Bennington Girls Are Easy

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Meg

Bennington Girls Are Easy is about two best friends, and their wider circle of college friends. Actually, it’s about living in the city right after college.

I love struggling-friends-in-the-city chicklit, and I love lifestyle porn, but I get extremely annoyed when they touch. (The I gotta find a job — any job! motivation* does not work for characters who each have their own room in their doorman apartment, and it just makes me wonder if the author’s ever been to Manhattan.) Bennington Girls Are Easy does not make me wonder if the author’s ever been to Manhattan. No, I’m convinced that all of these characters are real people who are going to sue the author for revealing all of their private and unflattering moments.

Would definitely recommend — I read it in two sittings, and I only stopped because APPARENTLY Harold wants to spend time with me or something —  but don’t expect a cheery adventure about college girlfriends making in the big city, though. That NetGalley blurb is a bit misleading. Instead, this novel is a blunt and somewhat dark look at sex, money, social class, and the evolution of college friendships in adulthood.

*But I love when the protag needs a job and can’t be picky, so she takes this strange position with this oddball cast of coworkers, and hilarity ensues. Love it.

Bennington Girls Are Easy by Charlotte Silver will be out on July 14th, 2015. I received a copy of the book to review. Opinions are my own, as always, and eARCs have never stopped me from snarking about a bad book.

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Comic Conspiracy

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Meg

comics

Went with Harold for a Free Comic Book Day signing at The Comic Conspiracy, Asheboro.

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A for All Done

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Meg

hello kitty chinglish squareI’ve not exactly enjoyed everything about my online class, but I passed with an A, because 90.0000000001 is an A.

I was obsessively checking, so I saw this in the grades section of my online “classroom”. Then I got an internal college message telling me my grades are available in my student account, then I got a regular email telling me I have my grades in my student account, then I got an email telling me that my most recent (only) grade has been added to my GPA, and my new (4.0) GPA is available in my student account, and blah blah blah basically every day since the class ended, the college has found another way to congratulate me on my A.

I hope skywriting is next.

(Photo explanation)

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No Pineapples Will Be Left Behind!

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Meg

Alternate Title: Even More Thoughts Around Games and Education

no pineapple left behindA while ago, I posted about No Pineapple Left Behind, a serious game Seth Alter from Subaltern Games is working on, all about standardized testing and school systems. I was really disappointed to hear that the Kickstarter had failed, and I was completely delighted when Seth told me at IndieCade that he’d found a publisher for No Pineapple Left Behind, so I’ll soon have a chance to play with the pineapple-children.

His first dev diary(ish) is up here:

 

I’m really glad these pineapples won’t be left behind.

 

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Enchanted Cave 2

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Meg

enchanted cave 2

I recently played and loved the web version of Enchanted Cave 2, and covered it for Youth Digital’s students, so I jumped at the chance to review the new mobile version for Hardcore Droid. I really love doing reviews for the kids, but naturally, game reviews for kids aren’t as in-depth as magazine articles, so I’m really looking forward to writing a longer piece for gamers on this cute and evil roguelike adventure.

Anyway, I started playing the mobile version, but figured I didn’t need the mechanics explained by the cave guard. He clearly did not appreciate me skipping the exposition.

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Writing About Writing, Again

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Meg

games gender eduOn Monday, I gave a talk at Davidson College about games and education. It was a really great day. the campus is beautiful, and it was lovely to talk with Anelise, about her work in digital media (old texts + new technology is so awesome), about mutual acquaintance, about Jersey girls in the south.

I did have a couple odd moments in the coffeeshop office hours on campus when (male) students explained things to me. I’m not sure if it was youth or mansplaining or what exactly, but I was thrown a bit when I was informed that the patriarchy affects career choice, or that the games industry regularly lays off talented employees. It wasn’t hostile, just… surprising. There’s a lot for me to unpack there, actually, there’s so much for me to think over from all the questions and comments from undergraduates. Anyway, I just read Matt’s post-mortum on his eduWeb talk, and decided to process my talk the same way.

Things I Was Awesome At

Slides with topic headings and supporting quotes! Next time I will add more images, too. I also used Prezi to draw actual lines between connected topics.

Talking slowly and making eye contact with audience members. I talk too quickly for the south and I don’t really enjoy eye contact any way. So this should have stars and glitter and confetti around it.

Used my full allotted time. Didn’t go over. Didn’t have time to kill. I guess 6 years (!!!) of classroom teaching has taught me some things.

Not too much reading. I read my intro and conclusion directly from my iPad but besides that, I was glancing at my notes and facing my audience as much as possible.

Things That Could Have Been Better

More practice. I could hear myself saying Oh, yeah, and another cool thing about that, but I was powerless to stop it. Ugh.

Better topic organization. See above. I waffled between trying to say ALL the THINGS and trying to make one point clearly and well, so my end result didn’t really do either.

Stand up and walk around. It’s more charismatic and inviting to stand up and move around, in fact, I secretly judge speakers who just plunk down and don’t move, but managing my Prezi, notes and nerves was enough.

Post-Lecture Manic Phase I compartmentalized to do a good talk, and got pretty jittery and manic after presenting. This is preferable to freaking out before or during the talk, so progress! But still not exactly best practice.

Post-Mania Crashing Having a body is hard. Having feelings is hard.

Take a photo of me speaking. Actually, take more photos in general. It was a good day and I wish I had remembered to take more pictures of it! I often hear laments about selfies or cries to put down your phone! Be present! But for me, I usually wish I had my phone out more to take more photos of my experiences.

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Secrets of ‘High School Story’ #hssgame

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Meg

hssgame

A few weeks ago, I was at a homeschool education conference for my work, and I got chatting with a twelve-year-old about our favorite games. (This was a theme of the conference weekend, and I got quite a few game recommendations from the under-18 crowd) She was very excited to find out that I also play High School Story, and gave me all the details of unlocking the secret missions. I didn’t even know there were any secret missions!

But I had my own High School Story secret. See, I didn’t expect to be showing my high-school themed appointment-style game to anyone, so I sort of named all my HSS students after Star Trek characters, and put them in Star Trek situations. As one does.

Student gov’t Seven reveals her #Borg past in #HighSchoolStory #hssgame #Voyager #7of9 #ios #screenshot

A photo posted by Meg (@simpsonsparadox) on

This won’t end well, Tuvok. #hssgame #Voyager #latergram A photo posted by Meg (@simpsonsparadox) on

Think that’s called shipping. #HighSchoolStory #hssgame #startrek #trek #fanfic #otp

A photo posted by Meg (@simpsonsparadox) on

It lines up pretty well, in case you were thinking of trying it.

 

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Design Flaw

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Meg

Recently, I’ve been feeling awful, just kind of dragging myself through things, and I have a great deal to do for class, regular work, freelance work and apparently if I don’t wash my clothes, they won’t clean themselves. Design flaw.

I can’t figure out if the way to out from under is to just power through it, work just as hard as I can to complete things. It’s been pretty hard to focus, but I’ll feel better for having accomplished something, and then I’ll rest better and feel better, and get into a positive cycle instead of a negative one.

Or maybe I should quit telling myself to work and power through, and actually acknowledge that I find myself zoning out instead of completing anything. In that case, I should shut off the computer, have something nice to eat, read a book for a while, and come back to it later when I’m in a better mindset. I’ll do better work because of it. and feel accomplished and get into that positive cycle.

But mostly I’ve been compromising between the power-through and self-care methods by eating horribly and doing sloppy work. Adulthood!

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Continuity

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Meg

continuity screenshot“Easy to learn, hard to master” is usually considered the gold standard for a casual game. The more time new players must spend, learning how systems and items work, the less casual and accessible the game is. (I love a good World of Warcraft or Icewind Dale, too, playing a game for years and still discovering new abilities for new character classes, and still finding tweaks to my customized hotkeys.) But accessible doesn’t have to mean match-three.

Continuity simply uses arrow keys to solve puzzles, in two modes. The first mode is a slider puzzle, with gentle meditative background music. In this mode, the puzzle is to build a path for your little hero to get the red key and get into the red door.

Hit spacebar to enter the second mode, a platform adventure exploring the path you just made. Again, players will use arrow keys to navigate, trying to get the key and then reach the door.The faster, more energetic music matches the jumping and running challenge.

continuity 3

There’s a surprising amount of variation in the 30+ levels. Later levels add extra keys, and speed-pausing puzzles, but the real growing challenge, and the real fun, comes from the interplay of the two gameplay modes. Players are building a platform game through a slider puzzle, then playtesting it, switching back to change the layout, playing again, switching back and forth to reach a goal.

Working in games, it’s hard not to play a game and think that it’s just like a popular other title with 1 vector of innovation, the common “like X but with Y” formula. In this case, I played each new level and legitimately wondered how the developers came up with it. So fun. It actually was really easy to learn the game rules, and then quite challenging to defeat the later levels.

Anyway, I discovered the PC version of this game over on Kongregate, but there’s also a mobile version of Continuity 2 for iOs and for Android.

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Retro Mobile Ready

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Meg

mobile readyI recently changed my theme to make my blog mobile-friendly, and in doing so, I went to a very simple theme and then took out a lot of features.

I’ll probably put the header image back, style up the sidebar widgets, and set up a related posts plugin again shortly, but it reminds me now of when I first started on Blogger in 2005. At that time, I thought it might be fun to have a blog, maybe, for a little while, so I picked the green default template and started writing.

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