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Category Archives: Modern Times

Audio Killed the Blogging Star

08 Feb

Ken Gagne and Mike Maginnis recently invited me to be their guest on their Open Apple Podcast. The result, which should show definitively why I chose to be a writer rather than a deejay, can now be enjoyed on their website or just by clicking the play button below. We talk some about the blog and various other projects, and then I offer lots of color commentary about lots of things I sometimes know something about and sometimes do not. Check it out if you have a couple of hours to spare.

Huge thanks to Ken and Mike for inviting me on the show. It was a lot of fun to do.

 
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Posted by on February 8, 2013 in Digital Antiquaria, Modern Times, My So-Called Life

 

Ring in the New (Blog Initiatives)

02 Jan

As most of you have probably already gathered, I tend to be pretty horrible at social networking and at self-promotion in general. But it’s a new year, and it seems to be a good moment to at least make a stab at embracing modernity. So, I’m rolling out a couple of new initiatives today that will hopefully help me as well as you.

First, you’ll notice that there’s now a little donation button on the sidebar to the right of this post. If you click it you’ll be taken to PayPal, where you can send me some money if you’d like. I frankly struggled a bit with myself before I made this move. I’ve always written here out of passion and a belief that the work I’m doing is really, genuinely important. Knowing that thousands of you are reading and enjoying what I write is a huge thrill in itself, one that almost feels like it ought to be enough. On the other hand, though, the time I spend researching and writing for the blog is time I can’t spend on other, paying projects. So, I just ask that you think about what you can afford and what you think this blog is worth, whether to you in personal enjoyment or — at the risk of sounding too grandiose — to posterity. Then maybe kick a little into the kitty, at whatever level and frequency seems appropriate to you. If you can’t afford to contribute right now, never fear; I’ll never restrict content to “subscribers” or anything of that sort. Nor will I bother to try to convince you that the blog’s survival depends on your donations; I love it too much, and will happily continue if I don’t get a cent. But if I should get a nice surprise from all you kind souls, that might just help me to justify spending more time on it — which means more frequent new posts for you to read.

Second, I’ve finally taken the big plunge and joined the Twittering classes. My virgin id there is DigiAntiquarian. I’ve had some of you recently asking me for a tweet when new posts go up here. At least as of now, that’s the main purpose for the account. If the WordPress plug-in I installed works correctly, this post should be the first to be broadcast. Fingers crossed!

With that administrative stuff taken care of, we’ll next week be turning away from the hardware manufacturers and back to the important games of 1983, starting with the arrival of a new publisher that’s still with us to this day. In the meantime, do check out the reborn SPAG Magazine, now edited by Dannii Willis, if you’re at all interested in modern interactive fiction. I was the editor for several years in an earlier life, and it makes me very happy to see my old baby return in such capable hands.

(Update 24 hours later: Thanks so much for the generosity many of you have already shown! And thanks also for your suggestions about better leveraging social media. I’ll have a think about what seems doable without cluttering up the site too badly.

In other news, I’ve made a change in plans which means that we won’t get back to games just quite yet. I’ve one more detour into computer-science history yet to take, and I now realize this is the best time for it. But I think it’s one hell of an interesting detour; hopefully you will too.)

 
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Posted by on January 2, 2013 in Antiquarian Productions, Digital Antiquaria, Interactive Fiction, Modern Times, My So-Called Life

 

The Once and Future SPAG

31 Aug

As many of you reading this undoubtedly know, I was for five years the editor of a webzine covering goings-on in the modern interactive-fiction community: the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games, or SPAG. In 2010 I turned it over to another fellow, but that didn’t work out too well in the long run. After 1.5 excellent issues under his guidance, SPAG fell dormant. It’s been that way for over a year now.

This has always vaguely bothered me, like a little worm of guilt always burrowing away at the back of my psyche. SPAG, you see, is just about the longest-lived institution in contemporary IF, dating back to 1994. It even pre-dates the big annual Competition. People have continued occasionally to inquire about the magazine’s status, which has only made me feel worse. Still, I never felt quite bad enough to take on the job of reviving SPAG myself, as that feels very much like a “been there, done that” kind of endeavor for me. So I let my guilt fester in the background as I continued with my other projects.

Luckily, someone has finally come to my psychological rescue. More importantly, he’s come to SPAG’s rescue. Danni Willis has already done a hell of a lot for IF with Parchment, his interpreter that lets you play IF right in the browser. Now he’s going to take over as editor of SPAG. He has big plans for a new, dynamic website. He also plans to take a shift in emphasis I began at the end of my tenure to its logical conclusion: SPAG will now be a magazine for in-depth features and analysis rather than a reviews clearinghouse, a change I wholeheartedly approve.

But of course, and as I said way too many times during my own tenure as editor, to succeed SPAG needs your articles and feedback. Please contact him, or contribute to the aforelinked forum discussion, with your article proposals and ideas on how to make the new SPAG bigger, better, and more relevant than ever. I know that it’s again in good hands at last.

 
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Posted by on August 31, 2012 in Interactive Fiction, Modern Times

 

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Hacked!

20 Jun

At some point in the last couple of months this site got pretty thoroughly compromised by a group of jackasses peddling counterfeit handbags. I don’t know a huge amount about these things, but the basic scheme seems to have been to hijack this site’s Google search results, both by redirecting searchers to their sites and by setting up heaps of links between my site and theirs, thus piggybacking on my site’s reputation. I’ve been vaguely aware that something not quite kosher was going on for the last several weeks, but I kept thinking to deal with the problem by just swatting down the symptoms — deleting strange files that showed up in my site directories, removing a pile of links that appeared on one of my WordPress theme pages, etc. — rather than rolling up my sleeves and properly scrubbing everything clean. Very, very stupid, I know.

After my very sweet mother-in-law called for the second time this week to tell us that when she clicked my name in Google she got handbags, I decided enough was enough. During the last couple of days I’ve rebuilt the site from scratch, and hardened everything in the process. I also learned a lot about how the bad guys operate, enough to make me wonder if they wouldn’t do better applying all that ingenuity to actually, you know, building a legitimate site like this one that people don’t have to be tricked into visiting. But anyway, I very much believe everything should be fixed now. I still don’t know the original source of the infection, but I believe it must have originated with my hosting provider, who have, alas, been having a bit of a problem with security lately.

I want to emphasize that the database itself was never compromised; your email addresses are all secure. Nor did they install anything that could harm visitors’ computers. You may see some slight weirdness with RSS feeds and the like for a few days while everything settles down, and I expect my site will have an odd association with handbags in Google for another week or two, but then hopefully all will be back to normal. I look forward to spending my time making content instead of farting around with WordPress. I think I’m going to have nightmares for a while about that damn handbag site that seemed to pop up every time I clicked a link…

P.S. If you came here looking to buy a handbag, you’re in the wrong place. We’re just a bunch of un-fashion-conscious nerds around these parts. But I would strongly recommend that you avoid buying from “Purse Vally” or any of the myriad other sites with similarly slightly misspelled names.

 
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Posted by on June 20, 2012 in Interactive Fiction, Modern Times, My So-Called Life

 

The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga

23 Apr

As has been something of an open secret for quite a while now, I wrote a book. It’s called The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga, it’s published by the MIT Press, and now it’s shipping at last.

As the name would imply, my book is a history of the Amiga, a computing platform that pioneered much of the digital world of today. Indeed, my central thesis is that the Amiga represents the world’s first true multimedia personal computer. Much of the book is devoted to working out the implications of that claim.

One thing I wanted to do with the book, as with this blog, was to not neglect the technology in writing technological history. To understand what allowed the Amiga to, say, pioneer the field of desktop video (something that has become so ubiquitous in this era of YouTube that, like “desktop publishing,” the term has ceased to be a useful signifier), one has to understand a bit about its design, even about how the Amiga got its picture to the screen and how this differed from other contemporary computers. So, and while I don’t neglect culture and sociology, I do delve quite deeply into the inner workings of the machine. At the same time, I keep the jargon to a minimum and, when I do indulge, make it a point to explain it carefully beforehand. I thoroughly believe that any patient and interested reader is capable of understanding this stuff if the author just shows a little bit of care, and that’s the assumption that guided me throughout the writing. In other words: no computer science degrees are required. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think many of you who enjoy this blog will also enjoy the book — even if only one chapter deals directly with games. (Hey, at least it’s one of the longest ones…)

Again as I do on this blog, I wanted to encourage active reading, to encourage you to go out and explore some of this technology and art for yourselves. With that in mind, I’ve created a website for the book that hosts a fair amount of content. The book itself can of course be purchased from many fine bookstores, online or brick and mortar.

Oh, and sorry things have been a little quiet with the blog lately. I should have some more stuff for you within a day or three.

 
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Posted by on April 23, 2012 in Antiquarian Productions, Digital Antiquaria, Interactive Fiction, Modern Times, My So-Called Life

 

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