Virgo, Gladiator et Imperator

I watched the final episode of Empire last night on ABC. Not a bad show at all. At least it was something different from the usual summer fluff.

A few things about the series caught my eye. Why is it that Romans always speak with British accents? And the nobler the patrician, the more upper-crust his dropping of R's? Second, the final battle between Octavius' and Antony's forces took place in the middle of a forest. Antony's forces did not get into formation and use their shields to protect themselves, in the testudo tactic. Instead, both sides charged pell mell into the fray. A soldier was seen shouting "Hold the line!" but there was no line to be held. I suspect two reasons for this undisicplined, un-Roman battle. First, this is a low-budget TV production, and the ubiquitous trees allowed some camera tricks to conceal the paltry amount of extras. Then, there is obvious homage to the forest-fighting scene at the opening of Riddly Scott's Gladiator. The same goes for the jerky, hand-held camera movements during fight scenese. These guys should send Riddly a check!

Other than that, the program had fairly well-developed characters and moved along smoothly. The ill-fated affair between Camane, the Vestal virgin, and Octavius, the future emperor, worked out as forshadowed. Neither character could shirk his or her duty, just as the ex-gladiator Tyrannus could not lay aside his final promise to the dying Ceasar.

In other happenings, tonight is the second-to-last Document Design class. I need to hit the course catalog and figure out what I want to enroll in next.

Finally, Donna Frye won the mayoral election yesterday! But, the evil Republican cabal that runs this town managed to dilute the race with enough of their own candidates that she did not win a 51% majority. So, we'll have a run-off election in November!

Go, Donna!

A Busy Few Weeks

The last few weeks have been busier than usual for me, mostly because the document design class is in high gear. The instructor demands a lot of reading, which is all right--some of it is truly interesting!

This past Wednesday, I got the results back on the exam that was meted out the week before. I scored 105 out of 100 (thanks to a bonus question). Nice to know my brain still works, after all I've put it through in the last year and a half!

This week I've been working on my final project, which will amount to 50% of the final grade. I've been at somewhat of a disadvantage in that I am currently not working for a company. So, I chose one of the suggested topics, which was to take and improve a handout on bronchiectasis that was written (very wordily) by a pulmonologist friend of the instructor. I decided to format the handout as a brochure via MS Publisher. Of course, everything reaches a certain unexpected level of complication.

First, I had to reinstall Publisher. Since Laurie still hasn't given me the Pub 2003 serial number back, I have had to make do with Publisher 2000. Then, I had to find a PostScript printer driver for HP (my InkJet is not a PS printer) and install it. Then I had to find and install Ghostgum and Ghostscript. After saving my .Pub files as PS files, I had trouble with the PS drivers and had to reinstall. The first ones I had were for LaserJet, but those are black and white only. So I had to find and install color LaserJet drivers.... Sheesh.

Anyway, now I've forwarded the brochure on to my friends, who will have to stand in as "users" for this round. I will also send the item to Sue Warner, the nurse for Dr. Landers, to get a real pulmonologist's opinion.

This has put a stall to my creative writing, but I should be able to get back to it tomorrow. Once I get people's feedback, I can finish this silly little project.

One other thing. I have been working with Sheila Johnson, my DR counselor, to get the shift-lever fixed on my van. She told me last week she would have to check with her supervisor about it, as "this is not really related to the repairs we did to your van." Like hell it isn't! I didn't hear from her after her meeting with her boss on Friday, so I will have to contact her on Monday.

A Wednesday in July

The previous weekend was hectic in an unexpected way. A friend of mine managed to crash my computer, necessitating a reinstallation of Windows along with a reformat of the hard drive. At first I was mildly annoyed by this, then was flabbergasted when I realized I had not backed up any of my short stories onto the backup CD! It seems when I dragged and dropped folders onto the CD drive, I missed the short story folder.

I e-mailed all my friends who might have a copy of a story lying around their hard drives, and after much prayer, recovered most of my work, though not in the latest form. So far, I have finished rewriting my "spider story," which I hope to send out soon. Luckily, my novel folder was backed up succesfully.

Also on Saturday, I went to see "The Fantastic Four," which was more or less a poor man's "X Men." The characters were pretty faithful to the original comic book, but the story was flat, with a dull villain who had similar powers to Magneto in X Men.

Tonight, I have another Information Design class, along with a test. Let's hope Clarence arrives on time!

Back to Class

Tonight I will head back to the document design class.

The 3 elements of document design (Carliner): Physical, Cognitive, Affective

Woo hoo! O.o

Less Verbosity, More Design

I have been reading the textbook for my document design course. To say it's interesting would be to exaggerate slightly. It's not that the subject matter is without appeal; but what really annoys me is the annoying American sense of Positivism that pervades the pages.

In the chapter I was reading, the author describes three types of document design approaches: 1) Classifying
2) Intuiting
3) Listening

Now, the astute reader can discern immediately which approach the author favors. "Listening," listed last, comes first in the author's mind. Classifiers do audience analysis based on statistics, intuitors frame the text around the "invoked reader," while listeners ASK the intended audience about their reactions to proposed document types. Seems clear enough. The remainder of the chapter then discusses a "user study" the author and her collaborators performed on teenagers who had to look at anti-drug brochures. Not surprisingly, the teens had trouble with the various brochures.

The textbook is riddled with side notes on every page, mostly explaining how "Johnson and Smith (1968) analyzed ...." Even when the author admits somewhat later in the book that many readers just look at the headlines and skim charts (exactly what I found myself doing), she proceeds ad nauseam to show how this or that study "proves" or "demonstrates" or "indicates" this or that fact.

Let me stipulate--All text is fiction. Studies do not make facts. Studies reinforce the authors' own Weltanshauung. When you repeatedly rely on some professor of technical communications to reinforce your point, you succeed only in reminding me that your "facts" are argument by authority. In other words, the educational and psychological establishment have overtaken the universe of "textual artifacts."

Those teens were more or less forced to give their reactions to the brochures. Their time was taken up by the authors for the latters' own career purposes. Did it not occur to anyone that the teens' reactions would be coerced and therefore suspect?

"If we just perform enough studies, we can think our way out of this problem," seems to be what the edu/psych establishment wants to accomplish. If we break a subject into its components and then observe them, we can discover the Truth. But it's all a contstruct; if you break matter down far enough, you discover not more matter, but empty space. If you rely too much on studies and reports, you will find yourself constructing a reality based on a web of pre-known and forced experience.