Tunxis New Media

My IF Snippets Web Site

Timmons — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:45:11 +0000

Here is the link to my Inform 7 site:

Valve Finally Porting to the Mac

Ersinghaus — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:53:34 +0000

It’s officially official: Valve will bring its Steam online distribution service and titles from its massive library of hit games to the Mac this April, the company confirmed Monday.

The successful content-delivery service will bring Valve titles like Left 4 Dead and the upcoming Portal 2, as well as games from other publishers, to Apple computers for the first time.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/03/steam-mac/#ixzz0hdku4P76

Cellphones and Shopping

Ersinghaus — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:03:38 +0000

This goes to what we were talking about the other day in class:

Shoppers will soon be able to stand outside the designer Norma Kamali’s boutique in Manhattan, point a phone at merchandise in the window and buy it — even late at night when the store is closed.

The New York Times has the details.

It remains to be seen how readily shoppers will embrace such aggressive merchandising, which will generally require them to download free applications onto their phones and consent to being tracked electronically while in a store. But many stores are betting they will go along. After all, people already wander city streets guided by maps on their mobile phones. Why shouldn’t the same technology lead them to the toilet paper in Aisle 3?

Trend Watch Report Changes

Ersinghaus — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:11:54 +0000

As I was late with the Trend Watch Template, the assignment has been moved to March 3rd. Details for how to complete the assignment can be found by following this link.

New Media and Communication

Ersinghaus — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:18:50 +0000

Follow this link to find an interface to the lecture notes from Wednesday. Notes like this can be found under the Notes category.

(If you’re confused about the interface, play around a little bit.)

Memex Video

Ersinghaus — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:40:55 +0000

The following video is a simulation of Bush’s memex built by Dynamic Diagrams in 1995:

Spring 2010 Beginning

Ersinghaus — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:17:10 +0000

Spring 2010 course information for the new semester is going up, including updates to the Student Portfolio page, syllabus and calendar, and a new Assessments page. We have all kinds of links to assist students with their ePortfolios, also, including a model to follow.

Free Web Hosting for the Experiments

Ersinghaus — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:53:20 +0000

Zymic offers free web hosting. Something to look into.

IF Project [Fall 09] – Part 2

Timmons — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:47:07 +0000

Today we will finish our work with Nine Points and then spend some time with The Legend of Grammy’s Apples. This will establish our foundation for playing works of IF and then begin discussing how we will be creating a work of IF.

Then we will discuss the basics: creating the world of the story (rooms, pathways, and descriptions) and then basic objects (things and their respective descriptions.)

The assignment for everyone will be to create a map of their world that includes rooms (or spaces), how they interconnect, and any things that will occupy those rooms. Then, create concise descriptions of all these object as well as a prologue that sets up the story (and later, the goals.) The result being a world that tells a story to the player just by moving through the world and examining everything.

On Wednesday (10/28) everyone will begin building their works of IF. So come prepared to work.

IF Project [Fall 09] – Getting Started

Timmons — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:54:43 +0000

We will be starting the interactive fiction project on Wednesday (10/21) and there are several things you will need in order to get ready:

Read “Getting Started With Interactive Fiction“;
Bookmark this page: Interactive Fiction Shorts;
Play “Nine Points” at the above web page (and feel free to play any of the others linked there);
Download and install Inform 7 (it’s free) on your own computer.