I haven’t written much about this lately, mostly because there isn’t much to say about it except weep weep it’s awful, but our 14 year old Bigster is still extremely unwell with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. At the end of Term 1, she dropped all but her five core subjects (her peers are taking nine subjects) of English, Maths, Science, Latin and German. Her Latin teacher isn’t sure that she can pass with her current attendance – even with the timetable affordances, she is still only getting to about 30% of her classes – so it’s on the critical list at the moment. She even dropped the history of warfare subject that she has been looking forward to since before she started high school. She’s dropped out of Saturday German as well, because she just can’t get there. The German name for this condition is Chronisches Erschöpfungssyndrom which translates literally as “chronic exhaustion syndrome” which seems a much better name to me – when you can’t get out of bed AT ALL some days, when you are a bookworm who is too exhausted to read, when you can’t wash your hair because you can’t actually stand up for the time it would take – that’s more than just fatigue.

The specialist tells us that she still has hope that Biggie may start to recover towards the end of the year. This is critical for us and we cling to that hope. Sadly, she’s not gaming much – the days when she played all (then) 12 Power Grid maps over one epic BorderCon weekend are behind us, at least for now.

The ME/CFS society of Australia offers support for people with this severely life-limiting condition (the 80% recovery rate for young people is much higher than that for adults) and funds research into it. There is no cure and no known cause.

Every year, BorderCon runs a raffle to aid a charity group, often raising over $1000. Donations are received from game companies within Australia as well as from attendees. This year, Neil has kindly agreed that the profits from the raffle will be donated to the ME/CFS Society of Australia.

I have a personal interest in making this the Biggest BorderCon Raffle Yet. So I am going out to game companies and to game designers to ask for your support. Can you donate a game? Can you donate a signed sticker that someone could paste inside their game box (or just put in there if they are a bit fussy about their boxes)? Maybe you have a piece of game artwork that could be included in the raffle? BorderCon is a small con with a big heart and any donation is always appreciated, even more so this year.

The background for those who don’t like clicking links: Some of you will know that I have gone back to uni part-time to do a postgrad degree in Internet Studies. This semester, I am doing a unit on social networks and internet communities. The main activity for the unit is a three-week online conference at which each student “presents” a paper (posts the text on the conference site). Various academics are formally invited by the course co-ordinator, and students invite everyone they know other interested people. That means you, dear readers of my very sporadic blog.

One of the conference streams is on online gaming. I’ve written a paper on BrettspielWelt, looking at whether the Meta-Game is actually a game at all. (Spoiler: Answer rhymes with Dope). You can read it online or download it as a PDF.

Others have written about World of Warcraft, about Starcraft vidding communities, about representations of women in videogames, … – and that’s just the papers that I know about. I haven’t read any of them yet.

Here’s a wonderful video , though, from my fellow students at Charles Telfair Institute. Watch carefully.

Anyone can read the papers but if you want to comment then you need to register. It’s a university-operated site so they are quite respectful of collected email addresses.

Link to conference: http://networkconference.netstudies.org/2013/
Link to gaming stream: http://networkconference.netstudies.org/2013/category/games/
Link to my paper: http://networkconference.netstudies.org/2013/gaming-squared-brettspielwelt-game-world-or-great-good-place/

Because it is just you and me reading this, dear reader, I will tell you that this is a horrendously confronting and anxiety-ridden exercise for me. It turns out that I am happy telling the world about all sorts of ridiculous personal stuff, and even reasonably comfortable submitting stuff for assessment, but when I have to combine the two and tell my beloved readers to go and read something that I have written and submitted for assessment that is not kind of self-mocking, I have a minor crisis of confidence. I find this odd and strange.

Also because it is just you and me, I should tell you that 30% of my mark for this unit is for interaction and participation. I can neither interact nor participate without comments over on the conference site.

So please consider yourself invited.

“I can’t even begin to understand what could bring someone to do that,” says I.

“I can,” says Otto, then proceeds to enumerate:

• They must have had a lot of alcohol
• Or drunk a lot of drugs
• Or MAYBE they were hypnotised. By a crazy magician.

She thought for a while, then added one:

• Or they could just have been BORN EVIL.

I’m not sure where to begin. But I like the crazy magician theory.

The idea is that each student writes a conference paper that fits one of four streams, then submits it for assessment. It is returned with comments and a notional mark, then we have a week to revise it and publish it on the conference site. The notional mark is adjusted (hopefully upwards, because downwards would just be embarrassing), and that is worth a whopping 50% of our mark for the unit. There is also a 30% “participation” mark which is about commenting on other people’s papers, responding to comments on your own paper, talking about the conference on your blog promoting the conference etc. With over 100 students enrolled in the course through three different institutions, some as undergrads and the rest of us as postgrads, there are plenty of opportunities to find something interesting.

It’s a really interesting idea. I have a few qualms, but they’re mostly of the “what if my paper is crap and/or naïve?” paranoid anxiety type (I get terrible Post-Submission Anxiety, as soon as a piece of work is out of my hands), with a side of “what if some of the other people’s papers are crap?”. But as with anything of this nature, the good papers will bubble up to the top – and they’re the ones I will be tweeting about and inviting you all to look at.

Because I think many of you WILL be interested in the conference and in its streams:

• Communities and Web 2.0
• Gaming and Online Communitites
• Identity in Communities and Networks
• Social Networks

No prizes for guessing which stream I wrote for!

I really enjoyed working on this, because, as I have said before, the topic was malleable enough to let me write about things I am interested in while still being relevant to the topic and learning a lot. I’ve read a lot about games, but hadn’t read so much about the theory of games before – not the stats and probability, but the big picture concepts and ideas. There was a great discussion on my Facebook recently but, as all good discussions do, it degenerated to the point where all that we could agree on was that “Gamification is bollocks”. Only now, I have a big pile of references to quote when I want to say that. (And I *do* want to say that, so often and in so many different ways that I give myself points for doing).

The Big Find for me, in this semester, has been Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community. There’s been quite a lot of work done on how our online spaces fulfil many of the same needs as the physical places that Oldenburg writes about. I feel like I’ve barely touched the sides there, let alone reached the surface.

The other Big Find has been, well, academics completely shitbagging each other. That is, it turns out, always funny. Except, it would not be if it were me. Please note and remember.

Anyway. That thing I said about participation. I’ll post here when my paper goes up (April 29, but the conference lasts 3 weeks). My rather wordy topic, whose origins the careful reader will notice, is Gaming Squared? Brettspielwelt: World, Game, or Great Good Place? – If you are interested in the topic, or even if you just like me a little bit, please consider reading and commenting.

Like OMG and WTF self-inking stamps, which maybe aren’t used terribly often, but are often in my thoughts. Sometimes. But now that they ARE in my thoughts, I realise that they apply to some of the articles I have been reading for Uni. Useful AND Fun – look at that!

And the many, MANY parcels from the Book Depository that arrive on my doorstep (often literally – the postie doesn’t usually put them in the mailbox, for some reason) singing their sweet songs of happiness and delight.

And the Digital USB Microscope. OK, it doesn’t get much use, but just those three words are beautiful together.

And various t-shirts.

And then there are the things I have SEEN online but bought in person. Like the Inspection Camera. And many pairs of shoes.

And then there are the duds.

Let’s start with that new “Pern” book. Or the series of Piers Anthony books that I thought was not bad, so I ordered the whole lot, and then read the first one and where is that OMG WTF stamp when I need it, the series is such a shocker I didn’t even finish the first book and am seriously contemplating ceremonial incineration.

And the electronic mozzie bite relief thing. In a 2-pack.

And a solar house number, which really is SUCH a good idea because it is ILLUMINATED AT NIGHT so people can see your house number. But Fraser gives it a week before it is stolen and refuses to have it hung outside for that reason. So instead, it is inside where most people know our house number already. Not so useful after all.

And the mince pies.

Actually, they were part of a bread order. You get this enormous box full of bread and bread products and in theory you sink happily into carbohydrate heaven. In practice, you end up throwing out moldy bread because there is just too much of it and it’s not terribly nice, but the kids like the slices and the doughnuts and the muffins.

And there is this delicious little pack of mince pies that they sneak in there … except that when you go to open it, you notice that they were use by some time in January. And this went on for three of the four weeks that we had the standing bread product order, so Fraser sent them a little email saying I know mince pies live for ever, but presumably you took that into account when you created the use by dates, so – just maybe – it would be a good idea to stick to them, and they apologised. Yay!

And today, we had a new delivery. With mince pies. Except, they had TAKEN THEM OUT OF THE PACKAGING (but left them in the same tray).

And I think my food shopping on the Internet might be stopping right there.

TEN.

Because she’s in the German school system (at least a little bit), she has been proudly telling everyone that she is in HIGH SCHOOL this year. Because, Year 5.

That was hard enough.

But still.

Ten.

Me: You know how we can’t find our satnav? And I thought maybe we should get another one but you said OVER YOUR DEAD BODY? And we are driving to South Australia? Well there’s a TomTom app that runs on an iphone.

Fraser: Ah ha

me: so you would not crack the shits if I got it?

Fraser: No. But I might ban you from Ikea for 6 months

me: lol << (“as if”)
I’m going to buy this sucker so I can wear it in a bit

Several minutes later …

Me: omg

Fraser: wot?

me: you can buy a YODA VOICE
for the TomTom

Fraser: no

me: Turn left, you must.
A roundabout, there will be.

Fraser: NO

me: Follow the third path, you should
I am not going to
but I am cracking up thinking about it
there is a lot of fun to be had there for $6.49

and, as it turns out, there is a lot of fun to be had wondering about what else Yoda might say.

• The urge to speed, resist, you must.
• An accident, there has been.
• USE the brakes.

etc.

What I love about studying this course is that it puts a conceptual framework around stuff that I already know and do. Which is not to say that I’m not learning new knowledge and skills, because I am (omg academic writing I had almost forgotten you), but that it has meaning and context for me.

OK, what I really love about this course is that I can write about games in NEARLY EVERY SUBJECT. OMG.

Especially this semester’s subjects, which are “Internet Collaboration and Organisation” and “Internet Communities and Social Networks”. SO MUCH LOVE.

Me: I need hay fever pills.

Pharmacy sales person: Ok. Well, we have …

Me: I need TWO DIFFERENT TYPES. That I can take at the same time. Please.

Pharmacy sales person: Oh, Well …

Me: And that prescription nasal spray? Get me some of that too.

Pharmacy sales person: *fetches hand cart*

Me: Oh and my kid needs some prescriptions filled. And please give me some butter menthol cough lollies too. And one of those creepy nasal irrigatiom things.

Because while I may be suffering, at least my credit card is suffering more.

I have blogged before about trying to pack for game conventions. It’s fair to say, though, that that is the easiest of these tasks. Because when it comes down to it, we throw lots of clothes into a bag and then put games into the car until no more fit. And then trade them out until we have a decent set.

But to do that requires us to pack the car. And the car is still full of stuff I bought at IKEA a couple of months back, when I was going to clean out the Bigster’s bedroom. I got 60% of the work done, then stopped, and now it is around 20% more messy than it was, with 100% more floorspace covered. And I don’t want to move the new stuff in while the floor is still kinda incognito. So that’s a challenge, especially as the Bigster’s response to anyone going into her room while she is there is to go kind of Chuck Norris on them … and she’s there pretty close to 24/7 at the moment.

Courtesy memegenerator.com

And before that can be done, there are several days’ worth of work to do (because going away just brings all of that week’s deadlines forward by a week) as well as a 1500 word essay on internet censorship to be written.

And I don’t think the meme generator can do either of those things for me, more’s the pity.