I'm finding it hard to come up with a way to round things out this semester, to come to any kind of closure with this class. I'm not sure if I managed to convey this, but I'm enormously proud of all of you, of what you accomplished this semester, and of the bravery with which you took it on. I know this was uncharted territory for the majority of you, and I know you must all have had moments (perhaps still today!) of wondering what the heck you'd gotten yourselves into. And I know that there were a lot of times (perhaps still today!) when you'd have liked more input from me, more of a reassuring sense that we had a clear destination, that I knew how to get there, and that you were all well on track.

Hi, all. The final projects page is up, and those folks who've sent me their permission to post links to their sites are included. If you're not linked and I've missed your permission somehow, or if you want to give me permission to add a link for you, let me know.

In case you missed the discussion, or forgot, we've agreed on the following readings for next Monday's class:

-- Michael Joyce, "Walking Mornings" (on Sakai)
-- Kate Hayles, "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers" (on Sakai)
-- The Onyx Project (or at least what of it is available online)

Have a great break!

Sigh. So I managed to get things set up so that folks not in the class could comment, and thought it was kinda weird that no one had. And then it occurred to me -- only three weeks later -- hey! Maybe I should check the approval queue!

And lo, but there were comments. And some of them awesome.

This one is my favorite one, FYI.

So far, it appears that we have a very few suggested readings for our second-to-last week of class. These include a few online sources:

-- Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

-- The Semiotics of the Web

-- A New Alphabet

-- The Onyx Project

I'm not sure whether or not I mentioned on Monday that I'm giving a talk tomorrow (Wednesday) in the Fall Faculty Lecture Series. It's in the Frank Blue Room at noon, and the topic, appropriately enough, is "Scholarly Publishing in the Age of the Internet." (I really honestly didn't plan for the talk to fall right during that topic on our syllabus, but lo, there it is.)

Anyhow, I'm posting this now because:

(a) I'd love for you guys to come, as I'm hoping that there might be stuff you'd be interested in hearing; but also

(b) I'm likely to be a few minutes late to class afterward, given discussion and the need to cruise back down to ITB.

Hello, and welcome to the end of October. (And not a moment too soon, I might say, as one who had an insane October, but way, way too soon, as one who sees the end of the semester screaming up at us out of nowhere.)

A few issues that need attending to:

Hello from Vienna! There was a presentation at my conference yesterday by the developer of TiddlyWiki, a fascinating wiki system that allows you to build networked documents both on- and offline. I was just poking around on his website and spotted a link labeled "TiddlyWikiFiction." There are links there to several wiki fiction projects that I thought you might all take a look at those projects, and particularly Gimcrack'd...

So Frabby's post on "Hot and Cold" (and note the URL if you can!) gave me an idea: if we didn't get to your passage in class today -- or even if we did -- you might consider posting it and your stabs at interpretation on your blog. It could be useful for us to puzzle through some of those passages in the comments!

This is the usual getting started post, which mostly serves to test the software, and to see what this is all going to look like. The installation was super-easy, but certain kinds of theme-tinkering seem a bit more difficult. Generally speaking, I like this theme (pushbutton), particularly because of the keyboard image in the header, but the site name (Writing Machines) is much too small, and I can't find a way to increase its size. I'll keep poking around.