(186,1,'2010-10-22 17:51:29','2010-10-22 21:51:29','The annual <a title=\"The 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, edition the 16th, has been underway for nearly a month, but vacation and classes and, well, let\'s face it, life in general, have delayed my chance to download and start evaluating the 25 (26?) new games to emerge upon the <a title=\"Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction\">IF</a> scene. Fortunately, the past week has given me a brief respite, and I\'ve started checking out the entries.\n\nAlthough I have played and judged the competitors in previous years, I have never written down my thoughts. I\'m hoping that by announcing in this very post that <strong>I will, indeed, review the games that I play[1. Some of them? Hopefully all of them?]</strong>, that I will actually take some time and effort to contribute to the <a title=\"ifwiki.org: 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2010\">game reviews already available</a>, most of them very insightful and informative, and some not-so-much. I will aspire mine to be the former, with one post per review when time permits.\n\nIn the meantime, I\'ll simply say that out of the half-dozen games that I have played, only one has stood out among the others:  <em><a title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">The Warbler\'s Nest</a></em> by Jason McIntosh[2. Full disclosure. I am a personal acquaintance of the author, but I\'m recommending his game because <strong>it is good</strong>, not because I know him]. It\'s well-written and well-crafted, which--for those interested in how I \"rate\" a game-- are my two main criteria for what constitutes a good, and therefore fun, piece of IF. In a nutshell, \"well-written\" refers to the literary aspects of the game, and \"well-crafted\" refers to the technical implementation. You might wonder if there can be a difference, but trust me, you can have a beautifully written piece of IF that is horribly bug-ridden; and you can have a technically elegant game that is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. I have seen and played both. And within each year\'s competition, you can usually find games that span all corners of my particular reviewer\'s matrix.\n\nQuite honestly, I\'m not certain what to attain publishing reviews. Certainly not fame or glory. But perhaps by studying the games of others, I will be better prepared when I gather up both the time and courage to submit a game of my own.','Interactive Fiction Competition 2010','','inherit','open','open','','170-revision-16','','','2010-10-22 17:51:29','2010-10-22 21:51:29','',170,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/170-revision-16/',0,'revision','',0),(187,1,'2010-10-22 17:53:26','2010-10-22 21:53:26','The annual <a title=\"The 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, edition the 16th, has been underway for nearly a month, but vacation and classes and, well, let\'s face it, life in general, have delayed my chance to download and start evaluating the 25 (26?) new games to emerge upon the <a title=\"Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction\">IF</a> scene. Fortunately, the past week has given me a brief respite, and I\'ve started checking out the entries.\r\n\r\nAlthough I have played and judged the competition in previous years, I have never written down my thoughts about my experience. I\'m hoping that by announcing in this very post that <strong>I will, indeed, review the games that I play[1. Some of them? Hopefully all of them?]</strong>, that I will actually take some time and effort to contribute to the <a title=\"ifwiki.org: 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2010\">game reviews already available</a>, most of them very insightful and informative, and some not-so-much. I will aspire mine to be the former, with one post per review when time permits.[2. No guarantees on any of this, I\'m sad to say.]\r\n\r\nIn the meantime, I\'ll simply say that out of the half-dozen games that I have played, only one has stood out among the others:  <em><a title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">The Warbler\'s Nest</a></em> by Jason McIntosh[3. Full disclosure. I am a personal acquaintance of the author, but I\'m recommending his game because <strong>it is good</strong>, not because I know him]. It\'s well-written and well-crafted, which--for those interested in how I \"rate\" a game-- are my two main criteria for what constitutes a good, and therefore fun, piece of IF. In a nutshell, \"well-written\" refers to the literary aspects of the game, and \"well-crafted\" refers to the technical implementation. You might wonder if there can be a difference, but trust me, you can have a beautifully written piece of IF that is horribly bug-ridden; and you can have a technically elegant game that is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. I have seen and played both. And within each year\'s competition, you can usually find games that span all corners of my particular reviewer\'s matrix.\r\n\r\nQuite honestly, I\'m not certain what to attain publishing reviews. Certainly not fame or glory. But perhaps by studying the games of others, I will be better prepared when I gather up both the time and courage to submit a game of my own.','Interactive Fiction Competition 2010','','inherit','open','open','','170-revision-17','','','2010-10-22 17:53:26','2010-10-22 21:53:26','',170,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/170-revision-17/',0,'revision','',0),(188,1,'2010-10-22 17:55:49','2010-10-22 21:55:49','The annual <a title=\"The 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, edition the 16th, has been underway for nearly a month, but vacation and classes and, well, let\'s face it, life in general, have delayed my chance to download and start evaluating the 25 (26?) new games to emerge upon the <a title=\"Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction\">IF</a> scene. Fortunately, the past week has given me a brief respite, and I\'ve started checking out the entries.\n\nAlthough I have played and judged the competition in previous years, I have never written down my thoughts about my experience. I\'m hoping that by announcing in this very post that <strong>I will, indeed, review the games that I play[1. Some of them? Hopefully all of them?]</strong>, that I will actually take some time and effort to contribute to the <a title=\"ifwiki.org: 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2010\">game reviews already available</a>, most of them very insightful and informative, and some not-so-much. I will aspire mine to be the former, with one post per review when time permits.[2. No guarantees on any of this, I\'m sad to say.]\n\nIn the meantime, I\'ll simply say that out of the half-dozen games that I have played, only one has stood out among the others:  <em><a title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">The Warbler\'s Nest</a></em> by Jason McIntosh[3. Full disclosure. I am a personal acquaintance of the author, but I\'m recommending his game because <strong>it is good</strong>, not because I know him]. It\'s well-written and well-crafted, which--for those interested in how I \"rate\" a game-- are my two main criteria for what constitutes a good, and therefore fun, piece of IF. In a nutshell, \"well-written\" refers to the literary aspects of the game, and \"well-crafted\" refers to the technical implementation. You might wonder if there can be a difference, but trust me, you can have a beautifully written piece of IF that is horribly bug-ridden; and you can have a technically elegant game that is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. I have seen and played both. And within each year\'s competition, you can usually find games that span all corners of my particular reviewer\'s matrix.\n\nQuite honestly, I\'m not certain what to attain publishing reviews. Certainly not fame or glory. But perhaps by studying the games of others, I will be better prepared when I gather up both the time and courage to submit a game of my own.','Interactive Fiction Competition 2010','The annual Interactive Fiction Competition has been live for almost a month. Herein I state my intention to review some, if not all, of the games I play.','inherit','open','open','','170-autosave','','','2010-10-22 17:55:49','2010-10-22 21:55:49','',170,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/170-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(189,1,'2010-10-22 17:53:31','2010-10-22 21:53:31','The annual <a title=\"The 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, edition the 16th, has been underway for nearly a month, but vacation and classes and, well, let\'s face it, life in general, have delayed my chance to download and start evaluating the 25 (26?) new games to emerge upon the <a title=\"Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction\">IF</a> scene. Fortunately, the past week has given me a brief respite, and I\'ve started checking out the entries.\r\n\r\nAlthough I have played and judged the competition in previous years, I have never written down my thoughts about my experience. I\'m hoping that by announcing in this very post that <strong>I will, indeed, review the games that I play[1. Some of them? Hopefully all of them?]</strong>, that I will actually take some time and effort to contribute to the <a title=\"ifwiki.org: 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2010\">game reviews already available</a>, most of them very insightful and informative, and some not-so-much. I will aspire mine to be the former, with one post per review when time permits.[2. No guarantees on any of this, I\'m sad to say.]\r\n\r\nIn the meantime, I\'ll simply say that out of the half-dozen games that I have played, only one has stood out among the others:  <em><a title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">The Warbler\'s Nest</a></em> by Jason McIntosh[3. Full disclosure. I am a personal acquaintance of the author, but I\'m recommending his game because <strong>it is good</strong>, not because I know him]. It\'s well-written and well-crafted, which--for those interested in how I \"rate\" a game-- are my two main criteria for what constitutes a good, and therefore fun, piece of IF. In a nutshell, \"well-written\" refers to the literary aspects of the game, and \"well-crafted\" refers to the technical implementation. You might wonder if there can be a difference, but trust me, you can have a beautifully written piece of IF that is horribly bug-ridden; and you can have a technically elegant game that is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. I have seen and played both. And within each year\'s competition, you can usually find games that span all corners of my particular reviewer\'s matrix.\r\n\r\nQuite honestly, I\'m not certain what to attain publishing reviews. Certainly not fame or glory. But perhaps by studying the games of others, I will be better prepared when I gather up both the time and courage to submit a game of my own.','Interactive Fiction Competition 2010','','inherit','open','open','','170-revision-18','','','2010-10-22 17:53:31','2010-10-22 21:53:31','',170,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/170-revision-18/',0,'revision','',0),(190,1,'2010-10-29 22:15:28','2010-10-30 02:15:28','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/asgard.jpg\" alt=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" />Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\r\n\r\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\r\n\r\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\r\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\r\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\r\n\r\nAfter a quick ride with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problem manifests as a young girl:\r\n<pre>&gt;say hello\r\n(to Polly)\r\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\r\n\r\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\r\n</pre>\r\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\r\n\r\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\r\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\r\n(the turnstiles)\r\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\r\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\r\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \r\n\r\nPolly is here. \r\n\r\n&gt;x fireplace\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\r\n\r\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\r\n\r\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 2010 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\r\n\r\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','publish','open','open','','ifcomp-210-review-the-1254-to-asgard','','','2010-11-07 11:14:49','2010-11-07 15:14:49','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/?p=190',0,'post','',0),(191,1,'2010-10-27 12:41:59','2010-10-27 16:41:59','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/quiet_evening.jpg\" alt=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" width=\"130\" height=\"131\" />\r\n\r\nWhen presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay and writing flaws abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that the mission has been accomplished.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build a new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','publish','open','open','','ifcomp-2010-review-a-quiet-evening-at-home','','','2010-10-27 12:42:14','2010-10-27 16:42:14','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/?p=191',0,'post','',0),(192,1,'2010-10-27 02:52:16','2010-10-27 06:52:16','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but a quiet evening. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no, this game authored by anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\n\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaways being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay flaws and typos abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\n<pre>Sidewalk\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\n</pre>\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\n<pre>&gt;x door\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nAnd ...\n<pre>&gt;x house\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\n\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\n\n&gt;enter house\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that my first goal was to find a bathroom. I did, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player.\n\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of any enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\n\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Then use the knowledge to build a game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','','inherit','open','open','','191-revision','','','2010-10-27 02:52:16','2010-10-27 06:52:16','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(193,1,'2010-10-27 02:52:20','2010-10-27 06:52:20','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but a quiet evening. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no, this game authored by anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaways being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay flaws and typos abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that my first goal was to find a bathroom. I did, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of any enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Then use the knowledge to build a game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-2','','','2010-10-27 02:52:20','2010-10-27 06:52:20','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(194,1,'2010-10-27 10:05:47','2010-10-27 14:05:47','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\n\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic game play flaws and typos abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\n<pre>Sidewalk\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\n</pre>\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\n<pre>&gt;x door\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nAnd ...\n<pre>&gt;x house\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\n\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\n\n&gt;enter house\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that the mission has been accomplished.\n\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of any enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\n\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Then use the knowledge to build a game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I quickly summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-3','','','2010-10-27 10:05:47','2010-10-27 14:05:47','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(195,1,'2010-10-27 10:07:18','2010-10-27 14:07:18','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\n\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic game play flaws and typos abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\n<pre>Sidewalk\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\n</pre>\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\n<pre>&gt;x door\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nAnd ...\n<pre>&gt;x house\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\n\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\n\n&gt;enter house\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that the mission has been accomplished.\n\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of any enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\n\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Then use the knowledge to build a game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I quickly summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-4','','','2010-10-27 10:07:18','2010-10-27 14:07:18','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(199,1,'2010-10-27 11:47:08','2010-10-27 15:47:08','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\n\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay and writing flaws abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\n<pre>Sidewalk\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\n</pre>\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\n<pre>&gt;x door\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nAnd ...\n<pre>&gt;x house\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\n\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\n\n&gt;enter house\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\n\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\n\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build a new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-8','','','2010-10-27 11:47:08','2010-10-27 15:47:08','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(196,1,'2010-10-27 10:51:54','2010-10-27 14:51:54','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\n\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic game play flaws and typos abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\n<pre>Sidewalk\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\n</pre>\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\n<pre>&gt;x door\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nAnd ...\n<pre>&gt;x house\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\n\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\n\n&gt;enter house\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\n\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my overall enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\n\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Then use the knowledge to build a game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I quickly summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-5','','','2010-10-27 10:51:54','2010-10-27 14:51:54','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(197,1,'2010-10-27 10:52:47','2010-10-27 14:52:47','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic game play flaws and typos abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-6','','','2010-10-27 10:52:47','2010-10-27 14:52:47','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(198,1,'2010-10-27 10:52:56','2010-10-27 14:52:56','When presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic game play flaws and typos abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-7','','','2010-10-27 10:52:56','2010-10-27 14:52:56','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(200,1,'2010-10-27 12:39:48','2010-10-27 16:39:48','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"130\" caption=\"Hamster in da house!\"]<img title=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/quiet_evening.jpg\" alt=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" width=\"130\" height=\"131\" />[/caption]\n\nWhen presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\n\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay and writing flaws abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\n<pre>Sidewalk\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\n</pre>\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\n<pre>&gt;x door\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nAnd ...\n<pre>&gt;x house\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\n\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\n\n&gt;enter house\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\n\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\n\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build a new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-9','','','2010-10-27 12:39:48','2010-10-27 16:39:48','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(202,1,'2010-10-27 12:40:35','2010-10-27 16:40:35','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/quiet_evening.jpg\" alt=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" width=\"130\" height=\"131\" />\r\n\r\nWhen presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay and writing flaws abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build a new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-11','','','2010-10-27 12:40:35','2010-10-27 16:40:35','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(201,1,'2010-10-27 12:39:55','2010-10-27 16:39:55','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"130\" caption=\"Hamster in da house!\"]<img title=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/quiet_evening.jpg\" alt=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" width=\"130\" height=\"131\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nWhen presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay and writing flaws abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build a new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-10','','','2010-10-27 12:39:55','2010-10-27 16:39:55','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(203,1,'2010-10-27 12:40:39','2010-10-27 16:40:39','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/quiet_evening.jpg\" alt=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" width=\"130\" height=\"131\" />\r\n\r\nWhen presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay and writing flaws abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that mission accomplished.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build a new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-12','','','2010-10-27 12:40:39','2010-10-27 16:40:39','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(204,1,'2010-10-27 12:41:59','2010-10-27 16:41:59','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/quiet_evening.jpg\" alt=\"A Quiet Evening at Home\" width=\"130\" height=\"131\" />\r\n\r\nWhen presented with a game entitled <em>A Quiet Evening At Home</em>, I expect a story about anything but. Surely such an evening within Interactive Fiction will be interrupted by invading aliens, or the discovery of my neighbor\'s body, or even the Rapture. Alas, no. This game authored by Anonymous offers what it promises: You, the daunting adventurer, spend a quiet evening at home performing a few mundane chores so that, ultimately, you can go to sleep.\r\n\r\nThis is clearly the anonymous author\'s first attempt, or one of his first attempts, at writing IF, the dead giveaway being the \"I implemented my apartment\" world model. The other giveaways are that basic gameplay and writing flaws abound. Indeed, the very first room demonstrates several of these:\r\n<pre>Sidewalk\r\nYou are standing on a densely-settled residential street in front of a beige house with red trim.  A short flight of stairs leads to the front door\r\n</pre>\r\nNote the missing period at the end of the paragraph. And...\r\n<pre>&gt;x door\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nAnd ...\r\n<pre>&gt;x house\r\nit\'s the shortest house on the street, and it\'s got beige-painted siding.  It\'s home.\r\n\r\nyou\'ve got to use the restroom!\r\n\r\n&gt;enter house\r\nThat\'s not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAfter seeing these numerous capitalization errors and the fact that I couldn\'t examine a door or enter a house that was clearly in front of me, I nearly quit on my fourth move. Nevertheless, I continued onward, since, to the game\'s credit, it was clear that I had a goal. I did find the bathroom, though as far as I can tell, I never actually *used* the bathroom. Apparently, the game simply flags the fact that you enter the bathroom and that\'s that. No notification is given to the player that the mission has been accomplished.\r\n\r\nSimilar errors and quirks throughout the work deprived me of my enjoyment, so I eventually quit without finishing. Too bad, since according to other reviews, the ending awards the player with a dream about weird alien sex... or something.\r\n\r\nIf a lesson is to be learned, authors, it is this: Unless your first game is a polished work of IF, please do not submit it to the competition. By all means, submit it to the community. Folks will be more than happy to test the game and offer constructive feedback. Use the knowledge to build a new game with more polish, more pizazz, one worthy of the competition. In other words, keep writing, anonymous, and hopefully you will feel that your next game deserves your name on it.','IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home','My first IFComp 2010 review, in which I summarize my impressions of \"A Quiet Evening at Home\" by Anonymous. Standard spoiler alert: If you haven\'t played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','191-revision-13','','','2010-10-27 12:41:59','2010-10-27 16:41:59','',191,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/191-revision-13/',0,'revision','',0),(205,1,'2010-10-28 14:42:37','2010-10-28 18:42:37','<em>\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\"</em> Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins<em> <a title=\"East Grove Hills\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y7wari1gdsklfyhy\">East Grove Hills</a></em> by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in.\r\n\r\nThe game is an autobiographical account of Thomas Wu, a 16-year-old boy who has survived a tragic event that occurred in East Grove Hills High School. You, as the player, travel in Thomas\'s footsteps as his narrative shifts back and forth through the times before, during, and after the event. Typical teenage themes overlay his story: Social exclusion, dealing with the loss of family and friends, awkward relationships, and his general boredom of it all. In addition, the genre of IF is prevalent among the themes. Thomas admits to spending many evenings playing \"crappy text adventures\", which, in turn, causes him to think in terms of cardinal directions as we guide him through a walk to a park.\r\n<blockquote>\"The teacher was using the last ten minutes of her life grading us on our presentation.\"  <strong>--Thomas Wu</strong></blockquote>\r\nAlthough the concept of IF plays a central role in the story, interactivity mostly does not. Player actions are generally limited to moving around (when possible), examining objects, waiting, or conversing with a person. In the meantime, the story gradually unfolds turn after turn, not exactly climaxing with what might be construed as a \"twist\", which unfortunately left me distracted and dangling. Did the events in the game actually happen? Or was this just an angsty game written by an angsty teenager? I wasn\'t certain how to interpret this major revelation. Or maybe that was the point. Regardless, it left me in a state of confusion rather than one of reflection.\r\n\r\nOther gameplay issues are apparent, including basic IF implementation mistakes, such as mentioning objects that have already been described in a room\'s main description. Also, there is at least one major bug that I encountered halfway through the game. When ensconced in one particularly exciting scene, I was suddenly thrust back into a conversation I was having with a character from the previous scene. Upon finishing the conversation (again), the scene in which the bug originated started up afresh. Fortunately, the bug did not reappear, lest I would have been caught in an infinite loop.\r\n\r\nThese flaws took away some of the game\'s emotional impact. That, and I couldn\'t help feeling I was replaying a novice\'s version of Adam Cadre\'s classic game, <em><a title=\"Photopia\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl\">Photopia</a></em>. For someone who has played both games, comparing<em> East Grove Hills</em> and <em>Photopia</em> is inevitable. Both rely on a linear narrative of flashbacks and forwards to tell a tale of teenage tragedy. <em>East Grove Hills</em> is less adept at the telling, depending on a solitary voice to recount the events, the prose of which is not as mature as any of Cadre\'s voices.\r\n\r\nNevertheless,<em> East Grove Hills </em>is worth a look to see how a tragic short story can be told in the medium of IF.','IFComp 2010 Review: East Grove Hills','\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\" Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins East Grove Hills by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in...\r\n\r\nHere I review author XYZ\'s entry in the 16th annual Interactive Fiction Competition. Standard spoiler alert: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','publish','open','open','','ifcomp-2010-review-east-grove-hills','','','2010-10-28 14:42:37','2010-10-28 18:42:37','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/?p=205',0,'post','',1),(206,1,'2010-10-27 18:09:04','2010-10-27 22:09:04','<em>\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\"</em> Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins<em> <a title=\"East Grove Hills\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y7wari1gdsklfyhy\">East Grove Hills</a></em> by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in.\n\nThe game is an autobiographical account of Thomas Wu, a 16-year-old boy who has survived a tragic event that occurred in East Grove Hills High School. You, as the player, travel in Thomas\'s footsteps as his narrative shifts back and forth through the times before, during, and after the event. Typical teenage themes overlay his story: Social exclusion, dealing with the loss of family and friends, awkward relationships, and his general boredom of it all. In addition, the genre of IF is prevalent among the themes. Thomas admits to spending many evenings playing \"crappy text adventures\", which, in turn causes him to think in terms of cardinal directions as we guide him through a walk to a park.\n<blockquote>\"The teacher was using the last ten minutes of her life grading us on our presentation.\"  <strong>--Thomas Wu</strong></blockquote>\nAlthough the concept of IF plays a central role in the story, interactivity mostly does not. Player actions are generally limited to moving around (when possible), examining objects, waiting, or conversing with a person. in the meantime, the story gradually unfolds around the player, not exactly climaxing with what might be construed as a \"twist\", which unfortunately left me distracted and dangling. Did the events in the game actually happen? Or was this just an angsty game written by an angsty teenager? I wasn\'t certain how to interpret this major revelation. Or maybe that was the point. Regardless, it left me in a state of confusion rather than one of reflection.\n\nOther gameplay issues are apparent, including basic IF implementation mistakes, such as mentioning objects that have already been described in a room\'s main description. Also, there is at least one major bug that I encountered halfway through the game. When ensconced in one particularly exciting scene, I was suddenly thrust back into a conversation I was having with a character from the previous scene. Upon finishing the conversation (again), the scene in which the bug originated started up afresh. Fortunately, the bug did not reappear, lest I would have been caught in an infinite loop.\n\nThese flaws took away some of the game\'s emotional impact. That, and I couldn\'t help feeling I was replaying a novice\'s version of Adam Cadre\'s classic game, <em><a title=\"Photopia\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl\">Photopia</a></em>. For someone who has played both games, comparing<em> East Grove Hills</em> and <em>Photopia</em> is inevitable. Both rely on a linear narrative of flashbacks and forwards to tell a tale of teenage tragedy. <em>East Grove Hills</em> is less adept at the telling, depending on a solitary voice to recount the events, the prose of which is not as mature as any of Cadre\'s voices. Nevertheless,<em> East Grove Hills </em>is worth a look to see how a tragic short story can be told in the medium of IF.','IFComp 2010 Review: East Grove Hills','','inherit','open','open','','205-revision','','','2010-10-27 18:09:04','2010-10-27 22:09:04','',205,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/205-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(207,1,'2010-10-27 18:09:46','2010-10-27 22:09:46','<em>\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\"</em> Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins<em> <a title=\"East Grove Hills\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y7wari1gdsklfyhy\">East Grove Hills</a></em> by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in.\r\n\r\nThe game is an autobiographical account of Thomas Wu, a 16-year-old boy who has survived a tragic event that occurred in East Grove Hills High School. You, as the player, travel in Thomas\'s footsteps as his narrative shifts back and forth through the times before, during, and after the event. Typical teenage themes overlay his story: Social exclusion, dealing with the loss of family and friends, awkward relationships, and his general boredom of it all. In addition, the genre of IF is prevalent among the themes. Thomas admits to spending many evenings playing \"crappy text adventures\", which, in turn causes him to think in terms of cardinal directions as we guide him through a walk to a park.\r\n<blockquote>\"The teacher was using the last ten minutes of her life grading us on our presentation.\"  <strong>--Thomas Wu</strong></blockquote>\r\nAlthough the concept of IF plays a central role in the story, interactivity mostly does not. Player actions are generally limited to moving around (when possible), examining objects, waiting, or conversing with a person. in the meantime, the story gradually unfolds around the player, not exactly climaxing with what might be construed as a \"twist\", which unfortunately left me distracted and dangling. Did the events in the game actually happen? Or was this just an angsty game written by an angsty teenager? I wasn\'t certain how to interpret this major revelation. Or maybe that was the point. Regardless, it left me in a state of confusion rather than one of reflection.\r\n\r\nOther gameplay issues are apparent, including basic IF implementation mistakes, such as mentioning objects that have already been described in a room\'s main description. Also, there is at least one major bug that I encountered halfway through the game. When ensconced in one particularly exciting scene, I was suddenly thrust back into a conversation I was having with a character from the previous scene. Upon finishing the conversation (again), the scene in which the bug originated started up afresh. Fortunately, the bug did not reappear, lest I would have been caught in an infinite loop.\r\n\r\nThese flaws took away some of the game\'s emotional impact. That, and I couldn\'t help feeling I was replaying a novice\'s version of Adam Cadre\'s classic game, <em><a title=\"Photopia\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl\">Photopia</a></em>. For someone who has played both games, comparing<em> East Grove Hills</em> and <em>Photopia</em> is inevitable. Both rely on a linear narrative of flashbacks and forwards to tell a tale of teenage tragedy. <em>East Grove Hills</em> is less adept at the telling, depending on a solitary voice to recount the events, the prose of which is not as mature as any of Cadre\'s voices.\r\n\r\nNevertheless,<em> East Grove Hills </em>is worth a look to see how a tragic short story can be told in the medium of IF.','IFComp 2010 Review: East Grove Hills','','inherit','open','open','','205-revision-2','','','2010-10-27 18:09:46','2010-10-27 22:09:46','',205,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/205-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(208,1,'2010-10-27 18:09:50','2010-10-27 22:09:50','<em>\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\"</em> Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins<em> <a title=\"East Grove Hills\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y7wari1gdsklfyhy\">East Grove Hills</a></em> by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in.\r\n\r\nThe game is an autobiographical account of Thomas Wu, a 16-year-old boy who has survived a tragic event that occurred in East Grove Hills High School. You, as the player, travel in Thomas\'s footsteps as his narrative shifts back and forth through the times before, during, and after the event. Typical teenage themes overlay his story: Social exclusion, dealing with the loss of family and friends, awkward relationships, and his general boredom of it all. In addition, the genre of IF is prevalent among the themes. Thomas admits to spending many evenings playing \"crappy text adventures\", which, in turn causes him to think in terms of cardinal directions as we guide him through a walk to a park.\r\n<blockquote>\"The teacher was using the last ten minutes of her life grading us on our presentation.\"  <strong>--Thomas Wu</strong></blockquote>\r\nAlthough the concept of IF plays a central role in the story, interactivity mostly does not. Player actions are generally limited to moving around (when possible), examining objects, waiting, or conversing with a person. in the meantime, the story gradually unfolds around the player, not exactly climaxing with what might be construed as a \"twist\", which unfortunately left me distracted and dangling. Did the events in the game actually happen? Or was this just an angsty game written by an angsty teenager? I wasn\'t certain how to interpret this major revelation. Or maybe that was the point. Regardless, it left me in a state of confusion rather than one of reflection.\r\n\r\nOther gameplay issues are apparent, including basic IF implementation mistakes, such as mentioning objects that have already been described in a room\'s main description. Also, there is at least one major bug that I encountered halfway through the game. When ensconced in one particularly exciting scene, I was suddenly thrust back into a conversation I was having with a character from the previous scene. Upon finishing the conversation (again), the scene in which the bug originated started up afresh. Fortunately, the bug did not reappear, lest I would have been caught in an infinite loop.\r\n\r\nThese flaws took away some of the game\'s emotional impact. That, and I couldn\'t help feeling I was replaying a novice\'s version of Adam Cadre\'s classic game, <em><a title=\"Photopia\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl\">Photopia</a></em>. For someone who has played both games, comparing<em> East Grove Hills</em> and <em>Photopia</em> is inevitable. Both rely on a linear narrative of flashbacks and forwards to tell a tale of teenage tragedy. <em>East Grove Hills</em> is less adept at the telling, depending on a solitary voice to recount the events, the prose of which is not as mature as any of Cadre\'s voices.\r\n\r\nNevertheless,<em> East Grove Hills </em>is worth a look to see how a tragic short story can be told in the medium of IF.','IFComp 2010 Review: East Grove Hills','','inherit','open','open','','205-revision-3','','','2010-10-27 18:09:50','2010-10-27 22:09:50','',205,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/205-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(209,1,'2010-10-27 18:11:22','2010-10-27 22:11:22','<em>\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\"</em> Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins<em> <a title=\"East Grove Hills\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y7wari1gdsklfyhy\">East Grove Hills</a></em> by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in.\r\n\r\nThe game is an autobiographical account of Thomas Wu, a 16-year-old boy who has survived a tragic event that occurred in East Grove Hills High School. You, as the player, travel in Thomas\'s footsteps as his narrative shifts back and forth through the times before, during, and after the event. Typical teenage themes overlay his story: Social exclusion, dealing with the loss of family and friends, awkward relationships, and his general boredom of it all. In addition, the genre of IF is prevalent among the themes. Thomas admits to spending many evenings playing \"crappy text adventures\", which, in turn, causes him to think in terms of cardinal directions as we guide him through a walk to a park.\r\n<blockquote>\"The teacher was using the last ten minutes of her life grading us on our presentation.\"  <strong>--Thomas Wu</strong></blockquote>\r\nAlthough the concept of IF plays a central role in the story, interactivity mostly does not. Player actions are generally limited to moving around (when possible), examining objects, waiting, or conversing with a person. In the meantime, the story gradually unfolds turn after turn, not exactly climaxing with what might be construed as a \"twist\", which unfortunately left me distracted and dangling. Did the events in the game actually happen? Or was this just an angsty game written by an angsty teenager? I wasn\'t certain how to interpret this major revelation. Or maybe that was the point. Regardless, it left me in a state of confusion rather than one of reflection.\r\n\r\nOther gameplay issues are apparent, including basic IF implementation mistakes, such as mentioning objects that have already been described in a room\'s main description. Also, there is at least one major bug that I encountered halfway through the game. When ensconced in one particularly exciting scene, I was suddenly thrust back into a conversation I was having with a character from the previous scene. Upon finishing the conversation (again), the scene in which the bug originated started up afresh. Fortunately, the bug did not reappear, lest I would have been caught in an infinite loop.\r\n\r\nThese flaws took away some of the game\'s emotional impact. That, and I couldn\'t help feeling I was replaying a novice\'s version of Adam Cadre\'s classic game, <em><a title=\"Photopia\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl\">Photopia</a></em>. For someone who has played both games, comparing<em> East Grove Hills</em> and <em>Photopia</em> is inevitable. Both rely on a linear narrative of flashbacks and forwards to tell a tale of teenage tragedy. <em>East Grove Hills</em> is less adept at the telling, depending on a solitary voice to recount the events, the prose of which is not as mature as any of Cadre\'s voices.\r\n\r\nNevertheless,<em> East Grove Hills </em>is worth a look to see how a tragic short story can be told in the medium of IF.','IFComp 2010 Review: East Grove Hills','','inherit','open','open','','205-revision-4','','','2010-10-27 18:11:22','2010-10-27 22:11:22','',205,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/205-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(210,1,'2010-10-27 18:16:56','2010-10-27 22:16:56','<em>\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\"</em> Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins<em> <a title=\"East Grove Hills\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y7wari1gdsklfyhy\">East Grove Hills</a></em> by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in.\n\nThe game is an autobiographical account of Thomas Wu, a 16-year-old boy who has survived a tragic event that occurred in East Grove Hills High School. You, as the player, travel in Thomas\'s footsteps as his narrative shifts back and forth through the times before, during, and after the event. Typical teenage themes overlay his story: Social exclusion, dealing with the loss of family and friends, awkward relationships, and his general boredom of it all. In addition, the genre of IF is prevalent among the themes. Thomas admits to spending many evenings playing \"crappy text adventures\", which, in turn, causes him to think in terms of cardinal directions as we guide him through a walk to a park.\n<blockquote>\"The teacher was using the last ten minutes of her life grading us on our presentation.\"  <strong>--Thomas Wu</strong></blockquote>\nAlthough the concept of IF plays a central role in the story, interactivity mostly does not. Player actions are generally limited to moving around (when possible), examining objects, waiting, or conversing with a person. In the meantime, the story gradually unfolds turn after turn, not exactly climaxing with what might be construed as a \"twist\", which unfortunately left me distracted and dangling. Did the events in the game actually happen? Or was this just an angsty game written by an angsty teenager? I wasn\'t certain how to interpret this major revelation. Or maybe that was the point. Regardless, it left me in a state of confusion rather than one of reflection.\n\nOther gameplay issues are apparent, including basic IF implementation mistakes, such as mentioning objects that have already been described in a room\'s main description. Also, there is at least one major bug that I encountered halfway through the game. When ensconced in one particularly exciting scene, I was suddenly thrust back into a conversation I was having with a character from the previous scene. Upon finishing the conversation (again), the scene in which the bug originated started up afresh. Fortunately, the bug did not reappear, lest I would have been caught in an infinite loop.\n\nThese flaws took away some of the game\'s emotional impact. That, and I couldn\'t help feeling I was replaying a novice\'s version of Adam Cadre\'s classic game, <em><a title=\"Photopia\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl\">Photopia</a></em>. For someone who has played both games, comparing<em> East Grove Hills</em> and <em>Photopia</em> is inevitable. Both rely on a linear narrative of flashbacks and forwards to tell a tale of teenage tragedy. <em>East Grove Hills</em> is less adept at the telling, depending on a solitary voice to recount the events, the prose of which is not as mature as any of Cadre\'s voices.\n\nNevertheless,<em> East Grove Hills </em>is worth a look to see how a tragic short story can be told in the medium of IF.','IFComp 2010 Review: East Grove Hills','\"It was five minutes before the end of the world. Well, the end of the world for us, anyway. Yue, Jenny, and I spent those five minutes trying to barely scrape by on some sort of presentation in AP Lit.\" Now that\'s a hook: Three friends, the end of the world, and Advanced Placement Literature class. So begins East Grove Hills by the pseudo-anonymous author, XYZ, and I was immediately drawn in...\n\nHere I review author XYZ\'s entry in the 16th annual Interactive Fiction Competition. Standard spoiler alert: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','205-revision-5','','','2010-10-27 18:16:56','2010-10-27 22:16:56','',205,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/205-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(211,1,'2010-10-27 02:49:06','2010-10-27 06:49:06','','Auto Draft','','inherit','open','open','','190-revision','','','2010-10-27 02:49:06','2010-10-27 06:49:06','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(245,1,'2010-11-19 16:23:33','2010-11-19 20:23:33','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"People\'s Glorious whatever...\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/revolution.jpg\" alt=\"People\'s Glorious Long Text Adventure Title I Can\'t Remember\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished <em>Gigantomania</em>, this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s <em><a title=\"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" href=\"http://http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8le4zj44wh217o0o\">The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game</a></em>. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike <em>Gigantomania</em>, which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, <em>Revolution</em> (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.\r\n\r\nAs the ridiculously long title implies, silliness is the real name of the game. Appropriately attired in a furry papakha and your \"What Would Trotsky Do?\" bracelet, you explore the streets of Freedonia, attempting to win the hearts and minds of its citizens. At your disposal are your to-do list (when you find it), a couple of comrades (with names such as Jetski), and a few gadgets, including the Marxist Ventriloquator Mk II, which, when pointed at someone, forces the victim to spout a \"glorious Marxist quote\" (though it often sounds like something Yahkov Smirnoff might say). All in all, it\'s up to you to bring everything together so you can throw one Hell of a Communist party.\r\n\r\nAt its core, \"Revolution\" is traditional IF: Explore the map, solve the puzzles, and win the game. The map divides the city into four quadrants, each easily remembered and navigable. The puzzles are fun, if not particularly challenging, and several left me with smile (in particular, the solution for getting the vodka still makes me chuckle). Should you get stuck on a puzzle, you can either consult the hints or take advantage of an in-game gadget designed specifically so you can \"cheat\" yourself out of solving one puzzle. And depending on how you go about your quest, you may find yourself at more than one ending.\r\n\r\nAlas, the ending I received suggested I could have done something more, that somewhere out there was a \"better\" ending. Upon researching other player experiences, I discovered that I had, indeed, botched my \"happily ever after\" by resorting to capitalism. To be fair, the game hinted that purchasing something with the almighty dollar might lead to some severe consequences, but in my defense, I also learned that at that point, I simply had no choice. There is one object in the game that if accidentally discarded, forces you to resort to capitalism. And I had used that item to solve another puzzle in the game. This represents a major fault in the game\'s implementation and breaks a general rule-of-thumb in good IF: Unless the player is heavily warned in advance, discarding or using an item should not break a major win-condition. At the very least, alternatives must be presented so the game can still be satisfactorily won.\r\n\r\nAside from this issue, <em>Revolution</em> offers your average capitalist like me a solid game of good fun and laughs.','IFComp2010 Review: The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game','At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished \"Gigantomania\", this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s \"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" Game. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike \"Gigantomania\", which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, \"Revolution\" (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.  Continue reading for the rest of my review. Warning: Spoilage ahead...','publish','open','open','','ifcomp2010-review-the-peoples-glorious-revolutionary-text-adventure-game','','','2010-11-19 16:23:33','2010-11-19 20:23:33','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/?p=245',0,'post','',0),(213,1,'2010-10-29 12:01:26','2010-10-29 16:01:26','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s <em>The 12:45 to Asgard,</em> a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-2','','','2010-10-29 12:01:26','2010-10-29 16:01:26','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(214,1,'2010-10-29 12:42:17','2010-10-29 16:42:17','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s <em>The 12:45 to Asgard,</em> a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the evening--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of the Studio A\'s innards, of it\'s catwalks and closets, initially drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the hastily taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly, I had been left with the cleanup of the failed attempt. Together with the voice of the protagonist and the mood meter, I knew was pretty pissed about it. All in all, an excellent way to motivate the player and capture his/her attention.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you attempt to fix the leak that sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nThe first issue appears in the form of the second NPC you encounter, Polly\n\nThis is where the game spirals downward, for the implementation of the afterlife seems to be an afterthought.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s The 12:45 to Asgard, a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-3','','','2010-10-29 12:42:17','2010-10-29 16:42:17','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(215,1,'2010-10-29 12:55:04','2010-10-29 16:55:04','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s <em>The 12:45 to Asgard,</em> a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the evening--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of the Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, initially drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the hastily taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly, I was the one left to cleanup everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you attempt to fix the leak that sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nThe afterlife shows promise at first. But after a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems appears in the form of the second NPC you encounter, a little girl named Polly, who remains mostly unresponsive to your inquiries. Following her','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s The 12:45 to Asgard, a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-4','','','2010-10-29 12:55:04','2010-10-29 16:55:04','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(216,1,'2010-10-29 13:10:26','2010-10-29 17:10:26','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s <em>The 12:45 to Asgard,</em> a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the evening--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of the Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, initially drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the hastily taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly, I was the one left to cleanup everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you attempt to fix the leak that sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter. It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game. Upon exiting, I found myself outside a cottage with a locked door. Unable to get back in the place I jut left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s The 12:45 to Asgard, a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-5','','','2010-10-29 13:10:26','2010-10-29 17:10:26','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(217,1,'2010-10-29 13:14:06','2010-10-29 17:14:06','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s <em>The 12:45 to Asgard,</em> a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the evening--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of the Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, initially drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the hastily taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly, I was the one left to cleanup everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you attempt to fix the leak that sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter. It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game. Upon exiting, I found myself outside a cottage with a locked door. Unable to get back in the place I jut left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. At this point, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that consulting the walkthrough didn\'t help. I gave up.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s The 12:45 to Asgard, a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-6','','','2010-10-29 13:14:06','2010-10-29 17:14:06','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(218,1,'2010-10-29 13:36:37','2010-10-29 17:36:37','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:45 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the evening--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of the Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, initially drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the hastily taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly, I was the one left to cleanup everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you attempt to fix the leak that sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter. It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game. Upon exiting, I found myself outside a cottage with a locked door. Unable to get back in the place I had jsut left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on this crummy afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the author\'s credentials, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a little more fulfilling and a little less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s The 12:45 to Asgard, a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-7','','','2010-10-29 13:36:37','2010-10-29 17:36:37','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(220,1,'2010-10-29 15:03:41','2010-10-29 19:03:41','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:45 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the hastily taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter. It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game. Upon exiting, I found myself outside a cottage with a locked door. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on this crummy afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a little more fulfilling and a little less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s The 12:45 to Asgard, a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-9','','','2010-10-29 15:03:41','2010-10-29 19:03:41','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(219,1,'2010-10-29 13:39:14','2010-10-29 17:39:14','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:45 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the evening--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of the Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, initially drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the hastily taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was the one left to cleanup everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you attempt to fix the leak that sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter. It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game. Upon exiting, I found myself outside a cottage with a locked door. Unable to get back in the place I had jsut left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on this crummy afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a little more fulfilling and a little less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play Rob Wheeler\'s The 12:45 to Asgard, a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-8','','','2010-10-29 13:39:14','2010-10-29 17:39:14','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(221,1,'2010-10-29 15:10:17','2010-10-29 19:10:17','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:45 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a little more fulfilling and a little less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:45 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-10','','','2010-10-29 15:10:17','2010-10-29 19:10:17','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(222,1,'2010-10-29 15:11:56','2010-10-29 19:11:56','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a little more fulfilling and a little less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:45 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-11','','','2010-10-29 15:11:56','2010-10-29 19:11:56','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(225,1,'2010-10-29 15:21:23','2010-10-29 19:21:23','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-14','','','2010-10-29 15:21:23','2010-10-29 19:21:23','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-14/',0,'revision','',0),(223,1,'2010-10-29 15:12:14','2010-10-29 19:12:14','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\r\n\r\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\r\n\r\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\r\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\r\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\r\n\r\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\r\n<pre>&gt;say hello\r\n(to Polly)\r\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\r\n\r\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\r\n</pre>\r\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\r\n\r\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\r\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\r\n(the turnstiles)\r\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\r\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\r\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \r\n\r\nPolly is here. \r\n\r\n&gt;x fireplace\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\r\n\r\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\r\n\r\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a little more fulfilling and a little less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\r\n\r\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-12','','','2010-10-29 15:12:14','2010-10-29 19:12:14','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(224,1,'2010-10-29 15:12:30','2010-10-29 19:12:30','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\r\n\r\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\r\n\r\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\r\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:45 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\r\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\r\n\r\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\r\n<pre>&gt;say hello\r\n(to Polly)\r\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\r\n\r\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\r\n</pre>\r\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\r\n\r\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\r\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\r\n(the turnstiles)\r\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\r\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\r\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \r\n\r\nPolly is here. \r\n\r\n&gt;x fireplace\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\r\n\r\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\r\n\r\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a little more fulfilling and a little less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\r\n\r\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-13','','','2010-10-29 15:12:30','2010-10-29 19:12:30','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-13/',0,'revision','',0),(227,1,'2010-10-29 16:37:31','2010-10-29 20:37:31','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/asgard.jpg\" alt=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" />Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problem manifests as a young girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-16','','','2010-10-29 16:37:31','2010-10-29 20:37:31','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-16/',0,'revision','',0),(226,1,'2010-10-29 15:48:24','2010-10-29 19:48:24','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/asgard.jpg\" alt=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" />Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problems manifest in the form a of little girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-15','','','2010-10-29 15:48:24','2010-10-29 19:48:24','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-15/',0,'revision','',0),(228,1,'2010-10-29 22:12:15','2010-10-30 02:12:15','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/asgard.jpg\" alt=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" />Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\r\n\r\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\r\n\r\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\r\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\r\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\r\n\r\nAfter a quick rid with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problem manifests as a young girl:\r\n<pre>&gt;say hello\r\n(to Polly)\r\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\r\n\r\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\r\n</pre>\r\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\r\n\r\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\r\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\r\n(the turnstiles)\r\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\r\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\r\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \r\n\r\nPolly is here. \r\n\r\n&gt;x fireplace\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\r\n\r\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\r\n\r\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\r\n\r\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-17','','','2010-10-29 22:12:15','2010-10-30 02:12:15','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-17/',0,'revision','',0),(229,1,'2010-10-29 22:15:28','2010-10-30 02:15:28','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/asgard.jpg\" alt=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" />Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\r\n\r\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\r\n\r\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\r\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\r\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\r\n\r\nAfter a quick ride with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problem manifests as a young girl:\r\n<pre>&gt;say hello\r\n(to Polly)\r\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\r\n\r\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\r\n</pre>\r\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\r\n\r\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\r\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\r\n(the turnstiles)\r\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\r\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\r\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \r\n\r\nPolly is here. \r\n\r\n&gt;x fireplace\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\r\n\r\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\r\n\r\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 210 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\r\n\r\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-18','','','2010-10-29 22:15:28','2010-10-30 02:15:28','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-18/',0,'revision','',0);
INSERT INTO `wp_posts` VALUES (230,1,'2010-10-29 22:17:17','2010-10-30 02:17:17','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/asgard.jpg\" alt=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" />Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\n\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\n\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\n\nAfter a quick ride with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problem manifests as a young girl:\n<pre>&gt;say hello\n(to Polly)\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\n\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\n</pre>\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\n\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\n(the turnstiles)\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\n</pre>\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \n\nPolly is here. \n\n&gt;x fireplace\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\n</pre>\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\n\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\n\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 2010 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\n\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-autosave','','','2010-10-29 22:17:17','2010-10-30 02:17:17','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(231,1,'2010-11-05 16:46:00','2010-11-05 20:46:00','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order to not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\n\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nThe downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from enjoying the game\'s climax.\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','publish','open','open','','ifcomp-2010-review-gigantomania','','\nhttp://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/','2010-11-07 11:18:13','2010-11-07 15:18:13','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/?p=231',0,'post','',0),(232,1,'2010-10-30 20:48:00','2010-10-31 00:48:00','You travel up the food chain of Stalinist Russia, from lowly peasant worker, to patriotic industrial laborer, to dutiful bureaucrat, to the master mind himself. <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a> written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','','inherit','open','open','','231-revision','','','2010-10-30 20:48:00','2010-10-31 00:48:00','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/231-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(233,1,'2010-11-05 16:38:48','2010-11-05 20:38:48','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\n\nSuffice to say, the opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\n\nIf there is a downside to Gigantomania, it is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \n\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n</pre>\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;e4&gt;\n</pre>\nMy additional interaction went like this:\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\n\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\n</pre>\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from\n\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, its a technical decision in this the fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-2','','','2010-11-05 16:38:48','2010-11-05 20:38:48','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(236,1,'2010-11-05 16:41:15','2010-11-05 20:41:15','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\n\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\n\nIf there is a downside to Gigantomania, it is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \n\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n</pre>\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;e4&gt;\n</pre>\nMy additional interaction went like this:\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\n\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\n</pre>\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from\n\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-5','','','2010-11-05 16:41:15','2010-11-05 20:41:15','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(234,1,'2010-11-05 16:39:11','2010-11-05 20:39:11','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nSuffice to say, the opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nIf there is a downside to Gigantomania, it is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-3','','','2010-11-05 16:39:11','2010-11-05 20:39:11','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(235,1,'2010-11-05 16:39:17','2010-11-05 20:39:17','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nSuffice to say, the opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nIf there is a downside to Gigantomania, it is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-4','','','2010-11-05 16:39:17','2010-11-05 20:39:17','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(237,1,'2010-11-05 16:43:15','2010-11-05 20:43:15','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\n\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\n\nIf there is a downside to Gigantomania, it is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \n\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n</pre>\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;e4&gt;\n</pre>\nMy additional interaction went like this:\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\n\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\n</pre>\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from\n\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-6','','','2010-11-05 16:43:15','2010-11-05 20:43:15','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(238,1,'2010-11-05 16:44:25','2010-11-05 20:44:25','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\n\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nThe downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-7','','','2010-11-05 16:44:25','2010-11-05 20:44:25','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(239,1,'2010-11-07 11:16:00','2010-11-07 15:16:00','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\n\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\n\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\n\nThe downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \n\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\n</pre>\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;e4&gt;\n</pre>\nMy additional interaction went like this:\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\n\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\n\n&gt;&gt; 1\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\n</pre>\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from enjoying the game\'s climax.\n\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\n\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-autosave','','','2010-11-07 11:16:00','2010-11-07 15:16:00','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(240,1,'2010-11-05 16:46:00','2010-11-05 20:46:00','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\n\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nThe downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from enjoying the game\'s climax.\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-8','','','2010-11-05 16:46:00','2010-11-05 20:46:00','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(241,1,'2010-10-29 22:16:13','2010-10-30 02:16:13','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/asgard.jpg\" alt=\"The 12:54 to Asgard\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" />Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s <em><a title=\"The 12:45 to Asgard\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yj7gf24jvpxq0kl\">The 12:54 to Asgard</a></em>. Inspired by the themes of <a title=\"Speed-IF U\" href=\"http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_U\">Speed-IF U</a>, this work of IF offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this.\r\n\r\nEnter the life of a disgruntled maintenance man who has been called into work during the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Within a few turns after entering your workplace--a TV studio shut down for the night--it\'s clear that your goal is to fix the leak in the roof. A meter in the status bar, which starts at \"foul\", measures your mood as you progress through your main task and a few other chores you might discover along the way.\r\n\r\nThe depiction of Studio A\'s innards, of its catwalks and closets, drew me into the game\'s world. I truly felt like I was in the bowels of a television studio that had been hastily abandoned for the night. The placement of a bucket and sponge, the mangling of the maintenance closet, and the carelessly taped piece of cardboard to the roof clearly suggested someone had attempted to remedy the leak, but clearly I was left to clean up everyone\'s mess. Couple this with the mood meter and the protagonist\'s grouchy voice, and you have an excellent beginning to a game.\r\n<blockquote>\"Cripes, that one was close. Did a cow just explode? \" <strong>--The 12:54 to Asgard</strong></blockquote>\r\nUnfortunately, what happens <em>after</em> you fix the leak is what sends the game into its literal death spiral. Task complete (?), you plummet into the second part of the game, a journey into the afterlife where neither your environment nor goals have the cohesiveness they did in life. Perhaps that\'s the point, but unfortunately, the actual technical implementation of this portion of the game is so shoddy that the afterlife seems more like an afterthought.\r\n\r\nAfter a quick ride with Death across the River Styx, the first technical problem manifests as a young girl:\r\n<pre>&gt;say hello\r\n(to Polly)\r\n\"Hello, Polly,\" you say.\r\n\r\nThe girl runs over to you and shakes your hand. \"Nice to meet you,\" she says. \"I\'m Polly.\"\r\n</pre>\r\nNote that I didn\'t know the name of the little girl at the time, but the game seems to assume that I do. Yet I don\'t think I\'m supposed to know her name, otherwise why would she run over to me and introduce herself?\r\n\r\nPolly also remains mostly unresponsive to inquiries, not an uncommon occurrence in IF, but demoralizing nonetheless. After following her to a series of gem-encrusted turnstiles, I was met with my second technical challenge: How to enter the devices after receiving the appropriate token. Various commands failed to work, including:\r\n<pre>&gt;go through turnstile\r\n(the turnstiles)\r\nThey\'re not something you can enter.\r\n</pre>\r\nAt last I opted to \"follow polly\", which brought me to another devastating bug:\r\n<pre>Inside the farmhouse\r\nEvening supper is being prepared in the kitchen. A fire glows in the front fireplace. \r\n\r\nPolly is here. \r\n\r\n&gt;x fireplace\r\nYou can\'t see any such thing.\r\n</pre>\r\nPolly also remained unresponsive and after awhile, I exited the farmhouse. Thinking I could reenter, I tried to do so, only to find I had been locked out. Unable to get back in the place I had just left, I vigorously knocked on the door. Someone who was not Polly shooed me away. It was here that I theorized I had accidentally stumbled into a room I was never meant to enter: It was simply a \"holding\" room within the game.\r\n\r\nExploring the area around the cottage left me directionless in terms of where to go and what to do. At some point, I found myself back at the turnstiles. I repeated the \"follow Polly\" command and the cycle restarted. Sadly, I was so far-off track from the game\'s path that even consulting the walkthrough didn\'t give me any guidance. I gave up on my adventure, never getting a chance to catch the train the title promised. And I was left with many questions about my initial experience: For example, if the focus of the game is on the afterlife, then why did I spend so much time trying to fix a leak in my actual life? And what was the point of the mood meter, which abruptly disappears when I die? In other words, why not simply start me off in the afterlife?\r\n\r\nBased on the <a title=\"J. Robinson Wheeler\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJ.+Robinson+Wheeler\">author\'s credentials</a>, there\'s an excellent chance that finishing the game would have answered my questions, but the buggy technical implementations and lack of guidance or goals in the afterlife prevented me from getting that far. A shame, really. A little more polish and attention to the afterlife would have made my journey in <em>The 12:54 to Asgard</em> a much more fulfilling and a lot less of a train wreck.','IFComp 2010 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard','Rarely does a game sweep me off my feet, carry me giggling and squealing over verdant meadows, only to dump me off a cliff into a pool of sharks. That\'s how I felt after attempting to play J. Robinson Wheeler\'s \"The 12:54 to Asgard\", a game that offers a great deal of promise in its first part, only to falter and eventually collapse in its second part. Indeed, the two parts of the game are so far off in terms of polish and implementation that I wonder if two different authors had their hands in this...\r\n\r\nThus begins my review of this IFComp entry. Standard spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, then view at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','190-revision-19','','','2010-10-29 22:16:13','2010-10-30 02:16:13','',190,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/10/190-revision-19/',0,'revision','',0),(242,1,'2010-11-07 11:14:33','2010-11-07 15:14:33','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\n\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nThe downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from enjoying the game\'s climax.\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate solid, historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-9','','','2010-11-07 11:14:33','2010-11-07 15:14:33','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(243,1,'2010-11-07 11:16:23','2010-11-07 15:16:23','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order to not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\n\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nThe downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from enjoying the game\'s climax.\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-10','','','2010-11-07 11:16:23','2010-11-07 15:16:23','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(244,1,'2010-11-07 11:17:18','2010-11-07 15:17:18','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Gigantomania\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg\" alt=\"Gigantomania\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title=\"Gigantomania\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol\">Gigantomania</a>, a piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nI am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game\'s portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game\'s setting is not just the product of the author\'s imagination.\r\n\r\nThe opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor\'s most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order to not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?\r\n<blockquote>\"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers.\" <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>\r\nUncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn\'t work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.\r\n\r\nAs for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.\r\n\r\nThe downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:\r\n<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn\'t really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn\'t ice for nine months of the year. \r\n\r\n1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n\r\n2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nI wasn\'t certain what to make of the \"Nbd7\" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:\r\n<pre>&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;e4&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nMy additional interaction went like this:\r\n<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nxe4&gt;\r\n\r\n1) &lt;Qc7&gt;\r\n\r\n&gt;&gt; 1\r\n&lt;Nc3&gt;\r\n</pre>\r\nWhat to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from enjoying the game\'s climax.\r\n\r\nI learned later from <a href=\"http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/\">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game\'s dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It\'s a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.','IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania','I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing \"Gigantomania\", a historical piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it\'s a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.\r\n\r\nAnother of my IFComp 2010 reviews. Spoilage warning: If you haven\'t played the game, read at your own risk.','inherit','open','open','','231-revision-11','','','2010-11-07 11:17:18','2010-11-07 15:17:18','',231,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/231-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(246,1,'2010-11-19 16:22:17','2010-11-19 20:22:17','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"People\'s Glorious whatever...\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/revolution.jpg\" alt=\"People\'s Glorious Long Text Adventure Title I Can\'t Remember\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished <em>Gigantomania</em>, this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s <em><a title=\"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" href=\"http://http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8le4zj44wh217o0o\">The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game</a></em>. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike <em>Gigantomania</em>, which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, <em>Revolution</em> (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.\n\nAs the ridiculously long title implies, silliness is the real name of the game. Appropriately attired in a furry papakha and your \"What Would Trotsky Do?\" bracelet, you explore the streets of Freedonia, attempting to win the hearts and minds of its citizens. At your disposal are your to-do list (when you find it), a couple of comrades (with names such as Jetski), and a few gadgets, including the Marxist Ventriloquator Mk II, which, when pointed at someone, forces the victim to spout a \"glorious Marxist quote\" (though it often sounds like something Yahkov Smirnoff might say). All in all, it\'s up to you to bring everything together so you can throw one Hell of a Communist party.\n\nAt its core, \"Revolution\" is traditional IF: Explore the map, solve the puzzles, and win the game. The map divides the city into four quadrants, each easily remembered and navigable. The puzzles are fun, if not particularly challenging, and several left me with smile (in particular, the solution for getting the vodka still makes me chuckle). Should you get stuck on a puzzle, you can either consult the hints or take advantage of an in-game gadget designed specifically so you can \"cheat\" yourself out of solving one puzzle. And depending on how you go about your quest, you may find yourself at more than one ending.\n\nAlas, the ending I received suggested I could have done something more, that somewhere out there was a \"better\" ending. Upon researching other player experiences, I discovered that I had, indeed, botched my \"happily ever after\" by resorting to capitalism. To be fair, the game hinted that purchasing something with the almighty dollar might lead to some severe consequences, but in my defense, I also learned that at that point, I simply had no choice. There is one object in the game that if accidentally discarded, forces you to resort to capitalism. And I had used that item to solve another puzzle in the game. This represents a major fault in the game\'s implementation and breaks a general rule-of-thumb in good IF: Unless the player is heavily warned in advance, discarding or using an item should not break a major win-condition. At the very least, alternatives must be presented so the game can still be satisfactorily won.\n\nAside from this issue, <em>Revolution</em> offers your average capitalist like me a solid game of good fun and laughs.','IFComp2010 Review: The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game','','inherit','open','open','','245-revision','','','2010-11-19 16:22:17','2010-11-19 20:22:17','',245,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/245-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(247,1,'2010-11-19 16:23:08','2010-11-19 20:23:08','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"People\'s Glorious whatever...\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/revolution.jpg\" alt=\"People\'s Glorious Long Text Adventure Title I Can\'t Remember\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished <em>Gigantomania</em>, this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s <em><a title=\"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" href=\"http://http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8le4zj44wh217o0o\">The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game</a></em>. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike <em>Gigantomania</em>, which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, <em>Revolution</em> (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.\r\n\r\nAs the ridiculously long title implies, silliness is the real name of the game. Appropriately attired in a furry papakha and your \"What Would Trotsky Do?\" bracelet, you explore the streets of Freedonia, attempting to win the hearts and minds of its citizens. At your disposal are your to-do list (when you find it), a couple of comrades (with names such as Jetski), and a few gadgets, including the Marxist Ventriloquator Mk II, which, when pointed at someone, forces the victim to spout a \"glorious Marxist quote\" (though it often sounds like something Yahkov Smirnoff might say). All in all, it\'s up to you to bring everything together so you can throw one Hell of a Communist party.\r\n\r\nAt its core, \"Revolution\" is traditional IF: Explore the map, solve the puzzles, and win the game. The map divides the city into four quadrants, each easily remembered and navigable. The puzzles are fun, if not particularly challenging, and several left me with smile (in particular, the solution for getting the vodka still makes me chuckle). Should you get stuck on a puzzle, you can either consult the hints or take advantage of an in-game gadget designed specifically so you can \"cheat\" yourself out of solving one puzzle. And depending on how you go about your quest, you may find yourself at more than one ending.\r\n\r\nAlas, the ending I received suggested I could have done something more, that somewhere out there was a \"better\" ending. Upon researching other player experiences, I discovered that I had, indeed, botched my \"happily ever after\" by resorting to capitalism. To be fair, the game hinted that purchasing something with the almighty dollar might lead to some severe consequences, but in my defense, I also learned that at that point, I simply had no choice. There is one object in the game that if accidentally discarded, forces you to resort to capitalism. And I had used that item to solve another puzzle in the game. This represents a major fault in the game\'s implementation and breaks a general rule-of-thumb in good IF: Unless the player is heavily warned in advance, discarding or using an item should not break a major win-condition. At the very least, alternatives must be presented so the game can still be satisfactorily won.\r\n\r\nAside from this issue, <em>Revolution</em> offers your average capitalist like me a solid game of good fun and laughs.','IFComp2010 Review: The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game','At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished \"Gigantomania\", this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s \"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" Game. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike \"Gigantomania\", which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, \"Revolution\" (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.  Continue reading for the rest of my review. Warning: Spoilage ahead...','inherit','open','open','','245-revision-2','','','2010-11-19 16:23:08','2010-11-19 20:23:08','',245,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/245-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(248,1,'2010-11-19 16:23:12','2010-11-19 20:23:12','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"People\'s Glorious whatever...\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/revolution.jpg\" alt=\"People\'s Glorious Long Text Adventure Title I Can\'t Remember\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished <em>Gigantomania</em>, this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s <em><a title=\"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" href=\"http://http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8le4zj44wh217o0o\">The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game</a></em>. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike <em>Gigantomania</em>, which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, <em>Revolution</em> (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.\r\n\r\nAs the ridiculously long title implies, silliness is the real name of the game. Appropriately attired in a furry papakha and your \"What Would Trotsky Do?\" bracelet, you explore the streets of Freedonia, attempting to win the hearts and minds of its citizens. At your disposal are your to-do list (when you find it), a couple of comrades (with names such as Jetski), and a few gadgets, including the Marxist Ventriloquator Mk II, which, when pointed at someone, forces the victim to spout a \"glorious Marxist quote\" (though it often sounds like something Yahkov Smirnoff might say). All in all, it\'s up to you to bring everything together so you can throw one Hell of a Communist party.\r\n\r\nAt its core, \"Revolution\" is traditional IF: Explore the map, solve the puzzles, and win the game. The map divides the city into four quadrants, each easily remembered and navigable. The puzzles are fun, if not particularly challenging, and several left me with smile (in particular, the solution for getting the vodka still makes me chuckle). Should you get stuck on a puzzle, you can either consult the hints or take advantage of an in-game gadget designed specifically so you can \"cheat\" yourself out of solving one puzzle. And depending on how you go about your quest, you may find yourself at more than one ending.\r\n\r\nAlas, the ending I received suggested I could have done something more, that somewhere out there was a \"better\" ending. Upon researching other player experiences, I discovered that I had, indeed, botched my \"happily ever after\" by resorting to capitalism. To be fair, the game hinted that purchasing something with the almighty dollar might lead to some severe consequences, but in my defense, I also learned that at that point, I simply had no choice. There is one object in the game that if accidentally discarded, forces you to resort to capitalism. And I had used that item to solve another puzzle in the game. This represents a major fault in the game\'s implementation and breaks a general rule-of-thumb in good IF: Unless the player is heavily warned in advance, discarding or using an item should not break a major win-condition. At the very least, alternatives must be presented so the game can still be satisfactorily won.\r\n\r\nAside from this issue, <em>Revolution</em> offers your average capitalist like me a solid game of good fun and laughs.','IFComp2010 Review: The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game','At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished \"Gigantomania\", this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s \"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" Game. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike \"Gigantomania\", which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, \"Revolution\" (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.  Continue reading for the rest of my review. Warning: Spoilage ahead...','inherit','open','open','','245-revision-3','','','2010-11-19 16:23:12','2010-11-19 20:23:12','',245,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/245-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(249,1,'2010-11-19 16:24:37','2010-11-19 20:24:37','<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"People\'s Glorious whatever...\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/revolution.jpg\" alt=\"People\'s Glorious Long Text Adventure Title I Can\'t Remember\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" />At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished <em>Gigantomania</em>, this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s <em><a title=\"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" href=\"http://http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8le4zj44wh217o0o\">The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game</a></em>. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike <em>Gigantomania</em>, which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, <em>Revolution</em> (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.\n\nAs the ridiculously long title implies, silliness is the real name of the game. Appropriately attired in a furry papakha and your \"What Would Trotsky Do?\" bracelet, you explore the streets of Freedonia, attempting to win the hearts and minds of its citizens. At your disposal are your to-do list (when you find it), a couple of comrades (with names such as Jetski), and a few gadgets, including the Marxist Ventriloquator Mk II, which, when pointed at someone, forces the victim to spout a \"glorious Marxist quote\" (though it often sounds like something Yahkov Smirnoff might say). All in all, it\'s up to you to bring everything together so you can throw one Hell of a Communist party.\n\nAt its core, \"Revolution\" is traditional IF: Explore the map, solve the puzzles, and win the game. The map divides the city into four quadrants, each easily remembered and navigable. The puzzles are fun, if not particularly challenging, and several left me with smile (in particular, the solution for getting the vodka still makes me chuckle). Should you get stuck on a puzzle, you can either consult the hints or take advantage of an in-game gadget designed specifically so you can \"cheat\" yourself out of solving one puzzle. And depending on how you go about your quest, you may find yourself at more than one ending.\n\nAlas, the ending I received suggested I could have done something more, that somewhere out there was a \"better\" ending. Upon researching other player experiences, I discovered that I had, indeed, botched my \"happily ever after\" by resorting to capitalism. To be fair, the game hinted that purchasing something with the almighty dollar might lead to some severe consequences, but in my defense, I also learned that at that point, I simply had no choice. There is one object in the game that if accidentally discarded, forces you to resort to capitalism. And I had used that item to solve another puzzle in the game. This represents a major fault in the game\'s implementation and breaks a general rule-of-thumb in good IF: Unless the player is heavily warned in advance, discarding or using an item should not break a major win-condition. At the very least, alternatives must be presented so the game can still be satisfactorily won.\n\nAside from this issue, <em>Revolution</em> offers your average capitalist like me a solid game of good fun and laughs.','IFComp2010 Review: The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game','At first I thought that my randomly-generated list of games to play was hinting at something. Right after I finished \"Gigantomania\", this list--again, I stress that it was randomly generated--suggested that I play Taylor Vaughan\'s \"The People\'s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure\" Game. Here was yet another game centered around communism, albeit the similarities ended there. Unlike \"Gigantomania\", which presents a sobering account Stalinist Russia, \"Revolution\" (as I will simply call it lest I waste too much time typing out the title) presents the light-hearted escapades of Karl, a Marxist-wannabe who wishes to turn a capitalist town of Freedonia into a communistic utopia.  Continue reading for the rest of my review. Warning: Spoilage ahead...','inherit','open','open','','245-autosave','','','2010-11-19 16:24:37','2010-11-19 20:24:37','',245,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/11/245-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(251,1,'2011-01-29 16:54:40','2011-01-29 20:54:40','<em>Author’s note: <a title=\"The Portal: Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/the-warbler%E2%80%99s-nest-by-jason-mcintosh/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net/\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.</em>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-261\" title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\" alt=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" /></a>\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.</em>\r\n\r\nThe protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.\r\n\r\nWhat separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.\r\n\r\nThe game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.\r\n\r\nIf you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','publish','open','open','','if-review-the-warblers-nest-by-jason-mcintosh','','\nhttp://sffportal.net/2011/01/the-warbler%E2%80%99s-nest-by-jason-mcintosh/','2011-01-29 17:03:13','2011-01-29 21:03:13','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/?p=251',0,'post','',0),(252,1,'2011-01-25 18:38:23','2011-01-25 22:38:23','','Auto Draft','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision','','','2011-01-25 18:38:23','2011-01-25 22:38:23','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(253,1,'2011-01-25 18:38:47','2011-01-25 22:38:47','\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->\r\n\r\nThe protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.\r\n\r\nWhat separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.\r\n\r\nThe game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.\r\n\r\nIf you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.','','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision-2','','','2011-01-25 18:38:47','2011-01-25 22:38:47','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(254,1,'2011-01-25 19:24:16','2011-01-25 23:24:16','<em>Author\'s note: <a title=\"The Portal: A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/a-brief-introduction-to-short-form-interactive-fiction/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.\r\n</em>\r\n\r\nAlthough part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). Note that I say a ‘computer’ game rather than a ‘video’ game, for the most common form of IF considers the written word, not graphics, its medium. Nevertheless, expanded definitions of IF have included games that are graphical in nature, such as the <a title=\"King\'s Quest series\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest\">King’s Quest series</a>, <a title=\"Myst\" href=\"http://www.mystworlds.com/us/\">Myst</a>, <a title=\"The Longest Journey\" href=\"http://www.longestjourney.com/\">The Longest Journey</a>, and the more recent <a title=\"Heavy Rain\" href=\"http://www.heavyrainps3.com/\">Heavy Rain</a>. But herein we will mostly review traditional ‘text adventures’, games composed and played completely with text.\r\n\r\nThe question remains: What, exactly, constitutes IF? The answer is, and always has been, difficult to pin down, and it may best to describe what IF does rather than what it is. Central to IF is immersing players into stories (the ‘fiction’) in which they participate (the ‘interaction’). Indeed, almost all games involve a story world with which a player interacts, even in a game like <a title=\"Super Mario Bros.\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros\">Super Mario Bros</a>.  However, in many games, the story is just pretense, a foundation on which other, more important components are laid. For example, the story behind Super Mario Brothers is ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’, yet it’s not the hero’s journey that sells the game; it’s the mechanics of the game itself, the hand-eye coordination required to get through the story, that are important to the player. Contrast this to ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’ as it is told in ‘<a title=\"IMDB - Star Wars: Episode IV\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/\">Star Wars: Episode IV</a>‘: It is the hero’s journey itself that is important to the viewer. The most notable IF, like much of cinema and literature, does the same as ‘Star Wars’ except in IF, the audience is actively participating in the hero’s journey, not simply watching the events unfold.\r\n\r\nIt’s this active immersion that is perhaps the most important way in which IF has advanced traditional literature. Rather than passively absorbing a story, an IF player interacts with the narrative, and, depending on how a game is authored, this interaction can have astounding consequences. A story may have multiple endings, it may be experienced from different perspectives, or it may tell an entirely different tale when played a second time. Since players control the actions of the game’s protagonist, they may feel more attached to narrative, more emotionally involved. The key to IF, then, is not only the immersion of a game player into a game story, but also making the story central to the game player’s experience.\r\n\r\nThat isn’t to say that IF originally manifested as a vehicle for thought-provoking literature. Classic IF, such as <a title=\"IFDB: Adventure\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv\">Adventure</a> or the original <a title=\"IFDB: Zork\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4gxk83ja4twckm6j\">Zork</a>,  consisted mainly of players romping through Tolkein-esque dungeons,  slaying monsters, solving riddles, and gathering treasure. Bit by bit, however, IF left its roots and ventured into serious storytelling, starting with games produced by the commercial software company Infocom. Among these are <a title=\"IFDB: A Mind Forever Voyaging\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa\">A Mind Forever Voyaging</a>, a science fiction piece that critiques the right-wing and populist ideals of the mid-eighties (ideals, some may note, that still crowd the political landscape of the twenty-first century). A year later, Infocom produced  <a title=\"IFDB: Trinity\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j18kjz80hxjtyayw\">Trinity</a>. Riddled with metaphor and symbolism, the game entices the player with an in-depth exploration of the darker aspects of the atomic age.\r\n\r\nAfter the demise of commercial IF, the tradition of telling deep and thoughtful stories continued with non-commercial productions. Graham Nelson’s <a title=\"IFDB: Jigsaw\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm\">Jigsaw</a>, a time traveling adventure that takes place during historic moments of the twentieth century, questions what it means to ‘fix’ history. Mike Gentry’s <a title=\"IFDB: Anchorhead\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7\">Anchorhead</a>, a masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror, places the player in role of a dutiful wife who has reluctantly moved with her husband to a quaint, New England town. Finally, Star Foster’s and Daniel Ravipinto’s <a title=\"IFDB: Slouching Towards Bedlam\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78\">Slouching Towards Bedlam</a> is noted for incoporating meta-game information (such as saving a game, restoring a game, or undoing an action) into a steampunk adventure that examines the oral word.\r\n\r\n<strong>Playing IF</strong>\r\n\r\nSo how is this form of literature read or, rather, played? In general, a game starts with a written introduction, and like any good piece of fiction, these first couple of paragraphs are often meant to hook the player into the story. The game then describes a room or situation, followed by the simple question (either asked directly or in the form of a command prompt): “What now?”\r\n\r\nIt is here the art of IF heads more toward games than that of traditional story-telling, for the player must now enter <a title=\"IF Command Postcard\" href=\"http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/\">one of a limited set of commands</a>. Typically, a command may indicate the player wishes to move to another area within a game, examine some object in more detail, or perhaps take an object into his possession. Once a command is entered, the game provides an appropriate response, and the story continues until the player is prompted for another command. Again, they key here is that the player is interacting<em> </em>with the fiction, and by doing so, unfolding a story piece by piece.\r\n\r\n<strong>Short-Form IF</strong>\r\n\r\nDefining what constitutes a ‘short story’ can be problematic, though editors and authors can generally rely on defining word-counts to establish an appropriate baseline. In general, a piece of fiction within <a title=\"Cliff Notes\" href=\"http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/id-305403,articleId-7941.html\">1,000 to 20,000 words</a> is considered a short story.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, word counts in IF are relatively meaningless, especially since the process of defining what is meant by ‘word count’ in IF is nebulous at best. When Inform 7, an IF-authoring tool, explains that it has generated a story of 20,000 words, it refers not only to the prose presented the player, but also to the game’s code—a glorious amount of text that is generally never experienced by anyone but the author. If we are to ignore code in the word count, which is often suggested, then perhaps we can only count the words encountered by the player. Even this is problematic, for a majority of this prose may consist of standard responses, not author-generated content; or, perhaps, the author has written only a few lines of text, but through the trickery of randomness and some clever use of code, the game erupts with an infinite supply of unique prose.\r\n\r\nSo rather than dealing with stories in terms of word length, in IF we instead fall back to another measure of length, that of time, specifically in how long it may take an average player to work through a game. Classic IF tends to take many hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to play from start to finish. Indeed, the commercial heyday of IF necessitated such lengthy games—after all, buyers wanted their money’s worth. But with the decline of commercial games and the rise of games brewed by hobbyists came the decline of spending long hours in front of the screen. Indeed, the annual <a title=\"IFComp\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, which inspires many writers to produce IF, encourages authors to limit their games to a two-hour experience. So we will consider a short piece of IF to be one that an average player can complete within an hour or so. This is certainly equivalent to enjoying a piece of short fiction, and also sits comfortably with <a title=\"The Philosophy of Composition\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition\">Edgar Allen Poe’s philosophy</a> that the best literature can be read in a single sitting.','A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction','\"Although part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). \" Herein I give a summary of short-form Interactive Fiction. This is an article originally published for the online magazine, \"The Portal\".','publish','open','open','','a-brief-introduction-to-short-form-interactive-fiction','','','2011-01-25 19:24:16','2011-01-25 23:24:16','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/?p=254',0,'post','',0),(255,1,'2011-01-25 18:40:17','2011-01-25 22:40:17','','Auto Draft','','inherit','open','open','','254-revision','','','2011-01-25 18:40:17','2011-01-25 22:40:17','',254,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/254-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(257,1,'2011-01-25 18:43:55','2011-01-25 22:43:55','<em>Author\'s note: This article originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.\n</em>\n\nAlthough part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). Note that I say a ‘computer’ game rather than a ‘video’ game, for the most common form of IF considers the written word, not graphics, its medium. Nevertheless, expanded definitions of IF have included games that are graphical in nature, such as the <a title=\"King\'s Quest series\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest\">King’s Quest series</a>, <a title=\"Myst\" href=\"http://www.mystworlds.com/us/\">Myst</a>, <a title=\"The Longest Journey\" href=\"http://www.longestjourney.com/\">The Longest Journey</a>, and the more recent <a title=\"Heavy Rain\" href=\"http://www.heavyrainps3.com/\">Heavy Rain</a>. But herein we will mostly review traditional ‘text adventures’, games composed and played completely with text.\n\nThe question remains: What, exactly, constitutes IF? The answer is, and always has been, difficult to pin down, and it may best to describe what IF does rather than what it is. Central to IF is immersing players into stories (the ‘fiction’) in which they participate (the ‘interaction’). Indeed, almost all games involve a story world with which a player interacts, even in a game like the <a title=\"Super Mario Bros.\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros\">Super Mario Bros</a>.  However, in many games, the story is just pretense, a foundation on which other, more important components are laid. For example, the story behind Super Mario Brothers is ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’, yet it’s not the hero’s journey that sells the game; it’s the mechanics of the game itself, the hand-eye coordination required to get through the story, that are important to the player. Contrast this to ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’ as it is told in ‘<a title=\"IMDB - Star Wars: Episode IV\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/\">Star Wars: Episode IV</a>‘: It is the hero’s journey itself that is important to the viewer. The most notable IF, like much of cinema and literature, does the same as ‘Star Wars’ except in IF, the audience is actively participating in the hero’s journey, not simply watching the events unfold.\n\nIt’s this active immersion that is perhaps the most important way in which IF has advanced traditional literature. Rather than passively absorbing a story, an IF player interacts with the narrative, and, depending on how a game is authored, this interaction can have astounding consequences. A story may have multiple endings, it may be experienced from different perspectives, or it may tell an entirely different tale when played a second time. Since players control the actions of the game’s protagonist, they may feel more attached to narrative, more emotionally involved. The key to IF, then, is not only the immersion of a game player into a game story, but also making the story central to the game player’s experience.\n\nThat isn’t to say that IF originally manifested as a vehicle for thought-provoking literature. Classic IF, such as <a title=\"IFDB: Adventure\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv\">Adventure</a> or the original <a title=\"IFDB: Zork\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4gxk83ja4twckm6j\">Zork</a>,  consisted mainly of players romping through Tolkein-esque dungeons,  slaying monsters, solving riddles, and gathering treasure. Bit by bit, however, IF left its roots and ventured into serious storytelling, starting with games produced by the commercial software company Infocom. Among these are <a title=\"IFDB: A Mind Forever Voyaging\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa\">A Mind Forever Voyaging</a>, a science fiction piece that critiques the right-wing and populist ideals of the mid-eighties (ideals, some may note, still crowd the political landscape of the twenty-first century). A year later, Infocom produced  <a title=\"IFDB: Trinity\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j18kjz80hxjtyayw\">Trinity</a>. Riddled with metaphor and symbolism, the game entices the player with an in-depth exploration of the darker aspects of the atomic age.\n\nAfter the demise of commercial IF, the tradition of telling deep and thoughtful stories continued with non-commercial productions. Graham Nelson’s <a title=\"IFDB: Jigsaw\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm\">Jigsaw</a>, a time traveling adventure that takes place during historic moments of the twentieth century, questions what it means to ‘fix’ history. Mike Gentry’s <a title=\"IFDB: Anchorhead\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7\">Anchorhead</a>, a masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror, places the player in role of a dutiful wife who has reluctantly moved with her husband to a quaint, New England town. Finally, Star Foster’s and Daniel Ravipinto’s <a title=\"IFDB: Slouching Towards Bedlam\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78\">Slouching Towards Bedlam</a> is noted for incoporating meta-game information (such as saving a game, restoring a game, or undoing an action) into a steampunk adventure that examines the oral word.\n\n<strong>Playing IF</strong>\n\nSo how is this form of literature read or, rather, played? In general, a game starts with a written introduction, and like any good piece of fiction, these first couple of paragraphs are often meant to hook the player into the story. The game then describes a room or situation, followed by the simple question (either asked directly or in the form of a command prompt): “What now?”\n\nIt is here the art of IF heads more toward games than that of traditional story-telling, for the player must now enter <a title=\"IF Command Postcard\" href=\"http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/\">one of a limited set of commands</a>. Typically, a command may indicate the player wishes to move to another area within a game, examine some object in more detail, or perhaps take an object into his possession. Once a command is entered, the game provides an appropriate response, and the story continues until the player is prompted for another command. Again, they key here is that the player is interacting<em> </em>with the fiction, and by doing so, unfolding a story piece by piece.\n\n<strong>Short-Form IF</strong>\n\nDefining what constitutes a ‘short story’ can be problematic, though editors and authors can generally rely on defining word-counts to establish an appropriate baseline. In general, a piece of fiction within <a title=\"Cliff Notes\" href=\"http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/id-305403,articleId-7941.html\">1,000 to 20,000 words</a> is considered a short story.\n\nUnfortunately, word counts in IF are relatively meaningless, especially since the process of defining what is meant by ‘word count’ in IF is nebulous at best. When Inform 7, an IF-authoring tool, explains that it has generated a story of 20,000 words, it refers not only to the prose presented the player, but also to the game’s code—a glorious amount of text that is generally never experienced by anyone but the author. If we are to ignore code in the word count, which is often suggested, then perhaps we can only count the words encountered by the player. Even this is problematic, for a majority of this prose may consist of standard responses, not author-generated content; or, perhaps, the author has written only a few lines of text, but through the trickery of randomness and some clever use of code, the game erupts with an infinite supply of unique prose.\n\nSo rather than dealing with stories in terms of word length, in IF we instead fall back to another measure of length, that of time, specifically in how long it may take an average player to work through a game. Classic IF tends to take many hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to play from start to finish. Indeed, the commercial heyday of IF necessitated such lengthy games—after all, buyers wanted their money’s worth. But with the decline of commercial games and the rise of games brewed by hobbyists came the decline of spending long hours in front of the screen. Indeed, the annual <a title=\"IFComp\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, which inspires many writers to produce IF, encourages authors to limit their games to a two-hour experience. So we will consider a short piece of IF to be one that an average player can complete within an hour or so. This is certainly equivalent to enjoying a piece of short fiction, and also sits comfortably with <a title=\"The Philosophy of Composition\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition\">Edgar Allen Poe’s philosophy</a> that the best literature can be read in a single sitting.','A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction','','inherit','open','open','','254-revision-3','','','2011-01-25 18:43:55','2011-01-25 22:43:55','',254,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/254-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(256,1,'2011-01-25 18:40:27','2011-01-25 22:40:27','						<p>Although part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a &#8216;game&#8217; rather than a &#8216;story&#8217;). Note that I say a &#8216;computer&#8217; game rather than a &#8216;video&#8217; game, for the most common form of IF considers the written word, not graphics, its medium. Nevertheless, expanded definitions of IF have included games that are graphical in nature, such as the <a title=\"King\'s Quest series\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest\">King&#8217;s Quest series</a>, <a title=\"Myst\" href=\"http://www.mystworlds.com/us/\">Myst</a>, <a title=\"The Longest Journey\" href=\"http://www.longestjourney.com/\">The Longest Journey</a>, and the more recent <a title=\"Heavy Rain\" href=\"http://www.heavyrainps3.com/\">Heavy Rain</a>. But herein we will mostly review traditional &#8216;text adventures&#8217;, games composed and played completely with text.<br />\r\n\r\n<span id=\"more-1090\"></span></p>\r\n<p>The question remains: What, exactly, constitutes IF? The answer is, and always has been, difficult to pin down, and it may best to describe what IF does rather than what it is. Central to IF is immersing players into stories (the &#8216;fiction&#8217;) in which they participate (the &#8216;interaction&#8217;). Indeed, almost all games involve a story world with which a player interacts, even in a game like the <a title=\"Super Mario Bros.\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros\">Super Mario Bros</a>.  However, in many games, the story is just pretense, a foundation on which other, more important components are laid. For example, the story behind Super Mario Brothers is &#8216;rescue the kidnapped princess&#8217;, yet it&#8217;s not the hero&#8217;s journey that sells the game; it&#8217;s the mechanics of the game itself, the hand-eye coordination required to get through the story, that are important to the player. Contrast this to &#8216;rescue the kidnapped princess&#8217; as it is told in &#8216;<a title=\"IMDB - Star Wars: Episode IV\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/\">Star Wars: Episode IV</a>&#8216;: It is the hero&#8217;s journey itself that is important to the viewer. The most notable IF, like much of cinema and literature, does the same as &#8216;Star Wars&#8217; except in IF, the audience is actively participating in the hero&#8217;s journey, not simply watching the events unfold.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It&#8217;s this active immersion that is perhaps the most important way in which IF has advanced traditional literature. Rather than passively absorbing a story, an IF player interacts with the narrative, and, depending on how a game is authored, this interaction can have astounding consequences. A story may have multiple endings, it may be experienced from different perspectives, or it may tell an entirely different tale when played a second time. Since players control the actions of the game&#8217;s protagonist, they may feel more attached to narrative, more emotionally involved. The key to IF, then, is not only the immersion of a game player into a game story, but also making the story central to the game player&#8217;s experience.</p>\r\n<p>That isn&#8217;t to say that IF originally manifested as a vehicle for thought-provoking literature. Classic IF, such as <a title=\"IFDB: Adventure\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv\">Adventure</a> or the original <a title=\"IFDB: Zork\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4gxk83ja4twckm6j\">Zork</a>,  consisted mainly of players romping through Tolkein-esque dungeons,  slaying monsters, solving riddles, and gathering treasure. Bit by bit, however, IF left its roots and ventured into serious storytelling, starting with games produced by the commercial software company Infocom. Among these are <a title=\"IFDB: A Mind Forever Voyaging\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa\">A Mind Forever Voyaging</a>, a science fiction piece that critiques the right-wing and populist ideals of the mid-eighties (ideals, some may note, still crowd the political landscape of the twenty-first century). A year later, Infocom produced  <a title=\"IFDB: Trinity\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j18kjz80hxjtyayw\">Trinity</a>. Riddled with metaphor and symbolism, the game entices the player with an in-depth exploration of the darker aspects of the atomic age.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>After the demise of commercial IF, the tradition of telling deep and thoughtful stories continued with non-commercial productions. Graham Nelson&#8217;s <a title=\"IFDB: Jigsaw\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm\">Jigsaw</a>, a time traveling adventure that takes place during historic moments of the twentieth century, questions what it means to &#8216;fix&#8217; history. Mike Gentry&#8217;s <a title=\"IFDB: Anchorhead\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7\">Anchorhead</a>, a masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror, places the player in role of a dutiful wife who has reluctantly moved with her husband to a quaint, New England town. Finally, Star Foster&#8217;s and Daniel Ravipinto&#8217;s <a title=\"IFDB: Slouching Towards Bedlam\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78\">Slouching Towards Bedlam</a> is noted for incoporating meta-game information (such as saving a game, restoring a game, or undoing an action) into a steampunk adventure that examines the oral word.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Playing IF</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p>So how is this form of literature read or, rather, played? In general, a game starts with a written introduction, and like any good piece of fiction, these first couple of paragraphs are often meant to hook the player into the story. The game then describes a room or situation, followed by the simple question (either asked directly or in the form of a command prompt): &#8220;What now?&#8221;</p>\r\n<p>It is here the art of IF heads more toward games than that of traditional story-telling, for the player must now enter <a title=\"IF Command Postcard\" href=\"http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/\">one of a limited set of commands</a>. Typically, a command may indicate the player wishes to move to another area within a game, examine some object in more detail, or perhaps take an object into his possession. Once a command is entered, the game provides an appropriate response, and the story continues until the player is prompted for another command. Again, they key here is that the player is interacting<em> </em>with the fiction, and by doing so, unfolding a story piece by piece.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Short-Form IF</strong></p>\r\n<p>Defining what constitutes a &#8216;short story&#8217; can be problematic, though editors and authors can generally rely on defining word-counts to establish an appropriate baseline. In general, a piece of fiction within <a title=\"Cliff Notes\" href=\"http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/id-305403,articleId-7941.html\">1,000 to 20,000 words</a> is considered a short story.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Unfortunately, word counts in IF are relatively meaningless, especially since the process of defining what is meant by &#8216;word count&#8217; in IF is nebulous at best. When Inform 7, an IF-authoring tool, explains that it has generated a story of 20,000 words, it refers not only to the prose presented the player, but also to the game&#8217;s code—a glorious amount of text that is generally never experienced by anyone but the author. If we are to ignore code in the word count, which is often suggested, then perhaps we can only count the words encountered by the player. Even this is problematic, for a majority of this prose may consist of standard responses, not author-generated content; or, perhaps, the author has written only a few lines of text, but through the trickery of randomness and some clever use of code, the game erupts with an infinite supply of unique prose.</p>\r\n<p>So rather than dealing with stories in terms of word length, in IF we instead fall back to another measure of length, that of time, specifically in how long it may take an average player to work through a game. Classic IF tends to take many hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to play from start to finish. Indeed, the commercial heyday of IF necessitated such lengthy games—after all, buyers wanted their money&#8217;s worth. But with the decline of commercial games and the rise of games brewed by hobbyists came the decline of spending long hours in front of the screen. Indeed, the annual <a title=\"IFComp\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, which inspires many writers to produce IF, encourages authors to limit their games to a two-hour experience. So we will consider a short piece of IF to be one that an average player can complete within an hour or so. This is certainly equivalent to enjoying a piece of short fiction, and also sits comfortably with <a title=\"The Philosophy of Composition\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition\">Edgar Allen Poe&#8217;s philosophy</a> that the best literature can be read in a single sitting.</p>\r\n','','','inherit','open','open','','254-revision-2','','','2011-01-25 18:40:27','2011-01-25 22:40:27','',254,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/254-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(258,1,'2011-01-25 18:44:53','2011-01-25 22:44:53','<em>Author\'s note: <a title=\"The Portal: A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/a-brief-introduction-to-short-form-interactive-fiction/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.\n</em>\n\nAlthough part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). Note that I say a ‘computer’ game rather than a ‘video’ game, for the most common form of IF considers the written word, not graphics, its medium. Nevertheless, expanded definitions of IF have included games that are graphical in nature, such as the <a title=\"King\'s Quest series\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest\">King’s Quest series</a>, <a title=\"Myst\" href=\"http://www.mystworlds.com/us/\">Myst</a>, <a title=\"The Longest Journey\" href=\"http://www.longestjourney.com/\">The Longest Journey</a>, and the more recent <a title=\"Heavy Rain\" href=\"http://www.heavyrainps3.com/\">Heavy Rain</a>. But herein we will mostly review traditional ‘text adventures’, games composed and played completely with text.\n\nThe question remains: What, exactly, constitutes IF? The answer is, and always has been, difficult to pin down, and it may best to describe what IF does rather than what it is. Central to IF is immersing players into stories (the ‘fiction’) in which they participate (the ‘interaction’). Indeed, almost all games involve a story world with which a player interacts, even in a game like the <a title=\"Super Mario Bros.\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros\">Super Mario Bros</a>.  However, in many games, the story is just pretense, a foundation on which other, more important components are laid. For example, the story behind Super Mario Brothers is ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’, yet it’s not the hero’s journey that sells the game; it’s the mechanics of the game itself, the hand-eye coordination required to get through the story, that are important to the player. Contrast this to ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’ as it is told in ‘<a title=\"IMDB - Star Wars: Episode IV\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/\">Star Wars: Episode IV</a>‘: It is the hero’s journey itself that is important to the viewer. The most notable IF, like much of cinema and literature, does the same as ‘Star Wars’ except in IF, the audience is actively participating in the hero’s journey, not simply watching the events unfold.\n\nIt’s this active immersion that is perhaps the most important way in which IF has advanced traditional literature. Rather than passively absorbing a story, an IF player interacts with the narrative, and, depending on how a game is authored, this interaction can have astounding consequences. A story may have multiple endings, it may be experienced from different perspectives, or it may tell an entirely different tale when played a second time. Since players control the actions of the game’s protagonist, they may feel more attached to narrative, more emotionally involved. The key to IF, then, is not only the immersion of a game player into a game story, but also making the story central to the game player’s experience.\n\nThat isn’t to say that IF originally manifested as a vehicle for thought-provoking literature. Classic IF, such as <a title=\"IFDB: Adventure\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv\">Adventure</a> or the original <a title=\"IFDB: Zork\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4gxk83ja4twckm6j\">Zork</a>,  consisted mainly of players romping through Tolkein-esque dungeons,  slaying monsters, solving riddles, and gathering treasure. Bit by bit, however, IF left its roots and ventured into serious storytelling, starting with games produced by the commercial software company Infocom. Among these are <a title=\"IFDB: A Mind Forever Voyaging\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa\">A Mind Forever Voyaging</a>, a science fiction piece that critiques the right-wing and populist ideals of the mid-eighties (ideals, some may note, still crowd the political landscape of the twenty-first century). A year later, Infocom produced  <a title=\"IFDB: Trinity\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j18kjz80hxjtyayw\">Trinity</a>. Riddled with metaphor and symbolism, the game entices the player with an in-depth exploration of the darker aspects of the atomic age.\n\nAfter the demise of commercial IF, the tradition of telling deep and thoughtful stories continued with non-commercial productions. Graham Nelson’s <a title=\"IFDB: Jigsaw\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm\">Jigsaw</a>, a time traveling adventure that takes place during historic moments of the twentieth century, questions what it means to ‘fix’ history. Mike Gentry’s <a title=\"IFDB: Anchorhead\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7\">Anchorhead</a>, a masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror, places the player in role of a dutiful wife who has reluctantly moved with her husband to a quaint, New England town. Finally, Star Foster’s and Daniel Ravipinto’s <a title=\"IFDB: Slouching Towards Bedlam\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78\">Slouching Towards Bedlam</a> is noted for incoporating meta-game information (such as saving a game, restoring a game, or undoing an action) into a steampunk adventure that examines the oral word.\n\n<strong>Playing IF</strong>\n\nSo how is this form of literature read or, rather, played? In general, a game starts with a written introduction, and like any good piece of fiction, these first couple of paragraphs are often meant to hook the player into the story. The game then describes a room or situation, followed by the simple question (either asked directly or in the form of a command prompt): “What now?”\n\nIt is here the art of IF heads more toward games than that of traditional story-telling, for the player must now enter <a title=\"IF Command Postcard\" href=\"http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/\">one of a limited set of commands</a>. Typically, a command may indicate the player wishes to move to another area within a game, examine some object in more detail, or perhaps take an object into his possession. Once a command is entered, the game provides an appropriate response, and the story continues until the player is prompted for another command. Again, they key here is that the player is interacting<em> </em>with the fiction, and by doing so, unfolding a story piece by piece.\n\n<strong>Short-Form IF</strong>\n\nDefining what constitutes a ‘short story’ can be problematic, though editors and authors can generally rely on defining word-counts to establish an appropriate baseline. In general, a piece of fiction within <a title=\"Cliff Notes\" href=\"http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/id-305403,articleId-7941.html\">1,000 to 20,000 words</a> is considered a short story.\n\nUnfortunately, word counts in IF are relatively meaningless, especially since the process of defining what is meant by ‘word count’ in IF is nebulous at best. When Inform 7, an IF-authoring tool, explains that it has generated a story of 20,000 words, it refers not only to the prose presented the player, but also to the game’s code—a glorious amount of text that is generally never experienced by anyone but the author. If we are to ignore code in the word count, which is often suggested, then perhaps we can only count the words encountered by the player. Even this is problematic, for a majority of this prose may consist of standard responses, not author-generated content; or, perhaps, the author has written only a few lines of text, but through the trickery of randomness and some clever use of code, the game erupts with an infinite supply of unique prose.\n\nSo rather than dealing with stories in terms of word length, in IF we instead fall back to another measure of length, that of time, specifically in how long it may take an average player to work through a game. Classic IF tends to take many hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to play from start to finish. Indeed, the commercial heyday of IF necessitated such lengthy games—after all, buyers wanted their money’s worth. But with the decline of commercial games and the rise of games brewed by hobbyists came the decline of spending long hours in front of the screen. Indeed, the annual <a title=\"IFComp\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, which inspires many writers to produce IF, encourages authors to limit their games to a two-hour experience. So we will consider a short piece of IF to be one that an average player can complete within an hour or so. This is certainly equivalent to enjoying a piece of short fiction, and also sits comfortably with <a title=\"The Philosophy of Composition\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition\">Edgar Allen Poe’s philosophy</a> that the best literature can be read in a single sitting.','A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction','','inherit','open','open','','254-revision-4','','','2011-01-25 18:44:53','2011-01-25 22:44:53','',254,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/254-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(260,1,'2011-01-25 18:39:15','2011-01-25 22:39:15','\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->\r\n\r\nThe protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.\r\n\r\nWhat separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.\r\n\r\nThe game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.\r\n\r\nIf you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision-3','','','2011-01-25 18:39:15','2011-01-25 22:39:15','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(261,1,'2011-01-25 19:10:43','2011-01-25 23:10:43','','The Warbler\'s Nest','','inherit','open','open','','warblers_nest','','','2011-01-25 19:10:43','2011-01-25 23:10:43','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(262,1,'2011-01-25 19:10:10','2011-01-25 23:10:10','\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.\r\n\r\n<!--more-->\r\n\r\nThe protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.\r\n\r\nWhat separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.\r\n\r\nThe game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.\r\n\r\nIf you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision-4','','','2011-01-25 19:10:10','2011-01-25 23:10:10','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(263,1,'2011-01-25 19:11:47','2011-01-25 23:11:47','<a href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-261\" title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\" alt=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" /></a>\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.\r\n\r\nThe protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.\r\n\r\nWhat separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.\r\n\r\nThe game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.\r\n\r\nIf you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision-5','','','2011-01-25 19:11:47','2011-01-25 23:11:47','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(264,1,'2011-01-25 19:14:28','2011-01-25 23:14:28','<em>Author\'s note: <a title=\"The Portal: A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/a-brief-introduction-to-short-form-interactive-fiction/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.\n</em>\n\nAlthough part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). Note that I say a ‘computer’ game rather than a ‘video’ game, for the most common form of IF considers the written word, not graphics, its medium. Nevertheless, expanded definitions of IF have included games that are graphical in nature, such as the <a title=\"King\'s Quest series\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest\">King’s Quest series</a>, <a title=\"Myst\" href=\"http://www.mystworlds.com/us/\">Myst</a>, <a title=\"The Longest Journey\" href=\"http://www.longestjourney.com/\">The Longest Journey</a>, and the more recent <a title=\"Heavy Rain\" href=\"http://www.heavyrainps3.com/\">Heavy Rain</a>. But herein we will mostly review traditional ‘text adventures’, games composed and played completely with text.\n\nThe question remains: What, exactly, constitutes IF? The answer is, and always has been, difficult to pin down, and it may best to describe what IF does rather than what it is. Central to IF is immersing players into stories (the ‘fiction’) in which they participate (the ‘interaction’). Indeed, almost all games involve a story world with which a player interacts, even in a game like the <a title=\"Super Mario Bros.\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros\">Super Mario Bros</a>.  However, in many games, the story is just pretense, a foundation on which other, more important components are laid. For example, the story behind Super Mario Brothers is ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’, yet it’s not the hero’s journey that sells the game; it’s the mechanics of the game itself, the hand-eye coordination required to get through the story, that are important to the player. Contrast this to ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’ as it is told in ‘<a title=\"IMDB - Star Wars: Episode IV\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/\">Star Wars: Episode IV</a>‘: It is the hero’s journey itself that is important to the viewer. The most notable IF, like much of cinema and literature, does the same as ‘Star Wars’ except in IF, the audience is actively participating in the hero’s journey, not simply watching the events unfold.\n\nIt’s this active immersion that is perhaps the most important way in which IF has advanced traditional literature. Rather than passively absorbing a story, an IF player interacts with the narrative, and, depending on how a game is authored, this interaction can have astounding consequences. A story may have multiple endings, it may be experienced from different perspectives, or it may tell an entirely different tale when played a second time. Since players control the actions of the game’s protagonist, they may feel more attached to narrative, more emotionally involved. The key to IF, then, is not only the immersion of a game player into a game story, but also making the story central to the game player’s experience.\n\nThat isn’t to say that IF originally manifested as a vehicle for thought-provoking literature. Classic IF, such as <a title=\"IFDB: Adventure\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv\">Adventure</a> or the original <a title=\"IFDB: Zork\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4gxk83ja4twckm6j\">Zork</a>,  consisted mainly of players romping through Tolkein-esque dungeons,  slaying monsters, solving riddles, and gathering treasure. Bit by bit, however, IF left its roots and ventured into serious storytelling, starting with games produced by the commercial software company Infocom. Among these are <a title=\"IFDB: A Mind Forever Voyaging\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa\">A Mind Forever Voyaging</a>, a science fiction piece that critiques the right-wing and populist ideals of the mid-eighties (ideals, some may note, still crowd the political landscape of the twenty-first century). A year later, Infocom produced  <a title=\"IFDB: Trinity\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j18kjz80hxjtyayw\">Trinity</a>. Riddled with metaphor and symbolism, the game entices the player with an in-depth exploration of the darker aspects of the atomic age.\n\nAfter the demise of commercial IF, the tradition of telling deep and thoughtful stories continued with non-commercial productions. Graham Nelson’s <a title=\"IFDB: Jigsaw\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm\">Jigsaw</a>, a time traveling adventure that takes place during historic moments of the twentieth century, questions what it means to ‘fix’ history. Mike Gentry’s <a title=\"IFDB: Anchorhead\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7\">Anchorhead</a>, a masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror, places the player in role of a dutiful wife who has reluctantly moved with her husband to a quaint, New England town. Finally, Star Foster’s and Daniel Ravipinto’s <a title=\"IFDB: Slouching Towards Bedlam\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78\">Slouching Towards Bedlam</a> is noted for incoporating meta-game information (such as saving a game, restoring a game, or undoing an action) into a steampunk adventure that examines the oral word.\n\n<strong>Playing IF</strong>\n\nSo how is this form of literature read or, rather, played? In general, a game starts with a written introduction, and like any good piece of fiction, these first couple of paragraphs are often meant to hook the player into the story. The game then describes a room or situation, followed by the simple question (either asked directly or in the form of a command prompt): “What now?”\n\nIt is here the art of IF heads more toward games than that of traditional story-telling, for the player must now enter <a title=\"IF Command Postcard\" href=\"http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/\">one of a limited set of commands</a>. Typically, a command may indicate the player wishes to move to another area within a game, examine some object in more detail, or perhaps take an object into his possession. Once a command is entered, the game provides an appropriate response, and the story continues until the player is prompted for another command. Again, they key here is that the player is interacting<em> </em>with the fiction, and by doing so, unfolding a story piece by piece.\n\n<strong>Short-Form IF</strong>\n\nDefining what constitutes a ‘short story’ can be problematic, though editors and authors can generally rely on defining word-counts to establish an appropriate baseline. In general, a piece of fiction within <a title=\"Cliff Notes\" href=\"http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/id-305403,articleId-7941.html\">1,000 to 20,000 words</a> is considered a short story.\n\nUnfortunately, word counts in IF are relatively meaningless, especially since the process of defining what is meant by ‘word count’ in IF is nebulous at best. When Inform 7, an IF-authoring tool, explains that it has generated a story of 20,000 words, it refers not only to the prose presented the player, but also to the game’s code—a glorious amount of text that is generally never experienced by anyone but the author. If we are to ignore code in the word count, which is often suggested, then perhaps we can only count the words encountered by the player. Even this is problematic, for a majority of this prose may consist of standard responses, not author-generated content; or, perhaps, the author has written only a few lines of text, but through the trickery of randomness and some clever use of code, the game erupts with an infinite supply of unique prose.\n\nSo rather than dealing with stories in terms of word length, in IF we instead fall back to another measure of length, that of time, specifically in how long it may take an average player to work through a game. Classic IF tends to take many hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to play from start to finish. Indeed, the commercial heyday of IF necessitated such lengthy games—after all, buyers wanted their money’s worth. But with the decline of commercial games and the rise of games brewed by hobbyists came the decline of spending long hours in front of the screen. Indeed, the annual <a title=\"IFComp\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, which inspires many writers to produce IF, encourages authors to limit their games to a two-hour experience. So we will consider a short piece of IF to be one that an average player can complete within an hour or so. This is certainly equivalent to enjoying a piece of short fiction, and also sits comfortably with <a title=\"The Philosophy of Composition\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition\">Edgar Allen Poe’s philosophy</a> that the best literature can be read in a single sitting.','A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction','\"Although part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). \" Herein I give a summary of short-form Interactive Fiction. This is an article originally published for the online magazine, \"The Portal\".','inherit','open','open','','254-revision-5','','','2011-01-25 19:14:28','2011-01-25 23:14:28','',254,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/254-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(266,1,'2011-01-25 19:23:08','2011-01-25 23:23:08','<em>Author\'s note: <a title=\"The Portal: A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/a-brief-introduction-to-short-form-interactive-fiction/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.\n</em>\n\nAlthough part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). Note that I say a ‘computer’ game rather than a ‘video’ game, for the most common form of IF considers the written word, not graphics, its medium. Nevertheless, expanded definitions of IF have included games that are graphical in nature, such as the <a title=\"King\'s Quest series\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest\">King’s Quest series</a>, <a title=\"Myst\" href=\"http://www.mystworlds.com/us/\">Myst</a>, <a title=\"The Longest Journey\" href=\"http://www.longestjourney.com/\">The Longest Journey</a>, and the more recent <a title=\"Heavy Rain\" href=\"http://www.heavyrainps3.com/\">Heavy Rain</a>. But herein we will mostly review traditional ‘text adventures’, games composed and played completely with text.\n\nThe question remains: What, exactly, constitutes IF? The answer is, and always has been, difficult to pin down, and it may best to describe what IF does rather than what it is. Central to IF is immersing players into stories (the ‘fiction’) in which they participate (the ‘interaction’). Indeed, almost all games involve a story world with which a player interacts, even in a game like <a title=\"Super Mario Bros.\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros\">Super Mario Bros</a>.  However, in many games, the story is just pretense, a foundation on which other, more important components are laid. For example, the story behind Super Mario Brothers is ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’, yet it’s not the hero’s journey that sells the game; it’s the mechanics of the game itself, the hand-eye coordination required to get through the story, that are important to the player. Contrast this to ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’ as it is told in ‘<a title=\"IMDB - Star Wars: Episode IV\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/\">Star Wars: Episode IV</a>‘: It is the hero’s journey itself that is important to the viewer. The most notable IF, like much of cinema and literature, does the same as ‘Star Wars’ except in IF, the audience is actively participating in the hero’s journey, not simply watching the events unfold.\n\nIt’s this active immersion that is perhaps the most important way in which IF has advanced traditional literature. Rather than passively absorbing a story, an IF player interacts with the narrative, and, depending on how a game is authored, this interaction can have astounding consequences. A story may have multiple endings, it may be experienced from different perspectives, or it may tell an entirely different tale when played a second time. Since players control the actions of the game’s protagonist, they may feel more attached to narrative, more emotionally involved. The key to IF, then, is not only the immersion of a game player into a game story, but also making the story central to the game player’s experience.\n\nThat isn’t to say that IF originally manifested as a vehicle for thought-provoking literature. Classic IF, such as <a title=\"IFDB: Adventure\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv\">Adventure</a> or the original <a title=\"IFDB: Zork\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4gxk83ja4twckm6j\">Zork</a>,  consisted mainly of players romping through Tolkein-esque dungeons,  slaying monsters, solving riddles, and gathering treasure. Bit by bit, however, IF left its roots and ventured into serious storytelling, starting with games produced by the commercial software company Infocom. Among these are <a title=\"IFDB: A Mind Forever Voyaging\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa\">A Mind Forever Voyaging</a>, a science fiction piece that critiques the right-wing and populist ideals of the mid-eighties (ideals, some may note, that still crowd the political landscape of the twenty-first century). A year later, Infocom produced  <a title=\"IFDB: Trinity\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j18kjz80hxjtyayw\">Trinity</a>. Riddled with metaphor and symbolism, the game entices the player with an in-depth exploration of the darker aspects of the atomic age.\n\nAfter the demise of commercial IF, the tradition of telling deep and thoughtful stories continued with non-commercial productions. Graham Nelson’s <a title=\"IFDB: Jigsaw\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm\">Jigsaw</a>, a time traveling adventure that takes place during historic moments of the twentieth century, questions what it means to ‘fix’ history. Mike Gentry’s <a title=\"IFDB: Anchorhead\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7\">Anchorhead</a>, a masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror, places the player in role of a dutiful wife who has reluctantly moved with her husband to a quaint, New England town. Finally, Star Foster’s and Daniel Ravipinto’s <a title=\"IFDB: Slouching Towards Bedlam\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78\">Slouching Towards Bedlam</a> is noted for incoporating meta-game information (such as saving a game, restoring a game, or undoing an action) into a steampunk adventure that examines the oral word.\n\n<strong>Playing IF</strong>\n\nSo how is this form of literature read or, rather, played? In general, a game starts with a written introduction, and like any good piece of fiction, these first couple of paragraphs are often meant to hook the player into the story. The game then describes a room or situation, followed by the simple question (either asked directly or in the form of a command prompt): “What now?”\n\nIt is here the art of IF heads more toward games than that of traditional story-telling, for the player must now enter <a title=\"IF Command Postcard\" href=\"http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/\">one of a limited set of commands</a>. Typically, a command may indicate the player wishes to move to another area within a game, examine some object in more detail, or perhaps take an object into his possession. Once a command is entered, the game provides an appropriate response, and the story continues until the player is prompted for another command. Again, they key here is that the player is interacting<em> </em>with the fiction, and by doing so, unfolding a story piece by piece.\n\n<strong>Short-Form IF</strong>\n\nDefining what constitutes a ‘short story’ can be problematic, though editors and authors can generally rely on defining word-counts to establish an appropriate baseline. In general, a piece of fiction within <a title=\"Cliff Notes\" href=\"http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/id-305403,articleId-7941.html\">1,000 to 20,000 words</a> is considered a short story.\n\nUnfortunately, word counts in IF are relatively meaningless, especially since the process of defining what is meant by ‘word count’ in IF is nebulous at best. When Inform 7, an IF-authoring tool, explains that it has generated a story of 20,000 words, it refers not only to the prose presented the player, but also to the game’s code—a glorious amount of text that is generally never experienced by anyone but the author. If we are to ignore code in the word count, which is often suggested, then perhaps we can only count the words encountered by the player. Even this is problematic, for a majority of this prose may consist of standard responses, not author-generated content; or, perhaps, the author has written only a few lines of text, but through the trickery of randomness and some clever use of code, the game erupts with an infinite supply of unique prose.\n\nSo rather than dealing with stories in terms of word length, in IF we instead fall back to another measure of length, that of time, specifically in how long it may take an average player to work through a game. Classic IF tends to take many hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to play from start to finish. Indeed, the commercial heyday of IF necessitated such lengthy games—after all, buyers wanted their money’s worth. But with the decline of commercial games and the rise of games brewed by hobbyists came the decline of spending long hours in front of the screen. Indeed, the annual <a title=\"IFComp\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, which inspires many writers to produce IF, encourages authors to limit their games to a two-hour experience. So we will consider a short piece of IF to be one that an average player can complete within an hour or so. This is certainly equivalent to enjoying a piece of short fiction, and also sits comfortably with <a title=\"The Philosophy of Composition\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition\">Edgar Allen Poe’s philosophy</a> that the best literature can be read in a single sitting.','A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction','\"Although part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). \" Herein I give a summary of short-form Interactive Fiction. This is an article originally published for the online magazine, \"The Portal\".','inherit','open','open','','254-revision-7','','','2011-01-25 19:23:08','2011-01-25 23:23:08','',254,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/254-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(265,1,'2011-01-25 19:16:04','2011-01-25 23:16:04','<em>Author\'s note: <a title=\"The Portal: A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/a-brief-introduction-to-short-form-interactive-fiction/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.\r\n</em>\r\n\r\nAlthough part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). Note that I say a ‘computer’ game rather than a ‘video’ game, for the most common form of IF considers the written word, not graphics, its medium. Nevertheless, expanded definitions of IF have included games that are graphical in nature, such as the <a title=\"King\'s Quest series\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest\">King’s Quest series</a>, <a title=\"Myst\" href=\"http://www.mystworlds.com/us/\">Myst</a>, <a title=\"The Longest Journey\" href=\"http://www.longestjourney.com/\">The Longest Journey</a>, and the more recent <a title=\"Heavy Rain\" href=\"http://www.heavyrainps3.com/\">Heavy Rain</a>. But herein we will mostly review traditional ‘text adventures’, games composed and played completely with text.\r\n\r\nThe question remains: What, exactly, constitutes IF? The answer is, and always has been, difficult to pin down, and it may best to describe what IF does rather than what it is. Central to IF is immersing players into stories (the ‘fiction’) in which they participate (the ‘interaction’). Indeed, almost all games involve a story world with which a player interacts, even in a game like the <a title=\"Super Mario Bros.\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros\">Super Mario Bros</a>.  However, in many games, the story is just pretense, a foundation on which other, more important components are laid. For example, the story behind Super Mario Brothers is ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’, yet it’s not the hero’s journey that sells the game; it’s the mechanics of the game itself, the hand-eye coordination required to get through the story, that are important to the player. Contrast this to ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’ as it is told in ‘<a title=\"IMDB - Star Wars: Episode IV\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/\">Star Wars: Episode IV</a>‘: It is the hero’s journey itself that is important to the viewer. The most notable IF, like much of cinema and literature, does the same as ‘Star Wars’ except in IF, the audience is actively participating in the hero’s journey, not simply watching the events unfold.\r\n\r\nIt’s this active immersion that is perhaps the most important way in which IF has advanced traditional literature. Rather than passively absorbing a story, an IF player interacts with the narrative, and, depending on how a game is authored, this interaction can have astounding consequences. A story may have multiple endings, it may be experienced from different perspectives, or it may tell an entirely different tale when played a second time. Since players control the actions of the game’s protagonist, they may feel more attached to narrative, more emotionally involved. The key to IF, then, is not only the immersion of a game player into a game story, but also making the story central to the game player’s experience.\r\n\r\nThat isn’t to say that IF originally manifested as a vehicle for thought-provoking literature. Classic IF, such as <a title=\"IFDB: Adventure\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv\">Adventure</a> or the original <a title=\"IFDB: Zork\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4gxk83ja4twckm6j\">Zork</a>,  consisted mainly of players romping through Tolkein-esque dungeons,  slaying monsters, solving riddles, and gathering treasure. Bit by bit, however, IF left its roots and ventured into serious storytelling, starting with games produced by the commercial software company Infocom. Among these are <a title=\"IFDB: A Mind Forever Voyaging\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa\">A Mind Forever Voyaging</a>, a science fiction piece that critiques the right-wing and populist ideals of the mid-eighties (ideals, some may note, still crowd the political landscape of the twenty-first century). A year later, Infocom produced  <a title=\"IFDB: Trinity\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j18kjz80hxjtyayw\">Trinity</a>. Riddled with metaphor and symbolism, the game entices the player with an in-depth exploration of the darker aspects of the atomic age.\r\n\r\nAfter the demise of commercial IF, the tradition of telling deep and thoughtful stories continued with non-commercial productions. Graham Nelson’s <a title=\"IFDB: Jigsaw\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm\">Jigsaw</a>, a time traveling adventure that takes place during historic moments of the twentieth century, questions what it means to ‘fix’ history. Mike Gentry’s <a title=\"IFDB: Anchorhead\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7\">Anchorhead</a>, a masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror, places the player in role of a dutiful wife who has reluctantly moved with her husband to a quaint, New England town. Finally, Star Foster’s and Daniel Ravipinto’s <a title=\"IFDB: Slouching Towards Bedlam\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78\">Slouching Towards Bedlam</a> is noted for incoporating meta-game information (such as saving a game, restoring a game, or undoing an action) into a steampunk adventure that examines the oral word.\r\n\r\n<strong>Playing IF</strong>\r\n\r\nSo how is this form of literature read or, rather, played? In general, a game starts with a written introduction, and like any good piece of fiction, these first couple of paragraphs are often meant to hook the player into the story. The game then describes a room or situation, followed by the simple question (either asked directly or in the form of a command prompt): “What now?”\r\n\r\nIt is here the art of IF heads more toward games than that of traditional story-telling, for the player must now enter <a title=\"IF Command Postcard\" href=\"http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/\">one of a limited set of commands</a>. Typically, a command may indicate the player wishes to move to another area within a game, examine some object in more detail, or perhaps take an object into his possession. Once a command is entered, the game provides an appropriate response, and the story continues until the player is prompted for another command. Again, they key here is that the player is interacting<em> </em>with the fiction, and by doing so, unfolding a story piece by piece.\r\n\r\n<strong>Short-Form IF</strong>\r\n\r\nDefining what constitutes a ‘short story’ can be problematic, though editors and authors can generally rely on defining word-counts to establish an appropriate baseline. In general, a piece of fiction within <a title=\"Cliff Notes\" href=\"http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/id-305403,articleId-7941.html\">1,000 to 20,000 words</a> is considered a short story.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, word counts in IF are relatively meaningless, especially since the process of defining what is meant by ‘word count’ in IF is nebulous at best. When Inform 7, an IF-authoring tool, explains that it has generated a story of 20,000 words, it refers not only to the prose presented the player, but also to the game’s code—a glorious amount of text that is generally never experienced by anyone but the author. If we are to ignore code in the word count, which is often suggested, then perhaps we can only count the words encountered by the player. Even this is problematic, for a majority of this prose may consist of standard responses, not author-generated content; or, perhaps, the author has written only a few lines of text, but through the trickery of randomness and some clever use of code, the game erupts with an infinite supply of unique prose.\r\n\r\nSo rather than dealing with stories in terms of word length, in IF we instead fall back to another measure of length, that of time, specifically in how long it may take an average player to work through a game. Classic IF tends to take many hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to play from start to finish. Indeed, the commercial heyday of IF necessitated such lengthy games—after all, buyers wanted their money’s worth. But with the decline of commercial games and the rise of games brewed by hobbyists came the decline of spending long hours in front of the screen. Indeed, the annual <a title=\"IFComp\" href=\"http://www.ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>, which inspires many writers to produce IF, encourages authors to limit their games to a two-hour experience. So we will consider a short piece of IF to be one that an average player can complete within an hour or so. This is certainly equivalent to enjoying a piece of short fiction, and also sits comfortably with <a title=\"The Philosophy of Composition\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Composition\">Edgar Allen Poe’s philosophy</a> that the best literature can be read in a single sitting.','A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction','\"Although part of computer culture since the mid-seventies, the genre of Interactive Fiction, commonly abbreviated IF, is often relatively new for avid readers of fiction. This may be because IF originated from a computer game and, quite frankly, many would classify IF as a kind of computer game rather than a kind of literature (I will certainly refer to an IF work as a ‘game’ rather than a ‘story’). \" Herein I give a summary of short-form Interactive Fiction. This is an article originally published for the online magazine, \"The Portal\".','inherit','open','open','','254-revision-6','','','2011-01-25 19:16:04','2011-01-25 23:16:04','',254,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/254-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(267,1,'2011-01-29 16:54:14','2011-01-29 20:54:14','<em>Author’s note: <a title=\"The Portal: A Brief Introduction to Short-Form Interactive Fiction\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/a-brief-introduction-to-short-form-interactive-fiction/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net/\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.</em>\n\n<em><a href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-261\" title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\" alt=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" /></a>\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.</em>\n\n<em>The protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.</em>\n\n<em>What separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.</em>\n\n<em>The game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.</em>\n\n<em>If you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.</em>','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision-6','','','2011-01-29 16:54:14','2011-01-29 20:54:14','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(268,1,'2011-01-29 17:03:08','2011-01-29 21:03:08','<em>Author’s note: <a title=\"The Portal: Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/the-warbler%E2%80%99s-nest-by-jason-mcintosh/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net/\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.</em>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-261\" title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\" alt=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" /></a>\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.</em>\n\nThe protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.\n\nWhat separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.\n\nThe game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.\n\nIf you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.</em>','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','inherit','open','open','','251-autosave','','','2011-01-29 17:03:08','2011-01-29 21:03:08','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(269,1,'2011-01-29 16:54:40','2011-01-29 20:54:40','<em>Author’s note: <a title=\"The Portal: Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/the-warbler%E2%80%99s-nest-by-jason-mcintosh/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net/\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.</em>\r\n\r\n<em><a href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-261\" title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\" alt=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" /></a>\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>The protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>What separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>The game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>If you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.</em>','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision-7','','','2011-01-29 16:54:40','2011-01-29 20:54:40','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(270,1,'2011-01-29 17:02:05','2011-01-29 21:02:05','<em>Author’s note: <a title=\"The Portal: Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh\" href=\"http://sffportal.net/2011/01/the-warbler%E2%80%99s-nest-by-jason-mcintosh/\">This article</a> originally appeared in <a title=\"The Portal\" href=\"http://www.sffportal.net/\">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.</em>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-261\" title=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/warblers_nest.jpg\" alt=\"The Warbler\'s Nest\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" /></a>\"The <a title=\"IFDB: The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej\">Warbler\'s Nest\"</a> is <a title=\"Jason McIntosh, The Warbler\'s Nest\" href=\"http://jmac.org/warbler/\">Jason McIntosh\'s</a> entry to the 2010 <a title=\"Interactive Fiction Competition\" href=\"http://ifcomp.org/\">Interactive Fiction Competition</a>. The game tied for ninth place in the competition, which surprised me, since I felt it was a better piece than several submitted works (at least, the works that I played) which finished ahead of it. Categorized as \'horror\' and headlined as \'a dark fairy tale\', the game is difficult to describe as either. To be certain, there are dark elements to the story, and although this tale revolves around an old mythos, the tale itself is far more about reality than about the paranormal. I\'m almost inclined to describe \"The Warbler\'s Nest\" as a piece of historical fiction, for the plot centers on the choice that a woman of long, long ago might have to make without having the knowledge that we do today.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>The protagonist begins the game in a bed of riverside reeds, not far from her home. Within a few rounds of exploration, it\'s clear that something is amiss within her house, something very dreadful indeed, and it\'s the player\'s task to rectify what\'s gone wrong. As is common with IF, the player uncovers how to accomplish this by exploring her surroundings. Brief and frequent flashbacks serve up the backstory, though it\'s up to the player to fill in the details. What <strong>exactly</strong> happened is never said outright, but there are enough hints to spell out the story. More importantly, the backstory firmly forms a foundation for the protagonist\'s plight.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>What separates this game from other IF is atmosphere, which is conveyed with crisp, tight prose. The despair and uncertainty experienced by the protagonist pervades this story. Are the mushroom rings in your yard an indication of fairy magic, or are they simply a product of nature? At one point in the game, one of two objects that you have dutifully hunted down literally collapses in your hand. Later, a critical decision which would normally be made based on the outcome of possessing both objects must now be made with just the one. Is the one object enough to make a \'correct\' decision? Only the player can judge.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>The game revolves around the Western European mythos of the changeling, a creature of folklore—typically an elf, fairy, troll—that has been secretly swapped with a human child. Physically identical to the child, a changeling can only be identified by aberrant behavior or features, many of which we in the modern day now associate with well-known diseases or disorders. The possibility that this dark magic might be afoot fuels the player\'s despair and uncertainty, and it all nicely accumulate in the player\'s final, possibly heartrending, decision of the game.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>If you haven\'t experienced IF, then this game is a great place to start. It has all the elements of good IF scaled into a tidy package. The game world is small, the puzzles intuitive, and its vocabulary relies primarily on a standard set of actions common throughout IF. The prose is tight, elegantly written, and effectively incorporates the changeling mythology and its potentially dark consequences into the player\'s endgame.  This game demonstrates how IF  can bring legends and character to life not only on the printed page, but within the player as well.</em>','IF Review: The Warbler\'s Nest by Jason McIntosh','','inherit','open','open','','251-revision-8','','','2011-01-29 17:02:05','2011-01-29 21:02:05','',251,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/01/251-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(272,1,'2011-02-22 05:27:51','2011-02-22 09:27:51','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And thus on ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.\r\n<h2>Sections</h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 01\" href=\"/section-01/\">Section 01</a>, <a title=\"Section 01 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_01_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 4.5 MB)</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 02\" href=\"/section-02/\">Section 02</a>, <a title=\"Section 02 slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_02_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 7.4 MB)</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 03\" href=\"/section-03/\">Section 03</a>, <a title=\"Section 03 slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_03_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 9.0 MB)</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 04\" href=\"/section-04/\">Section 04</a>, <a title=\"Section 04 slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_04_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 8.9 MB)</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 05\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/section-05/\">Section 05</a>, <a title=\"Section 05 slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_05_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 7.1 MB)</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 06\" href=\"/section-06/\">Section 06</a>, <a title=\"Section 06 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_06_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 4.9 MB)</li>\r\n	<li>Section 07, No slides available</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 08\" href=\"/section-08/\">Section 08</a>, <a title=\"Section 08 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_08_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 5.0 MB)</li>\r\n	<li>Section 09, No slides available</li>\r\n</ul>','Teaching','','publish','open','closed','','teaching-home','','','2011-11-12 12:29:01','2011-11-12 16:29:01','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/',0,'page','',0),(273,1,'2011-02-22 04:40:12','2011-02-22 08:40:12','Once upon a time, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which included some weeks focusing on naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t discuss in day-to-day conversation. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\n\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, although I find the experience more comforting and delightful than I did. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me to two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, clicking my way through slides and drawing diagrams on the whiteboard.\n\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I present. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through the fundamentals of a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, HTTP protocols replace blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh out our web pages.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision','','','2011-02-22 04:40:12','2011-02-22 08:40:12','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(274,1,'2011-02-22 05:11:12','2011-02-22 09:11:12','Once upon a time, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which included some weeks focusing on naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t discuss in day-to-day conversation. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\n\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, although I find the experience more comforting and delightful than I did. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, clicking my way through slides and drawing diagrams on the whiteboard.\n\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through the fundamentals of a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\n\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\n\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\n\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-2','','','2011-02-22 05:11:12','2011-02-22 09:11:12','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(275,1,'2011-02-22 05:18:13','2011-02-22 09:18:13','Once upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\n\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\n\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\n\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\n\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\n\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-3','','','2011-02-22 05:18:13','2011-02-22 09:18:13','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(324,1,'2011-02-24 00:06:54','2011-02-24 04:06:54','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n<h3>Resources</h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_01_slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5 MB)</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"../../teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home page</a>','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-12','','','2011-02-24 00:06:54','2011-02-24 04:06:54','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(277,1,'2011-02-22 05:18:34','2011-02-22 09:18:34','Once upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-4','','','2011-02-22 05:18:34','2011-02-22 09:18:34','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(278,1,'2011-02-22 05:25:32','2011-02-22 09:25:32','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\n\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\n\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\n\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\n\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\n\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\n\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-5','','','2011-02-22 05:25:32','2011-02-22 09:25:32','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(279,1,'2011-02-22 05:27:51','2011-02-22 09:27:51',' ','','Teaching the Fundamentals of web site development','publish','open','open','','279','','','2011-02-22 05:29:22','2011-02-22 09:29:22','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/279/',1,'nav_menu_item','',0),(323,1,'2011-05-18 19:52:29','2011-05-18 23:52:29','<h2>Forms and an Introduction to CSS</h2>','Section 03','','inherit','open','open','','322-revision','','','2011-05-18 19:52:29','2011-05-18 23:52:29','',322,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/05/322-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(281,1,'2011-02-23 05:29:27','2011-02-23 09:29:27','<h2>The Web Tool Kit and Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n<h3>Resources</h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_01_slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5 MB)</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"../../teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home page</a>','Section 01','','publish','open','closed','','section-01','','','2011-05-18 19:53:34','2011-05-18 23:53:34','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/',0,'page','',0),(282,1,'2011-02-23 05:03:45','2011-02-23 09:03:45','This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\n\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\n\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\n\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\n\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"','Section 1','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision','','','2011-02-23 05:03:45','2011-02-23 09:03:45','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(283,1,'2011-02-23 05:04:12','2011-02-23 09:04:12','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\nThis page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"','Section 1','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-2','','','2011-02-23 05:04:12','2011-02-23 09:04:12','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(284,1,'2011-02-23 05:08:36','2011-02-23 09:08:36','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\nThis page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\n\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\n\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\n\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\n\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\n\n<strong>Section 1 Slides</strong> (PDF, 4.5MB)','Section 1','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-3','','','2011-02-23 05:08:36','2011-02-23 09:08:36','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(285,1,'2011-02-23 05:09:03','2011-02-23 09:09:03','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\nThis page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 1 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5MB)','Section 1','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-4','','','2011-02-23 05:09:03','2011-02-23 09:09:03','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(286,1,'2011-02-23 05:10:38','2011-02-23 09:10:38','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\nThis page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\n\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\n\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\n\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\n\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\n\n<a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5MB)','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-5','','','2011-02-23 05:10:38','2011-02-23 09:10:38','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(287,1,'2011-02-23 05:29:27','2011-02-23 09:29:27',' ','','','publish','open','open','','287','','','2011-02-23 05:29:27','2011-02-23 09:29:27','',0,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/287/',3,'nav_menu_item','',0),(288,1,'2011-02-23 05:29:27','2011-02-23 09:29:27','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5MB)','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-6','','','2011-02-23 05:29:27','2011-02-23 09:29:27','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(289,1,'2011-02-23 05:30:09','2011-02-23 09:30:09','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5MB)','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-7','','','2011-02-23 05:30:09','2011-02-23 09:30:09','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(290,1,'2010-09-04 19:25:06','2010-09-04 23:25:06','<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"Shakespeare in blog\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/about/shakespeare_blog.jpg\" alt=\"To blog or not to blog\" width=\"150\" height=\"143\" />What to blog about?\r\n\r\nA daunting question, to say the least, and I thought about how to answer it. And I thought and I thought, then I set those thoughts on the back burner where they simmered for years. And I mean <em>years</em>, for I\'ve been thinking about sharing thoughts world-wide before the term \"blog\" became fashionable. I just never found the time, the motivation, the <em>chutzpah, </em>so to speak, to follow through with the dream. And I never could answer that damn question.\r\n\r\nSo, finally, after a decade, I have decided not to answer it.\r\n\r\nRather, I will do what countless of others will do: Spew random musings that I find of interest into the ether. Hardly unique, but the fact of the matter is that every topic that can be blogged about is probably being blogged about. Oh, I suppose there\'s still a little room out there for a literary analysis of <a title=\"Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Man:_The_Ultimate_Ninja\">The Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja</a>, but every other idea is already out there, for better or worse.  What <em>isn\'t</em> being blogged about it is what is on my mind. And, coincidentally, that\'s what I can write best about, for better or worse.\r\n\r\nWhich brings us back to the original question and its lack of answer. Herein you will find not total randomness, but assorted randomness, stuff that fills the trunks in the attic up there in my own little cerebral cortex: Interactive fiction, books, movies, games, web development, technology--that sort of stuff.\r\n\r\nSo welcome to my mind. Enter at your own risk.','About','','inherit','open','open','','2-revision-10','','','2010-09-04 19:25:06','2010-09-04 23:25:06','',2,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2010/09/2-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(292,1,'2011-02-22 05:27:51','2011-02-22 09:27:51','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-6','','','2011-02-22 05:27:51','2011-02-22 09:27:51','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(291,1,'2011-02-23 05:30:41','2011-02-23 09:30:41','<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"Shakespeare in blog\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/about/shakespeare_blog.jpg\" alt=\"To blog or not to blog\" width=\"150\" height=\"143\" />What to blog about?\r\n\r\nA daunting question, to say the least, and I thought about how to answer it. And I thought and I thought, then I set those thoughts on the back burner where they simmered for years. And I mean <em>years</em>, for I\'ve been thinking about sharing thoughts world-wide before the term \"blog\" became fashionable. I just never found the time, the motivation, the <em>chutzpah, </em>so to speak, to follow through with the dream. And I never could answer that damn question.\r\n\r\nSo, finally, after a decade, I have decided not to answer it.\r\n\r\nRather, I will do what countless of others will do: Spew random musings that I find of interest into the ether. Hardly unique, but the fact of the matter is that every topic that can be blogged about is probably being blogged about. Oh, I suppose there\'s still a little room out there for a literary analysis of <a title=\"Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Man:_The_Ultimate_Ninja\">The Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja</a>, but every other idea is already out there, for better or worse.  What <em>isn\'t</em> being blogged about it is what is on my mind. And, coincidentally, that\'s what I can write best about, for better or worse.\r\n\r\nWhich brings us back to the original question and its lack of answer. Herein you will find not total randomness, but assorted randomness, stuff that fills the trunks in the attic up there in my own little cerebral cortex: Interactive fiction, books, movies, games, web development, technology--that sort of stuff.\r\n\r\nSo welcome to my mind. Enter at your own risk.','About','','inherit','open','open','','2-revision-11','','','2011-02-23 05:30:41','2011-02-23 09:30:41','',2,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/2-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(293,1,'2011-02-23 05:31:31','2011-02-23 09:31:31','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-7','','','2011-02-23 05:31:31','2011-02-23 09:31:31','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(294,1,'2011-02-23 05:31:17','2011-02-23 09:31:17','<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"Shakespeare in blog\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/about/shakespeare_blog.jpg\" alt=\"To blog or not to blog\" width=\"150\" height=\"143\" />What to blog about?\r\n\r\nA daunting question, to say the least, and I thought about how to answer it. And I thought and I thought, then I set those thoughts on the back burner where they simmered for years. And I mean <em>years</em>, for I\'ve been thinking about sharing thoughts world-wide before the term \"blog\" became fashionable. I just never found the time, the motivation, the <em>chutzpah, </em>so to speak, to follow through with the dream. And I never could answer that damn question.\r\n\r\nSo, finally, after a decade, I have decided not to answer it.\r\n\r\nRather, I will do what countless of others will do: Spew random musings that I find of interest into the ether. Hardly unique, but the fact of the matter is that every topic that can be blogged about is probably being blogged about. Oh, I suppose there\'s still a little room out there for a literary analysis of <a title=\"Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Man:_The_Ultimate_Ninja\">The Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja</a>, but every other idea is already out there, for better or worse.  What <em>isn\'t</em> being blogged about it is what is on my mind. And, coincidentally, that\'s what I can write best about, for better or worse.\r\n\r\nWhich brings us back to the original question and its lack of answer. Herein you will find not total randomness, but assorted randomness, stuff that fills the trunks in the attic up there in my own little cerebral cortex: Interactive fiction, books, movies, games, web development, technology--that sort of stuff.\r\n\r\nSo welcome to my mind. Enter at your own risk.','About','','inherit','open','open','','2-revision-12','','','2011-02-23 05:31:17','2011-02-23 09:31:17','',2,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/2-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(295,1,'2011-02-23 05:32:26','2011-02-23 09:32:26','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-8','','','2011-02-23 05:32:26','2011-02-23 09:32:26','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(296,1,'2011-11-12 12:28:47','2011-11-12 16:28:47','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\n\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\n\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\n\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\n\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And thus on ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\n\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\n\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.\n<h2>Sections</h2>\n<ul>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 01\" href=\"/section-01/\">Section 01</a>, <a title=\"Section 01 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_01_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 4.5 MB)</li>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 02\" href=\"/section-02/\">Section 02</a>, <a title=\"Section 02 slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_02_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 7.4 MB)</li>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 03\" href=\"/section-03/\">Section 03</a>, <a title=\"Section 03 slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_03_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 9.0 MB)</li>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 04\" href=\"/section-04/\">Section 04</a>, <a title=\"Section 04 slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_04_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 8.9 MB)</li>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 05\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/section-05/\">Section 05</a>, <a title=\"Section 05 slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_05_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 7.1 MB)</li>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 06\" href=\"/section-06/\">Section 06</a>, <a title=\"Section 06 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_06_slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 4.9 MB)</li>\n	<li>Section 07, No slides available</li>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 08\" href=\"/section-08/\">Section 08</a>, Slides (PDF, 5.0 MB)</li>\n	<li>Section 09, No slides available</li>\n</ul>','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-autosave','','','2011-11-12 12:28:47','2011-11-12 16:28:47','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(297,1,'2011-02-23 05:35:12','2011-02-23 09:35:12','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-9','','','2011-02-23 05:35:12','2011-02-23 09:35:12','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(299,1,'2011-02-23 05:30:22','2011-02-23 09:30:22','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5MB)','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-8','','','2011-02-23 05:30:22','2011-02-23 09:30:22','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(300,1,'2011-02-24 00:09:46','2011-02-24 04:09:46','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\n\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\n\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\n\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\n\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\n<h3>Resources</h3>\n<ul>\n	<li><a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_01_slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5 MB)</li>\n</ul>\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"../../teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home page</a>','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-autosave','','','2011-02-24 00:09:46','2011-02-24 04:09:46','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(301,1,'2011-02-23 05:40:08','2011-02-23 09:40:08','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5MB)\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"../../teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home page</a>','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-9','','','2011-02-23 05:40:08','2011-02-23 09:40:08','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(302,1,'2011-02-23 05:37:42','2011-02-23 09:37:42','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.\r\n<h2>Links to Individual Sections</h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 01\" href=\"/section-01/\">Section 01\r\n</a></li>\r\n</ul>','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-10','','','2011-02-23 05:37:42','2011-02-23 09:37:42','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(303,1,'2011-02-23 05:44:25','2011-02-23 09:44:25','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And so my current ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.\r\n<h2>Links to Individual Sections</h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 01\" href=\"/section-01/\">Section 01</a>, <a title=\"Section 01 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 4MB)<a title=\"Section 01\" href=\"/section-01/\">\r\n</a></li>\r\n</ul>','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-11','','','2011-02-23 05:44:25','2011-02-23 09:44:25','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(304,1,'2011-02-24 00:02:20','2011-02-24 04:02:20','<h2>Validation, XHTML Markup, and Tables</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"The validator\" src=\"/images/teaching/validate_me.jpg\" alt=\"Validate me!\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" />Web pages, like the best of us, need love, too. As authors, we need to craft our XHTML with care, massaging head and body with finesse, primping and beautifying our markup, and most of all, validating it, lest it behave awkwardly, often temperamentally, once exposed to the world. Think of XHTML validation as an author\'s public display of affection.\r\n\r\nThus we spend a good portion of section 2 going over how to validate XHTML documents, and why this validation is so important. We discuss the<a title=\"XHTML DTD\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_dtd.asp\"> Document Type Definition</a> and what it means to authors and browsers. We crown our XHTML document with it, and send the whole page off to the <a title=\"The W3C Markup Validation Service\" href=\"http://validator.w3.org/\">W3C validator.</a> We analyze any errors, do what we can to clean things up, then rinse and repeat until we\'re certain our XHTML shines with perfection.\r\n\r\nOnce we understand how to validate XHTML, we go into the fundamentals of building a web document, reviewing the most popular of <a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/\">XHTML elements</a>, such as the ubiquitous <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tag, the conspicuous heading tags, the orderly <code>&lt;ol&gt;</code> tag, and its unorderly sibling, the <code>&lt;ul&gt;</code> tag. Finally, we spend a great deal of time addressing one of the most important structures in XHTML, the table, and how to appropriately construct them.\r\n\r\nAn underpinning theme of the section, emphasized while we validate documents and construct tables, is <a title=\"Web Accessibility Initiative\" href=\"http://www.w3.org/WAI/\">accessibility</a>. Often an after-thought, accessibility allows people and devices, especially the browser on which we depend on as our interpreters, to better understand the dialect within our web pages. Without accessibility, web pages may unintentionally hide pertinent information from a large population of the community, or perhaps display the information incorrectly.\r\n<h3>Resources</h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a href=\"/teaching/section_02_slides.pdf\">Section 02 Slides</a> (PDF, 7.4 MB)</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp\">HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 Reference</a></li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"HTML Tables\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp\">(X)HTML Tables</a></li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Mastering Tables | HTML Dog\" href=\"http://htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/tables/\">Mastering Tables</a></li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Accessible Tables\" href=\"http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse9.htm\">Accessible Tables</a></li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"/teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home</a>','Section 02','','publish','open','open','','section-02','','','2011-05-18 19:54:21','2011-05-18 23:54:21','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/',0,'page','',0),(305,1,'2011-02-23 23:46:50','2011-02-24 03:46:50','<h2>Validation, XHTML Markup, And Tables</h2>\n<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"The validator\" src=\"/images/teaching/validate_me.jpg\" alt=\"Validate me!\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" />Web pages, like the best of us, need love, too. As authors, we need to craft our XHTML with care, massaging head and body with finesse, primping and beautifying our markup, and most of all, validating it, lest it behave awkwardly, often temperamentally, once exposed to the world. Think of XHTML validation as an author\'s public display of affection.\n\nThus we spend a good portion of section 2 going over how to validate XHTML documents, and why this validation is so important. We discuss the<a title=\"XHTML DTD\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_dtd.asp\"> Document Type Definition</a> and what it means to authors and browsers. We crown our XHTML document with it, and send the whole page off to the <a title=\"The W3C Markup Validation Service\" href=\"http://validator.w3.org/\">W3C validator.</a> We analyze any errors, do what we can to clean things up, then rinse and repeat until we\'re certain our XHTML shines with perfection.\n\nOnce we understand how to validate XHTML, we go into the fundamentals of building a web document, reviewing the most popular of <a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/\">XHTML elements</a>, such as the ubiquitous <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tag, the conspicuous heading tags, and the orderly <code>&lt;ol&gt;</code> tag, and its unorderly sibling, the <code>&lt;ul&gt;</code> tag. Finally, we spend a great deal of time addressing one of the most important structures in XHTML, the table, and how to appropriately construct them.\n\nAn underpinning theme of the section, emphasized while we validate documents and construct tables, is <a title=\"Web Accessibility Initiative\" href=\"http://www.w3.org/WAI/\">accessibility</a>. Often an after-thought, accessibility allows people and devices, especially the browser on which we depend on as our interpreters, to better understand the dialect within our web pages. Without accessibility, web pages may unintentionally hide pertinent information from a large population of the community, or perhaps display the information incorrectly.\n<h2></h2>','Section 02','','inherit','open','open','','304-revision','','','2011-02-23 23:46:50','2011-02-24 03:46:50','',304,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/304-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(306,1,'2011-02-23 23:48:27','2011-02-24 03:48:27','<h2>Validation, XHTML Markup, And Tables</h2>\n<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"The validator\" src=\"/images/teaching/validate_me.jpg\" alt=\"Validate me!\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" />Web pages, like the best of us, need love, too. As authors, we need to craft our XHTML with care, massaging head and body with finesse, primping and beautifying our markup, and most of all, validating it, lest it behave awkwardly, often temperamentally, once exposed to the world. Think of XHTML validation as an author\'s public display of affection.\n\nThus we spend a good portion of section 2 going over how to validate XHTML documents, and why this validation is so important. We discuss the<a title=\"XHTML DTD\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_dtd.asp\"> Document Type Definition</a> and what it means to authors and browsers. We crown our XHTML document with it, and send the whole page off to the <a title=\"The W3C Markup Validation Service\" href=\"http://validator.w3.org/\">W3C validator.</a> We analyze any errors, do what we can to clean things up, then rinse and repeat until we\'re certain our XHTML shines with perfection.\n\nOnce we understand how to validate XHTML, we go into the fundamentals of building a web document, reviewing the most popular of <a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/\">XHTML elements</a>, such as the ubiquitous <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tag, the conspicuous heading tags, and the orderly <code>&lt;ol&gt;</code> tag, and its unorderly sibling, the <code>&lt;ul&gt;</code> tag. Finally, we spend a great deal of time addressing one of the most important structures in XHTML, the table, and how to appropriately construct them.\n\nAn underpinning theme of the section, emphasized while we validate documents and construct tables, is <a title=\"Web Accessibility Initiative\" href=\"http://www.w3.org/WAI/\">accessibility</a>. Often an after-thought, accessibility allows people and devices, especially the browser on which we depend on as our interpreters, to better understand the dialect within our web pages. Without accessibility, web pages may unintentionally hide pertinent information from a large population of the community, or perhaps display the information incorrectly.\n<h3>Slides</h3>\n<h3>Resources</h3>','Section 02','','inherit','open','open','','304-revision-2','','','2011-02-23 23:48:27','2011-02-24 03:48:27','',304,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/304-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(307,1,'2011-02-23 05:42:21','2011-02-23 09:42:21','<h2>The Web Tool Kit And Publishing Your First Web Page</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Web Tool Kit\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/teaching/web_toolkit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Tool Kit\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" />This page summarizes the first of approximately 13 sections that I will teach during the Spring semester of 2011. Generally, sections last between an hour-and-a-half to two hours and are attended by at least a half-dozen students willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings with me. I spend the first half of a section doing a song-and-dance with PowerPoint and online demonstrations; the latter half is spent giving hands-on help to students as they work to complete their assignments.\r\n\r\nMy first section of the semester includes introductions, a brief summary of the course, and, more importantly, giving students an opportunity to publish an actual web page. Of course, some students are already accomplished at this last task, but for many others, this is a first: Having their own web page, their own creation, as simple as it may be, out there for the entire internet see.\r\n\r\nWe overview what I call the Web Tool Kit, a suite of applications that the students will become intimately familiar with over the course of the semester. This software includes their web browser, the web server, a text editor of their choice, an SSH client for logging into the server, an SFTP client for securely uploading files to the server, and last, but surely not least, the Web itself.\r\n\r\nFinally we delve into XHTML elements, the building blocks of the web, and once familiar with what an element looks like, we take a few and construct the skeleton of a web page. We don\'t necessarily go over individual elements or what they do--that\'s for later. For now, just knowing that these blocks can come together to form a web page is sufficient.\r\n\r\nThe final exercise involves taking this newly minted page and pushing it to the server. Here we cover concepts such as the basics of a URL, how a web server interprets a URL to find a web page, and how we prepare our files and folders to be found. Once everything is in place, we visit the web server and view our new, and sometimes first, web page, happy to see it meet us with a simple greeting, \"Hello World!\"\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Section 1 Slides\" href=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\"><strong>Section 01 Slides</strong></a> (PDF, 4.5MB)\r\n\r\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"../../teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home page</a>','Section 01','','inherit','open','open','','281-revision-10','','','2011-02-23 05:42:21','2011-02-23 09:42:21','',281,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/281-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(308,1,'2011-02-24 00:00:03','2011-02-24 04:00:03','Validation, XHTML Markup, And Tables\n\n<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"The validator\" src=\"/images/teaching/validate_me.jpg\" alt=\"Validate me!\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" />Web pages, like the best of us, need love, too. As authors, we need to craft our XHTML with care, massaging head and body with finesse, primping and beautifying our markup, and most of all, validating it, lest it behave awkwardly, often temperamentally, once exposed to the world. Think of XHTML validation as an author\'s public display of affection.\n\nThus we spend a good portion of section 2 going over how to validate XHTML documents, and why this validation is so important. We discuss the<a title=\"XHTML DTD\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_dtd.asp\"> Document Type Definition</a> and what it means to authors and browsers. We crown our XHTML document with it, and send the whole page off to the <a title=\"The W3C Markup Validation Service\" href=\"http://validator.w3.org/\">W3C validator.</a> We analyze any errors, do what we can to clean things up, then rinse and repeat until we\'re certain our XHTML shines with perfection.\n\nOnce we understand how to validate XHTML, we go into the fundamentals of building a web document, reviewing the most popular of <a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/\">XHTML elements</a>, such as the ubiquitous <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tag, the conspicuous heading tags, and the orderly <code>&lt;ol&gt;</code> tag, and its unorderly sibling, the <code>&lt;ul&gt;</code> tag. Finally, we spend a great deal of time addressing one of the most important structures in XHTML, the table, and how to appropriately construct them.\n\nAn underpinning theme of the section, emphasized while we validate documents and construct tables, is <a title=\"Web Accessibility Initiative\" href=\"http://www.w3.org/WAI/\">accessibility</a>. Often an after-thought, accessibility allows people and devices, especially the browser on which we depend on as our interpreters, to better understand the dialect within our web pages. Without accessibility, web pages may unintentionally hide pertinent information from a large population of the community, or perhaps display the information incorrectly.\n<h3>Resources</h3>\n<ul>\n	<li><a href=\"/teaching/section_02_slides.pdf\">Section 02 Slides</a> (PDF, 7.4 MB)</li>\n	<li><a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp\">HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 Reference</a></li>\n	<li><a title=\"HTML Tables\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp\">(X)HTML Tables</a></li>\n	<li><a title=\"Mastering Tables | HTML Dog\" href=\"http://htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/tables/\">Mastering Tables</a></li>\n	<li></li>\n</ul>\n<h3></h3>\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"/teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home</a>','Section 02','','inherit','open','open','','304-revision-3','','','2011-02-24 00:00:03','2011-02-24 04:00:03','',304,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/304-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(309,1,'2011-02-24 00:01:02','2011-02-24 04:01:02','<h2>Validation, XHTML Markup, And Tables</h2>\n<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"The validator\" src=\"/images/teaching/validate_me.jpg\" alt=\"Validate me!\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" />Web pages, like the best of us, need love, too. As authors, we need to craft our XHTML with care, massaging head and body with finesse, primping and beautifying our markup, and most of all, validating it, lest it behave awkwardly, often temperamentally, once exposed to the world. Think of XHTML validation as an author\'s public display of affection.\n\nThus we spend a good portion of section 2 going over how to validate XHTML documents, and why this validation is so important. We discuss the<a title=\"XHTML DTD\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_dtd.asp\"> Document Type Definition</a> and what it means to authors and browsers. We crown our XHTML document with it, and send the whole page off to the <a title=\"The W3C Markup Validation Service\" href=\"http://validator.w3.org/\">W3C validator.</a> We analyze any errors, do what we can to clean things up, then rinse and repeat until we\'re certain our XHTML shines with perfection.\n\nOnce we understand how to validate XHTML, we go into the fundamentals of building a web document, reviewing the most popular of <a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/\">XHTML elements</a>, such as the ubiquitous <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tag, the conspicuous heading tags, and the orderly <code>&lt;ol&gt;</code> tag, and its unorderly sibling, the <code>&lt;ul&gt;</code> tag. Finally, we spend a great deal of time addressing one of the most important structures in XHTML, the table, and how to appropriately construct them.\n\nAn underpinning theme of the section, emphasized while we validate documents and construct tables, is <a title=\"Web Accessibility Initiative\" href=\"http://www.w3.org/WAI/\">accessibility</a>. Often an after-thought, accessibility allows people and devices, especially the browser on which we depend on as our interpreters, to better understand the dialect within our web pages. Without accessibility, web pages may unintentionally hide pertinent information from a large population of the community, or perhaps display the information incorrectly.\n<h3>Resources</h3>\n<ul>\n	<li><a href=\"/teaching/section_02_slides.pdf\">Section 02 Slides</a> (PDF, 7.4 MB)</li>\n	<li><a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp\">HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 Reference</a></li>\n	<li><a title=\"HTML Tables\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp\">(X)HTML Tables</a></li>\n	<li><a title=\"Mastering Tables | HTML Dog\" href=\"http://htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/tables/\">Mastering Tables</a></li>\n	<li><a title=\"Accessible Tables\" href=\"http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse9.htm\">Accessible Tables</a></li>\n</ul>\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"/teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home</a>','Section 02','','inherit','open','open','','304-revision-4','','','2011-02-24 00:01:02','2011-02-24 04:01:02','',304,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/304-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(310,1,'2011-02-24 00:01:48','2011-02-24 04:01:48','<h2>Validation, XHTML Markup, And Tables</h2>\r\n<img class=\"alignright\" title=\"The validator\" src=\"/images/teaching/validate_me.jpg\" alt=\"Validate me!\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" />Web pages, like the best of us, need love, too. As authors, we need to craft our XHTML with care, massaging head and body with finesse, primping and beautifying our markup, and most of all, validating it, lest it behave awkwardly, often temperamentally, once exposed to the world. Think of XHTML validation as an author\'s public display of affection.\r\n\r\nThus we spend a good portion of section 2 going over how to validate XHTML documents, and why this validation is so important. We discuss the<a title=\"XHTML DTD\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_dtd.asp\"> Document Type Definition</a> and what it means to authors and browsers. We crown our XHTML document with it, and send the whole page off to the <a title=\"The W3C Markup Validation Service\" href=\"http://validator.w3.org/\">W3C validator.</a> We analyze any errors, do what we can to clean things up, then rinse and repeat until we\'re certain our XHTML shines with perfection.\r\n\r\nOnce we understand how to validate XHTML, we go into the fundamentals of building a web document, reviewing the most popular of <a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/\">XHTML elements</a>, such as the ubiquitous <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tag, the conspicuous heading tags, the orderly <code>&lt;ol&gt;</code> tag, and its unorderly sibling, the <code>&lt;ul&gt;</code> tag. Finally, we spend a great deal of time addressing one of the most important structures in XHTML, the table, and how to appropriately construct them.\r\n\r\nAn underpinning theme of the section, emphasized while we validate documents and construct tables, is <a title=\"Web Accessibility Initiative\" href=\"http://www.w3.org/WAI/\">accessibility</a>. Often an after-thought, accessibility allows people and devices, especially the browser on which we depend on as our interpreters, to better understand the dialect within our web pages. Without accessibility, web pages may unintentionally hide pertinent information from a large population of the community, or perhaps display the information incorrectly.\r\n<h3>Resources</h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a href=\"/teaching/section_02_slides.pdf\">Section 02 Slides</a> (PDF, 7.4 MB)</li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp\">HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 Reference</a></li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"HTML Tables\" href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp\">(X)HTML Tables</a></li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Mastering Tables | HTML Dog\" href=\"http://htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/tables/\">Mastering Tables</a></li>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Accessible Tables\" href=\"http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse9.htm\">Accessible Tables</a></li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a title=\"Return to teaching home\" href=\"/teaching-home/\">Return to teaching home</a>','Section 02','','inherit','open','open','','304-revision-5','','','2011-02-24 00:01:48','2011-02-24 04:01:48','',304,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/304-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(311,1,'2011-02-23 05:45:16','2011-02-23 09:45:16','[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" caption=\"How I sometimes imagine myself appearing before my class. Yeah, I know I&#39;m not that handsome.\"]<img class=\" \" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Real Genius\" src=\"http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/teaching/real_genius.jpg\" alt=\"Real Genius movie poster\" width=\"250\" height=\"259\" />[/caption]\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time, while I serving as a graduate student at <a title=\"Purdue University\" href=\"http://www.purdue.edu/\">Purdue University</a>, I couldn\'t fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--I struggled with the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title=\"Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear\" href=\"http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html\">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which sometimes included discussing naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don\'t normally discuss. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, \"He\'s cute, but he should smile more.\"\r\n\r\nTo date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher\'s saddle, this time at <a title=\"Harvard University\" href=\"http://www.harvard.edu\">Harvard University\'s</a> <a title=\"Harvard Extension School\" href=\"http://dce.harvard.edu\">Extension School</a>. Nowadays, I find the experience more comforting and delightful. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me a two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, dancing my way through slides and evoking diagrams on the whiteboard.\r\n\r\nNot only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I teach. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, GET and POST protocols stand in for our blood, and it\'s CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh everything out. This is my area of expertise now.\r\n\r\nUntil this semester, my visual aids consisted of dynamic pedagogical constructs, which is a bookish way of saying I scribbled doodles on the whiteboard and performed some online demonstrations. And that\'s all that I really needed for students to learn. This semester, however, I wanted to give them something more--something tangible, something they could take home and review. My fellow teaching associates had extensive notes, examples, and slides. Our professor, David Heitmeyer, also had an extensive collection of slides and notes. I wanted to provide the same, but make mine unique from the others. So I added a dash of design and humor. And thus on ongoing project, constructing a weekly slide deck, was born.\r\n\r\nI\'ve decided to share these efforts with not only my students, but the rest of the world. I\'m not certain why--on their own, the slides can\'t teach web site development. But they are excellent pointers in the right direction and, in my opinion, there\'s some amusing pictorials in there. I\'m a firm believer in the visual learning; I\'m a firmer believer in that learning should be fun. Combine the two and you\'ve got a pretty powerful cocktail. <a title=\"Head First Labs\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php\">Head First Labs</a>, the publishers of my favorite textbooks, <a title=\"Head First Labs secret formula\" href=\"http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php\">lays out this formula</a> and is the inspiration behind my own pedagogical carafe.\r\n\r\nSo as the weeks go by and the slide decks roll in, you\'ll find this portion of the web site slowly updated with summaries of my classes, along with a links to PDFs of the slides. And remember, if you\'ve enjoyed watching the slides just half as much as I\'ve enjoyed making them, then I\'ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.\r\n<h2>Sections</h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><a title=\"Section 01\" href=\"/section-01/\">Section 01</a>, <a title=\"Section 01 Slides\" href=\"/teaching/section_01-slides.pdf\">Slides</a> (PDF, 4MB)<a title=\"Section 01\" href=\"/section-01/\">\r\n</a></li>\r\n</ul>','Teaching','','inherit','open','open','','272-revision-12','','','2011-02-23 05:45:16','2011-02-23 09:45:16','',272,'http://www.biggles2k.com/2011/02/272-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),