Posted by matthew on Sep 14, 2005 in
funny At a meeting at work today one person was talking about horoscopes, and as a result mine was read aloud.
Libra
The prevailing influence brings a strong masculine energy into the day and may increase your sexual appetite. Now that’s not a bad thing, so plan a bit of fun tonight. But through the day you shouldn’t flirt or that may be taken the wrong way! Keep your energy firmly focussed on achieving your goals.
Now, when they got to the part in bold of course everyone was in hysterics. I started to turn a nice shade of bright pink and everyone wanted to know what starsign Lotte was. Naturally the next thing that was read out was hers:
Virgo
Happy Birthday Virgo: This should be the perfect day to attain a goal, make a dream come true or fulfil an ambition. All things can be realised when you take a stand, be courageous and work for your own benefit. This is not a hostile thing; you just want to know you’ve done it alone! Plan a hot and sultry romantic night if that’s possible!
Of course they had to add that last line just to embarass me in front of my colleages, didn’t they?
Posted by matthew on Sep 9, 2005 in
education,
eroleplay.net,
research,
roleplays Today was definitely one of the most interesting and motivating days I’ve had in a long while working on my research project. I sat in on the Strategic Political Communication class and took a bunch of field notes, so I felt like a real researcher on the job. But more than anything I had a real sense of what my interviews were going to be like by seeing the students first hand. They are an interesting bunch from a lot of different places. Very talkative and informed about media and communications, so I think the simulation would work well with them.
One of the most interesting things that came up was actually that the students recognised that there was a technical problem with the system allowing them to see things ahead of time. This potentially breaks down the authentic feeling of the simulation — or does it? I was really interested to see that they knew it was a problem but were not necessarily going in and checking out stuff that they shouldn’t. Virtually the whole class knew there was a problem. The other main thing this brings up is the importance of things such as chronological order to a simulation of this kind, and the potential therefore of the system to add a great deal of confusion when it malfunctions. I think this is a theme I need to write something about in my discussion and the whole story about just what happened when this did crop up should make wonderful reading. The students basically lead the discussion, showing the lecturer exactly what the technical problem was and how to subvert the system. Excellent stuff.
The other thing I was paying a lot of attention to in the class was the ways in which the roles were reinforced by the way that people addressed each other face to face. At a number of stages the students were referred to as Journalists or Advisors. There wasn’t any real first person “role-playing” going on at all, though. No side-jokes with students pretending to hate/like each other or anything of that nature. It was all very much as though they viewed the exercise as something to ponder and reflect on rather than “live”. I want to know whether that illusion of living in the shoes of an Advisor or Journalist is any more real in the online exercises.
Posted by matthew on Sep 7, 2005 in
health,
life Well, I haven’t been able to post about it until now but it’s finally public. We’re not going to be coordinating MLX this year. It was a tough decision to make, but we’re both relieved too. I think it’s going to be really different for both of us to be there as attendees and just enjoy the vibe, and the new team is going to be great. I’m not quite sure if they know what they’ve gotten themselves into, but that’s probably a good thing. Here’s our announcement, made yesterday night.