Hypercompendia

Well now that I’ve figured out my little error in jumping in without knowledge but with loads of enthusiasm, I’ve corrected my "Summer Projects" plan easily enough to begin again with the proper form.  In truth, I am a student who learns life by figuring it out step by step on a need-to-know basis. Directions are all well and good, but the lessons that stick are those that have been reasoned out.  Besides, software technology can be an overload of information that is quickly forgotten until used to a purpose. There’s also that old "Mother please! I’d rather do it myself!" syndrome (from the old aspirin commercials I believe?).

What bothers me in the mapview below is what has always bothered me about my hypertext writing experience: the neat little rows and perfectly aligned columns.  I wonder if I truly have the freeflowing form of mind that can depend upon the program to do its job (and more skillfully than I) in organizing threads and a confluence (there–now I’m starting to use this word I must’ve heard a hundred times in the past month!) of ideas.  It may just be my nature of control freak, and I may need to learn to give over that responsibility to the software and let it perform its own magic with my creative input.  We’ll see. I can already imagine the links that will tie these boxes together, as all are involved with hypertext in some form, from reading to writing and developing hypertext (and new media art form) projects.

Anyway, here is the new version (I was never this neat with my blocks as a child):

Well I was just having the devil of a time putting notes into notes. The manual says it’s easy, Mark said it was easy, and knowing how easy Storyspace was to learn, I too knew it would be easy. 

Only the little buggers refused to stay put and kept popping out.

So I knew it was something I’d done incorrectly p.m. (pre-manual) to start off with and realized that after working with Storyspace, I just assumed the toolbar item I clicked upon was creating notes (failing, of course, to bother reading the clear description that appeared).  Not so; it was creating agents.  And agents are a whole ‘nuther thing.

So, mystery solved, and I think only because I came from Storyspace into Tinderbox was this faux pas on my part committed. That, and an ingrained tendency to not follow directions, or what I call the "aw, g’wan…try the fresh pineapple in making jello" syndrome.

Hypercompendia may be in disarray for a day sometime soon as I can possibly make my life easier by reorganizing it automatically in chronological order from oldest to newest rather than the traditional blogging reverse. 

In that temporary state, I can copy the entries more easily into document format such as Word or Page via Category in large blocks rather than post by post as I once did for a New Media course.

But I’ll warn you when I do this, hopefully do it in off-peak time, and with the luck of the gods, get it back in shape with no problems.

First I have to figure out the code that shows the date posted under the individual post (and not just the time). It’s correctly done in Spinning, but here, though the settings are the same, only the time is displayed with the date in the header only.  It seems in Spinning (and I learn a lot by observing what I want and transferring the code) there is a separate template for "individual entry" rather than all in the stylesheet so maybe that’s what I’ll need to add here.

Sigh.  Another project.

Having mucho fun with the program in setting up my "summer projects" list though I’m having a bit of trouble creating ‘children’ and tucking them inside the womb of a compartment.  Time to consult the manual. 

It’s another case–as it happened with Storyspace–when I wonder why I didn’t get Tinderbox sooner.  A project immediately came up that it was so well suited for and when I say immediately, I had the base set up on the flight home from PA.

It’s also proof of technology improving upon traditional; two more projects presented themselves after the layout was done (hard copy of my Storyspace postings–and in chronological order instead of reverse–and finishing up the susangibb.net sites so that I can make the transfer soon).  Tinderbox makes it so much easier and a lot more fun to amend and add to an overall plan in its flexibility. 

Naturally, the first thing I’m working on is the mostest fun:

Well it looks like what I’ve brought out of the Hypertext 2008 conference is a long to-do list:

1. Continue the Storyspace short story I started somewhere between Pittsburgh and Philly and a couple miles up in the sky.

2. Continue Juan Gutierrez’s Extreme Conditions in Literatronica and move into Mark Marino’s A Show of Hands.

3. Review and post here on Alan Baldwin’s flash work at Webyarns.

4. Return to Storytron and download the newest version of Chris Crawford’s character building program and play around with that to form an idea of how it serves the writer and the interactivity of the program.

5. Follow and learn from Steve Ersinghaus’ 100 Poems to prepare for imagery and brevity in all work.

6. Learn Inform and produce an IF piece before the Tunxis Fall semester. (John–you’ll likely be getting some e-mail pleas for help from me, okay?)

7. Start thinking about an Eastern Hypertext and New Media get-together for next year (!)

8. Consider Dene Griger’s human hypertext form as it may apply to layers, or 3D hypertext event in text form–back to the CAD programs?

9. Rewatch and review Charles Deemer’s Changing Keys hyperdrama and note its significance to the expansion of the written hypertext form.

10. Focus on the marketing of the hypertext literary experience over and above yakking it up to all I encounter (I’m noticing some avoidance on the part of my friends).  I envision a street corner in downtown Hartford–or more likely some sprawling corporate park where I pretend to play a harmonica as a hook to draw them closer.

11. Re #10 above: the more important ‘marketing’ may be not to the readers, but to the writers.  The readers will come if there’s great and diverse story available.

12. Figure how I can forward the hypertext environment in new ways by genre or combination of text and audio and graphics to produce something new and exciting in story.

13. Learn Tinderbox really, really fast to organize all the above.

(Note:  13’s always been a lucky number for me!)

What makes the geraniums glow in the early morning mist?  How does the attention of the prismatic effect of the rain enhance the depth of color? What turns plain text to rich html?  How does the writing space focus the language?

This geranium laughs in reply.

Interesting thought sitting here, noting that the layout of an airport is similar to a mapview of a hypertext story.  The stories here are unrelated, transient in their nature as the people passing through become a single event that becomes a part of this moment only.

The lady across from me is going to Philly too, I suppose.  What is her story?

While my attendance at conference sessions may have been spotty, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being here.  Thursday’s Workshop Sessions headed by Steve Ersinghaus was a small group, but representative of most of the various forms of creativity and creative tools available to the hypertext artist.  Storyspace, Literatronica, Flash (or ‘net art’ as Alan put it), Hypertextopia, Storytron, Hyperdrama, Dene Griger’s human hypertext space; all here and represented for discussion. 

It was my extreme pleasure to meet the creators like Mark Bernstein, Chris Crawford, Juan Guiterrez and Mark Marino, and to understand how they design and create for they are certainly as creative with story as they are with technology. And it was fun to share a beer (okay, a couple) and a meal with such folk as these and the artists albeit technologically skilled users as Alan Bigelow and of course, Steve, and those who I’ve known for years via weblogs and finally have had a chance to meet such as Dennis Jerz, who’s proven his journalistic abilities in his reporting of the events on a daily basis.

My thanks too to Jeff Smith for his warm welcome and such great handling of details of the event and particularly his helpful directions to downtown Pittsburgh.

So even though I may not have taken advantage of the full value of the event on the technical side of hypertext and all it encompasses, I’m glad to have spent this weekend in such a mood of inspiration and good people.