Hypercompendia

One of the main reasons that I wanted to set up my own sites away from Typepad’s restrictions was to be able to offer some of my own work online, in particular, the hypertext work done in Storyspace so that it could be read.

Well, I finally was able to export one of my pieces, A Bottle of Beer, originally worked in Hypertextopia and transferred to the Storyspace format so that it was more available to my own whims. Though it’s basically a linear piece that was worked specifically for the Hypertextopia form of hypertext using ‘shards’ or what may be considered ‘asides,’ it was easily put into the Storyspace format. And today I was able to export the pieces into html format via the Storyspace templates, upload it here into the Pages-My Works part of this weblog.

There are some kinks to work out; some of the links point to a 404 page and I suspect it has to do with the titles of the nodes. Another problem seems to be the incorrectness of the links show as ‘next’ and ‘previous’ but I seem to recall Steve Ersinghaus having had that problem when he first exported a file and so I may find an easy answer to that if he recalls it. At any rate, despite the problems, it’s here.

Thanks to Dennis Jerz for pointing out Interactive Fiction Month which in true new media style, runs mid-February through mid-March.

There’s more information at this site as to how to participate, and it appears to be both a stimulus package for beginners as well as an opportunity for the more knowledgeable to get into it.

Great news this morning from Writer Response Theory on the nearing completion of Storytron. In an interview with Chris Crawford, Mark gives us a closer look at the process of developing this innovative software and offers hope that the project will soon be available beyond the beta testing.

I’ve played a bit with Storytron a couple years ago and found it to be complex but thorough in giving the author the ability to produce characters and situations that a reader can truly interact with in story.

Congratulations to Chris, thanks to Mark, and we’re all looking forward to joining this adventure.

Just caught a Crystal Lite commercial that mixed real actors–models wearing bright colored silky swirling dresses–with digital graphics. Beautifully done; as the models spun around, their dresses, in slow motion, turned liquid and splattered out in drops and sprays. A strand of pearls popped off and blew away like balloons. Nice stuff.

With the new developments in software abilities come the opportunities for the talented and creative to not only fill the needs in advertising, movies, video games, but also offers to take the medium to far beyond the reach of the mere human ability.

Thanks to the WordPress Forum, I discovered that to make the widget work so that only “Home” or “Spinning” showed up yet acted as a link, I had to leave the title of the Text Widget blank and put the reference in the body only, i.e., <a href=”https://susangibb.net/blog2″>HOME</a>

One more problem solved!

Since my text widgets don’t serve as links (gotta figure that one out) I’ve changed the banner to upload just background without text and am using the “show text” feature of the Dashboard’s easy-do upload of custom banner. Also had to take out any “description” on the Settings page so that that didn’t come through. You have to actually click on the name to use the link, but it’s better than nothing for now.

Now, on to do the same with Spinning.

Didn’t realize that while I neatly took the distracting tabs out of the banner, I also cut off all ways of getting back to the main page, or home (and the rolling archive menu doesn’t give us that either).

Steve pointed this out to me and helped locate the problem; that of the easy Dashboard method of installing a custom banner. With that, you need to “hide text” or the silly thing shows through. By hiding the text, the banner is no longer a link to the main page. For now I’ve added a “HOME” widget (not working right at this point) to the sidebar as he also suggested until I can find the proper way of making the banner work as it should. This didn’t happen in Typepad, so I didn’t even think of checking and am thankful that Steve pointed it out.

Just found that Mark Marino at Writer Response Theory got to play with the moviemaking facilities at xtranormal a couple days before me. Here’s his video as well as his thoughts on the program.

Steve Ersinghaus has been working on a poem in Tinderbox and has added stretchtext features using jQuery within the boxes. Read about the process he’s been willing to share.

I could get hooked on this.