ME WRITE GUD

Wait, you're actually reading this? So the title didn't scare you away? Or bore you to death? Interesting.

I'll be honest, I don't really understand how "active voice" is so much better than "passive voice". I mean, I can see the relationship, but one doesn't seem better than the other- they both serve their purposes in certain situations. I actually use passive voice a lot in my modular writings since it's something that is done often. Most people (aside from English/Writing teachers or pedantic jerks in the wild) will not detect passive voice in an oral context, and when they see it in a written context it's still getting the point across.

"Strong" writing is kind a misnomer here. There's no "strong" writer. We all suck. Hemingway, Tolstoy, Lovecraft, Poe, Murray- they all sucked at writing. We do too. "Strong writing" refers to people who stuck with an idea and edited it over and over and over after getting external input (editors) and internal input (the voices in your head that appear when you've drunken too much Goldschlager). Sure, some took their writing a little too far, and while there's many writers that stuck with it too much to the point of going into a depressive silence and either opening their veins with a pen or performing fellatio on their favorite projectile weapon, success in writing and in webtext is more how you refine and contract the text as it should be for your audience.

For example: http://stars4her.blog.com/2013/04/18/chapter-4/
"I have a tendency to speak in the passive voice". That's fine. But do you type in the passive voice too?

http://revkaworld.blogspot.com/2013/04/writing-good-webtext-editing-webtext.html
Kind of gets the idea with passive.

I'm truly just annoyed by all the hype about "passive" and "active" voice. Good writing works, people won't care if you say "he ran the gauntlet" or "through the gauntlet he ran" if it's done well.

Kind of like Lovecraft's "Azathoth". He basically ejaculated passive voice all over that thing. Did anyone notice? Of course not, it's Lovecraft. His prose poetry is beautiful no matter what he does.

Also, since this is the last "blog post" I need to do, I thought I'd say some things.

http://kalb483.wordpress.com/
Those balloons are more annoying than the rap music they play in the University Center for SEA Thursday.

There, I said it.

tl;dr - We need to forget passive vs. active voice. Just use a "good" voice for the writing. As always, the audience decides.

ME WRITE GUD

Giving People What They Want

Jance Redish posits in the reading this week that the only thing you should give is what the reader implicitly wants. Now, among the inverted pyramid theories and "omg this page is trying to sell something but is using two paragraphs, it's obviously bad", I have a question.

Why are you lumping up everyone into one category, Jance?

Let me backtrack a bit- for the most part, these are pretty good ideas that focus on how to create a user friendly site that can cater equally to many people. They show how to conserve an audience and present topics which are detailed but not verbose and cluttered.

My problem rests mainly into how Jance thinks that everyone is the "I'm not going to read this because it's not a bullet list / it's a wall of text". Not everyone thinks like that, and actually, a lot of people who go to certain sites don't mind the "wall of text" because that's what they're used to. It's not inherently bad, it's just not your cup of tea Jance.

Website Idea: Chronomancer Press

Site Idea: A website (Chronomancer Press) that publishes and advertises and sells (via PayPal) PDF's (written by me) that convert Public Domain fantasy fiction into D&D "Adventure Modules" in the vein of Wizards of the Coast and Paizo's takes on 3.5 D&D OGL system mechanics.

1. Who is your audience?
Individuals who play and enjoy materials related to OGL (Open Gaming License) content as developed by Paizo and Wizards of the Coast for their flagship "Dungeons & Dragons" intellectual properties. The site will cater to not only Players and Referees but also to industry professionals and publishers interested in purchasing the site.

2. What is the purpose?
The purpose is to create, market, and sell PDF conversions of public domain fantasy fiction stories into tabletop roleplaying game adventures. Not all PDFs will cost money, and there will be other arbitrary materials that I hold copyrights to made available for purchase or for free.

3. What is the content?
The primary content is public domain fantasy fiction and science-fiction stories that I have converted into roleplaying game adventures and then post for purchase or as a free offering to visitors. The PDF documents are displayed in a "My Library" page that is viewable once logged in to the website.

4. What is the design?
The website will be designed with a sidebar showing the various sections of the site: Home, News, Conversions, Other Stuff, Contact. The background will be a dark green or blue colour and the top left corner will have the "Chronomancer Press" insiginia or logo. Copyright info will be on the bottom of all screens. The "Home" page will have an auto-scrolling image in photo-reel style that will show the newest releases and news. The top of the page will have a banner advertisement advertising material pertinent to a hobbyist that would be browsing the site. The top right corner will display account information (whether the user is logged in or not). Account creation will involve the entering of the user's email and a password. Emails will be verified and there will be a security check to deter bots. Once logged in, the user can Logout, change their password, or access "My Library". The "My Library" page is a gallery of PDFs that the user has purchased.

The News page will order chronologically listed news items from top to bottom. The "Conversions" page will showcase in alphabetical order all of the Converted PDFs for sale in the following format-

Image of PDF - Title                                                      Price [PAYPAL BUTTON]
Description

The "Other Stuff" page will be a list of links to freely offered PDFs and other writeups. The "Contact" page will be a short listing of  my contact information.

A Short Word on Content Development

Going mainly off Cynthia Jeney's article here (which, while being easy reading unfortunately falls into the trap of many of the readings: simply being the obvious or smartest way of doing things- not really novel or new), concerning mainly content development. Short words here, but it would have been nice if the reading touched a bit on more niche topics that have more exotic avenues of development. For example, do the same principles as we have learned thus far hold up in all respects everywhere? No, they don't.

I don't know if it's just senioritis but I feel like many of the readings we do from the textbook are pretty redundant (and can be found online most of the time).

Monty Python's "How to Be Seen"

Subtitle: Along with two examples of the more well known "How Not to Be Seen".

Going mainly off McClurge and Mayer's articles here, but it seems to me like most of what we read this week is fairly obvious media arrangement ideas. Mayer's scanned "article" seems to deal with a much more cognitive discourse of design principles, so I will be focusing more on McClurge's "The Principles of Design". And of this article, two main points, and examples of them done wrong.

First off- Dominance. Most sites do it well, the presentation of pertinent information is usually the primary purpose of most sites. However, there are well known examples where Dominance is butchered and turned on its head. Want an example? Try Pinterest.

That never-ending scroll is also known as a Sisyphys Scroll. It never goes anywhere- dominance and continuance is ruined as you are constantly bombarded by a swarm of material. And that annoying pop-up window that follows you pisses me off to no end. If I want Facebook with images I'll go to Facebook.

Secondly, and even worse from a business perspective: Similarity. Those bland pages make me want to stop reading quicker than it takes my anti-virus to tell me it's finished installing yet another update. Want to see a big culprit in the sector of crappy site design? It may surprise you.

itunes.apple.com. Check the font. If you're on a laptop, you got it good. Now go to a desktop. Notice the font similarity to the background. Good luck reading that without some straining. Out of question for older people. When I see that on a site, I might as well close that tab and go back to 4chan. Yes Apple, you're being 1 upped by 4chan. How does it feel?

The Mittani.com and Apple Apps

It's nothing new for news websites- a reader app that displays information on a website in much easier to digest formats than the default layout. For my app design project, I am designing an app reader for the video game news website TheMittani.com. As a Goon and a contributor to the site's content (which mainly focuses around the games Planetside 2, World of Tanks, and EVE Online) the nonexistence of an app for this purpose (reading site content in easy and smooth ways) is quite frustrating.

But enough of my reasons for the development of this app. A more pressing matter garners my attention now- if a lowly site such as this, one that sees around 20,000 unique connections a month from an overwhelmingly gamer-centered audience, requires an app for a mobile view of its site, what does that say about other small sites? Does everything need an app? Should the app store be inundated with reader apps for news sites and forums? Is there a limit or line that must be crossed to necessitate the creation of an app?

And if there is, what is it? It seems almost wrong that it should require one or a few small dedicated few to develop ease-of-use apps for sites such as this. Perhaps it is simply the way of the world, but it seems like app development, rather than being the secretive science that it is, should get a bit simpler and easier to access.

Doublespeak - Is our smartphones makeing us dumberer?

In George Orwell's seminal dystopian novel "1984", the people of the bright and cold future use a speech vastly different from ours for the quickened statement of facts. This "Doublespeak" is remarkably similar to what we would call the "text speak" of today, in that it mutates and changes linguistic structures and forms for the communication of information in a much more quick manner. Of course, dystopian insinuations aside, much can be said when critics are up in arms about the easy targets of "leetspeak" and "text speak".

At it's core, "text speak" seeks to shorten and make haste over large and long to type words and phrases. "You" becomes "u", "wait" becomes "w8", and the well known "lol" (laugh out loud) becomes a universal marker for something we find humorous. The idea that this information and way of speaking is making us less intelligent though is like saying that dialects of Southern English make us stupid- on the contrary it is simply a different way of speaking. Smartphones, in their myriad uses and encouragement of multitasking, may be decreasing our prowess in different areas- yet their unique mode of speech use is not in and of itself an indicator of a loss of intelligence.

Multitasking itself bears some thought though. The various studies and other discussions in this week's readings make it clear that multitasking is bad for base human cognitive function in regards to the mental dexterity that is needed when dealing with multiple subjects at once. As the load increases, human ability to micromanage each part of the whole decreases, showing a classic inverse relationship between load and ability. Smartphones and other such devices encourage such micromanaging of multiple stimuli and loads, and thus I could support the claim that the use of such devices constitutes a overall systematic dampening of the human ability to balance and handle multiple activities and stimuli. In short- smartphones are making us less proficient at tasks, but they aren't making us less intelligent while performing such tasks.