RFC: Front Page?; Archive maintenance plans

Today I have a question and an announcement for regular readers of this blog. But first (as I qua reader prefer), a little bit of background.

The Blogroll (revisited)

Last year I drew your attention to some of the links in my blogroll, which I was then cleaning up. Now that I’ve been further weeding them (and cutting back significantly on my blog reading), but have added some others, here’s another installment of the links in my blogroll you might particularly wish to follow.

• Dreams of Earth and Resurrection: Poetry and such by Amanda, whose In Cambodia I recommended in last August’s list.
• Holy Worlds, again. An active community of Christian fantasy (and science fiction, and historical fiction, in separate, smaller forums) authors, aspiring authors, and enthusiasts.
• A Christian Worldview of Fiction and Rewrite, Reword, Rework: Two blogs, one personal/professional/etc. (fitting the title fairly well, but lately coming down more on the “Christian Worldview” side) and one a writing-tips blog, by author Rebecca Luella Miller.
• The Queen and the Handyman: A blog for her book of that title, and her other writing, by Maria Tatham, who’s lately become a regular commenter here.

And again, please do peruse the blogroll, which is to your right (just above the length “Archives” section and below the “Top Posts”) if you’re reading this on the blog and not in a blog reader, on Facebook, or through some syndication service.

And if you, dear reader, have a blog you think I might be interested in reading, please do let me know.

Feedback, Comments, and Critique: In General and in Specific

In every poetry post, and in other posts here and there, I beg for your comments—critique, suggestions, questions, and so on—on my work. I haven’t talked about what I’m looking for (or why) in a while, so today I’d like to talk about criticism and comments, in general and specific.

A Year in Review

The year draws to a close; today is in fact the last day of the Christian liturgical year, and the new year will begin tomorrow with the season of Advent. Last year at this time I looked back over the history of this blog in a three part retrospective; today I’ll take you through the past year since that series. (My Thanksgiving post earlier this week serves as my personal retrospective. And as I follow a schedule for my posts, I’ll be following each “department” separately, so this won’t be strictly chronological.)

Sharing Policy

It recently occurred to me that I’ve never given a clear, plain explanation of my feelings about sharing or copying the content on this blog. I’ve been remiss. So today I’ll explain the policy I’ll generally hold to. (This will also go up on a Page on the blog soon, so anyone can find it easily without having to dig through the archives.)

First of all, if in doubt, or if you think I might wish to make an exception in your case, ask me.

Second, feel free to link to posts on this blog, share them on social networks, etc. This is highly encouraged, though if you link to me on your blog or elsewhere I’d appreciate a trackback or other notification of the link. I’ll try to avoid breaking any of your links. And please don’t claim any of it as your work; when you link or share please give proper attribution.

Third, I do not object to personal archival copies or to the incidental electronic copies that are necessarily created by reading this blog on its web-page or on Facebook or by receiving it by email or in your blog reader, or in other similar cases that arise in the normal course of reading this blog. However, if you make personal archival copies, please do not distribute those.

But fourth, beyond such cases as those I outline above, please do not copy my work without my prior explicit permission.

If you think any of this is unreasonable, or have any other thoughts, please comment.

Poetry Archive

Since I’ve had no response so far to my plea for your opinion as to which of my poems you think are my best (and scarcely more for any of the other items on my help wanted page), and my full archive has grown to disconcerting size, for the next while I’ll post (links to) a small group of my poems each Thursday and ask you to read them and tell me which of that group you liked best (and, if possible, why, of course).

The Blogroll

Over the past few years, I’ve accumulated a long list of blogs that I read regularly, or in some cases that I used to and would like to read but (because they are so prolific) simply can’t spare the time. Many of them are linked from the two sections of my “blogroll”, to your right if you’re reading this on my blog directly rather than on Facebook or in a blog reader.

Before I begin, I’ll mention that I plan to weed my blogroll in the coming weeks; many of the sites I list, especially those of friends and former teachers, seem to have been abandoned in the last few years, but the main problem is that the list is far too long. (So if you want to investigate all my links, instead of just the ones I’m going to keep, it would be wise to hasten.)

In the remainder of today’s post, I’d like to highlight some of the more noteworthy blogs in my blogroll (in no particular order).

• A Maggid’s Musings: The blog of a Messianic Jewish former rabbi. This site contains quite a bit of very helpful background information on Scriptural concepts that most modern Christians don’t get in their early education.
• In Cambodia: A very dear friend is working for a mission organization in Cambodia, and blogging about her experiences there.
• Holy Worlds: A community of authors and enthusiasts of Christian fantasy, SF, and historical fiction. While the site includes a blog, I enthusiastically point any like-minded readers to the forums that are the bulk of the site.
• Patricia C. Wrede is a favorite author; her blog often includes helpful writing advice.
• The Musical Diary of Greg Scheer: He’s the Minister of Worship at Church of the Servant, which was my church when I was in Grand Rapids, and I find much of his music to be brilliant—but the rest is so wildly eclectic that I never know what we’ll get next.
• Fairies, Fantasy, and Faith: A blog for discussion of writing Christian fantasy.
• Iron Ink: Bret McAtee is pastor of Charlotte CRC and a man of decided theological and political opinions, most of which are highly unpopular but orthodox.
• Twenty Sided: I first happened upon this blog for its “DM of the Rings” comic, then thoroughly enjoyed reading the account of a D&D campaign, and then stayed for the variety of interesting and occasionally deep other content.
• Two Points for Honesty: The blog of another friend from college, with interesting posts on subjects ranging from politics to video-games to programming to music.
• The Tao of D&D: A blog by a curmudgeonly, “old-school”, occasionally brash AD&D DM, from which I have benefitted tremendously in my development of Strategic Primer.
• Speculative Faith: Another Christian fantasy community, this one focusing more on the genre in general and on specific books than on writing. It also includes a library of Christian
  fantasy novels.

Again, these are just a few of the blogs I follow; I recommend taking a look at my full blogroll (to your right on my blog). And I also recommend subscribing to this blog, so you’ll receive new posts either by email or in your blog reader as soon as they’re posted.

Correspondents?

A couple of times in the last year and a half or so, I’ve asked for correspondents, originally expressing my regret at not having developed the habit of corresponding—keeping in touch—with friends. (From those posts I now have some intermittent correspondence, and there are a few other friends I am keeping somewhat in touch with too, but still …) Then, about three months ago, soon after Facebook released their “Questions” product, I asked “If I missed you and wanted to catch up with you, would you prefer a(n) …” (letter, email, IM, etc.) using this new application, and several of you marked an answer.

But I’d still like (which is probably not a strong enough word) more correspondence, of whatever kind. If you write me an email or a letter, send me an instant message (IM) or Facebook message, write on my Wall on Facebook, or write a comment on this blog, I’ll do my best to reply. (Spam not included, of course. And in any case my habit of taking my time thinking about things means that a reply to anything except an IM might take a while. But I will write back.) Or if you don’t want to start the correspondence … would anyone like a letter?

Reintroduction: Strategic Primer

As I mentioned in Monday’s (re)introduction to the Shine Cycle, I never properly introduced myself or my work on this blog. Today, I’d like to (re)introduce Strategic Primer.

Strategic Primer is a strategy game that I’m designing. There are two versions of it (editions, perhaps): a campaign for a group of human players, run by a human moderator called the Judge, originally done with pen and paper but now run by email with computer assistance, and a computer game for one or several players.

In Strategic Primer, each player takes the role of the commander of a military outpost on an imagined world, which he or she is leading into the future. It has obvious similarities to many other games, but has several distinctive features that I think make it superior, including:

• Competent subordinates: once your workers and other subordinates have some experience, you can generally give them their instructions and leave them to it, and trust that they’ll carry them out competently.
• Limitless possibilities for discovery: If you describe a technology or scientific advance in terms that your subordinates can understand, and they have the necessary tools (physical and mental) to make use of that description, you gain the advance.
• You can do the unexpected, taking the campaign in directions I never anticipated.
• A story to explore.
• The possibility of real diplomacy between players.

A campaign is run by turns. Each turn, each player gives the Judge orders for his subordinates (soldiers, farmers, miners, scientists, engineers, smiths, etc.)—this is called the player’s “strategy” for the turn. Based on all the players’ strategies, the game rules and mechanics, and his or her own imagination (for things like “AI” players and “independents” that the Judge controls), the Judge determines what happens in the world that turn, and gives each player his or her “results” of the turn. In the current campaign, which desperately needs more players, each turn has taken about a month to resolve, but creating a strategy should take even a beginner no more than an afternoon&; most of the time is spent waiting for the other players to give me their strategies—we work around your schedule—or for me to work my way through them to produce the results.

Players in a campaign have assistive programs to help them play the game. Right now the only fully-functional program is a map viewer, which shows the player the terrain of the game-world, the locations of fortresses and units, and the results of explorers’ explorations, but I have plans to significantly improve the (not-yet-functional) character manager and add more programs according to player demand.

I also have plans to develop Strategic Primer as a computer game, in which each player will be able to play any part from infantry grunt up to commander in chief. But that project is on the back burner for now, as I need more programming and design practice before really tackling it and the assistive programs need my attention right now.

In this space (Wednesdays) on this blog, I write posts about various topics related to Strategic Primer: summaries of completed turns, the game’s distinctive features compared to other games, designing and programming the assistive programs and the computer game, hints and other information for players of the campaign, and so on.

If Strategic Primer looks interesting, welcome! I’d love to hear what you think.

Reintroduction: The Shine Cycle

I’ve recently realized that other than my “Hello World” first post in the last days of 2008, I’ve never properly introduced myself or my work on this blog. So, to correct this omission, over the next few weeks I’ll be writing a series of posts reintroducing myself and my major projects—other than my poetry, which for the most part needs no introduction. Today I’ll begin with my fiction.