Memory Book/Fractal Confusion (Kevin Breeman): Difference between revisions

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Memory Book/Fractal Confusion (Kevin Breeman): Difference between revisions

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-Okay I've looked over other people's histories here and I've decided I started off a tad too formal in my own bio.  So I'll give a few details.  Let's see, first off I'm a computer programmer / automation engineer in real life specializing in the Java programming language.  I love reading and philosophy and Star Trek (duh).
+{{BreeamanRunningHead}}
+<table width="100%" bgcolor="black" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
+<tr><td>
+[[image:BreemanMemBookBanner.png|link=Memory Book Team/Fractal Confusion (Kevin Breeman)]]
+</td></tr></table>
+{{KevinBreeman}}
+Okay I've looked over other people's histories here and I've decided I started off a tad too formal in my own bio.  So I'll give a few details.  Let's see, first off I'm a software engineer in real life specializing in the Java programming language.  I love reading and philosophy and Star Trek (duh).
-I joined this group because I love writing and I love thinking.  I wanted a place where I could shoot off some ideas and see how they played among a group of friends.  For the rest of this page I'll give some history of what I've done here and how I've tended to roll when simming.
+I joined this group because I wanted a place where I could keep writing fiction on my spare time.  I wanted a place where I could shoot off some ideas and see how they played among a group of friends.  For the rest of this page I'll give some history of what I've done here and how I've tended to roll when simming.
 ==Introduction==
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 ====Greatest Achievements====
 I have accomplished several things while being a part of UFOP.  The thing I'm most proud of I think is my simming logistics strategy of using linux's Festival text to speech engine to convert the set of emails for a given day into an MP3 for consumption while I perform various household tasks.  I have had many long and enjoyable hours contemplating the motivations behind various writers and their characters while sweeping the floors or cleaning the bathroom or mowing the lawn.
+I've come up with some cool new writing styles and then framed them in terms of maneuvers.  I'm sure it's probably been done before but I still think it's kind of cool.
 ====What I hope Ultimately to Accomplish====
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 ====[[Eric Da'Pan]]====
 Eric Da'Pan represents a more practical-minded scientist.  He has a doctorate in astrophysics and he is also a very people-oriented person.  He acts as a sort of opposite to the very theoretically-minded [[Kevin Breeman]].
+====[[Jessica the Writer]]====
+Jessica is a character who allows me to switch writing styles at will while I sim.  She writes in first person, reflecting on her life and then writing about the events in the sim.  Of course what Jessica doesn't realize is that she is in fact in another universe writing on the goings on of the reality as it exists in the world of SB118 sims.
 ==Current Simming Strategies and Maneuvers==
-I'll just describe how I've gone about writing my sims here.  I'm sure others have used similar methods for writing though perhaps under different names.  Presently my sims are part of a sort of architecture, with the real world at the top (on the left) and the simming world at the bottom.  The intermediate layer is the set of narrative voices that allows the reader to peer into the sim world.
+===Preliminary Definitions:  Analysis of Simming===
+Ever since I joined this group I have been fascinated by the study of simming in and of itself. In studying simming and the strategies one can employ in playing the game I have come up with several terms.
+====Demand====
+Demand is the number of posts tagging one or more of a given simmer's characters.
+====Output====
+Output is the number of posts a player produces per day.
+====Aggregate Output====
+The aggregate output is the total number of posts per day that a given simming group produces.  As I understand it, in order for a sim to continue to survive it must produce an aggregate output of about four posts per day.
+====Momentum====
+Momentum is the amount of demand a player can expect as a result of the amount of demand he is placing upon other players at present.  It is a rather inexact figure whose computation would depend upon a greater amount of statistical knowledge than I currently possess.  In general, momentum would depend on how fast the players the given player currently has tagged usually respond.
+For me a good momentum would be one post per day.
+====Tag Flow====
+Tag flow is the movement of tags between characters.  It is more a way of visualizing who is simming and with whom.  Consider the following example of a '''tag flow graph''':
+[[File:TagFlowExample.png]]
+The arcs represent the number of tags.  So for example during the period over which this graph was compiled (in this case from Aug 2nd 2011 to Aug 4th 2011) Breeman tagged 2 other characters while he was tagged a total of 5 times by other characters.  Tag flow graphs are a good way of seeing at a glance who is most active in a sim at a given time.  In this case, Breeman, Nicholotti, and Jaxx are most active over this slice of time.
+====Narrative Architecture====
+I'll just describe how I've gone about writing my sims here.  I'm sure others have used similar methods for writing though perhaps under different names.  I'd like to begin by outlining the cognitive framework in which I operate while I'm creating my sims.  Presently my sims are part of a sort of architecture, with the real world at the top (on the left) and the simming world at the bottom.  The intermediate layer is the set of narrative voices that allows the reader to peer into the sim world.
 [[Image:architecture.png]]
+Some have noted that this architecture is constrictive.  However, I would like to point out that any sim can be viewed in this way.  A sim is a narrative text.  As such, it is a text in which a narrative agent tells a story (Bal, Mieke. Narratology. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 15).  One may conveniently conceptualize the narrative agent him/her/itself as being an individual who occupies a reality dubbed the narrative voice or meta-character layer.  This reality itself may or may not be a part of the Star Trek universe, but it is one in which it is by necessity possible to possess an intimate knowledge of the Star Trek universe.
 ===Narrative Voice Injection===
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 ===Pick a Group Geared more to Part Time Simming===
 When I first joined I had no idea how much time it would take me to post for this game.  So I went with a group geared more toward being able to post 1 to 3 times per week.  Looking back this has been beneficial not only because it suits my hectic working schedule but also because it gives me more time to write well thought out posts.  I couldn't see myself writing in a group geared toward posting 4-7 times per week.  I couldn't keep up and write well there.
+===First Person Narration===
+This can be used to spice up your writing with an alternative perspective.  You could even write from a second person perspective if you like, though your reader might get annoyed after a while of being told what she/he is doing all the time.
+The advantage of a first person narrator is that the reader can be set at ease to enjoy the tensions of the story with the knowledge that somehow the narrator got through it and lived to tell the tale.  I suppose this might also rob the reader of some of the suspense though.
+===Narrative Voice Re-absorption===
+This is a special maneuver that should be used with care.  It would work in a situation such as one in which a character is stuck inside some kind of a temporal anomaly.  For example, consider the plight of one Jessica who finds herself waking one morning.  The simmer has elected to write her from the first person perspective.  He has also been employing [[#Narrative Voice Injection|narrative voice injection]] in the past.  The simmer is now positioned to execute a narrative voice reabsorption.
+The absorption involves the morphing of the first person narrative voice into the already-extant narrative voice.  For example, the first person might say something like "And then the space-time continuum changed such that I forgot everything and then found myself writing the story of Joe's life."  Where Joe, of course, is the character on whom narrative voice injection had been employed in the past.
+This allows the second character (in this case Jessica) to be retired gracefully and with some flare.  She morphs into the previous narrator.  However, you should use this move with care, as you are now faced with the problem of potentially having to carry around Jessica's baggage when executing subsequent narrative voice injections.
+====Success with Jessica====
+[[Jessica the Writer|Jessica]] was my first attempt at this maneuver.  [[SIM: Jessica: Rebirth|Execution]] proceeded as follows:
+# Jessica falls down mining shaft along with manifestations of the [[Desperot#Desperot Entity|Desperot Entity]]
+# Decides to become a writer
+# Describes her encounters with John Ewen, a mentor writer
+# Acts as official narrative voice [[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SB118-Independence/message/15749|in a Breeman sim]].
 ==Retired Simming Strategies==
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 This section will discuss some of the more exotic ideas for simming I have dreampt up over the past while.
-===Narrative Voice Reabsorption===
-This is a special maneuver that should be used with care.  It would work in a situation such as one in which a character is stuck inside some kind of a temporal anomaly.  For example, consider the plight of one Jessica who finds herself waking one morning.  The simmer has elected to write her from the first person perspective.  He has also been employing [[#Narrative Voice Injection|narrative voice injection]] in the past.  The simmer is now positioned to execute a narrative voice reabsorption.
-The absorption involves the morphing of the first person narrative voice into the already-extant narrative voice.  For example, the first person might say something like "And then the space-time continuum changed such that I forgot everything and then found myself writing the story of Joe's life."  Where Joe, of course, is the character on whom narrative voice injection had been employed in the past.
-This allows the second character (in this case Jessica) to be retired gracefully and with some flare.  She morphs into the previous narrator.  However, you should use this move with care, as you are now faced with the problem of potentially having to carry around Jessica's baggage when adding subsequent narrative voice injections.
-==Current Strategic Conditions==
+==Simming Blog==
-In this section I describe the current situation in which I find myself as a writer in the game.  This section is designed to act as a living record of my successes and follies.  Dates given in this section will be in RL time and not in IC time.  It will be composed of a set of discrete dated reports under the grand rubric usually of the mission or some aspect of it.
+In this section I describe the current situation in which I find myself as a writer in the game.  This section is designed to act as a living record of my successes and follies.  Dates given in this section will be in RL time and not in IC time.  It will be composed of a set of discrete dated reports.
-===Desperot Conditions===
+===2009-10-16===
-====2009-10-16====
+====Desperot Conditions====
 With the intent of spicing up the planet of [[Desperot]] I proceeded to write a few posts about a man named [[Rowls]] who lived on the planet and who experienced strange and possibly hallucinogenic experiences.  While on the face of it this was a good idea it did have the drawback of apparently running contrary to [[Cody, David Scott|David Cody]]'s post about the world being devoid of life.  It is indeed the case that I was aware of the planet's lack of life, but I wanted to inject the possibility of some kind of alternate reality which interfered with the present reality of the planet.
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 Regarding Desperot itself, I have been simming a lot of vignettes about the effects of whatever is happening on Desperot on a miner name Rowls.  It appears that the other writers aboard the ship are working on a plot about alien communication through energy discharges.  I think I'll back off for a while and see what they come up with.  I'm actually hoping they end up inventing the core of Desperot's mystery while I follow their lead and write after-effect sims.
 [[Category:Memory Books]]
+===2010-01-03===
+====Adding a Picture for Kevin Breeman====
+Wow!  Added a picture for my PC.  This is a strange experience.  I've had many different pictures in my mind of what Kevin Breeman would look like.  Now that I've put up a picture for Kevin Breeman I hope I'll be able to feel a bit more certain about who this person is that I'm writing about.  Will Breeman morph into a Doctor Who type character because I picked David Tennant's picture for his "avatar"?  Or did I pick Tennant's picture because I've always loved stocking Breeman with a certain eccentricity and innovation?
+Only time will tell.
+===2010-03-02===
+Leading a team for the first time.  It's a bit of a challenge and certainly a learning experience.  Relying a great deal on NPCs rather than direct interaction using Breeman.  The idea is that this will prevent the appearance of micro-management.  Again though I'm feeling awkward because am I the writer not micro-managing by simming the NPC's in the first place?
+The mission is to [[Locet|Paryat]] and my team is tasked with explaining curious abilities manifesting among some of the locals.
+===2010-03-21===
+Made Breeman have a mysterious vision of a simulation that Lt. Jg. Tyriden developed.  Other writers don't seem to have tried to take that odd part of the simulation and run with it, but perhaps that is due to my own making it rather opaque and mysterious.
+The [[USS Independence-A|USS Independence]] has been re-tasked to a different mission.  Thus my team leadership activities will, insofar as they concern the Locet, be ending for the time time being.
+===2010-05-21 - A Crisis of Voice?===
+Recently the plurality of narrative voices I employ and the fluidity by which I alternate them have caught up with me.  On our current mission my use of a present tense with a character called Jona offered me several advantages.  Unfortunately it caused no shortage of confusion among other simmers, who were used to a flashback style that involved smooth delineations between scenes.  With Jona I used present tense in order to allow the writing of his story to move freely into the past tense (flashbacks) without the need of adding flashback tags to the posts.
+As discussions of this have continued it has become apparent that I have yet to settle on a single narrative voice.  This is a consequence not of some lingering existential crisis I'm having but rather of the way I've treated my membership with this club.  That is, I have viewed it as a place in which to try out writing ideas in harmless fun.
+So a kind of quest has begun for me to find a voice, making me a "voice-seeker" in the words of one fellow simmer.  One possible resolution to this problem of course would be for me to do nothing and to define my voice not as a style that is characteristic of Kevin Breeman but rather as [[SIM: Imitated Imitating an Imitator|a plurality of styles, the employment of which is characteristic of my own style of simming]].
+===2010-06-04 - Transfer to the Ronin===
+Over the course of the past several days I was made aware of a crisis in simming counts aboard the [[USS Ronin]].  At the request of one of that vessel's senior officers, I put in for a secondary character.  The attempts to get a secondary on the Ronin were frought with struggles resulting from my own enthusiasm butting up against the more level-headed command staff.  In the end, the decision was made for my primary to transfer to the USS Ronin.
+Thus, I am now simming Lt. [[Kevin Breeman]] as the chief of science aboard the USS Ronin.  I must say that I leave behind a great group of people whom I will miss dearly.  However, it is my hope that the Ronin will have its own challenges and opportunities and great people.  The Ronin was, after all, the formative vessel for such simming greats as Elisa and Jack Kolk.  I am sure I will encounter there other great simming minds of whom I am unaware in the weeks and months to come.
+For the record, here is a transcript of the original email I sent in farewell to the USS Independence-A:
+====Farewell Email====
+Good evening,
+It has been an honour simming with each and every one of you over the course of this past year and a half.  I could not have found a better group of people with which to begin my career in this neck of the internet.
+I would like to thank especially Elisa Kolk, Ralik, Joel, the writer of Nicholas Lucianno, and many others for many hours of fun and rewarding writing.  If I have left anyone out of that list blame my rather tired mind and not my heart :).
+I'd also like to thank Maggie for giving me the opportunity I am pursuing at present.  I am leaving the Independence-A not due to any difficulties I might have been having but rather that I might help out some fellow simmers on another vessel.
+Lt. Kevin Breeman
+Frmr Chief of Science
+USS Independence-A
+===2010-06-06:  Simming Recession on the Ronin===
+The volume of simming on the Ronin is very low.  Because of this all the NPCs I have deployed there are currently blocked.  There is a slight amount of activity on the Breeman front but other chars are blocked.  I fear this may result in a couple of things:
+.  Me as a writer being at the core of most of the activity.  That is, I'd be either driving most of the activity by tagging people or else I'd just be simming to an empty audience.
+.  The Ronin not being saved simply because people will see (1)
+I suppose then I'd just get tasked to another ship.  I do miss the Indy so maybe I'd get sent there again.
+===2010-06-08:  Strategy for the Ronin===
+As I mentioned in my previous entry, I have deployed a great deal of NPCs to the Ronin.  The goal here is to stimulate output from other players.  So far, players have responded and demand upon me is now at about one post per day.  This is a very comfortable position as it affords me a greater amount of time to respond and it minimizes any conflict simming might have with my RL commitments.
+Going forward then, I hope to stagger my responses, maintaining a [[#Momentum|momentum]] of about one psot per day and injecting multiple sims should [[#Aggregate Output|aggregate output]] decrease to below four posts on a given day.
+===2010-08-02===
+Well it's been a while since I last posted here.  My real life situation has prevented me from simming as much as I'd like to and the lack of posting on the Ronin has sapped my creativity a lot.  I tried acquiring a secondary but then I found that I just couldn't concentrate.  Maybe I'm in a bit of a thunk.  I don't know.
+I've re-introduced that present-tense narrative style that caused so much confusion back on the Independence.
+===2010-08-22:  Help comes to the Ronin===
+Help, in the form of my [[Toni Turner|academy instructor]] has arrived on the USS Ronin.  Simming has really picked up in pace and I'm finding it difficult at times to keep up.  Still though, it's not terribly challenging as long as I keep utilizing my [[#Greatest Achievements|logistical strategies]].
+===2010-11-01:  Transfer to the USS Victory===
+I'm writing this retrospectively.  I seem to have reneged in my keeping of records of what I've been doing simming-wise to the point that I missed this turning point.  My transfer to the Ronin was accompanied by a small amount of controversy regarding what it was that actually prompted the move.  I don't think the drama was long-lived but essentially it boiled down to the following:
+* A ship where simming rates were too high to allow for 'contemplative' simming styles
+* Real-life commitments
+* Marine Simming
+====Marine Simming====
+That last item was the cause of the controversy.  I did not consider marine simming to be of interest and I also found the marine characters themselves to be out of tune with characters in the rest of Trek.  Shortly after my departure I wrote what I still consider to be a short  manifesto [[http://www.starbase118.net/forums/index.php?/topic/5248-marines-vs-starfleet/page__st__20__p__278203#entry278203]] that expresses my thoughts on the matter.  Indeed, I made a promise not to write any more on the subject but instead to leave the document / post as my thoughts for the record.
+The response to the post was mixed and more or less negative, usually centering on my use of quotes from actual marine sims.  It should be noted that the intent behind those quotes was not to attack the individual authors but rather to provide a bit more strength to my argument.  However, I do concede the point that some might have been offended.
+====The Aftermath====
+Since transferring I have been content.  One thing I do notice however, is that the Victory exposes me to many more of my weaknesses as a writer.  Whereas the USS Independence-A and, to a lesser extent, the Ronin tended to be vessels concerned with the mission and with a few smaller details on the characters, the USS Victory tends to feature sims that are much more relationship-driven.  That is, there is a lot more romance.  This is the form I'm weakest at, so I look forward to taking the opportunity to hone that skill aboard the Victory.
+===2011-01-03:  New Forms of Art===
+Over the past two weeks I've been learning to use Blender.  What is neat about this fact is that it comes exactly one year after I learned to use GIMP to doctor with pictures and use them to embellish wiki entries.  I'm thinking particularly of GIMP planets, which have helped bring life to wiki entries on the worlds we sim.
+More generally I've been noticing a shift away from simming as a place for literary experimentation to simming as a place for escapism.  To be sure I think this is healthy since it suggests I'm becoming more of a fun-loving person.  I suppose the transition can also be blamed on the fact that I haven't been reading complex books by guys like Murakami lately.
+===2011-03-06: Coming out of a New Simming Slump===
+(Please note:  I'll be posting each entry to my simming blog [http://www.starbase118.net/kevinbreeman/] on the main site as well)
+My real life job has recently made it difficult for me to post a lot.  However, that is now tapering a bit, so I'm getting back on my feet.
+I can't say that a lot of stylistic changes have happened between my last blog entry and the present, so maybe I'll just report on what I've been simming lately.
+I've revisited my decision not to include any AI's in my simming aboard the Victory.  I did this for two reasons.  The first was that I noticed other people simming them (for example, Katy Orman's 'Unky') aboard the Victory.  The second was that, whether or not it's important for me to look at new writing styles, AI's and their attendant philosophical quandries are still a big part of my writing style.
+So to this end I've re-introduced my Smilies.  I even rendered them in 3-D on the wiki to bring them even more to life.
+In general, things are picking up again and I'm hopeful I'll be able to introduce more of my usual creative flair into the sims.