↑Jesper Juul, ↑the ludologist, has published his book ↑half-real—here’s the ↑about: A video game is half-real: we play by real rules while imagining a fictional world. We win or lose the game in the real world but we slay … Continue reading →
the mystery of the broken bicycle tyre inflator The uncanny breaks into everyday-life spontaneously and unpredictably. Today it hit me for the third time. The first two instances were “The riddle of the vanished filling station attendant” and “The amazing … Continue reading →
↑Tom Boellstorff is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine and Editor-in-Chief of “↑American Anthropologist“. Somewhat belated I first heard of him when in 2006 his article “↑A Ludicrous Discipline? Ethnography and Game Studies“ appeared in … Continue reading →
a study in second life avatar customization—part 1 True, my first duty these days should be writing up all the stuff of the last six years into a neat volume. But in order not to loose the immersion into modding … Continue reading →
This is the second instance of my blog ‘xirdalium.’ The first instance for years ran fine on a university server, but then technical problems became overwhelming. Ye ole ‘xirdalium’ meanwhile is no more. Hence I decided to give it a … Continue reading →
Ian “Gizmo” Richard’s Tech Support Alert is a comprehensive, commented, and regularly updated compilation of free resources. Gizmo says: “As a computer professional, I’m always searching the Web for new sources of technical information. New support sites, great resources and … Continue reading →
One of the comps at my office is infected by a spambot—obviously this some time happened via IE, of course, and till now I haven’t found time to clean it up. Anyway from time to time windows pop up showing … Continue reading →
  Well, I dare say that I am doing multisited ethnography, on- and offline. Attending ↵LAN-parties is a perfect occasion to assimilate game- and modding-culture. In consequence I today registered for the ↑Fighternight 7 and restarted my ↵Q3A-training. I already … Continue reading →
… the dead will walk the earth Do you know this experience when, after a certain period of wallowing in escapism by swallowing heaps of fiction and movies, let’s say e.g. cyberpunk material …, the consciousness-contents induced by digesting fiction … Continue reading →
the beginning of … ↑“Genesis: The beginning of …” (2005) [18:11min | .avi | 349MB] ↑by Quan-Time is a hilarious ↑Q3A-trick-stunt movie which teaches you about ↑DeFRaG and a wealth of trickjumping techniques from the basics up. The movie … Continue reading →