Draft 1 is done

I’ve just posted the last two chapters of my dissertation draft. I also changed the title a bit. Let the revision begin!

A problem with images, part 2

So the newest chapter draft is up, finally. It took me extra time because it’s 50% longer than the last one (9k words vs 6k), and it’s full of pictures and videos. I’m not very happy with how they look on the page right now – their size and alignment isn’t right; and for some reason, the YouTube videos automatically sit on top of every other element, blocking the Snapshots popup boxes. Much of that’ll have to wait – gotta move onto the next chapter, job applications, my other article, teaching, etc. – but I thought I’d put one question out here, because I could fix it relatively quickly:

Is it more attractive to have videos on the page or popping up with Snapshots? Here’s what I mean:

Option 1 – videos embedded on page

(This is what I’m currently doing.)

The men do one of Travolta’s discos from Saturday Night Fever, and the women do the Macarena.

Option 2 – videos as links that Snapshots will display as popup boxes

The men do one of Travolta’s discos from Saturday Night Fever, and the women do the Macarena.

Male dance

Female dance

Gimme your votes.

A problem with images

The chapter I’m currently working on is about the ways WoW’s races are represented – all of the visual, aural, and narrative elements of their designs, and the real-life influences behind them. I’m trying to take advantage of my digital format a lot here, and include as many images and videos as possible. It’s a lot of fun – and if I can pull it off, it’ll look awesome – but it’s presenting some tough problems. I’m hoping someone out there can give me some advice on ‘em.

Basically, I’m organizing the majority of this chapter into profiles of each of WoW’s ten races. Each profile will contain a certain amount of info, arranged under headings. One of these is the architectural style(s) exhibited by the buildings in the main city of each race. (Many thanks to Jeff Hatch for identifying these styles!)

Here’s the architecture entry for the Humans.

Architecture

Stormwind, the Humans’ capital city, is Medieval in style, with some Romanesque elements to the main buildings of interest. It boasts an early-mid gothic cathedral, the Cathedral of Light.

The problem is, I can’t figure out the best way to display this stuff. Here are the options I’ve come up with.

Option 1: an image gallery

Pros:

• It’s the best-looking option, because it puts images right here in the page.
• It mitigates against link decay – I would have all of the images saved on my server.
• Wordpress has a built-in function for it that works perfectly (most of the time).

Cons:

• Ownership of images. The first site I’ve linked to, Greatbuildings.com, states clearly that it owns copyrights to its images. I can link to the profile pages of each style, as I’ve done above, but I can’t link directly to their image files, and I can’t download them and host them myself.

Option 2: hyperlinks (like I’ve already done above)

Pros:

• Almost universally accepted by owners of web content.
• Easy to do.
• Clean-looking.

Cons:

• Not as pretty as in-text images.
• Requires more clicks by readers to get to images, if I can’t link to an image file itself (i.e., with Greatbuildings.com links).
• Susceptible to link decay.

Option 3: some images, some hyperlinks

Pros:

• I can still use image galleries for the images I have the rights to, and I keep other content owners happy by not using their images in ways they don’t like.

Cons:

• Because it’s not a consistent way to present images, it runs the risk of looking haphazard/sloppy.

I’m currently thinking that Option 3 is the way to go: it lets me make use of my own screenshots and other legal-to-use images.  I’m running a plugin called Snapshots that shows previews of my links, so at least readers can get a sense of what they’ll see if they click on one. But I’m still not thrilled about the inconsistency in the presentation.

What do you think as a reader? What’s the most attractive, logical way to do all this?

Dissertation update: 9-11-09

The first solid draft of Chapter 1 is up. Still no Works Cited yet – I’m trying to find the most elegant way to do it. (What I want is a nice hypertextual way to follow in-text citations to the Works Cited. It’s easy enough to do, but I can’t decide whether it’d be better to have a Works Cited section at the bottom of each chapter, or a single, separate Works Cited page. If anyone’s got any suggestions on citations, I’d love to hear them.) But the footnotes are finally working, thanks to a plugin called FD Footnoes, as are some of the images.

As always, if you’re interested in commenting on the draft, I’d love any feedback, of any sort. That process is easier now that the dissertation is on my main site: you just leave a comment at the bottom of the page. No need to ask for a username and password anymore.

A late eulogy for the late great D.F.W.

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, jazzed me enough to read all of D.F.W.’s stuff and write my M.A. thesis on him. Now, as I’m working on my dissertation, I’m rereading it, and on more than one occasion it’s inspired me to get out of bed and write. Maybe D.F.W. will get me through my Ph.D as well as my M.A.

On starting more than I fin…

Lately, I’ve noticed that I start a lot more stuff than I finish. Games and books, mostly; but also, like many bloggers, my blog.

In the case of games, I know why I do it: there’s just so much great new shit coming out, and with apps like Steam that let me try new stuff without even having to schlep to Video Game Headquarters in Moscow, I’m always ready to whip out the old credit card and download the next awesome thing.  Plus, sometimes games are too hard. I’m looking at you, Braid.

With books, I seem to have lost the patience to slog through stuff that doesn’t grab me. It used to be, if a book had a dull section, I’d just wade through it. When I was a kid, I almost never quit a book. Now I do it all the time.

The blog – well, there’s usually no energy for the blog. The Diss takes it all. I don’t really enjoy writing, usually, to tell you the truth. Sometimes The Muse hits me and I’ll jump out of bed to write something down. Big fan of the epiphanies. Most of the time, though, writing is a chore, a professional duty. I do not, as many professional writers profess, have to write. I’d rather read, ponder, talk. Annie does, though, I’ve noticed. Need to write. She voluntarily blogs several nights a week (although see if you can get her anonymous blog’s address out of her!).  Which is probably why she’s gotten two (awesome) personal essays published. I’m suddenly reminded of the plot of Funny Farm. Hmm.

The habit concerns me, because I see it kind of spreading. There are a few things in my life – like oh, say, my dissertation – that I must see all the way through. I’m old enough to know that that things that are hard are good for you. And yet I sometimes catch myself slouching my through my Daily Diss Writing, or my Self-Directed Professional Reading. Without immediate deadlines, and with disc golf and Overlord beckoning, it’s hard to stay on task, you know?

A probably mundane self-directed-work-motivation problem meets a probably mundane Information-Age-consumption-based-ADD problem. The results are… troubling. Anybody having this too?

On Academic Detritus

A professor in my department is retiring in a couple of weeks, and he left a few hundred of his old books out for us students to take. Vulturing through this vast and dusty pile the other day, I was struck by a couple of things: 1) the large number of dated, obscure critical theory books, and 2) the fact that, at the end of his career, this guy had just decided to ditch them all.

It was kind of a sobering sight, and I’ve been weighing various responses to it. I’ve come up with three:

1. Despair: this is where my work, if it ever gets published, will wind up in 30 years – on a table amidst other dusty relics, too old and obscure to sell or even interest grad students. This one’s an obvious trap. I shall avoid it.
2. Ambition: this won’t be my fate! I’ll become a Big Name! My work will endure! There are two problems with this one: it’s arrogant (and who needs more arrogant academics), and it’s impossible (there’s no way to predict how your work will be received).
3. Self-reliance: if this is the likely fate of my work as a critic, then I might as well produce stuff I really like and am proud of. Something I would want to read, at least. And the third bowl of porridge was just right!

This isn’t so much a revelation as a reminder, but I’ve found that writing my dissertation – which is largely a struggle to establish my voice – is making me  appreciate aphorisms.

In case you didn’t see me at the Cs,

I’ve saved the script and slideshow from my presentation on this site. You can find links to the files on the Vita page.

My presentation’s title was “Working in the Metaverse and the Academy: Composing a Game Studies Dissertation Online.” It’s an inaccurate title (so it goes when you have to write a proposal almost a year in advance); the presentation was really about trying to write a “born-digital” dissertation and running into institutional roadblocks. Alex Reid has reviewed it on his blog, which you can see here.

A liveblog colloquium transcript

Last Friday, I held a colloquium on “Emerging Trends in the Digital Humanities” with Julie Meloni and Dr. Jason Farman. Here’s a liveblog transcript of it by Lauren Clark, a grad school friend of ours.

A fantasy in theory, part 2

Here’s what I meant by a visualization tool that will help me map networks: Thinkmap. It’s exactly what I’m looking for. Now, if only the company who owns it will let me by it for somewhat less than the $5,000 they list on their website… [cross fingers]