parlor game: let's talk about...

[cellio]

This parlor game comes via talvinamarich:

Comment to this post and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

He gave me: Lisp, On the Mark, Accessibility, Books, Role-Playing Games, Filk, Faroe Islands (one of these things is not like the others).

LISP turned out to be a longer story. On the Mark, ditto.

Books

I've been in houses that have no visible books. They're creepy.

I learned to love reading early on. I remember as a child going to the library at least once a week and coming home with my arms full of books. I bought some books through a school program that provided wholesome material at low prices and would let me order from grade levels above mine.

I still enjoy reading, though I've slowed down -- that pesky "job" stuff gets in the way, and is it my imagination or are fonts getting smaller? I received a Kindle as a gift a couple years ago and I love it (and it solves that small-font problem), though I've been slow to invest in purchases for it because when I buy a book I want it to last forever, not just until the DRM stuff breaks. So I've bought some e-books and downloaded more for free, and I read at a slow-enough rate now that that's sustainable. I'm currently reading the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, for which I believe I paid $5, and 1634 (free) is still waiting for me, and the short-story anthology from Apex that includes work by my friend mabfan... I won't run out.

As for the many physical books, I'll just point to this post and mention that last year when we added about 40 shelf-feet of space we mitigated the problem, for now. We like books. :-)

Role-playing games

I learned to play D&D in high school (out of the blue "basic" book). I learned to role-play (instead of roll-play) sometime after college, and that's when it got good. Yes of course I enjoy the fantasy aspect of "being"/playing a character with exotic useful skills, but it turns out what I really enjoy is being part of am extended, collaborative storytelling experience. Hack-and-slash dungeon crawls appealed to me in an earlier time and I still enjoy the occasional one-shot game of that sort, but learning the craft side of these games is the real win for me.

I've also found that writing helps this introvert to process a game and, perhaps, enhance it. Ralph's D&D game led to me writing an in-character journal in ralph_dnd, and sometimes the other players contributed pieces too, and that meant there was a second layer of game experience outside of the gaming sessions. Neat! This is an aspect I want to keep for any future games I play in.

Filk

My first encounter with filk music was the tape Minus Ten and Counting, a collection of songs about space from a variety of performers including Julia Ecklar and Leslie Fish. So I was spoiled early. :-)

I enjoy filk, both the simpler parodies that characterize the early genre and the polished renditions with rich accompaniment and original melodies. I tend to drift toward the latter, but there are gems in the former too.

One place I do not want to hear filk, though, is in the main areas of SCA events. Post-revels or bardic circles around the fire in someone's camp, sure. On the performance stage or in the main hall, no. I like filk; I also like modern folk music, but I wouldn't perform Fred Small songs in the SCA either.

Accessibility

It's going to be hard to do this one without ranting.

By any broad measure I am not "handicapped". I'm not blind, all my limbs work, I'm no more easily fatigued than most other people... I should not be bothered by accessibility problems. And, yet, I live in a world full of devices and interfaces that were clearly designed by and for folks with 20/20 vision that just do not degrade well. If this stuff bothers me, I shudder to think what it's doing to people with bigger problems.

You'd think that software interfaces would be some of the easiest to fix. Road signs that are too small or have poor contrast are expensive to fix; software with too-small fonts or bad colors should be easy. So why does so much software disappoint me so badly? Why do so many designers, even now in the 21st century when we should all know better, hard-code their visual designs on the theory that one size fits all? Why is form so much more important than function to so many?

My coping strategy is to use technology to my advantage when I can (e.g. Firefox Stylish, which is forcing me to learn more than I want to about CSS) and to just punt when I can't. Yeah, I miss out on some stuff, but at least where recreational technology is concerned, it's not like I want for ways to spend my time.

Faroe Islands

If the average temperatures were about 10 degrees warmer and if there were a Jewish community there, it sounds like it'd be a pretty nice place to live. I'm assuming that these days everybody has good internet connectivity... The trip to Pennsic would be challenging, though. :-)

Comments

High-priced comment

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Why do so many designers, even now in the 21st century when we should all know better, hard-code their visual designs on the theory that one size fits all? Why is form so much more important than function to so many?

A couple theories.
1. "It looks cool that way and I don't want anyone to mess it up."

If the "look" is part of the appeal this makes sense. Which makes the answer to "why is form more important than function?" "because the users care about form more than function." If this weren't the case at least some of the time, a whole lot of online games would not exist IMO.

2. Too expensive to be worth the extra userbase, alternately, just didn't think about it.

Certainly when I was working at the company you are working at, I did not make allowances for, eg, changing font size or color scheme, nor ever received a design for implementation that did. (That top-level ART component I wrote to reverse all the colors doesn't count; I never checked it in. :) Though the "magnify anything" functionality of CoMotion helps with this, I imagine?) And there were also times when it was far easier to say "and put this here at this pixel location" and fix the edges rather than figure out a layout algorithm for a widget with no viz components. And both projects I was on where the clients wanted an "executive dashboard" fixed layout ended up doing this to some extent as well, due to them being finicky.

"Too expensive" is a much more major concern in startups, I'd imagine. And then I'm sure you're familiar with how bad code lives forever...

3. CSS sucks

I am under the impression that the reason so many websites have a fixed width is because making reasonable dynamic (browser-window-sensitive) arrangements of panels in CSS ranges from difficult to impossible. Especially for people who are not experts. This may have changed in a recent version though.

Re. D&D:
I've kind of wanted to try out the journal technique myself sometime, but I haven't actually had an involved story and a complex character since Tal's-Mike's-John's game. My recent ones have all be short-ish, and in a group with rather different and mostly not-storytelling inclinations. There was a brief resurgence when we switched to HERO, just because the process of creating a character forces you to story-justify almost everything (and therefore, forces you to have a story in the first place), but we gave up the system after one adventure when we lacked sufficient GMs for anything except D&D4e.

Re. On The Mark
I still have two of your CDs in my iTunes rotation. :) (Among Friends never caught on with me for some reason.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I've been in houses that have no visible books. They're creepy.

I've met people older than me who have read only three books, two of which were Dan Brown. They go beyond creepy.

Re: Accessibilty: I find that zooming in the browser is fairly decent, if many places (*cough* LJ) end up with horizontal scroll bars. Still, I usually run at 140% and few sites I care about completely break.

OK, I'll Bite....

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

I could use some memage right about now :-)

[risiko.livejournal.com]

I'm game.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

I've been in houses that have no visible books. They're creepy.

LOL, then you can't come to my house! We just finished putting the bookshelves in the closet (which meant SEVERELY weeding the physical collection).

Seriously, though, bookshelves look to me like visual clutter (too many colors and shapes). We do tend to have books that are in use laying about (home design/decorating when working through those aspects of a project, N always has some cookbook or 3 on the kitchen table, etc). But books aren't decoration. They're useful items.

[fauxklore]

The Faroe Islands are beautiful and do have good internet connectivity. There is even free public high speed access at the main library in Torshavn.

Travel isn't all that challenging as there are flights nowadays, even though I went there by sea.

And, by the way, I will bite on the meme.