Steve’s story brought to mind the commonness of our plights and yet our conflicts in seeking individualism while at the same time needing to fit in with society. The life and death elements brought me to the two players on stage, a surgeon and a man and his heart.
It’s a very simple piece, with the balance of protagonist and antagonist each choosing their own paths and borders.
For no good reason I related instantly to “Tinkerton had always felt somewhat sore at the unfairness of his hands.” This led me into the mind games we play in balancing one choice against another, always seeking a sense of fair play by measuring ourselves against others.
I’ve admittedly broken point of view rules here, but the three women and the possibilities were too much to resist.
When I first read Steve’s story on data backup, Norman Rockwell’s “The Gossips” came to mind and the old fashioned manner of maintaining history through verbal storytelling. And of course, the details that change with each telling.
So this became a study in family history that shows the paths that history takes when man and not machine are the recorders.
The 100 Days Project is a group effort of creativity that a series of artists have committed to in producing one work each day for 100 days of summer starting May 22nd, 2009 that builds upon story and explores all directions of creative force and output.
The main site is 100 Days: Summer 2009 where access is available to all individual participants’ work on their websites. I will be offering flash-fiction hypertext pieces to add to the collection.
Well I’ve finally gotten the setting up of the stories in Tinderbox and their export here down to a science; the last story went through without a hitch. I even managed to put in the return link to the flash fiction page without having to do it on the server.
So the technical, the really technical portion of the project is somewhat under control. The story part is neat because I’m just letting stuff roll out of my mind. The problem I’m still having is the hypertext form itself. Even with as little as under ten lexias I’ve not gotten the knack of returns for emphasis, and maneuvering the reader through every lexia. I just reread the last story and got spit back at the home page without reading the majority of the work. This would be fine if the story was complete and satisfying with just those portions read, but it definitely indicates a lack of control as an author if it doesn’t.
Since I’m caught up, I might just spend some time tonight retesting and relinking.
Well, I know what I’ve been doing wrong with the story exports and it was the case of the duplication of the story file name, or else the lack of entering it into the Tinderbox html instructions for the URL.
So I’ve now gotten two stories into Tinderbox and out onto the Flash Fiction Page and am halfway through the third. Though I’m not participating in the 100 Stories Project, I’ve found that if I can follow along I can learn much, much more that I need to know about story written in hypertext and the thought process behind the linking, as well as the workings of the Tinderbox program that instead of being afraid, I can begin to settle into it.
Hey Mark–I did it!
I’m not sure what was causing the problem in exporting, but it was obviously something I was doing wrong in the html URL that I was putting in there. First I went back through all my files and deleted all the duplications and test files to keep one clean copy. Then I emptied out all the folders except the very basics: story title folder under the project folder, and put only the css sheet, the tinderbox hypertext, and the html. In Tinderbox, I took each story out of the Projects and working with one, gave it its own separate file. Then exporting the program to its own folder worked.
From there it was just a matter of keeping the URL correct for the export process, and I found a duplication of “backups” in the /uploads/100stories/backups/1backups/file.
Well, not versus really because it’s my own lack of experience that’s stymied me from figuring out the workaround of exporting html of separate Notes in Tinderbox as individual stories rather than keeping them within a larger shell. The same problem would occur in Storyspace, I’m sure, although I find myself running into its comfort as a known.
From Tale of Tales, another thoughtful view on games:
I’m considering to officially join the legions who are sick of the games-as-art debate. Because I am sick of it too. But not for the same reason. I’m sick of games. I’m sick of the endless debates on how we’re supposed to achieve something deeply meaningful by making people play with puzzles or achieving fake goals by adhering to arbitrary rules. Let games be games. Let them be fun. Let them be playful. Don’t weigh them down with all sorts of demands of meaning. Let them be frivolous, meaningless, brainless fun. Please.”
It seems that I’m constantly updating Tinderbox to the latest version and this time I noticed that-ohmygosh!–I only have a month remaining on my free upgrades.
It’s taken me a while to warm up to Tinderbox and yet I can see that it will serve as one of my most valuable programs over the long haul. Right now I’m creating some short-short hypertexts in it just to get used to the basics and to feel out some of the possibilities. The visual display of containers and colors, as I’ve mentioned before, will prove to be very handy in tying in a group such as a series of hypertext stories that are separate yet related in some way. This is what I’m experimenting with right now and I’ve already gone back and changed things around a bit as new situations develop. But Tinderbox is flexible that way, and no motions are wasted as the arrangements are changed to suit a different scenario.
In a few days, I hope to upload and link these examples.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
