creator for taking an hour to code the motions of a girl bending inhumanely backward to prick herself on some purple-pronged cactus … nor do I ever wish to animate the motions of two eyes sliding back towards the brain. I can stand a lot of things, but I draw the line at the following:

1. Dogs in distress.
2. Air vents … and those foot-long fingery bastards that SQUEEZE out of them (X-Files).
3. Eyes doing anything that eyes shouldn’t do.

A few key laws (in terms of eyes):

• Eyes should never possess black irises.
• Eyes should never be larger than a quarter and should never ever be misshapen.
• Eyes should never pop out, roll around or otherwise act out of accordance of their natural movements.

So when the goth girl’s eyes slid back into her skull, I minimized the window, started typing this entry and crept back a little more reluctant and on edge than before.

Here we go.

Uh oh. The sky changed colors and there’s ominous music. A building appears … some kind of congregation (AHH a sound behind me!), a taller boy behind bars … and …. crap. I clicked something and the window closed.

This time I try again, searching for items I may have missed on the first go. I somehow click on a book and a few pages in I find “Like everyone I hide things.” Wait a few minutes, then a hand appears from within the empty space in the pages. It grows red pustules. I look down at the sleeping girl (apparently this is a dream? Am I going nuts?) and notice that the same arm in the book is wrapped in white bandages.

Finally! Something makes sense. Then she starts spitting out some stinky hairballs, a big white blobby-thing does …. nothing, a stubbly-faced monkey dances … and I’m lost again.

This would be more satisfying if it gave me some sort of direction. Just a little hint. I’ve yet to see the end of the “story?” If you figure it out, please let me know.

EDIT: Finished it! Apparently I was to click on some random shrub and then the people who subsequently popped out of the tall grasses near the bottom of the page. They then proceed to burn in some building (I’m delighted to find out that I can see their screaming faces when I roll my cursor over them). Then the demon girl walks over to a black splotch in the ground and the scene fades out with this explanation:

“In the year 1696, the daughter of John Shaw, the Laird of Balgarran, fell victim to one of the most well remembered cases of ‘demonic possession’ in Scottish History. It resulted in a large number of locals being implicated as her tormentors, and concluded with 3 men and 3 women being put to death on Paisley’s Gallow Green on the 10th of June 1697.”

Hm. Did someone say “The Crucible?” Didn’t really get that in the Flash project