Monthly Archives: October 2006

clifford geertz (1926-2006)

Posted on by July 6, 2012
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  To the Institute Community,  I am very sorry to have to tell you of the sad news of the passing early this morning [30 October 2006] of Professor Emeritus Clifford Geertz.   Cliff was founding professor of the School of Social Science, who joined the Faculty in September 1970. He was the Harold F. Linder Professor from 1982 until 2000, when he obtained emeritus status. His work spanned the fields of cultural anthropology, religion and social theory, and his most recent research concerned the question of ethnic diversity and its implications in the modern world. Among his many honors, … Continue reading →

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it really happened

Posted on by July 12, 2012
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  Although all this ↑DeFRaG-screenshots showing the speeds I reached in ↑Q3A-gamespace by strafejumping document a part of the path of my personal immersion into the culture of trickjumping, I am perfectly aware that they start to get boring. But I simply have to show off the above one. Especially as I had a conversation with ↑2R about this, and back then voiced that I wished that this would happen. Well, it happened the day before yesterday. Note the fifth figure from the right side. Believe me, I didn’t doctor the pic. I guess that this is enough of documentation … Continue reading →

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delayed access

Posted on by October 2, 2012
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  Just another ‘little’ rant on economized politics reigning academia—skip it if you can’t stand it anymore.  Last night I woke up around one o’clock in the morning and couldn’t find sleep again. So, in trying to catch up with my personal reading schedule, I spent the rest of the night by burning through Steven Poole’s “Trigger happy” (↵Poole 2000) and especially ↑Henry Lowood‘s “High-performance play: The making of machinima”. I ↵already knew that the latter is a real gem, but somehow shifted it from desk to desk in didn’t come around to read it till last night. Already after … Continue reading →

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q1 map sources

Posted on by October 2, 2012
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  Just as he had promised during ↑QuakeExpo, celebrating the tenth anniversary of ↑Quake, ↑John Romero ↑released the map sources on 11 October 2006. Immediately not only ↑comments rained in, but the community sprang to action as well. For example ↑sajt dug up the seemingly lost ↑alternate end level at ↑speeddemosarchive, which even Romero himself didn’t have. Modders started to lay their hands on the original maps, ported them to current mods, compared them with their own recreations of the originals, and so on. Yet another proof for the existence of not only tradition, but also a sense for history … Continue reading →

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quake engine family tree

Posted on by October 2, 2012
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  A family tree of ↑Quake-based game engines. By Tei, ↑published at Wikipedia. ↑Licence. This is just to illustrate the enormous influence and impact of ↑John Carmack‘s game-engines on the whole lot of computergames as we know them today. The time and again up-popping assumption that with every engine Carmack starts from a blank slate, and that hence no code from previous engines is to be found in the next generations, is definitely wrong. In an Interview on ↑Doom III Carmack said the following to ↑Stephen L. Kent: “Since then, the moves from QUAKE to ↑QUAKE II to ↑QUAKE III … Continue reading →

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two johns

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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  What I finished reading last night is by far the best book on computergames I had my hands on so far. To be precise, it is the best book on those aspects of computergames I am interested in the most: history and culture, meaning and relevance. ↑David Kushner‘s “Masters of Doom: How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture” (↵Kushner 2004 [2003]) tells the biographies of the ‘Two Johns’, ↑Carmack and ↑Romero and thereby not only the history of Doom and Quake, of the invention and rise of first-person-shooter-games in general, but makes the reader understand gaming-culture, … Continue reading →

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two johns

Posted on by September 22, 2012
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What I finished reading last night is by far the best book on computergames I had my hands on so far. To be precise, it is the best book on those aspects of computergames I am interested in the most: history and culture, meaning and relevance. ↑David Kushner‘s “Masters of Doom: How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture” (↵Kushner 2004 [2003]) tells the biographies of the ‘Two Johns’, ↑Carmack and ↑Romero and thereby not only the history of Doom and Quake, of the invention and rise of first-person-shooter-games in general, but makes the reader understand gaming-culture, the … Continue reading →

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elements of style

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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  Speaking about writing, let’s listen to Stephen King:  This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less the bullshit.   One notable exception to the bullshit rule is The Elements of Style, by William Strunk jr. and E. B. White. There is little or no detectable bullshit in that book. (↵King 2000: 11) Here it is:  STRUNK, WILLIAM jr. 1918. … Continue reading →

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