Synopsis: Presentation Zen (Introduction)

Here's a weird bit of research: people find it more difficult to process information if it's delivered to them verbally and in writing at the same time. That means that most Powerpoint presentations (*) actively interfere with how people actually learn and communicate.

* The stereotypical 'speaker reciting from the bullet-pointed list on the slide right in front of them'.

This is one of the starting points for the book I'm reading; Presentation Zen is about making better presentations - ones that help you communicate more effectively (or at least not bore your audience). This is something I've been interested in for a while; it ties into one of the potential new things I'm going to do.

Designing a presentation is a creative act

A presentation involves transforming facts or opinions into a story. I haven't read very much of Presentation Zen yet, but I suspect this is going to be one of the fundamental principles of its approach.

And now I think about it, that transformation can be applied to a lot of things: advertising, editorialising, propaganda. Reflecting on it, I realise that makes me a little uneasy: communicating in order to share your insights is something I'm fine with; communicating in order to persuade the audience brings up memories of feeling manipulated. I guess presentations can have an ethical dimension to them.

The author, Garr Reynolds, suggests that the first thing to do when given the opportunity to create a presentation is to slow down. Take the opportunity to think about what is important and what isn't. This leads into ideas of:

• Restraint (in preparation)
• Simplicity (of design)
• Naturalness (of presentation)

Reynolds suggests that applying these three principles will lead to greater clarity in your presentation. I'm about to reach the point in the book where he explores the first of these: restraint.

True Blood: Season 1, the last three episodes

The last three episodes were filled with great stuff. Strong character developments, changes to dramatic situations on all fronts, the introduction of interesting and despicable new characters. Funny (and moving) in parts, too.

And yet I'm having trouble getting enthused about it. As a TV series, I like True Blood, but I'm not sure I'm that interested in it. It's actually kind of a weird feeling - I think I'm starting to realise I like to get a little obsessed with TV shows. And the qualities that get me obsessed fascinated are intriguing questions and a sense that a series has a bigger picture (a mythology) that each episode is a part of.

True Blood is a really entertaining horror melodrama, that's well-written and performed, with a story that occasionally takes funny and surprising turns.

And I'm not sure that's enough for me. Guess I'll find out for sure when the next season rolls around (preview, here).

On a slight tangent, I do think I've consistently made the mistake of viewing this as a TV series and judging it on an episode by episode basis. While watching the finale, I realised it works better for me to think it as an TV adapation of a novel. I'm not sure I can articulate the difference between than that, yet. I'll think on it.

Why I'm Not Writing today - Existential Dread edition

I've been watching the History Channel doco, "Life After People", which follows the planet Earth forward about 10,000 years to see what would happen if every single human were to disappear* right now.

* The doco continuously uses the metaphor of 'disappearance', as if we're all taken up in some raptural-like experience. Implicitly, though, it's asking "What happens if we all die?" ... and to its credit, it delicately steers away from explaining that this would give dogs that have been trapped inside a house an extra week or two of unrefridgerated food supply.

Things I've learned from it:

• Dogs with short legs are screwed; pity them more than you normally would
• Nuclear power plants won't melt down
• Radiation can have long-term benefits for the environment
• Flying squirrels are cool
• Radio and TV broadcasts from Earth probably turn to gibberish after travelling about 2 light years.

A bit lame and OTT in places, extremely moving in others. It's broken down into 10 minute segments on this site. I recommend it.

Graphic Design Practice #7

More Photoshop challenges (where you get a random picture, title and quote, and make a book cover):



That's my second draft. My first draft (where I wanted to play with the title a little) looked like this:

Capturing the inner life of an adaptation

In the comments thread for the previous post, Sean said this:

I find an adaptation only tends to work for me if I get
swept away in the inner life of it, given that a big usual
question ('what will happen next') is already answered.

I'm interested in how an adaptation does achieve an inner
life. Breathing the life into an adaptation is kind of
magical as well as a technical accomplishment.

Hix, do you have any further thoughts on that aspect?

I am fascinated by this, too. I lament that many Stephen King books
that I find riveting to read fall completely flat on screen as not only
do they fail to capture the inner thoughts and completely reasonable
motivations of their characters, but also fail to create an identity
outside of schlock-horror scares. Randall Flagg in the TV adaptation
of The Stand, I am looking at you.

Last year, one of Bex's students was doing a speech on adapting
books into films. While it's written for an 11-year old and contains
pretty basic stuff, it'll give us a starting point:

Why do people turn books into films?

1. They love the story.
2. People have already bought the book, so studios reckon
  they'll pay to see the movie. That's why best-sellers get made
   into films.
3. Books have already worked out what the story is, so people
   can see how it turns out.

That means, in general, you turn a book into a film because
books are safe - they'll probably make money and you know
what you're getting.

What's the problem?

The way most books are written, you get inside the
character's head and hear their thoughts and see the world
from their point of view. Movies are pretty terrible at
showing this - they film what's right in front of you, not what's
happening in your head.

Also, books are filled with lots of tiny details, and things that
aren't obvious. You have to be a pretty great scriptwriter or
director to put those tiny details up on screen, so most film
adaptations of books don't show the stuff that's really
interesting in the book.

What are good books to turn into films?

Action-adventure stories, crime novels, some horror and
science-fiction and comedy stories - if they're about people
doing and saying things to each other. That's important -
the book should show you what's happening, rather than
what people are feeling.

What are bad books to turn into films?

Books with lots of complicated thoughts about life, or history,
or that are set entirely in a character's head. Maybe
The DaVinci Code is an example. The movie version of The Lord
of the Rings removes a whole bunch of stuff that's about the
history of Middle Earth and mostly shows you the action
sequences and the moments where people are in lots of trouble.

--- --- ---

So, I open the floor to you all. What gives an adaptation an inner
life? How do you make an adaptation fascinating in its own right?

Opinions, examples, links to relevant blog posts - all welcome.

I've been able to start reading Garden of Last Days again, and
last night there was a chapter from the point of view of the wife
of AJ, a major character. Previously, we've only seen her from AJ's
point of view  - and she's seemed cold, sexually disinterested,
and difficult.

During this chapter, which is 11 pages long, I got a real sense
of her childhood, failed relationships in college, why she fell in love
with AJ, and the difficulties they've experienced since.

11 pages. An entire life.

So, that's difficult to do in films. But it makes me think this:

ADAPTATIONS CAN'T PRIORITISE THE PLOT

Hypothesis: If you just dramatise the plot, you will fail. While you
capture the events of the book, you won't capture what makes the
characters tick.

However, you can't really just transfer the characters' inner
monologues onto screen via voice-over either. Doing that will not
make us care about them or understand why they are what they
are.

So, I propose this: successful adaptations always create entirely
new scenes to illustrate essential points about characters from
the source material. This is WAY more than just transforming
prose into dialogue. It requires showing us character decisions
and conflicts between characters demonstrate these essential
points.

(Despite the phrasing, this is just a proposal. Challenge it!
With examples, preferably. I'd be particularly interested in
people's thoughts on Atonement, Fight Club and The
Shawshank Redemption)

True Blood 1.9

And just like that, the show's awesome again.

This time, not because it changed up the situation; instead, the episode took its time exploring the subplots, and had some great character development.

• Tara tries to confront her demon
• Amy and Jason's relationship deepens and grows more touching, while gaining a whole crapload more karmic debt to pay back
  
• Vampire Bill gets a subplot.

If I'm being entirely honest, this episode completely won me back inside of 10 seconds. A streaming jet of blood completely covering Anna Paquin has that effect on me.

I even like the cliffhanger - which was a situational cliff, rather than a jeopardy one.

Nice work all around. Probably my second favourite episode of the season, and a timely lesson in not being too judgmental.

Adaptations

Chris asked me what I thought of Watchmen. That reminded me that I judge films where I'm familiar with the source material VERY differently to other films. My ranking system for adaptations goes kinda like this:

1. Incompetent: The film completely misses the point of the source material; quite possibly it's narratively incoherence or lacks an inner life.
... Examples: The Punisher (Dolph Lundren version)*

* Yes, I think there's probably a good version of The Punisher waiting to be made.

2. Mishmash: Cobbling together moments from the source material, this film creates a narrative that makes sense but doesn't really capture the spirit of the original
... Examples: Aeon Flux (in places), Constantine, The Return of the King (pre-Shelob), Fantastic Four 2, From Hell

3. Photography: This is simply and literally translating the book on screen. While it looks and moves like the source material, there is no excitement or engagement. It's a dead but accurate adaptation.
... Examples: the first half of Harry Potter 1, all of Harry Potter 2, Smilla's Feeling for Snow*

* Which is the film that started me on the path of developing this system.

4. Competence: A translation that basically hits the mark, recreating some of the moments of the original or standing on its own as a movie.
... Examples: The Two Towers, Hellboy, Aeon Flux (sometimes), the second half of Harry Potter 1, Harry Potter 3, most of Harry Potter 4*

* I'm confused about exactly why I'm using Harry Potter as my go-to reference, but let's roll with it.

5. Dead On: An adaptation that nails exactly what I love about the original material. In some cases, it even improves on the original.
... Examples: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Return of the King (post-Shelob), Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter 4 (the school dance sequence)

6. Masterpiece: The adaptation to film has given the story new meaning or resonance; it transcends the original
... Examples: The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather

Given that, I can say that I felt Watchmen veered between competence and being a dead-on adaptation* (with sporadic moments of being a mishmash) ... which shakes out to a film that's slightly above average.

* Places where I felt it was dead-on: Rorschach / Nite Owl II scenes. Dr Manhattan revisiting his life, on Mars. Quite a bit of the Antarctic finale.

True Blood 1.8

OK, I think I've got a problem with the cliffhangers now. It took me about 4 days to work up the enthusiasm to watch this episode - which I attribute solely to the false jeopardy of how the previous ep ended. I tend to feel betrayed when a cliffhanger promises to kill the lead character or threaten the series-defining central relationship.* On rare occasions, I'll keep watching if the cliffhanger makes me ask 'HOW the hell could she possibly get out of this?", but that is a difficult skill to regularly master.

* It's why I stopped watching Alias after 6 episodes and never went back.

Far more successful are the cliffhangers that change the situation utterly.* True Blood has only done this twice so far (1.6 and 1.7), and they were far and away the most intriguing, engaging ends of episodes for me.

* See most episodes of 24.

So, I wasn't predisposed to like this ep, and sure enough I found it a little choppy in its characterisations. Tara and Sookie seemed all over the place emotionally - for good reasons, as both their lives seem to have fundamentally changed, but not in ways that convinced me dramatically. Vampire Bill's characterisation seemed much more settled and relaxed, which I totally didn't buy after what he'd just been through. And there was what seemed like a 10 minute sequence at Merlotte's that just felt like a series of scenes in a dull soap opera.

Maybe it'll all play better if I rewatch the series. I'm prepared to admit that I might be judging it too harshly.

And it did do something neat with the central Bill-Sookie question that kicked off the episode: for a while I felt that were going to drag out the mystery for the entire episode, focusing on Sookie alone, seeing what she did and how she started to live her life. The way they actually revealed what had happened was shocking, dirty, and kinda sexy in a WTF sort-of way.

It also contained a number of nice developments in everyone else's subplots. I'm a particular fan of Jason's new girlfriend, who's drug addict hippie ways make me laugh at nearly everything she says. In a way that feels much cleverer than the equivalent in this movie.

But then the ep ended with another false jeopardy cliffhanger. So, yes: officially starting to get grumpy and worried about this show now.

Lost - Season 5 - The Dharma Years (Part I)

This run of episodes has been the strongest Lost has been for me since the end of Season 2.


*** SPOILERS, JENNI. ***


*** YEAH, I KNOW YOU'RE NOT WATCHING IT, BUT YOU TOTALLY SHOULD BE. ***


*** WHY BOTHER, YOU ASK? BECAUSE SAWYER IS AWESOME AGAIN ***


*** TRUST ME. I WAS RIGHT ABOUT VERONICA MARS AND SUPERNATURAL, WASN'T I? ***

Introducing time travel is proven to be an extremely elegant way of getting a lot of backstory about people whose lives have been touched by the island. More importantly, by taking the pressure off people like Sawyer we've seen them blossom. From Sawyer's character arc lows in Season 2 (the long con with the guns) and Season 3 (he freakin' shot Tom in cold blood), he's now become a hero, a leader, a person to admire.

And all the people who stayed on the island now have a lot to lose. I'm totally invested in them.

Meanwhile, they've given Kate something interesting to do - seriously, giving her a mission that doesn't have anything to do with the boys and that goddamn love quadrangle will (I assume) make her way more fascinating to watch, and lead to further exploration of the island. I'm also in awe of the character transformation they're making Jack go through - his acceptance of the island is planned for him undercuts all the potential Jack-Locke conflict we've been expecting, and opens up many new areas of their personalities to explore.

Plus it's so nearly came close to unbelievable, top-moment-of-TV-everness with that cliffhanger between Sayid and Ben. I would probably have tried to have this show's babies if it had followed through on opening up an alternate timeline in which one of the lead characters never existed.

The show is totally recapturing the magic of Season 1 for me. It's ambitious, inventive, and driving towards the finish line. And I have to wait two more weeks for the next episode.

Learning how to play - Process

I've played an enormous amount of cellphone poker over the last 2 days. It's made me think about some broad phases of skill acquisition when I play games. For me, it breaks into:

• Process (what do I do and when do I do it?)
• Tactics (what are the best options for me?)
• Understanding (the point at which the game becomes fun)

Process is simply getting comfortable with what happens when. When is it your turn? What are your options on your turn? What further decisions do taking those options open up for you?

There are a lot of games that I think I'd enjoy where I'm simply not comfortable with the process: poker, D&D4E, Capes, The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries.

The thing that makes me comfortable with process is repetition. And that's where having poker on my cellphone comes in handy. Normally I might play three games of Texas Hold 'em a year. In between times, all of those skills simply get lost. Any insights I've made, fade away. In the last 48 hours, I've played at least 3 games a day (probably more), and in the course of doing that I've become way more comfortable with checking, calculating outs and pot odds, and bluffing.

Games where the human element isn't so important (and I think I include D&D4E in that - despite loving the way it plays and its apparent tactical depth), are really amenable to these rapid cycles of practice and learning.

... huh. I just taught myself something. Taking that idea of process (which has also been talked about here, with the idea of how do you introduce someone to a game), I think I'm going to add an 'introductory' round to Bad Family - an opportunity for players to get used to narration and introducing complications, without introducing the rules.

Star Trek (2009)

It's an amusing diversion filled with performances that range from satisfactory to excellent.

Most Satisfying: the rowdy, pulp action. Swordfights! Gun battles! Perilous Footchases!

Most Suprising: that the space battles didn't really engage me.

Biggest Regret: reading ANYTHING about the film before I saw it.

Biggest Failing (*) : that quite a bit of the storytelling felt functional rather than gripping; that the outcomes of conflicts seemed inevitable.

* I'm going to have to see it again (probably on DVD) before making final judgments about this, but there were moments and conflicts between core characters that just felt bland to me. I mean, there's basically a scene where a character says "This is what you need to do," followed by a scene of it happening. I haven't seen writing like that since the end of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Kirk: Is hilarious. For the first half of the movie, Ed and I were sniggering in our seats every couple of minutes at how outrageous he was being. Top marks.

All in all, a reasonably fun way to reintroduce the franchise to a new generation of fans so that Paramount can suck money out of them for the next 20 years. It's a sexy, rowdy, funny Trek that's gotten better in my memory.

And here's the thing: the original actors played these roles into their 60s and 70s. Given that, and given a movie every two or three years, that means we could expect another 12 to 15 films from this iteration of Trek (**).

** Given that sort of timeframe, I'd prefer it if the Kirk-Spock relationship had been developed a little slower - across multiple movies.

I have no idea what that means for the future of the Trek franchise. No more stories in the original TV universe? A reboot of The Next Generation? Star Trek movies shot back to back, Pirates of the Caribbean styles?

Lost ads

More, here.

Movies to Look Forward to

Star Trek - Seen. Short review later today.

The Hurt Locker - a bomb disposal thriller by Katherine Bigelow

Solomon Kane - it sounds badass

Moon - indie SF film set on the moon, starring Sam Rockwell, and the voice of Keyser Soze as the possibly-crazy computer.

What about you?

Why I'm Not Writing today - Portable Edition

I'm jazzed by my new cheap cellphone - I can shoot two hours of footage on it, store the names of all the books I want to read from the library, record voice messages to myself, listen to mp3s and play games.

Currently, I'm getting the hang of Texas Hold 'em Poker. (Di: if you're reading this, I'm gunning for you now.)

True Blood 1.7

Less convinced by this episode. Ep 1.6 gripped me because it dealt with the ramifications of a single situation; this one started out looking like it was going to focus heavily on exploring the pros and cons of a vampire-human relationship but it kind of drifted away from that, into a reconnection with (and amping up of) everyone else's subplots.

It also looks like True Blood is moving into that dangerous territory: where it could be less about normal people in a setting with supernatural elements, and more about supernatural people in a supernatural setting.

I don't mind that - in fact there are parts of that (like the possible explanation for Tara's behaviour) that I think could be fun. It just means that the show is starting to remind me of a mature version of the soap opera elements of Buffy, minus the 'Monster of the Week' structure to give episodes a payoff and Joss Whedon's authorial voice.*

* I haven't really detected a distinctive 'voice' to this series yet.

The show's moving faster than I expected though - partly cos' it's meaner to its characters than I expected, and partly because Sookie's telepathy has allowed us to develop a lot of subtext about minor characters within very few episodes.** However, there's also a lack of a compelling over-riding question that's drawing me in to watching the show - the cliffhangers aren't enough for me yet.

** It's a great technique, and one that I'll consider to be extremely lazy if any other show picks up on it.

Great to finally recognise two of the actors though. The guy who plays Detective Andy Belfleur was Frank Sbotka in Season 2 of the Wire, and is almost unrecognisably due to his lighter, goofier body language. And the Iraqi War veteran is played by the same guy who was Zach in Gilmore Girls - again, a very different performance, and one that could assure him a solid career of supporting roles.

Changing my posting schedule

Writing is tough, but it should be also be fun. And if it's not fun, I tend to try and figure out why not and then make adjustments.

I've been running an experiment with the blog over the last month or so: writing posts whenever I've been inspired to, and then auto-scheduling their publication.

It's a system that fits with my writing style a lot better; I tend to write in bursts, which usually means multi-dimensional goes through periods of posting 5 or 6 times a day, followed by several months of silence.

So, I'm enjoying blogging again for the first time in ages ... but to take the pressure off myself even further, I'm going to slow down the rate at which I'm auto-publishing my posts. Expect something every couple of days for the next month or two.

We'll see how that goes.

Review: 279 Days to Overnight Success

JP and I have been having a little bit of a conversation about 279 Days to Overnight Success in the comments.

At a simplistic level, 279 Days describes a strategy for building your blog in such a way that you can make a living (or at least a side-income) from it.

Is it the sort of thing you'll be interested in? Well, that depends on what you want:

• Do you want lots of people to read your blog?
• Do you want to sell stuff that you've created?
• Do you want to build a community of people interested in the same topic(s) as you?

I've recommended it to two people so far: Jenni (because she's interested in creating stuff people want to buy) and Morgue (whose ideas about small group action deserve a wider audience).

There's quite a lot I like about this manifesto. First off, it encourages you to think about why you're blogging - I've had to do a bit of that over the last year (and came to the conclusion that I just want to enjoy it - more fun, less profundity).

Second, I absolutely agree with the philosophy that if you're going to try and make money off your blog, do it with your own creations, not Google ads. As part of that, 279 Days describes the process of listening to your audience and discovering what they want. I find the process of finetuning the balance between my writing needs and what people who comment here say they want to be really fun.*

* Actually, JP, based on an earlier comment of yours, look for quite a bit more TV reviewing to show up here in the near future.

279 Days also mentions some other principles I agree with:

• Figure out your writing style
• Commit to a publishing schedule
• Know why people should read what you write
• Ignore vampires (critics who try to vapourise your will to write)*

* I've had a couple of these over the years, and I've had to figure out a couple of ways to deal with them.

This is not for every writer. The desire to expand your community - whether or not you intend to make money from blogging - isn't for everyone. But there's enough good stuff here that I have to recommend it.

Questions, JP?

(BTW, JP's blog is one of my top five reads on the internet: literate, thoughtful, funny meditations on growing up and parenting. This is a perfect example.)

True Blood 1.6

This is the first episode of True Blood I've been eager to watch. Following on from the first riveting cliffhanger I feel the show's done, Episode 1.6 dealt with a whole mess of nasty emotions coming to the surface: grief, suspicion, resentment ... while still laying out the possibility for hope.

We've also seen enough of the characters in action so that subtext is starting to come effortlessly to the scenes. And Anna Paquin's scene with her grandmother's pie is the first classic moment of the series for me.

Andrei Tarkovsky wrote about how cinema was the art of 'sculpting in time', and I could see that here. This episode felt cohesive, in comparison to the way that previous episodes have been entertaining but a bit all-over-the-place. It probably has a lot to do with the single event that this episode is based around, and its ramifications for all the characters. (Yes, I'm being vague here. If you haven't seen it, I totally don't want to spoil it.)

And one hell of a cliffhanger to finish off with. This series is totally hitting its stride.

Dracula - updated in realtime

You may have seen this already: someone's blogging Dracula, publishing each diary entry on the day that it was written.

Dracula.

Jonathon Harker still hasn't reached Castle Dracula yet, so there's plenty of time to jump on board the experience.

(JP: My thoughts on 279 Days are coming I'm posting my thoughts on 279 Days tomorrow ...)

True Blood - The first half of Season One

I'm really enjoying this. The word on the street is true: it does take a little while to warm up. I'd say it doesn't really become a TV series until about 40 minutes into the pilot, when Sookie and Bill the vampire spend a long, long scene together, firmly establishing them as the relationship that's going to be our hook into the show.

Prior to that, all we have is a setting. A small town in the American South, in a world very much like our own except that vampires exist and have recently outed themselves to the world. The show plays that part fairly matter-of-factly; the existence of vampires is pretty much as novel and filled with unknown dangers as the internet was about 10 years ago. What show-runner Alan Ball (and presumably novelist Charlaine Harris) is interested in at a setting level is using vampires to explore ideas of bigotry and integration. Setting the show in the south allows them to create parallels between vampires and African-Americans; the fact that vampires have recently revealed themselves but looking just like everyone else gives the show an opportunity to play around with ideas of being gay.

The show feels very different to Ball's previous series: Six Feet Under. I imagine it's a relief to be able to write episodes that explore a different emotional pallette (which I'd describe as sultry pulp, with a bit of comedy of human weakness thrown in there).

Over the last four episodes, True Blood has gradually deepened the supporting cast - several of them now seem like interesting characters embedded in pretty fascinating situations - and that's helped it go from a fairly functional show to an entertaining one. Very much looking forward to the next episode.

Parker, now in comic form

As a long-time fan of Richard Stark's Parker novels, I'm glad to see this comic. Particularly like the sense of time and place that Darwyn Cooke's creating.

Click here for the preview, if you're interested in reading about a bad-ass heist planner looking for revenge.

The Room is a great bad movie

The Room is the Plan 9 from Outer Space of '90s indie movies. I suspect that within 2 to 10 years, The Room will be as well known as Plan 9.

It is damn funny.
It is terrible.
These things are related.

And it is having an obsessive effect of many of my friends.

Sharp Teeth

A novel about werewolves, written in verse.
Spends the first two-thirds getting up to speed
And the last third delivering
On its promise.

Flashforward

Robert Sawyer's novel takes a starting situation I found pretty interesting (due to an experiment gone wrong, everyone in the world gets a two minute glimpse of their lives 21 years in the future), and uses that as a springboard to examine the conflict between free will and determinism.

And it's soon to be a TV series. The book provides an excellent tapestry for a show, and so far it seems to be making changes that make it (a) less cerebral, and (b) more likely to sustain a 3+ season TV series.

Flashforward's inspired me to seek out other sci-fi novels with strong 'What if' premises and good characterisations. Anybody got any suggestions?

Bad Family - still hammering away

The outline is nearly finished, and I'm about to send off the final requests for artwork. Not sure I'm going to make my self-imposed May 16 deadline, though.

The common wisdom around goal-setting is that you should always include a realistic but challenging deadline to achieve your goal by. I generally don't find deadlines that useful - I find them frustrating and de-motivating if I miss them. My preference is to set an objective and then stubbornly keep at it until it's done.

The one enormous exception to that is when I decided to film hopeless within a year. That got things done.

I'm still trying to reconcile these two things.

Supernatural - the Season 2 finale

Hmm. It was good, but it makes me wonder what the season would have looked like if it had focused on telling the over-aching story as opposed to filling a 22-episode order. I suspect it would have been considerably shorter.

Definitely interested in checking out Season 3, though. No spoilers: A main character made a decision very early on in the final episode that has set up a 'ticking clock' situation that I'm fascinated to see play out.

Why I'm Not Writing today

I'm busy pretending to be a hacker - playing Exploit, by Gregory Weir. Try it: it's got a fun, War Games, 1990s cyberpunk vibe to it.

You tube time travel

And to continue with the time travel theme, a choose-your-own adventure delivered via youtube. Any ideas how make one of these things?

The Second Best Thing ever

Click to embiggen.

The first best thing ever, of course, is this. [h/t and link to Billy]

Go Zack Kim!

If you are into guitars, music, the Simpsons or things that are awesome, then this is worth 1 minute and 38 seconds of your time.

Bad Family - Progress Report

Bad Family is the Old Thing #3 that I've been working on. I've nearly finished restructuring the outline. I'm trying to far easier for readers to visualise how to play the game. I've sort of been using Jason Morningstar's process:

the rules have to be crystal clear about procedures, and call out what to do when, and flag points where what you do is a little off kilter. So how to do that?

I’ve been steadily revising a cheat sheet, a “what to do when” document, so I atomized that into a very detailed outline. Like this detailed:

3.2.4.3 Keep any die that resolves a spotlight scene for your character in front of you throughout the game.

It’s four pages long and was a pain in the ass to put together. Then I cut and paste my current text into the outline by paragraph, wherever it referenced the outline. And here’s what I learned - there are big chunks of assumption, places where I don’t talk about what to do, when. There’s redundancy. There’s stuff that is presented subtly out of order. It was a really instructive and eye-opening exercise. It’s going to make the game text much, much clearer. I recommend it!

Jason's comment about stuff that's presented subtly out of order is very true of my project.

No idea if I'll make my May 16 deadline for producing an ashcan of this, but I'm making lots of progress towards getting the thing done and out of my life.

[RPG] Why I'm enjoying PTA - The Other Side

I mentioned how much I'm enjoying our Tuesday night game of Primetime Adventures. Here are a few reasons why:

1.
We've created a setting that we all love, and want to expand on. Our sessions are filled with improvising new details and quirks, and creating incidental characters. I'm keeping a chart of all the characters we've met, which we refer to regularly to reincorporate them. I, for one, want to see a return of the married animated doors that guard the King's treasury.

2.
This is our second season with the show. We're familiar with what works, and we've fine-tuned what didn't.

3.
Not only that, but the characters are all in really interesting and totally unstable positions that have emerged naturally from the events of Season One.

4.
More focused. Previously Svend and I were co-producing, and playing a character each. Now Svend is the solo producer, he's dropped his character. It's more screen-time for each of us.

5.
Celeste is playing a KICK-ARSE character, and her performance is riveting to watch. She has taken a secondary character who we all loved from last year, and turned her into something magnificent.

6.
There's a lot of trust between all of the players that at any point we'll be able to come up with something fun/cool/inventive/appropriate.

7.
We playing by the rules, which funnily enough is making the game easier to run. In particular, we're doing two things. First, we're focusing the conflicts on what the characters want, rather than trying to invent possible outcomes for the conflicts. Second, we're trying to keep the game 'in the moment', roleplaying stuff out rather than just saying "Then [this] happens, and then [this] would happen." Both those things are making the game flow more smoothly and more vividly.

8.
We're using fanmail to reward the things we want to see more of - like Wayne being emotional, and Celeste being bold and evil. It's not just about input that we think is funny. I think the game is deepening as a result.

Dollhouse 1.9

Spectacular. If this is the show, then it's the most interesting thing Joss Whedon has ever created.

Supernatural - the rest of Season 2

Supernatural continues to be a entertaining horror-for-TV show. It's been interesting seeing it mix:

• brotherly banter and matter-of-fact attitude towards dealing with monsters
• an episode of the week structure that uses several genre tropes (the Rashomon episode, the episode where they live a completely different life)
• serious emotional character developments and philosophical arguments, and
• a solid mythology for the show.

Favourite subplots so far include 'The FBI are after us', and 'Sam may go dark side'.

All the episodes have been fun, but the standouts for me are: No Exit (their take on 'Saw'), Nightshifter (weirdly, I feel it's inspired by 'Inside Man' and it's a great sequel to a Season 1 ep), Heart (werewolves, and a pretty amazing conclusion), and Hollywood Babylon (an satire of trashy Hollywood movies - Pearce, if there's one episode you should watch it's this one).

This second season has basically put all the pieces into place for a third season dealing with a war of demons vs hunters. I'm about to watch the two part season finale, and my expectations are high. The end of Season 1 had the highest proportion of cliffhangers-and-twists to running time of any episode of TV I've seen since the Season 1 finale of Twin Peaks.

Dollhouse - The original pilot screenplay

Just finished reading the screenplay for the original pilot of Dollhouse. Interesting stuff: overall, I'd say was a good idea for Team Whedon to do a rewrite/reshoot - not because the original version of the pilot is weaker than the broadcast version; in some ways the original pilot is stronger, particularly in its Act One introduction of what Actives are and what they do.

The problem is that it condenses a lot of beats that appear in later episodes into a single 54 page burst. That means that moments and plot developments don't have time to breathe or gain significance.

I feel there's a balance to found between this hyper-compressed version of Dollhouse and the first six episodes that were broadcast, but Team Whedon were right to unpack it they way they did.

[RPG] PTA - The Other Side

The Primetime Adventures games that I'm playing on Tuesday nights is fantastic. Season One was set mostly in a fantasy kingdom (orcs, elves and wizards) that's been colonised by American multi-national corporations. We're on to the second season now, which is flipping between that fantasy world and contemporary Earth.

The fantasy world has just suffered through a regime changes and is now struggling with the crappy leadership of a dangerously naive king (played by me). Back on Earth, Sam (an extremely emo teenager) is battling for the soul of his 9-year old sister with a fairy godmother from hell (literally).

It's great fun, and I'll go into more detail about why, later.

Supernatural - Season 2, the first 5 episodes

Supernatural: a show about two brothers who drive around the States in a Ford Impala killing monsters.

It should be the sort of show I hate with its 'kill a new monster every week' episode structure, but I really like it for two reasons: (i) attitude - the brothers are sarcastic, listen to metal, and kick monster ass with a variety of shotguns and crowbars, and (ii) sub-plots.

Right now, the show is juggling the grieving process, a hunters-bar sub-plot complete with an (I'm guessing) unwitting incestuous romance for Dean, the mystery of what Dad said to Dean, Dean is a psychic, (possibly) a crazy hunter who wants to get revenge on the brothers, (possibly) a peace-nik vampire, and a demon who wants to bring about the apocalypse. And it's doing it all fairly effortlessly while telling satisfying, self-contained stories every week.

I'm also a fan of the characterisation: what started out as a fairly simplistic 'Dean is a bad boy, Sam is a good boy' dynamic got nicely complicated about halfway through Season 1 when we realised that Dean has always tried to live up to his father's dreams, and plays the peace-maker between his Dad and Sam, who rebelled by quitting the family business of monster-hunting and going to university. I admire this because it was simply a matter of viewing facts we already knew in exactly the opposite way - and as a result it elegantly demonstrates that both brothers have elements of each other in them.

Nice, solid, 'horror movie but for TV' entertainment.

Zombies - Bad Plans and Romero films

Hat-tip to Simon for showing me this thread: a simple-minded teenager high on sugar products describes what he would do in the event of a zombie outbreak, and has his plan ripped to shreds by various asshats, gun fanatics, and people who take George Romero films EXTREMELY seriously.

BTW, I just watched 'Diary of the Dead', Romero's latest flick. Good cheap fun, not ground-breaking, but nice to see Romero doing a road-trip version of the zombie film. While the idea that the survivors travel around in an RV felt a little like 'The Walking Dead' to me, it was a great way of cheaply conveying a sense of scope to the outbreak (and that scope was nicely helped along by lots of internet footage).

Biggest problem: it doesn't quite figure out the right tone of how to mock its student film-maker protagonists.

Biggest asset: Samuel the Amish zombie fighter.

Biggest innovation: unlike 'Cloverfield', 'Blair Witch', 'Rec', or 'Doom', this film occasionally managed to really capture the thrills and terror of a first person shooter. Nice work.

Why I'm not writing - The Geography edition

Here's Globetrotter XL, a Flash game that tests your geography knowledge. I am fighting the urge to play it for the next couple of hours.

What I'm watching

With the end of Battlestar Galactica, my viewing habits are going to change. I'll be dabbling in TV shows, rather than following simply watching one till it finishes and then starting on another one. Currently, the shows I'm interested in seeing more of are:

• Dollhouse
• Lost
• Supernatural
• True Blood
• The Wire
• The Shield
• Rome

More on these, later.

Progress Report

Old Thing #2: I've sent off an enquiry email about The Limit. The second round of producer submissions has finally begun. Sean, you are now under strict instructions to stage an intervention on me if I attempt another unpaid rewrite.

Old Thing #3: I've figured out a way to structure the game's presentation; hopefully it'll be way easier to follow now. But there is much writing to be done.

Old Thing #1 is done

I've sent off the outline for this feature to the director. Probably a few more emails and meetings before it's all closed off, but as far as I'm concerned it's finally done.

Now to send the enquiry email and close off Old Thing #2.

What's stopping me writing today

Transmover: a Flash puzzle-solving game.

Dollhouse - The First 8 Episodes

Here's what I think: Dollhouse has the most untapped potential of any TV show I've seen in years.* The premise is that there are people ("dolls") who have 'volunteered' to have their minds first wiped and then replaced by programmable personalities. The show explores what happens to these dolls, and to the people who look after and control them.

Here are four reasons I want to keep watching this show:

1.
It's using its premise to create inventive soap opera storylines and weird-ass relationships that are extremely uncomfortable and dysfunctional.

2.
Caroline's backstory (as hinted at in the first scene of the pilot, and the most recent episodes) has been enough to hook me into watching the show to completion.

3.
The sense of paranoia that pervades everything. This show has a mood, and it's not typical Joss Whedon wise-cracking territory.

4.
From episode 6, I'm watching a show that's growing more interesting and layered with every passing scene. This is a show that's not afraid to take its time establishing its characters.

***

If you watch Dollhouse, I recommend you skip the third episode (which is weak). I'd recommend you skip the fifth episode (which I felt had a weak payoff) but it contains a small plot development which has an influence on future episodes.

Episodes 6 and 8 are strong and (coupled with the amount of exposition that dolled out in Ep 7) have me believing that Whedon is either aiming to:

• complete his overall story for the series in a single season (in case Dollhouse doesn't get renewed), or
• setting the groundwork for an amazing second season where the stories come primarily from the characters and situation, rather than an arbitrary 'Genre Movie Premise of the Week but with Dolls' episode structure.
  
  
  * Heroes felt like it had this sort of potential in its first 12 episodes, but it gradually slid into a web of relationships and conspiracies that was too tightly woven for my tastes (every character either being related to each other, or plotting against them).

Lost - Season 5 so far

Very quickly (and yes, spoilers if you haven't been watching. Massive spoilers.):

• Flaming arrows?
• Sayid kills people with his feet? And a dishwasher?
• Benjamin mother-fraking Linus?
• Penny and Charlie?
• Daniel Faraday's unsettling past?
• Jughead is still out there.
• Time travel? Exploring the island not only in space but in history? And putting an end to time travel?
• Sure - they spent a little too long off the island, but the stuff that happened there at the very end was fascinating.
• Sawyer and his band of sarcastic geniuses joining the Dharma Initiative? In 1974? For three years? Let me rephrase: Sawyer has been a happy and productive part of the Dharma Initiative for three years. W.T.F?
• Killing off nearly all the remaining survivors of Oceanic Flight 815? And then crashing another fraking plane on the island?

I honestly have no idea where this show is going to go next. It's like Dollhouse in that respect. Hatches? Numbers? Frak that. We have just watched a team of writers dismantle their own premise, bury the parts, and simultaneously all drop acid. What happens from this point on is going to be fascinating.

Oh yeah, and ... THE STATUE IS BACK!

Graphic Design Practice #6

A revision of yesterday's cover - I wanted to create more white space, and use some contrast in the font for the quote.

Graphic Design Practice #5

I learned about 'gradient fill' with this one - the nice shading from dark blue to white in the background.

I tried mucking around with a lot of differents appearances and placements for the quote, but in the end I decided that keeping it simple was going to be the best thing for the cover. I did do two versions though - adjusting the colour of the quote so that it sort-of matched the picture.

Slightly Less Ambiguous Progress Report 2

Here's how things stand:

Old Thing 1: I am currently re-editing, and writing a little bit of new material one scene away from locking down this treatment (it's a scene I didn't expect to be problematic, but I think I can get through it if I just focus on the characters rather than the plot) and will probably get away within the next week or two two or three days.

Old Thing 2: I need to compose have composed an enquiry email to a producer about my feature - now to send the damn thing.

Old Thing 3: need to completely rewrite (with examples), integrate artwork, and try to release as an ashcan in time for Day of Games on May 16.

Graphic Design Practice #4

My most recent design.

Graphic Design Practice #3

This third mock-cover is even simpler, but I tried to turn the quote into a tattoo (mucking around with the question mark to make it a bit more primal):

Graphic Design Practice #2

For my second cover, I went for something a bit simpler, and I wanted to take advantage of the black border on the left hand side:

Graphic Design Practice #1

I've been finding this graphic design challenge thread really inspirational - use a random wikipedia article as a title and randomly select a picture, and then turn them into a cover for a game.

I've never used Photoshop seriously before, and this challenge has been just the excuse I needed to start teaching myself.

Here's my first cover:

Ambiguous Progress Report

Here's where I stand:

Old Thing 1: am currently re-editing, writing a little bit of new material, and will probably get away within the next week or two.

Old Thing 2: need to compose an enquiry email to a producer, and send the damn thing.

Old Thing 3: need to completely rewrite (with examples), integrate artwork, and try to release as an ashcan in time for Day of Games on May 16.

Anti-bang

I have reached deep into the innards of my computer and given it life again.

Work on two old things and one new thing is proceeding.

Bang @#$@ !!!!!!!

Computer has exploded. Again.

Seems like it does this every time I finish a draft of The Limit. Perhaps the power supply unit blowing up is a result of unleashing my raw creative energy and focusing it into Microsoft Word.

Or, it could be that I take so long between drafts that the fan wears out.

... Anyway, repairs will soon get underway.

Another brother video

Again for Samuel Flynn Scott and the B.O.P. Made for absolutely no money.

I think this one's even catchier:

Keeping it in the family

My brother directed and edited this music video:

[RPG] Linkage to my game plan

Here's what I played last year, and the games I'm planning for 2009.

Thy Vernal Chieftains - a review

I've posted a new RPG review here. Thy Vernal Chieftains is a set of storytelling rules about groups of Britons, Celts, and Romans struggling in the power vacuum after the Roman legions withdraw from the British Isles.

Script Surprise

The big move revealed a first-draft screenplay I'd forgotten I'd written. Even better, it's for one of my dream projects - an exploration of being in a band: writing songs, recording albums, being creative.

Looking forward to reading it. I feel like I'm about see a film that I've heard good things about and that I watched the trailer for about three months ago. It's unbelievably rare to get an opportunity to read something you've written as a completely fresh audience.

Also, no internet access at home yet.

Links of Interest - on the sidebar

I'm now sharing interesting links from my Google Reader feed directly to this blog.

Check the sidebar for more. I've been trying to get this to work for a while; should result in less link posts.

Hiatus explanation

Posting has been slow due to promotion + moving + love + proofing + trip to the Ngai Tahu AGM in Kaikoura + cognitive overload + gaming + learning to drive + life planning.

More later.

West Wing Season 6

I have never seen a TV show bounce back so well. It's gone from fun (under Aaron Sorkin) to kind-of-a-slog in Season 5, to utterly compelling.

I love how, having heard spoilers for nearly everything, the show continues to surprise me with great developments for its leads. Especially CJ Cregg - she's entering a list I never knew I had: my Top 10 favourite characters.

Definitely a show to rewatch from the beginning. And I've still got the Santos-Vinnick election plot to come. In fact, check out this little article about the parallels between Santos-Vinnick and Obama-McCain. (THERE ARE SPOILERS ALL THE WAY THROUGH, BUT ESPECIALLY AT THE END)

Pop quiz: sexual chemistry

Pop quiz: name the last mainstream movie from Hollywood where there was sexual chemistry between the two leads.

Your answers will be assessed on (a) how recently it was made, and (b) how long the leads are on-screen together.

[The Gap] Finding people who are into what you're into

This one's for Morgue and Sean.

Colin Meek tipped me off to Twine.com. In Colin's words, it's:

a new social bookmarking site underpinned with semantic technology. For journalists it is Facebook on steroids.

Through Twine you can join groups (called Twines) where people post interesting links, bookmarks and resources on specific topics as diverse as the 'Financial Crisis' and 'Beer'. Based on your activity and items you have bookmarked, the site 'recommends' twines, connections with other members and other items people have saved.

This site is crucial to the development of Sean's and my new movie.

I don't care if it's repudiation or change

CNN just called Ohio.

Congratulations, President President-Elect Obama!

I will now go do something productive with my day to celebrate.

[Long Range Thinking] Negotiating through a complex problem (Part 3)

In 'Solving Tough Problems', Adam Kahane talks about his involvement in a negotiation about what post-apartheid South Africa would look like. Could they achieve the seemingly-impossible, and negotiate a peaceful transition in power that would lead to a prosperous country? The negotiations were held at the Mont Fleur Conference Center. What follows is part 3 of a series of direct quotes from the book:

*

The most extraordinary characteristic of the Mont Fleur process was the relaxed openness of the conversation. The team members not only spoke openly but, over the course of the meetings, changed what they said.

Open listening is the basis for all creativity - in business and engineering as much as in politics.

"[Work hard] to learn how to listen, without judging, to what the other person is trying to say-really to be there. If we listen in the normal closed way, for what is right and what is wrong, then we won't be able to hear what is possible: what might be but is not yet. We won't be able to create anything new."

The members of the Mont Fleur team had listened, not only openly, but also reflectively. When they listened, they were not just reloading their old tapes. They were receptive to new ideas. More than that, they were willing to be influenced and changed. They held their ideas lightly; they noticed and questioned their own thinking; they separated themselves from their ideas ("I am not my ideas, and so you and I can reject them without rejecting me "). They "suspended" their ideas, as if on strings from the ceiling and walked around and look at those ideas from different perspectives.

To create new realities, we have to listen reflectively. It is not enough to be able to hear clearly the chorus of other voices; we must also hear the contribution of our own voice. It is not enough to be able to see others in the picture of what is going on; we must also see what we ourselves are doing. It is not enough to be observers of the problem situation; we must also recognise ourselves as actors who influence the outcome.

Bill Torbet of Boston College once said to me that the 1960s slogan "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" actually misses the most important point about effecting change. The slogan should be, he said, "If you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution." If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way that they are, then logically we have no basis at all, zero leverage, for changing the way things are - except from the outside, by persuasion or force.

[Long Range Thinking] Negotiating through a complex problem (Part 2)

In 'Solving Tough Problems', Adam Kahane talks about his involvement in a negotiation about what post-apartheid South Africa would look like. Could they achieve the seemingly-impossible, and negotiate a peaceful transition in power that would lead to a prosperous country? The negotiations were held at the Mont Fleur Conference Center. What follows is part 2 of a series of direct quotes from the book:

*

The first brainstorming exercise produced 30 stories. The team combined these and narrowed them down to nine for further work, and set up for some teams to flesh out the scenarios along social, political, economic, and international dimensions. The subteams worked from September through December, when the whole team reconvened at Montt Fleur for a second workshop.

They first addressed in nine scenarios in more depth and then narrowed the field to four that they thought, given the current situation in the country, were the most plausible and important.

After that workshop, the team went back to their own organisations and networks to test these four scenarios. At a third workshop, in March 1992, the participants reviewed and refined the write-ups of the final scenarios and agreed how they would be published and disseminated.

Finally, in August, the team held a fourth, one-day workshop to present and test the logic of the scenarios with a broader and more senior group. The team's final scenarios asked the question: How will the South African transition go, and will the country succeed in "taking off"? Each of the four stories gave a different answer and had a different message that mattered to the country in 1992.

Once the four scenarios had been agreed on, the team introduced them into the national conversation. They inserted a 25 page booklet into the leading weekly newspaper, arranged for the work to be discussed in the media, and distributed a cartoon video of the four stories. Most importantly, they ran more than 100 workshops for leadership groups of their own and other influential political, business and civic organisations, where the four scenarios were presented and debated.

[Long Range Thinking] Negotiating through a complex problem (Part 1)

In 'Solving Tough Problems', Adam Kahane talks about his involvement in a negotiation about what post-apartheid South Africa would look like. Could they achieve the seemingly-impossible, and negotiate a peaceful transition in power that would lead to a prosperous country? The negotiations were held at the Mont Fleur Conference Center. What follows are direct quotes from the book:

*

The teams at Mont Fleur started off in mixed small groups, brainstorming possible scenarios for South Africa over the decade ahead. I asked them to talk not about what they or their party wanted to happen - their usual way of talking about the future - but simply about what might happen, regardless of what they wanted.

Each small group could present back to the whole group any story that day they wanted, as long as they could argue that it was logical and plausible. The listeners in the plenary were not permitted to shout down the story with "That couldn't happen" for "I don't want that to happen." They could only ask "Why would that happen?" or " What would happen next?"

The team found this scenario came to be fabulously liberating. They told stories of left-wing revolution, right-wing revolts, and free-market utopias. They told some politically incorrect stories, and also rejected as implausible some politically correct stories.

These scenario exercise also encouraged openness and reflectiveness. The scenarios were what if stories to play with, not predictions or proposals to sell. They emphasised multiple views about what might happen, rather than a single story about what would or should happen. They dealt with dynamic complexity because they addressed the whole situation in terms of causes and effects; with generative complexity because they addressed ways the future might be different from the past; and with social complexity because they created space not just for one "official future" but for many perspectives. Above all, they articulated links between the choices that the team members and their fellow citizens would make and the way in which the future would unfold.

(SJH: It appears that this exercise took place over a few days)

The first brainstorming exercise produced 30 stories. The team combined these and narrowed them down to nine for further work, and set up for some teams to flesh out the scenarios along social, political, economic, and international dimensions. The subteams worked from September through December, when the whole team reconvened at Montt Fleur for a second workshop.

*

I've broken this description of the Mont Fleur process into a series of posts. The next one will be up tomorrow.

[Long Range Thinking] Upcoming Articles

Here's some of the stuff I want to tackle soon:

• Profile James Hanson
• Profile Valev Smil
• Investigate the 100 months movement
• Publish more notes from Solving Tough Problems by Adam Kahane
• Discuss why long-range thinking could be a bad thing
• Summarise the WWF (wildlife, not wrestling) report, 'Weathercocks and Signposts'
• Summarise 'Plan B'
• Research VBN theory (Gardner and Stern)
• Conduct some polarity management between climate change deniers and believers

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[Long Range Thinking] An initial summary of the issues with LRT

Here's a summary of some of the important concepts I've been writing about for the last week or so. I'm trying to articulate some of the elements that make it more difficult for people to think long range:

The 'timeline' is the length of time a person is comfortable making plans for. A gambling addict can have a timeline of between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes. "Where's the next $2 coin for the pokies coming from?"

The 'responsibility' is how much action do you personally need to take, or think you should take, vs. how much action you think everyone else is taking.

The 'scope' is the limits of how complex a situation a person is comfortable making plans about. Many people are daunted by the scope of an issue like climate change. There are many variables involved, including a mass of scientific data to assess and reinterpret into terms intelligible to you, decisions to make about likely scenarios, and a global ecosystem to try and visualise. It is a complex problem.

In 'Solving Tough Problems', Adam Kahane defines three types of complexity:

1. Dynamic - how close together are the problem's cause and effect?
   
2. Generative - how familiar and predictable is the future suggested by the problem?
   
3. Social - how much to the people affected by the problem agree about what's causing the problem?
   

Kahane suggests that to solve problems with a high dynamic complexity, you need to examine the interrelationships among the pieces and the functioning of the whole system.

If you want to solve a problem with a high generative complexity, you can't calculate the solution in advance, based on what has worked in the past; you have to work it out as the situation unfolds.

When solving problems with a high social complexity, the people involved must participate in creating and implementing the solution.

To solve a complex problem, we have to immerse ourselves in and open up to its full complexity. Dynamic complexity requires us to talk not just with experts close to us, but also with people on the periphery. Generative complexity requires that we talk not only about options that worked in the past, but also about ones that are emerging now. And social complexity requires us to talk not just with people who see things the same way we do, but especially with those who see things differently, even those we don't like. We must stretch way beyond our comfort zone.

[Long Range Thinking] A game about climate change

Earlier this year, I spent about a week obsessed with this game:

Climate Challenge

It's a flash game where you play the president of the European Nations. Over 100 years, you must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office. It's really about the trade-offs between effective policy, electoral popularity, and earning enough money to keep the EU afloat.

For the first six days I played it, I was an ecological saviour at the cost of my policies crashing Europe into a new barbarism due to hyper-inflation.

Climate Challenge gives an entertaining intro to the feel of long-range thinking.

[Long Range Thinking] The Wiki is up

I've created the Long Range wiki, to organise all of these thoughts. You can find it here:

Long Range

The wiki is a work-in-progress, so it may look a bit messy. My hope is that it helps me in creating some regular 'summary' posts, that'll keep the writing on track.

*

'Long Range' is my attempt to apply the lessons from my script blogging: I started to put everything onto a wiki way too late in the script blogging process, and the whole thing became quite unwieldy.

Useful links

I've been cleaning out the backlog from my Google Reader. Here's some stuff that survived the cull from last week and the last year:

Mint.com provides us with 30 free ebooks to learn about personal finance.

Trent at the Simple Dollar discusses how to build a master information document. This is:

a guide to the executor of your estate, containing all important information not contained in the other documents and also explaining online account access and other such information, like where a safety deposit box key should be and such. This may also include personal letters to people for them to read in the event of your passing and so forth.

Trent also talks about creating a silent room to enhance productivity.

Dane lists 20 things you shouldn't do when starting a business.

Jenni links to Instructables and Wikihow - two sites that tell you how to do most of the things you need to know how to do. (And happy 5th blogday, Jenni!)

David Milch (Deadwood) discusses writing.

David Simon (The Wire) gives a talk at Harvard University.

[Long Range Thinking] The dilemma

Hypothesis: People make the best decisions they can. When deciding, their short-term interests (the ones that have an immediate impact on them) usually outweigh their long-term interests.

I suspect that one's reasonably uncontroversial.

I wonder if you could say this, though: People make the best decisions they can. Under extreme circumstances people could be persuaded to think about their best interests in terms of things that will happen in their lifetime. They might possibly think about it terms of their children, and maybe maybe in terms of their grandchildren.

People who voluntarily think at the century or millenia level - like Jim Hansen or Professor Vaclav Smil - are extremely rare. What makes them different?

[Long Range Thinking] Types of LRT

So, what types of long-range thinking am I talking about? Here's the start of a brainstorm:

1. Pressed upon you. You have a big life decision to make, and not much time to make it in. A job opportunity has come up that will require you to move cities. You've been dating for a few months and now you have to assess if it's going anywhere.
2. Big picture, little person. There's stuff going on that's so big you can't solve it by yourself. And yet it's caused by the contributions of you and thousands or millions of people like you. What do you do? In fact, do you have any obligations to do anything?
3. Known unknowns. You've heard about something (like climate change). You think it might require understanding, but something's stopping you or you're procrastinating.
4. Unknown unknowns. Paraphrasing from Adam Kahane's 'Solving Tough Problems' again, the future's tough to predict because it can be influenced.
5. Predictable. Known knowns. At the moment, you need money food and shelter to survive. How will you provide those for yourself and your family?

[Long Range Thinking] What inhibits LRT?

Hypothesis: your ability to think long-range gets better or worse depending on the situation.

In some areas of your life, you'll be great at it (finances or writing, for example), and in others you will suck (finances or writing, for example).

Pressure is probably a factor. Situations that have long-range implications but require an immediate response may lead to you not making the best decision. Pressure may inhibit long-range thinking.

... But I'm not entirely sure that this is what I mean when I talk about 'long-range'. Probably time to start unpacking that, and figuring out the different types of 'long-range thinking' there are.

Any suggestions?

[Long Range Thinking] Why don't we recognise problems?

To paraphrase a synopsis of Stumbling onto Happiness, we're not very good at recognising what the future will be like.

To mash-up a famous quote, the problems of the future are already here. They're just not evenly distributed yet.

[Long Range Thinking] The simplest way to think about it

Understand there's a problem.

Understand what the problem is.

Understand how to solve the problem.

[Long Range Thinking] The Goal

The goal is to improve our ability to see problems that aren't problems yet (or that don't seem to be problems yet).

[Long Range Thinking] Problems where the people involved disagree

From 'Solving Tough Problems', by Adam Kahane:

... problems are tough because they are complex, and there are three types of complexity: dynamic, generative, and social.

A problem has low social complexity if the people who are part of the problem have common assumptions, values, rationales, and objectives.

In a well-functioning team, for example, members look at things similarly, and so a boss or expert can easily propose a solution that everyone agrees with.

A problem has high social complexity if the people involved look at things very differently. South Africa in the early 1990s of had the perspectives of black versus white, left versus right, traditional versus modern - classic conditions for polarisation and stuckness.

Problems of high social complexity cannot be peacefully solved by authorities from on high; the people involved must participate in creating and implementing solutions.

[Long Range Thinking] Problems where the future is unfamiliar

From 'Solving Tough Problems', by Adam Kahane:

... problems are tough because they are complex, and there are three types of complexity: dynamic, generative, and social.

A problem has low generative complexity if its future is familiar and predictable.

In a traditional village, for example, the future simply replays the past, and so solutions and rules from the past will work in the future.

A problem has high generative complexity if its future is unfamiliar and unpredictable. South Africa in the early 1990s, for example, was moving away from the peculiar rigidities of apartheid and into a new, post-Cold War, rapidly globalising and digitising world.

Solutions to problems of high generative complexity cannot be calculated in advance, on paper, based on what has worked in the past, but have to be worked out as the situation unfolds.

[Long Range Thinking] Superstruct

Obviously I can't start posting about long-range thinking without mentioning Superstruct - a new online game that is going to last for another 5 weeks where you play yourself in the year 2019 dealing with a global threat of your choice. Available threats to choose from include food shortages and ubiquitous surveillance.

http://www.superstructgame.org/

Here's the tutorial:



I have some concerns about the game's presentation - in that it feels a little like unpaid market research - but totally applaud its open-source optimism.

Have a play round with the site. Watch the videos. Think about it.

Update: What I'm trying to imagine at the moment is a world in which people from all over the globe can contribute to forecasting about real-world issues. In my head, it has these qualities:

• a short-term commitment
• limited group size (120 or so?)
• produces results or next-actions-to-take or synthesises its findings into a readable / viewable form

I guess it would look a little something like World Without Oil. And maybe that's where the superstruct team are going.

[Long Range Thinking] Problems where cause and effect are far apart

From 'Solving Tough Problems', by Adam Kahane:

... problems are tough because they are complex, and there are three types of complexity: dynamic, generative, and social.

A problem has a low dynamic complexity if cause and effect are close together in space and time.

In a car engine, for example, a cause produce effects that are nearby, immediate, and obvious; and so, why an engine doesn't run can usually be understood and solved by testing and fixing one piece at a time.

By contrast, a problem has high dynamic complexity if cause and effect are far apart in space and time. For example, the economic decisions in New York affect the price of gold in Johannesburg, and apartheid-era educational policies affect present-day black employment prospects. Such problems - management theorist Russell Ackoff calls them " messes" - can only be understood systemically, taking account of the interrelationships among the pieces and the functioning of the system as a whole.

[Long Range Thinking] The two concepts, plus a third

You could sum up the two concepts in the previous post as:

a) the 'timeline' - the length of time a person is comfortable making plans for

b) the 'scope' - the limits of how complex a situation a person is comfortable making plans about.

A gambling addict can have a timeline of between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes. "Where's the next $2 coin for the pokies coming from?"

Many people are daunted by the scope of an issue like climate change. There are many variables involved, including a mass of scientific data to assess and reinterpret into terms intelligible to you, decisions to make about likely scenarios, and a global ecosystem to try and visualise.

And that reminds me, we need to add a third concept:

c) the 'responsibility' - how much action do you need to take, or should you take, or do you think everyone else is taking?

I'm not totally happy with the labels for these concepts yet, but they'll do for a start.

[Long Range Thinking] The Basics

When it comes to thinking about and planning for the future, my intuition tells me that most people are better at thinking about short-term consequences than longer-term ones. The graph could look something like this:
The question is: what tools and techniques can we use or create to make it look more like this:

Also, my intuition tells me that most people are better at thinking about things in their immediate vincinity than bigger ones.


Other things to consider:

Danyl once told me that we evolved on the savannahs to think about things that move slower than running speed, occur in the space of a day, and involve numbers less than seven.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell cites a study that found our social structures start to break down as soon as they're larger than 120 people.

Useful links

Here's the stuff that made it through my cull of Google Reader this week:

Let's make some animated movies. I haven't played around with either of these sites yet, but the tutorials make it sound like it simply a matter of typing and clicking to create a short film. (h/t Pulp 2.0)

Xtranormal
Goanimate

Also over at Pulp 2.0, Bill Cunningham talks about having a 'pulp notes' file, a nice tool for storing fragments of dialogue and ideas for later use.

Let Michael Caine teach you about film-acting.

I link to Morgue linking to Matt and Jon's applications for the Evil League of Evil. Really good, sharp characteristions from both teams (and I suspect Morgue might also find himself in contention for his 15-second cameo as the Devil's Advocate.)

Vincent Baker has written a new fantasy RPG. At the moment it's free, because he wants to see if it's readable - is it communicating the play experience he wants?

Here's a hack to improve pretty anything in your life. I first read this on Seth Godin's blog, but Trent over at the Simple Dollar generalises it.

The Casual Kitchen compiles a whole bunch of links on low-cost cooking.

An overview of some of the thinking about climate change we'll be doing as a society and as individuals over the next few years. Check it out.

Some Paul Krugman and Americablog linkage to analysis of the financial crisis:

• A solution
• A history and a solution
• The G8's report back

If you want to kick arse at folding t-shirts, then here's how: (a 22-second instructional video)

Have a great week

[The Limit] How to finish - Redefine your identity

I used to think of myself as "the man who is writing The Limit."

Now I'm thinking of myself as "the man who is finishing The Limit" (or "has finished it", on a good day).

I think that redefinition is important. Maybe part of the reason I've kept rewriting this for so long as because that is how I've defined myself.

***

I'm about a third of the way through the script now, and am very pleased with how this final, brutal cull is turning out. I reckon it is approaching being something very special, but the ending is gunna be very tricky.