Weblogs and Wikis: Hello,

Hello,

Pining for the Game

Visit my small-time gaming-oriented blog to see what I'm babbling about today! This is where I spend most of my time online.

Contact

Feel free to e-mail me at bynxes@gmail.com
I'm also on the Facebook, though I staunchly refuse to even glance at the site more than once a month and only then to graffiti.

I'm Zachary Burke, a 19 year old junior working on a Creative and Professional Writing BFA with a philosophy minor here at Bemidji State University. I grew up in Naples, Florida and moved with my family to Minnesota when I was entering sixth grade. I'm currently staying off-campus and working at the Writing Resource Center.

This class came highly recommended and I'm glad to say that I'm finding the experience of running a blog to be enjoyable and time consuming, in the best way. Though I have used wikis (Wakka and Wikidot) before for personal organization, lack of cooperation from my colleagues (read: lazy friends) seriously limited the wiki's usefulness. I one day dream to create a fictional universe on a wiki with the help of a dedicated group of people, into which we could all collaboratively write stories and share in the creation of a unique history.

Acts of Pen

! My Final Write-Up is complete: FinalWriteUpZacharyBurke
My Studio Tour: StudioTourBurke
My Project Proposal is online: ProjectProposalZacharyBurke The project can be found at http://remnant.wikidot.com

WhatIHateAboutWikis (Fixed links to WhatILoveAboutWikis)
WhatILoveAboutWikis (Created this & posted here about universe-building)
WhatILoveAboutWiiks (Got rid of this)
GroupThink (Created)

My Schedule for Spring 2008

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
9:00	19th Century Philosophy		19th Century Philosophy		19th Century Philosophy
10:00	Weblogs &	Wikis		Weblogs &	Wikis
	Weblogs &	Wikis	11:00	English Lit to 1800's
English Lit to 1800's		English Lit to 1800's	12:00	Advanced Writing
Advanced Writing		Advanced Writing	1:00	Work	Work
Work		Work	2:00		Work
	Work	Work	3:00		Work
	Work		4:00		British Film
			5:00		British Film
			6:00		British Film
	Lit for Young Adults		7:00		British Film
	Lit for Young Adults		8:00
	Lit for Young Adults		9:00
	Lit for Young Adults

My Schedule for Fall 2008

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
9:00	Prob Solving &	CompSci		Prob Solving &	CompSci
	Prob Solving &	CompSci	10:00
			11:00
			12:00	Twentieth Century Phil	American Lit to 1900
Twentieth Century Phil	American Lit to 1900	Twentieth Century Phil	1:00
			2:00		Writing Poetry I
CS LAB	Writing Poetry I		3:00		Work
	Work		4:00
			5:00
			6:00
			7:00		British Film
			8:00	The Novel: British&World
			9:00

If I'm at work, I'm down in the southeast end of the first floor of Hagg-Sauer in the Writing Resource Center. (It's yellow.) Please feel free to come down for a visit, have some coffee and talk about writing, flamingos, or whatever else strikes your fancy.

My Favorite Foods

Bears

A temporary guide for Wednesday's project presentation:

Main Page

What it's about: I gripe, I challenge myself.
What I expected to do
Choice of a wiki (specifically WikiDot) as opposed to a blog
Choice to work solo VS collaboration
This tour will cover my posting chronologically (don't have to read notes)
The Main Page itself
- Blog-like Status Report
- Static introduction (shows age)

Drawing Board

Critical for early stages of the project
Shows development of ideas
Functions as a checklist and a notepad

The Player

Learned: How much good going through old nodes will do.
- All these links are to pages which didn't exist when I made the current.
- An interlinking sweep through the wiki now would greatly increase its cohesiveness.
An early node. Short, noncommittal.

Movement

Here, I really began to consider how the game would be played.
- Still, a lot of this stuff was made up spur-of-the-moment.

Ship Modification

A lot of development on this page. A critical and unique part of the game.
- Development of the node isn't complete. I've still got things to change.
- Looking at its length - are my nodes too big?

Multiplayer

Unlike the previous, this page was almost a given. It wrote itself.

Combat

Noticed stressing the importance of certain things here.

Drones

As I say in the description, this one fell nicely into place.
- Beginning to get the feeling that I've got a skeleton here.

Commerce

Of all the nodes I've written, this was like getting a shot
- Very important for the structure of the game
- The mechanics of NPCs - something I didn't write about, but should've.

RSM / Interstellar

Here, I run out of steam
The Universe, which I'd been looking forward to, is not going to happen this semester.

Assessment

Though I do not think I've met the goals I set for myself in class, I do feel as if I've justified my whining about video games. Though sore by the end, I feel as if I'd covered all the angles regarding mechanics, which was the important part.
I feel bad that this project seems to have gotten left in the dust under the rest of my class load. If I'd had less to do, I would have met my goals.
In the end, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed sorting out each of the problems that arose, making decisions about how things would work, and getting frustrated - because this was something fun, something I wanted to do.

Weblogs and Wikis : ZacharyBurke