[PREV - DOOMIFICATION] [TOP]
SCAFFOLDING
(various scribbling about the way the doomfile is)
Well, it's 5/6/92 and the doomfile has
finally broken 300K... but much of this
is just quotation. My recent additions
of extensive Well's quotes from the _Outline_
put it over, and there are big chunks of
extraneous Delany quotes under Dsource,
not to mention the long Enough section,
which is essentially a paraphrase of
Ted Nelson.
So what's with all the quoting? I'm
acting like a grad student writing
a thesis, trying to impress the profs
with the depth of my familarity with
the literature, and my knowledge of
precedent...
It is possible that a Wells quote can make
a good starting point... but wouldn't it be
just as good if I reached the same ideas
following my own chain of thought, in
ignorence of the giants I may or may not
be standing on?
Delany sneers at typical male academics
being "ever-obssessed with paternity",
and maybe he's right.
- - - - -
Wells _Outline_
(work area, for now. how to organize?) (clipped around 5/6/92)
(These are the four topics:
1.The long view: history is not a smooth curve.
2.World Government idea.
3.The converse, multiplicity. The schismmatrix. The defense-dominated world.
4.Religion: What is Wells hoping for, in his universal belief structure?
Place after "Irrat." Note existing "Religion" is only about orgies.
Compare to Thomas Paine?
The alternative: systems that allow cooperation without agreement.
Axelrod?)
(The difficulty, as always is that there has to be one default organization,
and a very simple set of interconnections to indicate other ways...)
Interestingly enough, it looks like another
chunk of the doomfile has disappeared...
maybe I made some sort of control W error this time.
A stupid review of a weak movie "Route 66" got clipped.
I hope nothing more interesting went with it.
-------
4/15/00
Looking at DRYSPELL I feel like I
never really did make a smooth transition
from the old emacs based doomfile to
the web-based.
It didn't used to be so clear what was the beginning
of a link, and what was the end. Do a search on
the keyword DECADENCE and it would take you to all
occurences, not just the one up against the left
margin that might technically be taken as the
destination.
Early on in the DRYSPELL piece (that I think is so
sucessful) I tried to use this effect for short distance
links, to pop from a DECADENCE stuck in the middle to
the line True DECADENCE closer to the bottom on the right.
(Side issue: I also later created a 'proper' node that I
called Decadence, which is just a piece of movie review
trivia... so for a long time that was a false destination
in the webified doomfiles.)
I just manually changed that jump to an intrafile html
jump to a named anchor... but the browser has no way
of telling the reader that they're supposed to look
over on the right side of the screen.
Is there any fix for this? How about a Javascript widget
that does a text search for you in the current file?
(and if javascripts disabled, you want it to degrade to
an intrafile jump).
--------
Criticism of DRYSPELL aka DESPERATE:
I regard it as the best of the
nodes, and often praise it's inventive figure 8
structure... but that figure 8 flow isn't *really* there.
There's a busted link, just above "True Decadence".
I don't think there's any real logical flow into the bit
about Decadence.
Also: why am I still fucking referring to Malzberg here?
Trace the reference already... Some old influential lit
critter I expect.
Dictionaries
Websearches
Newsgroups
--------
Editing EDIFYINGMUSIC, I just inserted the word "decent"
here:
I also like some Industrial Music (roughly, a kind of pounding, noisy,
synthesizer created music, that frequently sounds something like some
clanking nineteenth century machine), though the lack of [decent]
lyrics limits a lot of what's been done with it.
because it doesn't make a lot of sense otherwise.
Industrial dance music often has lyrics, and I can't
remember a time when I thought that it didn't.
On the other hand, I'm leaving in place my original
impression of Industrial music (that the only industrial
was industrial dance... I hadn't yet heard any of the
original industrial like Throbbing Gristle).
I'm writing this note here, solely because it's at least
slightly possible that my memory is fooling me, and I was
even more clueless in 1992 than I think I was.
(What could I have been listening to that would make me
think that industrial dance music had no lyrics? Can't come
up with anything. For example, I remember liking Nine Inch
Nails "Pretty Hate Machine", hard to miss the lyrics there.)
----
About RESUME:
(Ideally: every entry in the above .plan could be used as a keyword
to jump to a section of the doomfile.)
===
Writing NEWFOLKS (about Suzanne Vega) 3/2000:
((The first two here are
real experiences, centering
around Vega. The audience
sitting through that Stony
Brook show makes a third.
The rules of composition
(the one's that I follow, anyway)
demand that this triad be
highlighted somehow,
grouped into a triangle on
the screen?
xxxx
xxxx
xxxx xxxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxxx
===
12/2/200
Critera for doom:
Personal rambling, -> doomfiles
autobiography
Straight polemic -> straight web page, e.g. Takes
Philsophical confusion,
arguments with myself
(dialogs where I
take all the sides?) -> doomfiles, natch.
But: what if you're not sure? What if you think maybe
you've got a polemic on your hands, but then doubts
arise? -> start as a Take, then doomify as necessary.
===
2/3/01
When I started writing the doomfile, I knew that my
audience was most likely ignorant of a lot of basic
things about the stuff I'm interested in, so it
made sense to me to do some explication of the basics.
I don't just launch into a point about Delany's
stuff that I'm interested in, I back up and
explain a lot of the history about who Delany
is, and give a description of his general body
of work.
Now in the days of the web, there are endless
introductory level texts on any silly subject
you can think of, which, for example, makes that
relatively recent GOTHIC node particularly
useless.
(A question still unresolved: Shouldn't the doomfiles have
explicit pointers to background material stashed elsewhere?
Or maybe I should just let people google if they want to...)
===
10/14/02
Up in:
UNINTENDED
I was saying:
Then an
ancillary doctrine accretes
around the original:
I can't figure out if I'm spelling
accretes
correctly. My Desktop F&W has
"accretion", but lists no verb form.
I haven't invented it, have I?
===
10/19/02
Doing a great browse sequence re-org, and it dawns on
me that instead of thinking:
where would be a good spot
to move this to?
It might be saner to just think
can I write a bridge between
these two nodes, that will
make it seem like they belong
together?
===
((Just append this to "Scaffolding", it's not node worthy:))
NEWDOOM 3/2/00
Note, the doomfile with it's PRE tags and fixed format
hovering around 80 columns has a problem built into
it. Despite being very retro and 1.0 compliant and all,
it probably doesn't display well on Palms or WebTVs.
Is this solvable?
E.g. put rectparas in a DB. Record chains of connections
between them. Generate different displays based on
device characteristics? Most likely of course:
alternate layouts would need to be saved and served
up as fixed pages, the servers job to determine which
ones to hand out.
The DB business would be primarily to avoid
the need to maintain multiple formats.
===
It is much easier to say something
if you don't try to say everything.
===
Musing upon the naming of NEED_TO_KNOW
GLUTTON
as in information glutton
(" -- for punishment"?)
EPISTEMECTOMY
But what would that really mean?
Removal of an epistemology?
EPISTLE
Maybe.
NEED_TO_KNOW
Seems clearest. Use it.
===
Wed Sep 7 18:14:31 2005
Considered calling this node about Ian Fleming:
COUGHING_UP_FLEMING
By the slightly more accurate
name of "PEGGING_FLEMING",
but I decided that references
to ice-skating stars of yesteryear
were going to seem like really
dorky fodder for humor to
later generations. If not to
the current one.
===
Tue Apr 6 12:57:09 2004
A problem:
Literature works by leaving some reference
implicit. The reader is supposed to notice
them, an important part of reading is the
process of noticing them.
It would be poor form to have a novel with footnotes
reminding the reader on which page they've encountered
a theme before.
A hypertext has explicit references.
But traditional literary values may require
you leave some references implicit.
Which ones?
===
Thu Jun 24, 2004
Feeling like I keep writing about relatively
trivial stuff, because the Important Issues
are too hard to get down.
So stop working so hard.
Work fast, be sloppy, see what happens.
(The early doomfile had *many* placeholder nodes,
and some of them are still out there as placeholders.
What's the problem?)
Like it says a few notches up, and a few years back:
It is much easier to say something
if you don't try to say everything.
===
Sat Nov 19 2005
There are (at least) two different kinds
of links that I use together, uneasily,
though they both look the same:
One is a "linear" link, an amplification
or support of a point under discussion,
a continuation of a subject.
The other is a "sideways" link, a step to a
different topic: it's a weaker connection,
like free association.
Linear links are jumps to material
that I might prefer to put in-line,
but can't because of space constraints
or (sometimes) because I want to jump
to that point from elsewhere also.
There are sometimes many "linear"
sequences that lead to the same
point.
Sideways links are similar to my
jumps to the side in graphical
layout, but sometimes they're Which suggests that I
even weaker. should at least
*consider* using
But I feel reluctant to stick in graphical layout
ones that are *too* weak. Possibly to distinguish such
I feel *too* reluctant. links: sideways is off
to the side, continuation
The original idea of the doomfiles is directly below.
was *not* that I should feel
restricted to staying "on topic".
And it occurs to me
Possibly the idea is that it's *all* that there's another
one topic, and there's no reason not problem in link
to range freely. difference that can
be "solved" easily
with a graphical
notation:
Sometimes a link is "let me explain that Is the "NEXT" at the
in more detail", or "I can support that bottom a strong
with these quotations". Straightforward. link, or an
I'm never reluctant to use those. arbitrary one?
On occasion a link is a "Hm, I seem to have
just contradicted something I said once. Indicate an arbitrary
Take a look for yourself." I often balk link with extra
at those at first, I have to remind myself whitespace between
that this is okay: better to present the content and the
contradictions openly than try and conceal bottom of the page:
them.
Simple, suggestive
of what it means
When a link is "hm, this point seems to be without being
edging toward a little bit, off on the side horribly heavy-handed.
of that other node". Those are frustrating:
they're good links, but I know the reader Conceivably:
must find them baffling, and probably not in could use a row
a good way. Probably this is a sign that of triple bullets
you should create a third node to talk through also/instead.
the other two little bits. Maybe there should
just be one-way links into the third node,
and none going back: without using internal
jumps (and why don't I?) there's no way to make
them clear.
For that matter: why not implement a system
of back links? Show me all the places in the
doomfiles that connect to this node.
===
Wed Oct 18 15:58:43 2006
I'm feeling the impulse to write about
politics/current events, and I'm feeling
a strange reluctance to finish them up
and push them out.
It seems absurdly egotistical:
so much is written about this stuff
why throw a little more on the pile
without a fresh angle, without some
new piece of information?
And it seems like the sort of material
that's likely to date awfully easily...
But if you go around asking
yourself questions like "What's
the point?" where do you think
you're going to end up?
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